The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1880-10-14
Small Farming in the South.

The phrase small farming" used of
the South, crops out in directions curl
Gus enough to one unacquainted with
the special economies and relations of
existence in that part of our country.
While large farming in the South means
exclusive cotton-gTowing-as it means
in the West exclusive wheat growing or
exclusive corn-growing-sma farming
means diversified farm-products; and -
special result of the Southern conditions
of agriculture has brought about a still
more special sense of the word, so that
in Georgia, for example, the term
small farmer" brings up to every ma
tive mind the idea of farmer who, be-
sides his cotton crop, raises corn enough
to do him. But again, the Incl
dents Ringing upon this apparently sim
pie matter of making corn enough to do
him are so numerous as, in turn, to
render them the distinctive feature of
small farming. Small farming means,
in short, meat and bread for which
there are no notes in bank; pigs fed
with homemade corn and growing
of themselves while the corn and cotton
were being tended; yarn spun. stock
ings knit, butter made and sold Gnstead
of bought; eggs, chickens, peaches,
water-melOns, the four extra sheep and
a little wool, two calves and beef-all
to sell every year, besides colt who is
now suddenly become, all of himself, a
good, serviceable horse; the four oxen,
who are as good as. gifts made by the
grass, and a hundred other items, all
representing income from hundred
sources to the small farmer, which
equally represent outgo to the large
farmer-items, too, scarcely appearing
at all on the expense side of the strict
est accOunt-book, because they are eth
er products of odd moments which, if
not so applied, would not have been at
all applied, or products of natural ami
NAL growth, and grass at nothing ton.
All these ideas are inSeparably connect
ed with that of the small farmer in the
South.
The extent of this diversityof product
possible upon single small farm in
Georgia, for instance, and the certain
process by which we find these DIVERSE
fled products presently creating de-
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bOrhOOd farmers club, the amateur
Thespian society, the Improvement of
the public schools, the village orchestra,
all manner of betterments and gentili-
ties and openings out into the universe,
show significantly, and even pictur-
esquely, in a mass of clippings which |
began to make a couple of years ago,
from a number of country papers in
Georgia, upon the idea that these I'M
considered triiles of mere farmers
neighborhood news, with no politics
behind them and no argumentative col
oring in front of them, would form the
best possible picture of actual small
farm life in the South-that is. of the
New South.
To read these simple and homely
scraps is indeed much like a drive
among the farms themselves with the
ideal automaton guide, who confines
himself to telling you that this field is
sugar-cane, that one yonder is cotton,
the other is rice, and so on, without
troubling you for responsive eXclaIna
Uion or other burdensome commentary.
Rambling among these cuttings one
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q single small farm, corn, wheat, rice,
sugar-cane, cotton, peaches. .plums, ap-
pies. pears, figs, water-meIons, canta-
loups, musk-melons, cherries, strawber-
ries, raspberries, blackberries, Catawba
grapes, Isabella, Scuppernongs, peas,
soup-beans, butter-beans, ollra, squash,
beetS, oyster-plant, mustard, cress, cab
bage. turnips, tomatoes, cauliilower,
asparagus, potatoes, onions; one does
not fail. too, to catch a glimpse of pigs
sauptering about, chickens singing,
colts flinging their heels at you and off
down the pasture, calves likewise, cows
caring not for these things, sheep on
the rising ground, geese and turkeys
passinl, perhaps the green-gray moss
surely designed by nature to pack veg
etables in and send them Northn-a
very bed of dew for many days after
cutting, and the roses and morning
glories everywhere for benson
lSt,l2aey Ldnicr. In Scribner'S MOatbjy.