That farm, recounting the adventures of a dry-goods merchant who went back to the land

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

^ I. In which I encounter the farm real ^ estate man and lease a vaca- ^ tion home 3

II. In which the lease is extended and

Chapter I

IN WHICH I ENCOUNTER THE FARM REAL ESTATE MAN AND LEASE A VACATION HOME

DURING the past ten or twelve years tlie critics among my friends have been gradually won over to my way of thinking on the general proposition, "Can a city man become a successful farmer?" But I still differ from them on a point of comparative values. To me the extraordinary thing is that, with my vast ignorance of matters agricultural — and 1 am just beginning to realize the vastness of it — I have actually been able to make things grow and to wrest a net profit from the willing but misused soil. To my friends, most of whom are still hunched up before roll-top desks, fatuously supposing that they are engaged in something important, the wonder is that a human being should exist with a mind so bizarre that he could give up a perfectly good dry-goods business in a thriving city for the sake of spending his mature years among the sun-scorched cornfields and the unclean cows of an up-state farm, and.

with luck so phenomenal as to enable him to "get away with the whole thing."

If I agreed with my friends on this point, I should now devote my pen-play to the task of expressing the philosophy of the situation. 1 should explain that the longing for the soil was probably bred in my bones, that some guardian angel had led me through the mazes of a business career and kept my heart true to the impulses of youth — and I should doubtless bore you to death.

But since I am convinced that the things worth telling about are the methods by which I have achieved a moderate measure of practical success, I shall keep my feet planted on the solid earth and will try to set forth those things that would have been most valuable to me a few years ago.

It is perhaps necessary to add that I am that converted merchant whom my friends still marvel over. I did give up a lucrative business, and I did it with my eyes open. A few decades of experience had knocked some of the rashness of youth out of me, and I did the thing advisedly and in cold blood. I believed that it was the best thing for my wife and myself, and deep down in my heart I knew I could make a business success of it.

However, this was not the sudden jump that it sounds. It took several years for me to come around to this point of view, and perhaps a brief tracing of the steps may serve to remove the mystery from what my friends still consider an extraordinary act.

Behold me, then, Harrison Whittingham, head of the Melvin & Whittingham Dry-Goods Company, with an average income of something more than $30,000 a year, and a bit laid by; vice-president of the Board of Trade and a charter member of the City Club; owner of a substantial stone house and stable on Centre Street; well established in the community, and apparently fixed for life; a man whose birthdays had long since become days of reflection instead of celebration, but still sound in mind and body.

Most insidiously did the rural serpent enter this most respectable and well-established urban Eden. It was fifteen years ago, and it all came about because of the annual annoyance of solving the summer problem. In desperation I came up here and rented this farm as a half-hearted experiment.

The vacation question is a terrible bore to the average business man with a family. Summer hotels, no matter where they are, lack the freedom and comfort of home — the home feeling, in other words, which is the most restful influence in the world. The furnished cottage is, as a rule, such only in name, for one must move a carload

S of furniture out from the city to make the cottage habitable. I knew the disadvantages of all of these before I finally hit upon the farm idea. In discussing the subject with my wife we concluded that there were, at least, possibilities in the country, so in the early spring 1 began to look around for a place to spend the following summer. I started with the real estate agents, and I don't think there is another line of business, except, perhaps, life insurance, that can boast of such persistently energetic representatives. My office became a magnet for them, and each day's mail brought descriptions of farms in every section of the country, and I read every one of them. New England estates highly improved, and others that needed a little doing over; Florida fruit lands, Texas cattle ranches, and Virginia estates with their alluvial James River bottom lands and their romantic antebellum history of which I never tire of reading; Mississippi Valley farms, bargains in grain farms out through Minnesota and the Dakotas, and the virgin land in the wonderful Canadian Northwest; apple growing in Oregon was held up before me with all its glittering possibilities, and for two hours one day a most active and interesting tongue led me through the sunshine and the roses and the Spanish Missions of California and off into the Imperial Valley to El Centro, where they

Irrigate and make the desert bloom, and where my old friend Allen Kelly preaches industry and progress through his newspaper to the indolent ones there on the edge of Mexico. It was all interesting in a way because it served to push my horizon back beyond the Hudson, and I was reminded once more that the constructive part of the United States stretches away in three directions from America's greatest port of entry.

But 1 was tethered to my business, in a way; so out of the mass of farm descriptions I saved only those that were within a couple of hours of my city desk, and to many of them I made fruitless pilgrimages in search of something to suit me.

If at the termination of human events there is to be required of us in another world an explanation of our earthly acts I tremble for the real estate man when he undertakes to bridge that awful gulf between his printed and illustrated description of a farm and the actual property itself. Into his written statements distorted and misleading sentences will find their way just as cotton threads will sometimes creep into "all silk" material, but the pictures — how is the camera made to tell such unnatural stories!

One place in particular cemented itself to my memory, and time beyond all the generosity of hope could never destroy the impression it made upon me. It was down on Long Island and was "A Gentleman's Country Estate." (I am speaking of the printed description, of course.) The manorhouse, rich in master's bedrooms and baths, rested like an architectural diamond in a setting of beautiful shrubbery. The picture, I recall, was a little out of focus and the effect was soft and artistic. I journeyed fifty miles to nibble at that bait, and as many miles back steeped in anger and regret. Perhaps at one time it had been a "gentleman's country estate," but when I saw it the halls that had once housed that august scion of elegance and refinement were warped and worn. The place belonged to a lady who occupied it in all its irreparable decay. The roof was sagged and, in spots, unshingled against the elements. Windows and doors were out of plumb and the stone flooring on the veranda reminded one of the ancient ways in the Alhambra. Two Muscovy ducks splashed about in a little lake near the house that was almost hidden in its growth of lily pads, and by an unweeded pathway that led to an overgrown garden a stone figure of Pan, minus his flute, clung tenaciously to his crumbling pedestal. Because of good material and the honesty of builders in other days the barn still stood, but out through its holey roof one got an unobstructed view up toward his Maker. A lone pigeon flew across the haymow and disappeared through a sashless window, and downstairs in one of the box stalls a knee-sprung ginny mule dozed and fanned flies. There were 115 acres of that wind-swept wilderness of sand, and the price of it was $20,000.

One day an industrious agent who had brought to my attention some twenty-odd of the seventy-five farms I had inspected, wrote me a most alluring description of a farm that he thought would just suit me. It was the first week in May when my wife and I went to look at the property. The village impressed us very favorably when we alighted from the train; it was clean and comfortable-looking and set in the most attractive, rolling country 800 feet above the sea. We drove three miles out from the village to the farm, but we did not go beyond the entrance to the place — the first impression was enough. Spring had worked its beautiful May coloring into everything else, but the brush had skipped on that particular spot. My wife and I looked hopelessly at each other, for we had reached a verdict.

The local real estate man drove us back to the town over another road in order to show us a little more of the country. About a mile and a half from the village we came upon a rather attractive place on the right of the turnpike. The untenanted house with its tightly closed blinds stood among the trees as though ashamed of the neglect it was suffering. We stopped in front of the gateway and I asked about the property. Our guide informed us that it was hard to tell who the property belonged to, for it changed hands so often; the caretaker, however, would show us about if we cared to see it; so we drove in. The place, we learned, was owned by a wholesale coffee merchant in the city, who would probably be glad to get some income from it in the form of monthly rental, for the coffee business was none too good just then.

There were 400 acres in the farm, nearly all cleared and arable; 300 acres, with the residence and outbuildings, on the east side of the highway, and 100 acres on the west. The outbuildings consisted of a cattle barn 145 feet long with accommodations for seventy head of stock and storage room for 300 tons of hay; a horse barn containing twenty box stalls, ten standing stalls, harness room, carriage room, etc.; chicken house, piggery, tool house, corncrib, blacksmith shop, and three tenant houses. On the lOO-acre tract a grist mill stood by the side of a stream that ran through the entire length of the property.

A great deal of money had undoubtedly been spent in the improvements, for they were more elaborate than one usually finds on a farm. The eaves of the colonial roofs on the barns, for example, were supported by ornamental wooden braces, and each of the three cupolas was surmounted by a handsome weather vane. Absence of paint was the worst affliction the buildings suffered from, but that had manifested itself only in spots; the foundations and sills were all in very good condition. Of course the general neglect cast a somewhat gloomy light over everything, but it was, nevertheless, by no means an unattractive farm.

The caretaker was an old man who had served in different capacities on the place since the buildings were erected — in fact, he had assisted in building them. Time had developed in him a sort of feeling of ownership for the property, and he was inclined to regard our visit as an intrusion until we came to inspect the residence; then his reticence disappeared. He pointed with pride to the cornerstone which he had helped to set in place; in the stone were cut the initials "J. H. B., 1874." James H. Bellair had built the house at a cost of ^50,000, so the old man informed us as he fumbled with the big brass key in the front door. The house was attractive in a way, but hardly the style of architecture that one would choose nowadays for a country dwelling; nevertheless, finding such a house on a property, there are few who would tear it down simply to exhibit in a new one their own

II peculiar ideas, more or less practical, of a summer home.

The walls were brick-filled and stood upon a splendid foundation around a cellar under the entire house. The main hallway, 20 feet wide, was floored with alternate squares of gray and white marble. A broad stairway rising from the centre of the far end, and divided at a landing, destroyed the suggestion of the conventional, useless hallway. The inside trim throughout was black walnut, which seemed terribly sombre at first, but even as we walked about the house it grew on us. On the left of the hallway was a large room the entire length of the house; this, the old fellow informed us, was originally the "picture gallery, and it had the finest paintings you ever seen all over the walls." We saw some of the paintings later, in the village hotel parlor, where they had found their way after Mr. James H. Bellair's demise; they were "buckeyes." A^buckeye.?" Well, when an impatient landlord or an annoying appetite steps in between an artist and his canvas at a time when the studio exchequer resembles Mother Hubbard's little cabinet, the artist will frequently dash ofi" an "Alpine Scene" or a "Cornfield Vista in the Afternoon Glow of an Autumnal Sunset" and convert theeff'ortat once into cash sufficient for his immediate needs; such works of art are known as "buckeyes."

On the right of the hallway was the parlor, back of that the library, then the dining-room, which was separated from the kitchen by a butler's pantry, and grocery and china closets. On the second floor there were eight bedrooms and three in the servants' quarters. The interior of the house was in fairly good condition; the outside, however, needed considerable repairing and painting, but with the memory of the other places I had visited fresh in my mind, I determined to try to rent this one. I left the matter in the hands of the real estate agent, and we returned to the city. The following week I received word from him that the farm could be had for $ioo a month; after some dickering I leased the place for one year at $80 per month.

U$

Chapter II In Which The Lease Is Extended And Actual Farming Operations Begun

IT IS an unusual thing for a city man in quest of a summer home for himself and family to lease a 400-acre farm for a year, so by way of explanation let me say that for a long time the farm idea had been in my mind.

I was one of those city men who wanted to go to the country and start farming, but my ideas differed in some respects from theirs. The "summer home" feature of it was only the first step in the direction I had been inclining for years. I had four growing boys whose welfare, naturally, was of the greatest importance to me, and I believed that a few months spent in the country each year would add very materially to their education as well as to their health. Professors and text books train a young man's mind, it is true, but farm life is the foundation of a peculiarly healthy viewpoint. But in addition to that, farming had always meant something more to me. I looked upon it as a business filled with tremendous possibilities, and in theory T had carefully worked out plans for their development. Many of my friends had farms, large and small, but almost without exception their places were veritable graveyards for dollars. The soil seemed to produce fairly good crops of all kinds, but some strange force operated most industriously and effectively against net profit. That was the problem that had always puzzled me, and after years of broken promises to myself I at last made up my mind to try to solve it.

Being almost entirely a *'book farmer," I soon learned that a very necessary part of my early agricultural education was a course in the mistakes of so-called "practical farmers" and **city farmers." Like most of the latter class, when they commence farming, I believed that the farm would supply my city house with milk, butter, eggs, vegetables, fruits, broilers, delicious country sausage (I haven't the heart to go any farther down the list), etc. In theory it was a brilliant conception, but in practice — well, just scratch off everything but one barrel of potatoes and six well-matured "broilers."

But, after all, this is to be a history of the working of my farm, of its failures and its successes, without any alphabetical arrangement of either; I shall write of my experiences just as they occurred.

IS

To begin with, I hired an overseer possessed of a multitude of virtues and a wife, to guide the agricultural end of the farm; they established themselves in the best of the three tenant houses. Two farm hands were employed to assist him. The old caretaker remained undisturbed in his position. They were apparently good men and industrious, for the place was in very presentable shape when we moved up in June. It is remarkable what effect the combination of energy and a few implements has upon a neglected place — it is like brushing a boy's tangled hair.

1 bought cattle and poultry to supply our needs, and two teams of horses for the farm work. The carriage horses I brought up from the Centre Street stable. The season was too far advanced to undertake much farming; in July, however, we cut about fifty tons of hay. But, after all, we were not there for that purpose. We were experimenting, primarily, to find out if those acres held the secret of summer happiness; if they did not, then another summer, so far as we were concerned, would find the tottering old caretaker reigning supreme once more in the midst of his memories and weeds.

To undertake to set down here a detailed account of our summer's experience on the farm would require too much space, and it would be a digression from my original purpose. I will say, how-

l6 ever, that If there was a single flaw in the whole scheme 1 have yet to find it out. Our sun-tanned, voracious boys were sufficient endorsement of the step we had taken.

Of course, it was a new experience for us all and another year might find the novelty somewhat worn off and the enthusiasm less riotous, particularly with the boys. After our return to the city in October, however, my wife and I, after a thorough analysis of the summer's experiment, concluded we had made no mistake. During my early years of theoretical farming in my library I doubt if my wife was very much in sympathy with me; if she was she carefully concealed it; but toward the last she seemed to have become infected in a small way with the enthusiasm that had worked so thoroughly into my system. To the average city woman the social position of a farmer's wife is not an enviable one. They see her as Millet pictured her in "The Gleaners," or, perhaps, as a "Maud Muller," bare ankled in a hot timothy field, tortured by bumblebees and work. As a rule they fail to appreciate the other side of it until they try it.

In this farm in the foothills we had apparently found an ideal summering place, so I turned my attention to the farming side of it. The first obstacle was the one-year lease; it might limit the

THAT FARM .

duration of the blissful state we had enjoyed, and at all events it seriously hampered farm projects. This latter feature particularly annoyed me, for I had already found my plans running over the edge of a year; so in December, under the persuasive influence of a little added rent, I succeeded in having the original lease cancelled and a new one drawn for five years. That placed me in a position to carry out some of the plans I had in mind regarding the working of the farm.

From 400 acres I could reasonably expect to get sufhcient grain and fodder to support quite a number of live stock, so I sold the three cows that were on the place and bought eleven thoroughbred Holsteins — ten cows and a bull. The milk could be sold to the factory in the village at a price that would pay the cost of production; then such of the increase in the stock as I did not hold for breeding purposes could be sold for a good price and would be net profit. I bought eight Berkshire sows due to farrow in March and April, 200 Leghorn chickens, and another team of work horses. This comprised our live stock equipment when we commenced in March to work a living for them out of the soil.

I moved the family up in May and it seemed like a homecoming to us all. During the previous summer we became pretty well acquainted with the village and its people, and when we returned, the better part of a forenoon was spent in renewing friendships of the year before. Village folk, I have noticed, are not given to placing obstacles in the way of friendship; they rather invite it. Such social lines as they have in Charleston, or in the Back Bay District, are not stretched about for the townspeople to trip over, and the countryman's standard of "blue blood" is in the tint of its red. The town prospered on its democracy and it was progressive, even to the extent of a country club.

That country club, by the way, was one of the chief attractions of the town. Everybody belonged to it; initiation fee $5 and annual dues $5 more. The clubhouse stood on a hilltop commanding a view that any club in the world might well be proud of. The record for the nine-hole golf course was held by the village baker; he was too knock-kneed to hope for proficiency in any other line of sport, but he could certainly play golf — and make good huckleberry pies. On Saturday afternoons the village matrons would assemble on the clubhouse veranda, each with a little fancy work or some darning, and spend a few delightful hours plying their needles and gossiping; of course such a small town could not furnish enough material during the week for a whole afternoon's gossip, so the needle work helped over the little depressions in conversation very nicely.

I said everybody belonged to the club, but that was not entirely correct. There was one man in the town who found no breath of welcome there. He had basked in the enjoyment of membership at one time, but whether or not his resignation had been voluntary I never knew. He was proprietor of an amusement palace in the village — a sort of department store of happiness. There were pool, billiards, bowling (and some said even cards) for the entertainment of those seeking diversion, and countless thirst-destroying libations for arid throats. The place, naturally, came to be looked upon with disfavor by the women of the town whose sons wasted their nights there, and the proprietor became intensely unpopular. One Saturday afternoon he chanced upon the clubhouse veranda while the sewing ring was in session, and he was put on trial by the ladies. Each one took a hack at him, and finally Mrs. Mayer, the butcher's wife, who had two sons, and, therefore, compound wrath, summed up in substance to the effect that the cafe king was sorely lacking in honor and decency, and his morals were rotten. At that point in the performance he looked smilingly around the irate circle and said: ** Where the carrion is there the vultures will gather." As

I said, there Is no authentic record of the circumstances surrounding his resignation from the club.

When we moved up in the spring there were ninety-five acres seeded down — fifty in corn, thirty-five in oats, and ten in wheat. Seven hundred pounds of commercial fertilizer to the acre was drilled in with the corn. We pastured one of the meadows and our hay crop was less than the previous year. About the middle of August the threshing machine paid a visit to our oat field; from the thirty-five acres we got 700 bushels of oats. Not so bad, my overseer informed me, considering the condition of the land. He seemed to feel that after he had become better acquainted with the land, the crops would be materially increased. This was reasonable enough. He was hired for that purpose and I did not propose to interfere with the working of his practical mind by offering theoretical suggestions, although at times I almost had the temerity to do so.

The home feature of the farm was working so beautifully that I determined to give the commercial side ample time to get into shape. What matter if the "Harrison Whittingham Farm Account'' showed a debit balance.^ It would be wiped out very soon by revenue from the stock and crops; it was counterbalanced already by the pleasure the farm had afforded us. Little wonder,

I thought, in a life so comfortable and independent, that the farmer's brain cultivates no appreciation of systematic economies.

I did not then appreciate how much I took for granted. In my city business I took nothing on trust; I had to have actual facts and detail figures; and I wonder, now that I look back on it, just why I thought that "general impressions" were safe to work on in farming and not in dry-goods.

Chapter III In Which I Become Convinced That I Must Buy

THE FARM

THE attitude of the farm owner toward his tenant is peculiar: in most instances the landlord seems to feel that his one obligation is to collect the rent. Against the possibility of having to make necessary repairs he will insert in the lease a clause providing for the tenant to do such work as may be required at his own expense, if he wants it done at all. Tenants do not, as a rule, find repairs necessary under these conditions, and the result is that both parties to the contract suffer. It would be far better for our farms, and for owners and renters, if the question of upkeep were given the consideration that it deserves, and the matter of repairs definitely provided for in the lease.

There are certain obligations imposed upon a tenant regarding the payment of rent, and, sometimes, a weak-kneed reference to repairs, which is always ignored, but the one feeble effort to protect the farm, to keep some life in the soil, is contained in a clause forbidding the removal of manure from the property. How much better it would be to have farm leases drawn by competent farmers, leases wherein the tenant would be compelled to pursue intelligent methods in the conduct of his business, rotate his crops, and fertilize properly. It would be no hardship for the tenant; in reality he would profit by it, and at the expiration of the lease the owner of the property would have something more than an exhausted piece of land and some dilapidated improvements. City landlords do not abandon improved real estate to tenants in consideration of so much rental; why should farm owners do it?

The theory that it is cheaper to rent a farm than to own it is all wrong. Of course, based upon a comparison of rental with interest on investment there is some foundation for the belief, but that is a very poor way to commence practising economy In agriculture. In the business of farming, as much as in any other, the first essential to success Is an efficient working plant — that is, highly productive soil and practical equipment. Most rentable farms contain neither of these requirements and tenants do not strive to put them there, whereas on a man's own property his work is all done with the idea of permanent betterment. The first year or two may not be apparently profitable ones, but in the end how much better off he is than his neighbor who farms for to-day's crop without any idea of to-morrow's. Just run down the mental list of farms you have seen and compare those worked by tenants with those operated by owners.

During my two years' occupancy of the farm under the new lease I had, at my own expense, painted the residence and done considerably more repairing about the property than I probably would have done had I taken the place solely as a bread-and-butter proposition. There were a great many alterations and additions necessary, however, and, although my lease had three years yet to run, I hesitated about making them. To repair fences was one thing, but to put up new ones was quite another. The dairy room was by no means up to my ideas of sanitation; the hennery was impractical and inadequate; the equipment of the cattle barn was serviceable in a way, but not at all in keeping with up-to-date ideas. In fact, I began to realize that a great portion of the plant was susceptible of improvements that would facilitate the working and economy of the business.

As I look back upon those days I recall my feelings at the time. The plans I had so carefully laid and in which I had a confidence that had grown into conviction were being rudely altered by act-