St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1908-05-30
WHERE TRUCKERS WIN.
Not Depending on Any One CROP
They Succeed.

Not Depending on Any One CroA
They Succeed.
These are the advantages the truck.
er gets from Investigation of veg
etable and fruit crops: ~ The same
unfaVorable weather will not injure
them all. (2) The necessary work
will not fall so much on the same day,
and there will not be the hoeing prob
lem that many strawberry growers
nave to face, or the picking problem.
| (S) The market price for all kinds Of
vegetables and fruit will not be low
the same year. (4) Helpful changes
In the crops grown on a given piece
OF land can be made from year to
year, SO plant diseases and insect
pests can be more easily controlled.
90 The land will respond better to
the food demands of crops grown in
| rotation.
The reason of every trucker who
reflects on these points will see they
are true, and that growing several
crops is advisable. During fat years,
when one is giving all his energy to
one or two crops, he will not take
these points seriously. He may admit
them-and dismiss them in the same
breath. But when he has had one or
two or three lean years, has had to
.scrape and beg for money to carry
him till he can market a. crop, he
Is ready to hunt something that will
pay him and make a yearly income
OF decent size. Common sense sug-
gests that he had better not wait till
he is in dire straits before he looks
to his own safety.
If children eat unripe fruit and
suffer pain, we feel that after the
pain they suffer and the bitter med
icine they have to take they ought
to know better than to go back to
the dangerous unripe fruit again.
Truckers are about as bad in some
instances. After going wild on straw.
berry growing, making good profit a
year or two, maybe, but finally suffer
Ing distressingly lean years, they go
wild on growing cabbags or some 9TH
er crop that for time offers good
profits. Lean years will come to the
cabbage grower. The trucker who
lodges about from one crop to an
other, and does not have a large
enough variety in his crops puts him
self in the class Of the child that eats
green fruit, suffers aches and bitter
medicine, and then goes back to eat
ing green fruit.
II truckers associations will get
their members to work on the diver.
sifcation plan, it will be just as easy
to get the crops to market easily and
quickly. The same buyers who may
come from distant cities can stay
right on the ground from week to
week to purchase the crops in the
fields or at the railway station, or
the truckers can make their own
shipments. All this can be done just
as well as if the number of crops
raised was small. Distressingly lean
years will be almost impossible. Years
that are so fat that the trucker is
encouraged to get extravagant with
suddenly acquired wealth may not
come often, but on the whole the
net profit will be better and surer.
Home supplies are also more likely |
to be raised, and more stock are like.
ly to be kept. Until truckers get to |
having a good number of market
crops, they are in danger of very lean |
years. No other one thing has a larg-
er influence on their success than |
this single principle. II it seems good,
do more than admit it-practice it
StarkVille, Miss, Southern Farm Ca
zette.