The Idaho Springs siftings-news., 1906-08-11
BACHELOR GIRLS
FARMING 1T,
Al EIPeriment on One of the Berkshire
Hilltops.
They ar" Trying If They Can Live From
the FT'eeed- Of Two Acre.-Mo.t of the
Work They viii DO Th.m.~l,--Ih.
Eye- Of Men Farmer. to lie open-d

T-"o bachelor girls Of New York
nd their mother have started an
experiment this summer 10 see
4 they can actually live from
the proceeds Of two acres of land. The
land is situated on one of the Berkshire
hiiitops, near the village Of Terryvil!e,
not tar from Waterbury. Conn Last
summer was the first they spent there,
and they sold fifty dollars worth Of gar
te4 trek, besides supplying their own
r-J'a
This ;pring they started early. They
have ilushed and planted the whole
NO a-Ti. hall OF it to potatoes They
Ell st II raise five hundred bushels Of
po.atoes to sell them for one dollar a
bushe,, nd to clear $3.50 or 5000 from
that acre They are now selling ho,bed
rlG.sAes nd lettuce. and have sold 1000
tomato pants raised under checseclotn
ir7m seeds planted in April.
The g'Eer acre Will include big vegc-
table garlen, a strawberry bed and a
scrap 1i pasture for the horse. Eventu-
ally they will have greenhouse They
keep he's enough 10 supply their own
table. lley hired man to do the plo.'
ing and Zoe the potatoes. The rest the
-xpe,t 10 do themselves.
q Believe said one OF them, that
great source Of modest prosperity is be-
ing wasted by the absence Of marke. gar
dening n the neighborhood OF the
smaller places. Terryville has about
1900 Inhabitants. There is one factory
there,
Before that came it was a farming
village, The farms are all there yet, but
the farmers are all working in the fac
tory. There are no vegetable gardens
in that yl.lage and no market gardens
around il.
They raise nothing on their farms but
hay. They will take a vacation in the
summer and go and do their haying, or
they will hire man to do it for them
but as they do nothing for the land the
hay crop gets poorer every year.
AT Terryville and Waterbury all the
garden truck comes in from New York,
and is, OF course, expensive and not
fresh. With great stretches of unculti-
vated land all around, the people eat
canned vegetables There is some mar
ket gardening around Hartford, but
there. too, supplies are drawn from New
York It IS so all through that region
and other regions like it
always lived on farm and farmed in
the old-fas hioned, unscientihc way for
wanting to get into town and 60 to work
in mill 1t is another stage in his evo-
luton B1t it leaves an opportunity for
the scient.alc farmer, the educated farmer
who farms with brains.
That SOFT Of person is one who has
got done with cities, who has been
through the mill, who has had enough,
and longs % get out Of the treadmill
Of city lie Such a person finds inter
est and ias nation in the life which the
owner Of tie place abandoned to go to
work in a Yoollen mill. l believe that
all the snail farming of the East, which
is practica"y only market gardening and
raising Of specialties is going to pass
into the hands of this class.
II believe that every year will see
more and more educated young men and
women turn ing to scientific farming for
a living. hat sort OF farmer will de
mand more than the old fashioned one
Books, new papers, periodicals, bath
tub and an occasional trip to the city
will be necc saries to him.
"He vii, make them possible by his
better meth ds, both of cultivating and
of marketir... He will raise high-grade
specnlties-truit, butter, mushrooms,
violets-all s,rts OF things, and ship them
straight to customers. He won't have
very much money, but he will have as
much at the end of the year as he had
on his salary in the city. He will be
free from the strain and grind of city
life; he won't be afraid OF being fred at
forty, and he will be his own boss"