Acreage

“ The largest acreage therefore consists of hay and pasture lands and gardens. Floriculture is of considerable importance, the annual returns from this source exceeding half a million dollars.
Population. ”

“ The term farm means, in relation to an eligible producer on a farm, the total of all crop acreage in all counties that is planted or intended to be planted for harvest, for sale, or on-farm livestock feeding (including native grassland intended for haying) by the eligible producer. (B) Aquaculture– In the case of aquaculture, the term farm means, in relation to an eligible producer on a farm, all fish being produced in all counties that are intended to be harvested for sale by the eligible producer. ”

“ Really the acre is the best agricultural unit. We buy and sell the land itself by the acre; we report crop yields at so many bushels or tons per acre; we apply manure at so many loads or tons per acre; we apply so many hundred pounds of fertilizer per acre; sow our wheat and oats at so many pecks or bushels per acre; and we ought to know the invoice of plant food in the plowed soil of an acre and the amounts carried off in the crops removed from an acre.
"Now, referring again to these figures from the forty acres of clover at two tons per acre. ”

“ In the first place, you don't need those twenty acres except for beauty. There are five acres in the meadow. You don't need more than two of them to make your living at selling vegetables. In fact, you and your wife, working from daylight to dark, cannot properly farm those two acres. Remains three acres. You have plenty of water for it from the springs. Don't be satisfied with one crop a year, like the rest of the old-fashioned farmers in this valley. Farm it like your vegetable plot, intensively, all the year, in crops that make horse-feed, irrigating, fertilizing, rotating your crops. ”

“ Suppose that a peasant farmer in Brie has so many acres of meadow, so many acres of forest, so many acres of rich arable land and a good-sized vineyard; do you imagine that on his death one son will take the pastures, another the cornland, and so forth? Not a bit of it! Each child will claim a slice of each sort of soil; and their children again will subdivide, till the strips of meadow, rye, cabbage, or vine, are not fields at all, but merely gardens. ”

“ Suffice it that I boast a little farm of close upon five thousand acres, in a country such as would gladden your heart, if matrimony and continued well-being have not spoilt your eves for richness of soil, it is shut in on all sides by precipitous mountain ranges, on the western peaks of which at this moment, as I sit in my veranda writing to you, a quantity of cloud, tinted a rose pink by the setting sun is gathering. ”

“ When any change was to be made, the part in grass was ploughed and prepared, and then thrown into the same course or rotation of crops as above: that which had been in crops, was sown with mixed grass-seeds (but not clover) , to lie for ten or twenty years, as before. The whole arable part of the farm thus parcelled, included neither the homestead nor the standing meadow; so that an arable farm of 300 acres admitted of 150 being in grass lay, or old field, and 150 in crops. ”

“ The lands are all naturally well drained; no flat or wet land, and by means of natural branches, which run through every eighty acres, the whole farm is conveniently and easily watered, by an unfailing supply. ”

“ It is my aim to enable the business man returning from his city office, or the farmer engrossed with the care of many acres, to learn in a few moments, from time to time, just what he must do to supply his family abundantly with fruits and vegetables.
If one is about to adopt a grape-culture as a calling, common-sense requires that he should locate in some region peculiarly adapted to the vine. If the possessor of a large farm purposes to put several acres in vineyard, he should also aim to select a soil and exposure best suited to his purpose. ”

“ The soil which their rude shares upturned to the sun was indeed virgin and fertile, but before it could be cultivated it had to be cleared of its heavy growth of timber and underbrush, and with the means then employed, to clear a farm was well-nigh a life's labor. Each pioneer with the help of a few neighbors—which help he paid for by helping them in return—built his own house, his barn, his sheds, and fenced his "clearing." ”

“ They ascended the rising ground, passing along the edge of the orchard, till, upon gaining the height of land, they entered upon a broad, level field of twenty-five acres, smooth as a lawn, green in all the verdure of spring, and giving promise of an abundant yield of grass. ”

“ If not drained, will it bring constant disappointment? Fences, lanes and the necessity for them, the amount and location of inferior land as pasture land, the kind of weeds about the farm, as [61] well as the amount, kind and location of timber, should be considered.
Fig. 4. Too many buildings for eighty acres of land.
Land devoted to market-gardening should be near the market town where the perishable products are to be sold. Vegetables should reach the market early in their season in a fresh and presentable condition and cheaply, if satisfactory profits are desired. ”

“ The tract may be, say, ten acres, with ample cultivation, irrigation, and fertilization, or even without irrigation because a hoe and a cultivator in the hands of a scientific farmer may bring as good and better results in providing moisture for growing plants as can be had from a ditch and unlimited water in the hands of an ignorant farmer."
The field of discovery is always limitless, and it is to those boys or girls who devote their attention to this that the greatest return will come. "What a fine thing it would be to find even one plant free from rust in the midst of a rusted field. ”

“ I reckon I've got about eighty acres of good cleared land yet on this farm, and the leaves and pine needles we rake up where the trees grow on the old fields make a good fertilizer for the land we aim to cultivate, and I get a good many loads of manure from friends who live in the village and keep a cow or a horse. ”

“ Can he regulate the depth of a plough—or know where to place the heaviest weight in a waggon—if not, I tell him he will emigrate to his ruin. Let him reflect seriously, is he qualified to undertake the occupation of land who is ignorant of the mode of cultivating each particular soil—the quantity of seed which ought to be sown upon an acre—and the proper preparation of land for the seed, and the state when it is most fit to be reaped and gathered into the barn. ”

“ On some it grows in patches, on others it becomes woody, and unless you really get a good crop, it pays worse than oats, barley, or almost any crop. On the other hand if it grows well it is a certain income, and being so little trouble is a better crop than any to grow. Five acres well fenced, cleared and under the plough, will give ample room to grow all he will have time to attend to for some time to come. ”

“ Why, my uncles, when they think of planting the old buck field or the widow’s acre into any crop, they first go projecting around in the soil, and, as they say, analyze it, to see what kind of a fertilizer it will require to produce the best results. ”

“ If an English agriculturist could see six thousand acres of the finest land in one field, unbroken by hedge or boundary, and covered with the most magnificent crops of tasselling Indian corn and sprouting sugar-cane, as level as a billiard-table, he would surely doubt his senses. ”

“ Every acre which is ploughed, should be cultivated in the best manner the state of the ground will admit ; but the remainder of the farm need not be thoroughly cleared or drained, but as it may be required for increasing tillage and cattle. ”

“ Planting.—It has been observed that lands which are unfit for arable culture, and which yield only a trifling rent as natural pasture, are yet in many cases capable of growing profitable plantations, and of being greatly increased in permanent value by the prolonged growth of wood. Not only, however, do all trees not thrive alike on the same soil, but all do not improve the soil on which they grow in an equal degree. ”

“ So well are we persuaded of the utility and correctness of these brief hints, that, in selecting a farm, we should regard the location more than the quality of the soil. The latter we could mend easily; while we should find it difficult to move our farm to a more favorable location. Poor land near a city or large town, or on some great thoroughfare, we should much prefer to good land far removed from market, or in an unpleasant location. ”

“ It plays with man the function of care and training, of cultivation and domestication, with the lower animals and with the products of the soil. By diligent tillage, by the spade, the hoe, the plough, by irrigation and fertilization, the planter may greatly increase the yield of his field or his orchard and even refine, in a measure, the quality of his fruit or his grain. ”

“ Another reason is, that when the snow has fallen to some depth, the light timbers cannot be cut close to the ground, or the dead branches and other encumbrances collected and thrown into heaps.
We shall have about three acres ready for spring crops, provided we get a good burning of that which is already chopped near the site of the house; this will be sown with oats, pumpkins, Indian corn, and potatoes: the other ten acres will be ready for putting in a crop of wheat. So you see it will be a long time before we reap a harvest. ”

“ Those who wished to go to farming on their own account immediately had land allotted to them, ten acres to each man. It was so arranged that even those who had no means could go to work on their fields and find support until they could raise a crop. ”

“ I hope you won't go back on letting me rent a few acres, though, to try my hand at farming, in the spring?"
"Jarve,"—Max sat down on the kitchen step—"do you seriously think a fellow could make a living off this land—taking into account all the squash-bugs and fruit-tree pests and tomato-grubs and every other thing that I've always understood makes the life of the farmer miserable?" ”

“ Thousands of acres, capable of bounteous fruitfulness, still lay in the perpetual shadow of the woods, untouched by spade or plough; and the forest growth of centuries was itself a harvest worth the gathering, while wild cataracts still invited masterful hands to tame them to utility. ”

“ With that of flowers, which never bloomed on earth.
With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God,
This is the place where human harvests grow! ”

“ The buildings, including a residence, cottages, and gardens, occupy about four acres, and the farm consists of 350 acres of strong clay land, which has been thoroughly drained and profusely manured, with the object of getting from it the largest possible crops. Fifty tons of turnips have been obtained from an acre. ”

“ Twelve years ago we saw about our dwelling an acre and a quarter of grass, in unsightly condition, grazed by a sickly cow; a few beds of flowers and a few more of vegetables — the former not well kept, and the latter far from productive — and, for the rest, a drive and little plantations, and slopes rarely neat, and always craving more care than we could give. ”

“ Since that day in the field, though my fences include no more acres, and I still plow my own fields, my real domain has expanded until I crop wide fields and take the profit of many curious pastures. From my farm I can see most of the world ”

“ When men have confined themselves to ten acres of land, having plowed it well the season before, all the foul weeds killed out and the soil left clean, the seed sown at an early day in the Spring, and put in in good order, I have known such fields to produce from forty to sixty bushels of good plump wheat to the acre. ”

“ Acres and acres of already harvested grainfields are seen on both sides, crossed by roads at right angles; here and there are stacks of grain which have not yet been threshed, or heaps of straw, where the threshing engine has done its work; on almost every section of land we see a farmhouse and barn, a few gum-trees or cottonwoods, and many a windmill and elevated tank informs us where the farmer gets his water for his house and his scanty trees. ”

“ The cultivation of new land, incumbered with heavy timber, presents a formidable feature; {20} labour incessant and unremitting, before a small tract of land can be tolerably cleared; but here I can enter either as a farmer or a grazier immediately; fine wide spreading fields of grass, inviting the flocks and herds to come and partake of the bounty with which they are loaded. In answer to the enquiry as to the proper mode of farming, I sit, and from the place I am now writing, see a beautiful herd of cattle of nearly two hundred in number. ”

“ The soil is peculiarly favourable to the production of celery and early potatoes; and large tracts of land are divided into unfenced strips locally known as 'selions' of from a quarter of an acre to 3 acres each, cultivated by men who live in the villages, each having one or more strips, some as much as 20 acres, and it is considered that 10 acres is the smallest area on which a man can support a family without any other industry to help him. ”

“ As a rule the neighbor will gladly give scions which, grafted upon the trees of the Home Acre, will soon begin to yield the coveted variety. This opportunity to grow different kinds of fruit on one tree imparts a new and delightful interest to the orchard. The proprietor can always be on the lookout for something new and fine, and the few moments required in grafting or budding make it his. ”

“ But when we shall have deepened essentially the soil of our arable acres, fertilized it abundantly, and cured it by faithful cultivation of its vicious addiction to weed-growing, I believe we shall devote millions of those acres to the growth of Beets for cattle-food, and, having learned how to harvest as well as till them mainly by machinery, with little help from hand labor, we shall produce them with eminent profit and satisfaction to the grower. ”