Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1883-12-27
Chinese Farming Around San Fran
cisco.

Chinese Farming Around San Fran
cisco.
The Chinaman began his usefulness
as a market gardener in and around
San Francisco nearly thirty wears AGO.
IN the days when the Americans had
greater treasures to die for in the earth
than vegetables. Men enjoying the
prospect of turning up q gold mine
with their spades, were not likely TO
apply them to a potato patch. Yet
these men had TO eat, and others, not
above the humber occupations, worked
to feed them. The first OF the Chinese
vegetable farmers thrOye so well that
other compatriots followed suit, and
the housewives of San Francisco sool.
became familiar with the queer voked
figures and their heaped-up baskets,
who announced their coming with a
shrill cry. not unlike that of New
York milkman. At first each farmer
made his day : trade on the contents
of two baskets. Then the more enter
prising hired men to carry additional
supplies. The farmer himself always
led, and still leads, the van in these
professions, which number from two
to a dozen men. He carries the same
burden rs his hired hands, and does
the bargaining tor them; and as their
baskets are emptied they are sent to
the rear, instead of back to the farm
to work. The procession leaves town
as it entered it, in single file. while the
usual chatter is still continued, as if
keeping time to the patter of their slip
Shod feet.
The Chinaman farmer lives on the
most economical basis. and does his
cultivating on strips of waste land. by
rOadsides, and on hillsides so abrupt
and naturally sterile that the white
man never dreams of utilizing them;
also down in rayineS and gullies which
ne had to reclaim from the original
wilderness. We remember one Chinese
farm in Il deep and once savage gully,
which used to be the bed of a creek
that the spring floods transformed into
q furious torrent. On one side the rail
road passes over Il steep embankment;
on the other is an abrupt and rocky
bluff. By damming the creek at the
head of the gully and diverting the
water down the hill range of which
the bluff Is a part, the ingenious Mon
gOlian has turned the bed of the ancient
torrent into q productive farm, and so
fortified the barren slope that he can
raise a crop upon it also. He utilities
every available foot of ground. He will
even build his house on piles over
creek, or on stills beside an embank-
ment, in order to save surface soil he
finds SO precious.
All his farm work is done by hand,
usually on the methods of his native
country. His vegetable farms are as
neat and trim as the great tlOwer-stud-
ded gardens of the milliOnaires whose
tables he helps to supply. He has, APP
parently, measured the productive ca
pacity of the earth to an inch and
Grams more into given space of soil
than would seem credible but for the
fact itself
His system of cultivation seems to be
as mathematical Us his calculation of
the resources of his plot. He measures
the ground in feet and inches instead
of by acres and rods, and allots spaces
to his beans, potatoes, peas, tomatoes,
cabbages, etc, in proportion to the de-
mand for them; and he never cult
Yates anything for which there is no
immediate call. Wheat, grapes. and
fruit do not seduce him, they require
too much space and care; the COMPETE
ton in them is too great, and the market
too fiuctuating. He works not for the
whole world, like the farmers who
have made the state famous, but for a
single city whose denizens must have
certain amount to each day. SO his
venture is a sure one, and only a rare
CONFUSION of nature can impair his
prosperity. An earthquake, or land
slide, Or a season of heavy rains, may
cut into his profits, but the climate is
so friendly that it soon repairs the
ravages. His crops are perennial, too.
When one product is not 1ourishing,
he manages to have another that is in
season, and he thus keeps busy all the
year round.-AJred TrannbIe, IN Am.
4grjculta1rjSt.