Bedford inquirer. [volume] (Bedford, Pa.) 1857-1884, 1867-03-29
noRAcE eREELEY on FARMNe

Yesterdays Tribune thus discourses in
reply to a letter asking practical advice rela-
tive to farming Your chief danger is i'm
patience. Ii you or your wife would not get
disgusted with farming the first year. it is
quite unlikely that you ever will. Begin
with distinct understanding that you will
not make money at tirst-that you viii almost
certainly be poorer at the close Of your first
year { farming than when you began il.
Your land will be in poor condition. you
viii have to do two DAYS work for futurity
to every one that tells directly on the produc-
ton of this year 5 crop. You viii suffer by
drouth and food, heat and frost, hail and
insects and will be led to conclude that
farming is hard business, and its rewards
very meager and uncertain. But all these
are passing clouds, to dispel which you have
but to persevere.
Resolve to grow what you need and to
consume your own products so far as may
be. We don't object to giving a bushel Of
good potatoes or a barrel of turnips for a
pound of middling tea; but half a dozen
such exchanges per annum are decidedly
preferable to a hundred.
Be sure to average at least five days on
your homestead. There are farmers who do
not mean to be shiftless, and who can do
fair day 5 work when they set about it, yet
who have so much business" that takes
them off this way aud that, that they do not
average three square days work per week.
Those farmers are heading straight toward
the poor-house. Can you wonder that they
deem farming beggarly pursuit?
Don't fear that you will oyerstock the
Barket. This city, like most American cit
les, ought to consume treble the fruit she
does, and would if it were reasonably cheap.
Good grapes can be grown at the cost of
Wheat-say i've cents per pOund-yet they
retail here at fifteen to thirty cents per
pound. At ten cents, tie consumption
would probably double annually for the next
four years at least Peaches of late sell here
at most exhOrbitant prices. Berries, save
when most plentiful, cost far more than they
should One hundred thousand acres well
set in fruit this year would not begin to glut
the markets Of our great Atlantic cities.
Bear in mind that each child over seven years
old can help you ii Yeu grow fruit.
For 81 900, you can buy habitable cot
tage and five to twenty acres of warm, mel
low, tractable soil 4 team aud COW viii
cost you $500 more leaving you balance
for implements, seeds provisions, &c. And,
il you practice frugality and live largely on
your own products, that will just do,
If you prefer to raise grain and grow
stock, you will naturally go West, where
land IS cheap and grass abundant. You
may there buy 100 acres Of land for 5 900
or less IN many civilized localities and viii
be apt to do It, though it is more than you
really need. But we may take another OPP
portunity to speak Of farming in the West,
where success Is not more decided, but where
failure is more difficult than in older commu-
mites Meantime, let US sum up our CON
yictiops in few sentences:
rvy tban ba9q AL L lfa fRffaRgE TGheapcr ali things
considered. here than elsewhere 1t very
cheap at the West, but cheap around this
3ity and in every old State, even in dcnsely
ueopled Massachusetts. To one who knows
how to improve and till IT, nothing else Is so
cheap among us as arabic soil
,. Eyery ono who has any available means
should own land. Though it be but gar
den patch, he will be a better husband, bet
ter father. better citizen, for owning land
He who owns an acre need never pass an
idle day. nor 60 eriuging aud begging Tor
employment. Ii no one wants to pay him
for his labor, he may pTofitably employ It on
his own land True, land unused, ike any
thing else unused, IS rarely profitable IN
vestigation yet nothing else Is so solid, so
tangible and 50 certain to increase steadily
in value, as land And no other man OF
moderate means can be So truly Independent
as he who cultvatcs bis oai, Iioasvh id.
3. If every man in business, who can spare
81 600 up to $4,000, would employ that
amount in buying laud-a homestead, if pos
sible-and let it be decided directly to his
wife, he would signally lessen the probability
of his dying in an aims house and buried at
the expense Of the town Few men will
deem this worth consideration We do