The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1893-11-22
For THE FLORIDA AGRICULTJR IsT.
Living on the Soil.

Sherman Adams is a level headed man,
and the editor OF this paper has some
claims to that distinction himself. Now
we old West Florida folks don't know
much about booms except what we read
of them, one never having struck our SET
ton, except little flaw of one at De-
Funiak and Chipley, two new places on
P. & A. railroad. Lands never sold for
more money than a crop on each acre
would pay for the first year, and yetthere
are many mortgages on farms. Onereaso
of that is that our farmers are land poor.
They are not satisfied with land enough
to cultivate well, and some over for wood.
And then a man here would be ashamed
to cultivate only fifteen or twenty acres
of land, even if by doing so he made treble
the amount that he does by half way fer
tilizing and cultivating forty acres. You
can no more get cotton out OF their fields
than you can get "blood out OF q tur-
nip" I met one young farmer the
other day who told me he only planted
cotton for the seed aid wished he could
fed a variety that produces all seed.
This one man is by degrees making anew
departure in his farming operations, and
for the benefit of other new beginners on
this side the State where we don't strike
things heavy in a money making way, L
will tell what he has been doing this year.
He cultivates thirty acres Of land. Ten
acres OF this is in cotton, for the seed
principally. He has wasted SO much
money On worthless commercial fertilizers
he done want any more. Fifteen acres
or thereabouts is in corn. Three acres he
planted to onions last November. He
put sixty bushels green cotton seed to
the acre broadcast and plowed it in. He
used some sets and some seed of Ferry 3
red onions. All went on nicely till the
breeze struck his crop in January. Nearly
all his plants from seed were killed, and
the sets killed to the ground. After
while some of the plants took a fresh
start and he gathered one hundred meas
ured bushels of fine onions, some, and
by no means a few, weighed one and a
half pounds. He handed me one of his
average sizes and the tape marked it ten
and a quarter inches in circumference.
He has three hundred bushels OF corn,
fifty head of hogs to kill, fat now, but so
many ground peas in his fields that if the
weather was cold enough he would hest
tate to take them off. / do not remem-
Der how much syrup and sweet potatoes
he told me, but he felt paid fo1 his onion
crop at one dollar per bushel.
Somebody wrote you that there is not
enough about agriculture such as is suit
able and OF interest to people OF other
than the everlasting orange, and garden
ing. That man wrote the truth, | have
tried to get a wide circulation for this
paper for the last six years and all the
encouragement meet with is, "It is a
good paper, for those interested in sub
tropical fruits and trucking, but no good
to u.s." We have no interest in orange
groves nor how to market the fruit, except
that we like to know our fellow citizens
are prospecting. Now l don't think such
allegations are just. There is much that
is good for all of US, even if we do haveto
go around orange groves and pineapples.
We emit make I'M orr minds that nine