FIVE ACRES AND INDEPENDENCE

A HANDBOOK FOR SMALL FARM MANAGEMENT

M. G. KAINS

DOVER PUBLICATIONS    1973

The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land.

Abraham Lincoln

The land! That is where our roots are. There is the basis of our physical life. The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity. From the land comes everything that supports life, everything we use for the service of physical life. The land has not collapsed or shrunk in either extent or productivity. It is there waiting to honor all the labor we are willing to invest in it, and able to tide us across any local dislocation of economic conditions. No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between man and a plot of land.

Henry Ford

Introduction to the Dover Edition by J. E. Oldfield

·        Much of this book is just good, sound common sense, which is timeless, and it was written by an author who so obviously knew what he was writing about, and believed in it, that it makes interesting and easy reading.

·        Five Acres and Independence has as its underlying message the basic importance of agriculture to mankind, and it would be useful in establishing this understanding, if for no other reason.

·        To make a wasteland productive, to propagate new and improved plants and animals, to bud or graft various desirable fruits onto a single stock – these are but a few examples of the agricultural heritage that this book bestows.

·        The book should be accepted and read for what it is: a first-hand account of a number of proven basic agricultural practices, which can either be applied directly or used as a base from which to adapt more recent advances in scientific agricultural technology.

The Purpose of this book by the Author

When you plan an auto trip, you wisely consult a road map to discover the fastest, most direct and pleasantest way to your destination. When you are actually on your way, you follow the signs and obey the signal lights, especially at the cross-roads, the branches and through cities. Often you may have the choice of several routes and often you may be in a quandary, but by consulting the map and obeying the signs, you ultimately reach your goal.

This book aims to be a ‘road map’ which traces some of the best routes along which you and your family may travel to happy, prosperous and interesting lives. It not only indicates the safest routes but, what is even more important, it particularly warns against blind alleys and side roads that lead to disappointment if not disaster. In this respect it differs from the usual rural life book which depicts only the pleasant features of farming. So for this reason, if for no other, it should be of signal service to you, especially if it prevents you making the serious mistakes commonly made by people who move from the cities and towns to the country.

Chapter 1: Introduction

• People who think they ‘would like to have a little farm’ naturally fall into two groups: those who are sure to fail and those likely to succeed. This book is written to help both!
• Its presentation of advantages and disadvantages, essential farming principles and practices should enable you to decide in which class you belong and whether or not you would be foolish or wise to risk making the plunge.
• My boyhood duties included not only the usual chores of the farm and those connected with fruit and vegetable gardening, poultry and beekeeping, horse and cow care, but canning and pickling, soap and candle manufacture, meat curing and wine making; in fact practically everything which characterized farm life only a remove or two from pioneer conditions.
• At various times I worked on five farms, on one or another of which the leading features were dairy cattle, sheep, grain, hay, fruit, vegetables and bees. I learned much from them in addition to how to handle tools and implements effectively.

Chapter 2: City VS, Country Life

• One of the most striking characteristics of each ‘depression period’ is the tacit acknowledgement that ‘the farm is the safest place to live.’ When hard times arrive and his savings steadily melt away he begins to appreciate the advantages of a home which does not gobble up his hard-earned money but produces its own upkeep, especially in the way of food for the family.
• Contrasted with these and other characteristics of city life are the permanence and productivity of land; the self-reliance of the man himself and that developed in each member of his family; the responsibility and satisfaction of home ownership; the health and happiness of life and of the wholesome association with genuine neighbors who reciprocate in kind and degree; the probable longer and more enjoyable expectation of life; and the basis and superstructure of true success – development and revelation of character and citizenship in himself, his wife, sons and daughters.
• A survey of Who’s Who in America shows that the majority of the men and women listed were reared in rural surroundings, where they learned how to work, concentrate and obedience to Ecclesiastes: “Whatever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.”

Chapter 4: Who is Likely to Succeed?

• If any one thing is more essential than any other in every branch of farming it is that the owner personally direct all operations. He cannot be an absentee farmer and he cannot entrust his interests entirely to hirelings.

Chapter 17: Functions of Water

• Though many factors are essential to plant growth, perhaps the most important is water. No other plays so many roles.
• It dissolves plant food in the soil; carries these solutions to and through the plants; supplies hydrogen and oxygen which combine with other elements to form sugar, starch, oil, plant tissues, and many other compounds; keeps plant cells distended, thus enabling them to perform their functions; regulates the temperature of plants (and incidentally of the air) by transpiration from the foliage; and carries food constituents and soluble plant products from part to part inside the plants for storage, assimilation or growth.
• The amount of unassimilated water living plants contain at any time is much greater than that of all other constituents combined – from 60% to 95% by weight.
• Each pound of ‘dry matter’ in a mature crop has required from 200 to 900 pounds of water to develop, the usual range for common crops in the Northeastern States being from 300 to 500 pounds.
• One of the most important ways to prevent loss of water is by tillage (Chapter 33). The other is mulching.
• You may increase the supply of capillary water in the soil by drainage, fertilizing, adding humus and by watering or irrigation.

Chapter 19: Irrigation

It is much wiser to give plenty of water once every few days, than a little each day. The latter method keeps the surface moist, and the roots naturally rise to the moisture, so that they are near the surface and will be injured by the heat of the following day. Give enough to go deep or else just enough to wash the leaves.

Edith Loring Fullerton, in How to Make a Vegetable Garden.

Chapter 22: Poultry

The best way to be successful with poultry is to start with a few hens, give them good care and comfortable quarters, and keep both eyes open. By this I mean that one should study the matter in a practical way by familiarizing himself with the habits and requirements of his fowls, and observe the effects of different kinds of food on them.

Eben E. Rexford, in The Making of a Home.

• No matter how small or large your farm, you should keep hens.

Chapter 23: Bees

• This chapter is written to warn you not to go in for commercial bee-keeping until after you have served your apprenticeship with one colony, then with others developed from it; for perhaps in no branch of agriculture is it so important to learn to creep before you try to walk.

Chapter 25: Coldframes and Hotbeds

As the name implies, coldframes are sash-covered frames without heat. The application of heat at once transforms them into hotbeds. While coldframes can hardly be accorded the dignity of forcing structures, yet they play an important part in the protection of plants in autumn and spring, as well as during the winter.

Lee C. Corbett, in Garden Farming.

Chapter 26: Soils and Their Care

A perfect soil is one which maintains a reserve supply of insoluble food material that cannot be washed away; which produces enough soluble material to feed the growing crop; which is so constituted that it can supply sufficient water to the crop; which is capable of maintaining the right temperature or of warming up quickly in the spring; and which has a structure that permits of proper root movement.

Charles W. Stoddart in Chemistry of Agriculture.

Chapter 29: Green Manures and Cover Crops

• Green manures are crops grown solely for the improvement of the soil and are of two classes: Nitrogen gatherers and nitrogen consumers. The former are generally most important because they increase the supply of this essential element of plant growth – the most expensive to buy and the one most easily lost from the soil.
• The principal nitrogen-gathering crops are clovers, vetches, peas, cowpeas, and soybeans.

Chapter 32: Cropping Systems

• Crop rotation is a farming practice which consists in having from 2 to 5 unrelated crops occupy the land in prescribed sequence.
• The advantages of rotation are: each crop leaves the soil in good physical condition for the next; faults and disadvantages of one season’s treatment may be corrected in the next; plant foods may be maintained in better balance; plant diseases and insect enemies are starved out; trouble with weeds is reduced; labor is economized; one or more of the crops (a green manure) helps to maintain the supply of humus in the soil; when this crop is a legume, the supply of nitrogen in the soil is supplemented or maintained at trifling cost.

Chapter 34: Weeds

If the definition that a weed is a plant out of place, is accepted, almost any plant may become a weed. On the other hand, perhaps almost every weed may, in some way, become an economic plant.

F. H. Rolfs in Subtropical Vegetable Gardening.

Chapter 38: Grafting Fruit Trees

• Anybody may succeed with grafting; there is nothing mysterious or difficult about it.
• The trees to graft are those that bear worthless fruit but are sound and comparatively young. Do only part of the work in any one year. Graft only a third, a quarter, a fifth or a smaller number of branches annually.

Chapter 40: Vegetable Crops to Avoid and to Choose

• As a novice grower it is advisable to limit yourself to the more or less simple crops until you have learned how manage each one successfully.

Chapter 41: Seeds and Seeding

The cost of seed is ordinarily a trifling matter in comparison with the expense of the season’s labor and the value of the crop.

L. H. Bailey, in The Principles of Vegetable Gardening.

Chapter 43: Plants for Sale

Marketing is the culmination of any production enterprise. Growing and selling depend absolutely upon one another. The most skilful production is in vain if the marketing is not well done. On the other hand, the best methods of marketing cannot save an enterprise if yields are too low for economy or if the quality is not sufficiently high to command ready sale at favourable prices.

Paul Work, in Tomato Production.

Chapter 44: Something to Sell Everyday

There is no safer place of existence than the moderate sized farm. It is not often practical to employ a large amount of machinery and a large area of land in attempting to turn agriculture into manufacture of some single great staple. But the family that makes the farm an old fashioned home with diversified crops, fruits and domestic animals sufficient to meet the household needs will still find agriculture one of the most satisfying forms of existence.

Calvin Coolidge

Chapter 45: Strawberries

The three essentials that should never be overlooked before going into the culture of strawberries are, first, the best variety suited to the soil, strong, vigorous, pure bred plants; second, a well drained and prepared soil; and third, thorough and frequent cultivation.

Hugh Findlay in Practical Gardening.

• No fruit is easier to grow, quicker to yield a crop, surer of a demand, or more likely to be profitable than the strawberry.

Chapter 46: Grapes

By using the different classes of varieties of grapes for the different latitudes, soils and purposes, there is scarcely a farm between the Great Lakes and the Gulf but can successfully grow grapes. Of only one or two other fruits, – the strawberry and blackberry – can as much be said.

T. V. Munson, in Foundations of American Grape Culture.