The Florida agriculturist. [volume] (DeLand, Fla.) 1878-1911, 1899-05-03
Tom Sawyer's Experience.

OCaClOn reported the Jersey req nOS
to be the best all around rooter in
Florida. My experience is not of ma
ture to confirm that opinion. After
eighteen months full of trials and trib-
ulatiOn-mOnths replete with careful
attendance, also full to repletiOn with
slOps and other evidences of my thrift
ty purpose to evolve pork, | sorrow
fully declare that the Jersey red hog
is a tiap-eared fraud. | would rather
pin my faith to palmetto raZOrback.
1t is meaner than town COW and full
err of original sin than brOOding hen
in a garden of early spring truck. 1t
breeds but little else than famine and
a GOODNESS between neighbOrs. So far
rs l am concerned the whole breed of
Jersey red swine can run violently
down a steep place into the sea" and
be d|d-Which means "drOwnded."
am now experimenting with the
Chester whites-then my good old
friend Judge White, of Live Oak.
means to send me a trio of the black
Essex. which he says is the best hog
on earth Afterwards l shall try to
find the Guinea blue hog such as my
father used to raise on che old planta
ton forty years ago. 1t hurts my con-
science and my lghborS potato patch
to allow hogs to run at large. but other
neighborS have shadow hogs fitting
about between the pines and fence
rails so why mayn not l? I'll don't sell
whisky. somebody else will is the sa
loon mans excuse. Is tn" raiser of
vagrant hogs any better than the
whisky seller? We are all trying to
do unto our neighbor as we think he
will do unto us.
l wish that could raise enough hog
feed on an acre of land to keep a hog
out Of mischief. l feel sure that it
can be done, because the papers say
so, but l confess my inability, or inca
pacity, to do it. Oh. these big potato
stories! how they haunt my day
dreams and my visions of the night.
Only recently l read in the papers
about a man at a place called Hast
ings, who had seven acres of sweet
potatoes which averaged 425 bushels
per acre. just went out to my pOta
to house and groaned. If could raise
$4,000 pounds of potatoes on one acre
Of land-I could feed hog.
A good old man here in Florida told
me that he had raised 1000 bushels of
potatoes Oh one acre of land. and he
also said that he had seen 1,5OO-but
| won't tell that The man died and
went to heaven in less than six
months after our conversation. On
my side | told him that l had harvest
ed 1928 bushels Of oats per acre on a
hundred acre field in TeXas-and | am
not dead yet. l believe all these big
stories for fear l may do some one an
injustice. A few years ago | was at
the Nebraska State Fair at Omaha
and in the course of little talk where
some wordy fellows were speech max
ing 1 told the crowd that [ had seen
four-legged hogs tnat day SO big that
their only use was to serve as a bal
ance weight to that end of the earth.
1t is q fact that there were on exhibit
ton hundreds of hogs each weighing
many hundreds of pounds, and either
as a supreme object lesson, or to bet
ter illustrate Nebraska hoggishness,
the managers of the fair had sent all
the way to Florida and imported the
thinnest and least greasy specimen of
pine land rooter that ever slipped
through a barbed wire fence. Men
can be mighty mean sometimes.
The poetry of farming is all in the
books, and the fellow is a liar who
wrote it, That beautiful little story
by E. P. Roe, called "Driven back to
Eden" ruined my life, and when I
meet the author in heaven l mean to
%o1l r. Sc of