What I know of farming:: a series of brief and plain expositions of practical agriculture as an art based upon scienceGreeley, Horace
Science
What I know of farming:: a series of brief and plain expositions of practical agriculture as an art based upon science
Greeley, Horace
Agriculture -- United States
After three all but fruitless years, we have this year a bountiful
Apple-crop, in this State and (I believe) throughout the North. Our old
orchards being still, for the most part, preserved and in bearing
condition, while a good many young ones, planted ten to twenty years
ago, begin to fruit considerably, we had, throughout the three Fall
months, a superabundance of this homely, wholesome, palatable fruit. It
should have been cheap for the great body of our mechanics and laborers
to provide their families with all the ripe, good Apples that they could
consume without injuring themselves by gluttony. Good Apples should have
been constantly displayed on every workingman's table, to be eaten raw
as a dessert, or baked and eaten with bread and milk for breakfast or
supper. Each provident housewife should now have her tub of applesauce,
her barrel of dried apples, or both, for Winter use; while a dozen
bushels of good keepers should be stored in every cellar, to be drawn
upon from day to day during the next four or five months. In short,
Apples should have been and be, from last August to next May, as common
as bread and potatoes, and should have been and be as freely eaten in
every household and by every fireside.
How nearly have we realized this?
I will not guess how many millions of bushels have rotted under the
trees that bore them, been eaten by animals to little or no profit, or
turned into cider that did not sell for so much as it cost, counting the
Apples of no value. Living immediately on a railroad that rims into this
City, wherefrom my place is 35 miles distant, I should be able to do
better with Apples than most growers; and yet I judge that half my
Apples were of no use to me. Many of them sold in this City for $1 per
barrel, including the cask, which cost me 40 cents; and, when you have
added the cost of transportation, you can guess that I had no surplus,
after paying men $1.50 per day for picking and barreling them. I sold
all I could to vinegar-makers at fifty cents per bushel for
cider-apples--the casks being returned. But they could not take all I
wished to sell them, there being so many sellers pressing to get rid of
their windfalls before they rotted on their hands that even this market
was glutted. That it was much worse for the farmer a dozen miles from a
railroad and a hundred from the nearest city, none can doubt. I have
heard that, in parts of Connecticut, cider was sold for fifty cents per
barrel to whoever would furnish casks, and that their size was hardly
considered. Manifestly, this left nothing for the apples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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