Ten Acres Enough A practical experience, showing how a very small farm may be made to keep a very large family

My life, up to the age of forty, had been spent in my native city of Philadelphia. Like thousands of others before me, I began the world without a dollar, and with a very few fr...

There was not a particle of romance in my aspirations for a farm, neither had I formed a single visionary theory which was there to be tested. My notions were all sober and pros...

The last thirty years have been prolific of great pecuniary convulsions. I need not recapitulate them here, as too many of them are yet dark spots on the memory of some who will...

As already stated, I had in round numbers a clear two thousand dollars, with which to buy and stock a farm, and keep my family while my first crops were growing. As I was entire...

The owner of these eleven acres had been for some months in the furnace of pecuniary affliction. He was going the way of nine-tenths of all the business flesh within the circle...

It was now the season for me to bustle about, fix up my land, and get in my crops. I examined it more carefully, walked over it daily, and made myself thoroughly acquainted with...

My peach-orchard was no sooner finished than I filled each row with raspberries, setting the roots two feet apart in the rows. This enabled me to get seven roots in between ever...

In the course of my agricultural reading for some years previous to coming into the country, I had noticed great things said of a new blackberry which had been discovered in the...

I mentioned some time ago that the wife of the former owner of this place had left it with a world of regrets. She had been passionately fond of the garden which now fell to us....

Both myself and wife had always coveted a cow. All of the family were extravagantly fond of milk. Where so many children were about, it seemed indispensable to have one; besides...

June came without my being obliged to hire any thing but occasional help on the farm. But when the month was fairly set in, I found every inch of my ploughed land in a fair way...

Very early after taking possession, I invested twelve dollars in the purchase of seven pigs of the ordinary country breed. They were wanted to eat the many odds and ends which a...

The pensive reader must not take it for granted that in going into the country we escaped all the annoyances of domestic life peculiar to the city, or that we fell heir to no ne...

I had one acre in tomatoes, a vegetable for whose production the soil of New Jersey is perhaps without a rival. The plants are started in hot-beds, where they flourish until all...

One morning in September, hearing shots fired repeatedly at the further end of my grounds, and proceeding thither to ascertain the cause, I discovered three great, overgrown boo...

It was now the dead of winter. Every thing was frozen up; but though cheerless without, it was far from being so within. My little library, well supplied with books and the lite...

Winter having passed away, the time for labor and the singing of birds again returned. Long before the land in Pennsylvania was fit to plough, the admirable soil of New Jersey h...

To strawberries succeeded raspberries. My stock of boxes was thus useful a second time. But raspberries are not always reliable for a full crop the first season after planting,...

No sooner had the autumn of my second year fairly set in, and the leaves fallen, than I turned my attention more closely than ever to the subject of providing an abundant supply...

As usual with me at the opening of spring, the garden received our first attention. Dick covered it heavily with manure, cleared it up and made all ready for wife and daughter....

As previously stated, there is no successful farming without a liberal expenditure for manure. I had proved that high manuring would pay, and while anxious to increase the quant...

It cannot be supposed that agriculture is always a successful pursuit. On the contrary, we know it many times to be the reverse. But when one looks carefully into that branch of...

From all these industrial antecedents, few would set me down as belonging to the class of gentlemen farmers. Generally they are men of leisure, and are always presumed to be ind...

Looking back upon the incidents of my city life, I confess that increasing years bring with them an increasing respect for those who do not succeed in life, as these words are c...

Every great national calamity has the effect of driving men from the cities to engage in agriculture. Such has been the result of the late war for the Union. I have been in a po...