The Democratic advocate. [volume] (Westminster, Md.) 1865-1972, 1893-07-15

glut the market let it 90 gradually.
He pointed TO a vast field of spinach
while driving by, through which enc or
two long lanes, representing thousand
barrelsful, had been cut, and he chuckled
as he recalled the present market price.
Il bought this farm sixteen years ago,
continued the genial trucking 'magnate,
at was then a waste of scrub and very
little of it had been under the pillow. |
calculated that | have spent on it from
$4,000 to $4,000 a year ever since"
The writer suggested that such statement
would make some of the up-eounty farmers
of Maryland and Virginia open their eyes.
aMaybe it would, coolly continued the
farmer, but did not so in blindfolded.
Referring to note book he gave the
following figures as receipts and dlsburse-
ments for the past three years:
Year to July 81, 1899, expenditures,
S20,913.72; receipts, So, 73O.9S.
neutrality-suspicious., s29,976.92; re-
ceipts, S4S,06253.
neutrality-suspicious., s34 ,291.20; re-
ceipts, s43, 452.0S.
''It's been all along like that. This
year | will probably do better. Now you
often hear of men who, while they talk of
making big profits, are at the same time
externally hard up. | have built one big
Office building in Norfolk and am now
building a market on the corner of Church
and Green streets. | hope you will be-
Iieve that my figures are correct.
The writer confessed that he could not
doubt what his eyes had seen, and taking
leave of the farmer went his way toward the
rancheros of some Of those who raised deli
cate vegetables At one of these places there
we're acres of asparagus beds 'just ripe. "
The proprietor said that the market for the
succulent stalk was not so good as formerly,
because it is raised so easily and with SO
little expense in the hot houses Of the
North. He said he treated his asparagus
after the old-fashioned methods, and the
results were always satisfactory. He kept
stable manure constantly on hand for
them, and in the early spring he watered
the beds with strong brine, such as he
could get from an old pork or mackerel
barrel. He had laid out his beds with
roots three years old, and that was ten
years ago. They were thirteen years old,
and some of the stalks were as big as
base ball bat and soft and marrowy for
good ten inches Tomatoes pay, he said,
when they are raised in small quantities
something ike thirty acres of vines, but
the fruit is so perishable that bad market
means big loss. He will have some on
the market very early, though, by middle
of May, certainly. These will go like hot
cakes
at takes the Eastern Shore of Mary
land farmers to handle and market toma-
toes. though" he said. "They are chain
lightning on perishable fruit, and you'll
notice that tomatoes are never plentiful In
the city markets until the truck farmers
of the Eastern Shore begin to ship. By
that time we farmers down here begin to
drop out of the business for the season"
In going through these big truck farms
about Norfolk Won are struck by the abso-
lutte absence of any of the improved
farming implements. There are no buggy
ploys, no sub-soilers, no patent troopers,
nor cultlVabOfsi nor any vi IhoSe nc"-
tangled machines which are deemed so es-
sential to the success of the northern and
western farmer. The old fashioned, cast
steel, two-horse pillow is used for the fallow,
and the old diamond harrow and the shovel
plows do the rest with ''mule and man
power. Yea, verify, even the hoe is used,
and a dozen colOred women will hoe fifty
acres of cabbage plants in two days. The
shrek Of the stationary engine is never
heard on that vast plain. The methods
come ms near being primitive as they well
could but there is the spirit of science and
s.git thar" behind these old methods which
directs them in a way that would certainly
make some of the old-timers catch their
breaths and stare should they come in con-
tact with it.
1t all proves that the old ways are good
ways after all, if energy and good sense
handle the hoe and direct the pillow.