Description

In 1854, Edmund Morris sold his big-city printing business and moved his large family to a small farm in New Jersey. He was determined to live debt-free by raising all of the food his family needed + enough fruit to sell to the city markets. This classic work is his story.

Morris shares details on choosing a farm, his marriage, deciding on plants to raise, experimenting with livestock, his expenses and profits, and so much more. I love the history and Americana included here, as well as useful information and inspiration for the large family, homesteaders, and homemakers.

Read what the Weston A. Price Foundation says about this book:

What did farmers use before the advent of commerical fertilizer? They used manure and lots of it. Morris is fixated on manure, which he purchases in wagon loads from a nearby city. A big fan of tilling, he tills deep and manures heavily. In addition, after planting, he applies liquid manure. After purchasing his land for five hundred dollars, he then spends two hundred dollars on manure—a huge sum when compared to the cost of the land. He spends these sums for several years until he realizes he can get manure for free by keeping cows over the winter. He purchases ten cows in the spring, keeps them in the barnyard throughout the year, feeds them on green cuttings, garden waste and hay, and sells them for a small profit early in the year. Meanwhile he gathers up all the manure for his crops—with no more expensive outlay. He also composts all the leaves he can get his hands on in the fall.

His other fertilizer is ashes, which he saves up throughout the year. He plants each fruit tree in a hole filled with ashes, and reapplies ashes to the roots every year. When the peaches set on the branch, he removes two-thirds of them so that the remaining have plenty of nutrients to grow big and sweet.

For insect protection, the root balls of the tree get an application of tar every spring; Morris also encourages the population of birds with numerous bird boxes. He considers the loss of a small amount of grain or fruit to the birds a just compensation for all the insects they eat. “A certain insect was found to lay 2,000 eggs, but a single tomtit was found to eat 200,000 eggs a year. A swallow devours about 543 insects a day, eggs and all.”

Morris’ other obsession is weeds, to which he has “an almost religious aversion.” During the first few years, he and his family and hired hand spend every free hour cultivating and weeding. Over time this hard work pays off and the weeds diminish. Using manure from his own cows, fed produce and greens before they have gone to seed, helps immeasurably, as does the planting of cover crops such as purslane.

The reward for all this hard work is steady profit and an enjoyable life in the country. It’s much harder to make as much money in agriculture today, but there is a great deal in this little book to provide inspiration to modern farmers. Read and enjoy! (Source)

QUOTES from the book:

Women who have been well educated, far from despising domestic duties, will hold them in high respect, because they will see that the whole happiness of life is made up of the happiness of each particular day and hour, and that much of the enjoyment of these must depend upon the punctual practice of virtues which are more valuable than splendid.

*

Surely it must be education alone which fills the world with two kinds of girls—one kind which appears best abroad, good for parties, rides, and visits, and whose chief delight is in such things—good, in fact, for little else. The other is the kind that appears best at home, graceful in the parlor, captivating in social intercourse, useful in the sick chamber as in the dining-room, and cheerful in all the precincts of home. They differ widely in character. One is often the family torment; the other the family blessing: one a moth consuming every thing about her; the other a sunbeam, inspiring life and gladness all along her pathway. As my wife embodied in herself all that to me appeared desirable in woman, so she possessed the faculty of transfusing her own virtues into the constitution of her daughters.

*

…of latter years measures have been taken to prevent, to some extent, the enormous waste of tomatoes during the height of the season, by preserving them in cans. Establishments have been started, at which any quantity that may be offered is purchased at twenty-five cents a bushel; and now they can be kept through the whole year, and be preserved for winter consumption, the same as potatoes or turnips. By hermetically sealing them in cans from which the air has been expelled by heat, they are not only preserved, but made to retain their full flavor; and may be enjoyed, at a very moderate cost, in the winter as well as the summer. The demand for them is constant, large, and increasing, and putting up canned tomatoes has become an extensive business.

*

It takes mankind a great while to learn the ways of Providence, and to understand that things are better contrived for him than he can contrive them for himself. Of late, the people are beginning to learn that they have mistaken the character of most of the little birds, and have not understood the object of the Almighty in creating them. They are the friends of those who plant, and sow, and reap.

*

But, in the ordering of a good Providence, failure in one pursuit does not imply failure in the next. I know and have proved this. The motto should be to keep moving, to try it again. Try it a hundred times, if you do not earlier succeed, and all the while be studying to see if you have not failed through some negligence and oversight of your own. Do not throw down your oars and drift stern foremost, because the tide happens to be against you. The tide does not always run the same way. Never anchor because the wind does not happen to be fair. Beat to windward, and gain all you can until it changes. If you get to the bottom of the wheel, hold on—never think of letting go. Let it move which way it will, you are sure to go up.

If in debt, do not let time wear off the edge of the obligation. Economize, work harder, spend less, and hurry out. If misfortune should overtake you, do not sit down and mope, and let her walk over you. Put on more steam, drive ahead, and get out of the way. If you meet obstacles in your path, climb over, dig under, or go around them—never turn back. If the day be stormy, you cannot mend matters by whining and complaining. Be good-natured, take it easy, for assuredly the sun will shine to-morrow.

If you lose money on a promising speculation, never think of collecting a coroner’s inquest about your dead body. Do not put on a long face because money is not so plentiful as usual—it will not add a single dollar to the circulating medium. Preserve your good-humor, for there is more health in a single hearty laugh than in a dozen glasses of rum. Be happy, and impart happiness to others. Look aloft, and trust in God. Be prudent as you please, but do not bleach out your hair, and pucker your face into wrinkles ten years ahead of time, by a self-inflicted fit of the dismals.

*

It was the determined will of our forefathers to which, with divine help, we are principally indebted for our freedom. For the first few years after the declaration of independence, we lost most of the battles that were fought. New York and Philadelphia were successively captured by the foe; South Carolina fell; New Jersey was practically reannexed to England; almost every thing went against us. Had the American people been feeble and hesitating, all would have been lost. But they resolved to conquer or die. Though their cities were taken, their fields ravaged, and their captured soldiers incarcerated in hideous prison-ships, they still maintained the struggle, making the pilgrimage of freedom with naked feet, that bled at every step. Had our fathers been incapable of Valley Forge, had they shrunk from the storm-beaten march on Trenton, we should never have been an independent nation.

*

I do not write for the rich and prosperous, but for those who have been unsuccessful. They need encouragement and bracing up. If their experience has been disastrous, that of others, who have succeeded, should be set before them.