Those summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome,and others to contemplation in India,and others to trade in London or New York,I thus,with the other farmers of New England,devoted to husbandry.Not that I wanted beans to eat,for I am by nature a Pythagorean,so far as beans are concerned,whether they mean porridge or voting,and exchanged them for rice;but,perchance,as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression,to serve a parable-maker one day.It was on the whole a rare amusement,which,continued too long,might have become a dissipation.Though I gave them no manure,and did not hoe them all once,I hoed them unusualy well as far as I went,and was paid for it in the end,“there being in truth,”as Evelyn says,“no compost or laetation whatsoever comparable to this continual motion,repastination,and turning of the mould with the spade.”“The earth,”he adds elsewhere,“especially if fresh,has a certain magnetism in it,by which it attracts the salt,power,or virtue (call it either)which gives it life,and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it,to sustain us;all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement.”Moreover,this being one of those “worn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,”had perchance,as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely,attracted “vital spirits”from the air.I harvested twelve bushels of beans.
But to be more particular,for it is complained that Mr.Coleman has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen farmers,my outgoes were,-
For a hoe $0.54
Plowing,harrowing,and furrowing 7.50Too much.
Beans for seed 3.12
Potatoes “1.33
Peas “0.40
Turnip seed 0.06
White line for crow fence 0.02
Horse cultivator and boy three hours 1.00
Horse and cart to get crop 0.75
In all $14.72
My income was (patremfamilias vendacem,non emacem esse oportet),from
Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold $16.94
Five“large potatoes 2.50
Nine “small 2.25
Grass 1.00
Stalks 0.75
In all $23.44
Leaving a pecuniary profit,as I have elsewhere said,of $08.71
This is the result of my experience in raising beans:Plant the common small white bush bean about the first of June,in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart,being careful to select fresh round and unmixed seed.First look out for worms,and supply vacancies by planting anew.Then look out for woodchucks,if it is an exposed place,for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go;and again,when the young tendrils make their appearance,they have notice of it,and will shear them off with both buds and young pods,sitting erect like a squirrel.But above all harvest as early as possible,if you would escape frosts and have a fair and salable crop;you may save much loss by this means.