The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1876-10-05
Exaggerated Profits Reported in Farm.
ing.

The time has about arrived for the
story Of a man having made one hundred
and fifty dollars from an eighth of an
acre of strawberries, to be started on it's
annual travel around the press. APP
pended to this statement comes the usual
computation of the small fortune to be
made on five acres at that rate, comments
upon the scarcity of the excellent berry,
and some heavy advice given to every
body, urging them to plant Strawberries
at once.
Next comes the story of the man who
commenced with six hives of bees, which
doubled the first year and quadrupled the
second, with hundreds of pounds of beau
tiful honey, sold at thirty or forty cents
per pound. Advice is given to secure
bees at once, and the millions of pounds
of honey evaporating throughout the
country are pointed to, as an evidence of
the stupidity Of man, and as one of the
causes for the prevailing business depres-
sion.
Next comes the story of the man with
five or ten acre truck patch, who real
ICES each year small fortune by manur-
ing heavy and double cropping accord.
ing to Peter Henderson's Gardening for
Profit" The editor of the agricultural
column loses patience in reading this ac-
count while before his eyes are farmers
selling ten acres of corn for one hundred
and fifty dollars, and he points with just
Indignation at what seems clear to him
that truck patches are the true solution of
the problem, How to make farming pay"
The climax is reserved, however, for
the editorial fiend who starts the annual
hen story afloat of how Thos. Peterson,
with fifty chickens, maintains large
family and purchased an eighty acre farm
from the sale of eggs and spring chickens.
Nothing has ever been more clearly
demonstrated (on paper than the fact that
ton of chicken meat can be produced
with as little cost as ton of beef. Moth
ing we know of so works up the phil
anthropic editor of the agricultural COL
umn more than the ignorance people show
upon the subject of raising poultry and
eggs for profit.
The day has gone by for the story of
the man making his fortune from ten
acres of hops to be read with very absorb
ing interest, although it annually finds a
place, and we are no longer beguiled
from the conservative paths of our fore
fathers to experiment upon castor beans,
hemp, cotton or flax, by the unusual profit
made by Tom, Dick or Harry, at some
place unknown to the geography man.
No! no! Nothing of that kind allures
us, in Kansas, from studying our long
line of figures which demonstrate the
mathematical fact; if our fifty cows in
crease to 100 head in one year, it is only
four or five years until we are turning off
two or three car loads of fat steers every
year. Or if our 500 head of sheep pay all
expenses and interest on the investment
by their increase, is it not plain that the
wool is clear profit? Or If one tree of
Ben Davis apples yield five dollars net
this year, what nice income 1000 trees
will certainly bring us. Or if we can put
in 100 acres more of wheat, and it yields
twenty-five bushels per acre, and We get
ninety cents or one dollar per bushel, dom
you see unreasonable skeptic, the profit
we make? My sanguine friend declares
these profits ION paper beats the twenty
four per cent. shaving shops.
We have all of us read these pleasant
stories about the big profits in this or that
crop, or in some special breed of stock,
and probably we might be induced to &C
knowledge that most of us, one time and
another, had undertaken to get these same
big profits out of crops and stock that can
be figured out so easily. We see you
smile, old friend, while the recollection
of that strawberry crop comes up, and
how you failed to get good plants the first
year, and the next was too dry, and very
poor setting was the result, and how, after
much manuring, cultivation and mulch
ing there was, after all, but a partiaLcrop.
Oh, yes, Of course there were other little
hindrances Of picking and marketing,
poor prices, and sundry Inconvenience,
of neglecting other work and crops that
seemed quite an annoyance at the time, so
much so, in fact, that before profitable
crop was secured, the patch either WENT to
weeds or was turned under.
= Probably nothing connected with the
farm has been more uselessly exaggerated
than the profits Of bee-keeping-an inter-
est that requires adaptability and special
study to have even the ordinary profits of
average farming. ". GeH',
1t is the most natural thing in the
world for men to become discouraged at
times, with the ordinary routine of the
farm, and to strike out into some special
crop or speculative venture in stock, to
secure unusual profit. Nine times out of
ten, these attempts are failures because
the INDIVIDUAL uUtS uOG ICdllZe Glldt, lUI
instance, handling large lots of cattle OF
sheep is growing q special crop like
broom corn, hemp, or castor beans, re.
quires thorough knowledge of handling
and marketing them, and, that the great
profits which have been somewhere re-
allied, have been either the result of &C
cident or great skill and good judgment,
together with a thorough knowledge Of
fhe stock or crOrS