The Abandoned Farms of New England.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume III, 1 October 1900, Page 34

The Abandoned Farms of New England.

By Henry A. Beers

XWfeJF the beginning of this century New wiMv n gl an d was an almost wholly fi\Ms agricultural community. Some of *==ilS==i the coast towns carried on a trade with the West Indies, and the fisheries of the Grand Banks had long been an important interest. But the leading occupation was farming, and the New England States probably raised all, or nearly all, the beef, mutton, grain, potatoes, etc., that they consumed. By the middle of the century, manufactures had taken the leading place formerly occupied by agricultm-e, but New England still continued to feed itself from the products of its own soil. When the writer was a boy, (1847-62) winter and summer wheats were quite generally sown in Connecticut, as well, of course, as rye, oats, buckwheat and barley. Nowadays one sees few wheat fields in this section.

Since the Civil War, the rapid extension of the railway system has brought the New England farmer into competition with the enormous grain fields of the West and the flour mills of Minneapolis. It is cheaper for him to buy his wheat flour, his oatmeal and even his Indian meal (maize) than to raise it. Increased facilities of transportation and the invention of cold storage have affected the Eastern cattle trade in the same way. Yet herds of beef cattle from the Texas plains, slaughtered in the abattoirs of Chicago, and shipped to the Atlantic seaboard in refrigerator cars, fill the Eastern markets with " Chicago dressed beef," which is preferred to the native article. Even in the item of eggs and domestic poultry, New England depends largely on New York State and on the West. Connecticut turkeys, for instance, have had a reputation for superior tenderness and flavour ; and at Thankgiving time (November) Litchfield County turkeys command a few cents more a pound than the foreign birds. Yet only an insignificant

percentage of the turkeys sold in Connecticut markets are raised in the State.

New England has never been a fruitgrowing region par excellence. Since the failure of the native peach trees some fifty years ago through the curculio, the yellows, the eai'ly frosts or other causes, New Jersey has supplied us with peaches. But now the South rushes its early fruit and vegetables into the northern cities. Bermuda onions and potatoes have been coming for years. Strawberries from Carolina begin to appear in May. Nobody ever saw a water melon in this part of the world before September. But now North Carolina melons may be had in June, and Greorgia peaches in July. California sends fruit of some kind all the year round : tropical fruits like oranges and dates, and fruits of the temperate zone such as plums, pears, and cherries in May and June. The Concord grape — originally a Massachusetts variety — comes in best perfection from the great vineyards on the Hudson River; and musk melons from the Hackensack meadows of New Jersey. The apple is the one fruit which has always thriven in New England. Next to his hayfield and his com and potato patch, the farmer's apple orchard has been, and still is, his greatest stand-by. Probably New England still raises its own apple crop, and makes its own "sass" and cider. But for export and for fancy varieties, even in New England city markets, western apples now have the call. As a result of this competition and of the growth of manufacturing industries in the towns, the condition of our rural communities has greatly altered within a generation. The value of farm land has fallen. Young men have gone to the cities, finding themselves able to earn only a bare living in the country ; and particularly in many of the old hill towns remote from railroads are fields

overgrown with hard - hack, and empty farmhouses slowly dropping to decay. In back country districts one comes across the traditional red wooden schoolhouse, standing among its sumachs and blackberry bashes in an open green spot where the roads meet, and finds a scant dozen of children scattered about in a room which holds, say, forty desks, and once held forty pupils. A recent census showed that the town of Barkhampstead, Litchfield Co., Connecticut, situated on a hill about twelve miles from a railroad, had lost twenty- four per cent, of its population in ten years. This is an extreme, but by uo means a unique instance of what has been taking place all over rural New England. In one Connecticut village I was told that nearly all the houses on the street — roomy, substantial, old-frame houses, standing pleasantly behind shady elms, among orchards and kitchen gardens, with flower beds in the front door yai'd, were owned and occupied by elderly women, widows and old maids. The old men had died, and the young men had gone to the city. In many townships a large proportion of tbe farms have been mortgaged to saving banks, and sold under foreclosure at incredibly small prices. The places of the Yankee owuers who have moved town ward, or gone west, have been taken largely by the Irish. Most rural townships in New England now have, besides their Congregational and Baptist, or Methodist meetinghouses, a Catholic chapel where Mass is held, perhaps once a fortnight or so, by a priest who divides his ministrations between two or three villages.

The French Canadians, who are invading the New England States in large numers, are not commonly land buyers. Many of them own farms in Canada already. They tend to the big factory towns, like Lowell (where there are three French Catholic churches) Manchester, Lawrence, and Fall River. If they stay in the country, it is to work on the farms as hired men, or to take jobs at wood-cutting or charcoal burning. In the wooded regions of New England, there are generally to be found one or more Canadians,

locally known as "the Frenchmen," squatting on a piece of land that is being "cut over," and living, either with thoir wild- looking woraeu and children, or sometimes en r/arcon, in tempoi*ary cabins in the wood clearings. They are usually a hard-working and harmless folk, but apt to quarrel among themselves, and use thoir knives when under the influence of hard cider. The- Gorman immigrants who go into farming commonly take up lands in the middle west, and the Scandinavians in tho north-west. But there are a few Germans and Italians ongaged in market gardening or truck farming in tho immediate neighbourhood of New England cities. In view of western competition, thero is no longer any money in raising grain or beef cattle on tho small, rocky farms of Now England ; but there are several branches of agriculture which aro still reasonably profitable, and in which the future of tin; New England farmer probably lies. J Lay, being too bulky for transportation, is a crop that pays, and is always sure of a homo market. Dairy farms, too, should become increasingly valuable with the growth in the city population. The New England pastures are good. They are based upon the everlasting rocks ; and the slow, constant dissolution of silicates and other mineral manures keep them from tho exhaustion that overtakes soils more superficially fertile. They are also little subject to drought. It is a land of streams. Every field has its spring, its wet hillside or its alder swamp. Little threads of water trickle by every road side. Trout brooks, big or little, slip down into the pebbly rivers that turn tho mill wheels in a thousand valleys. The ear is never out of the sound of running water.

Of late years the dairy business has been systematized by the establishment of creameries in nearly every village, or group of villages, within easy distance of a railroad. The creamery collects the milk from the farmers all about, paying two cents or a cent and a-half a quart. The cream is then separated by the use of a patent separator, made into butter, and sold in the States as

" creamery batter " in labelled pots at prices varying (at retail) from 22 to 30 cents a pound. It must be confessed that the creamery reaps most of the profit of this transaction, and that there is not much money for the farmer in selling milk at 1^ cents per quart. Some of the more enterprising of the farmers, who own large herds, or whose farms are near a railroad, get higher prices by making contracts for cream and butter with New York hotels or large city dealers. In this case they do their own churning ; but the smaller farmers find it an advantage to deal with the creamery and save the labour of buttermaking.

Track farming, or raising small fruits and early vegetables for the city market, is a business in itself, and is fairly profitable, though the profits are kept down by competition. Nearness to the market is here, of course, a prime consideration. Much of this market gardening is falling into the hands of foreigners. A milk route in a city is another branch of the business which pays reasonably. But the trusts have begun to invade this department. In the city where the writer resides a combination has recently been formed which controls a great share of the output of neighbouring milk farms, and the fight is now on between the trust and the individual dairymen who still hold out. The price to the consumer has been slightly reduced in consequence, but it is not sure that the reduction will be permanent when the trust has absorbed the remaining dealers and skilled competition.

It is hardly necessary to mention in this connection the cranberry harvest in the bogs of Cape Cod, the maple sugar field of Vermont, or the tobacco raised in the rich alluvial lands of the Connecticut valley, a profitable though rather precarious crop. These are local specialities, and do not affect the general question of agricultural decadence in New England.

That question has lately received earnest attention from the governors and legislatures of several States. About eight years ago the governor of Vermont recommended the subject to the consideration of his common-

wealth, and efforts were made to attract settlers, and especially immigrants from the Scandinavian countries, to the deserted farmsteads which were growing up to bush and. woodland. Massachusetts and Connecticut followed suit with catalogues of abandoned farms, printed and distributed by the State Boards of Agriculture. Owners of such farms were invited to send in descriptions of them, with prices of sale, exact location, distance from railroads, post offices, churches and school-houses. These descriptions, arranged by counties, were then published and sent free to all enquirers, in the hope that the very modest terms on which farming lands could be bought might induce purchasers. During the present year the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture has sent out letters of enquiry to the buyers of such catalogued farms, and their replies will be made the basis of a forthcoming report on the results of the experiment.

Pending the appearance of this report, and perhaps of similar reports by other New England States, it would be rash to genei'alize. I can only record my own impressions, supplemented by the impressions of others, including several personal friends who have been looking for abandoned farms. The Massachusetts and Connecticut catalogues furnished very fascinating reading, and stirred up a general interest in the matter. The Century Magazine published two articles by Mr. W. H. Bishop, a well-known novelist and writer of travel-sketches, who went up through the western counties of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, catalogue in hand, and came to the conclusion that the farms were not quite so "abandoned" as had been generally supposed, and, furthermore, that the prices at which they were offered — to city purchasers — were not so very low, all things considered. Mr. Bishop's articles provoked a lively discussion in the Critic and other periodicals, and many correspondents came forward who knew of numerous fine properties in various parts of New England, which could be had foi less than the cost of the buildings, the land counting for nothing.

The fact is that the catalogue made an appeal to two very different classes of purchasers: city "people of moderate means, who wanted a country home ; and practical farmers, with a small capital — or the chance of borrowing a small capital — who wanted to get, as cheaply as possible, a place on which they could make a living and save some money. The requirements of the two classes were unlike. The city clergyman, or teacher, or business man desired good air and line scenery, a somewhat attractive house on the edge of a village, not too far from the doctor and the telephone ; and a limited quantity of land, say t.'n to thirty acres — enough for a garden and lawn, with pasturage for a horse and cow, and perhaps a bit of woodland and orchard. He was comparatively indifferent about the quality of the soil, the state of the fences, barn room, etc. On the other hand the farmer was not particular about being near the village, but wanted to be within striking distance of a railway-station, or a town where he could market his produce. He needed a good deal of land, say LOO to 300 acres. The character of the soil was important to him, and the proportion of meadow and arable land to pasture and wood lots. He cared quite as much about the condition of the fences and outbuildings as about the dwelling-house.

Now my own impression is that the free advertisement of these abandoned farms has not resulted in very many sales for purely agricultural purposes. I think that the Yankee farmer is shrewd enough to know that if a farm is " abandoned," it is because it does not pay to work it under the prevailing conditions.

But I think it not unlikely that these catalogues have helped to sell a great many small farms to city people in search of a country residence for the summer months. The return of the city upon the country is one of the most striking social phenomena of recent years. The " summer boarder " has long been a regular source of income in many rural communities throughout New England, and now the boarder has begun to give place to the cottager. Where the

cottager abounds, and especially where he is given to fashionable ways, the price of land has risen greatly. At Lenox, Berkshire Co., Mass., for instance, where an old New England hill town has been converted into a toy of the idle, rich and a veritable congeries of palaces and sumptuous estates, property values have been multiplied ten or twenty fold. But away from such rallying points of fashion the prices of land rule very low. " There's too much land around here anyway," said an old farmer to me, in explanation of the fact that field after Held along the road where we were driving was grown up with hard hack, breast high, from fence to fence. My own experience as a purchaser of an abandoned farm is perhaps representative. I wanted elevation, and [ therefore confined my search to the two adjoining hilly counties of Lichh'eld, Conn., and Berkshire, Mass., I checked off on the state catalogues the places which seemed likely to suit me in point of size, location, price, etc., and, after some correspondence, I made a visiting tour of the likeliest of the lot. I inspected about eight or ten "bargains," and finally selected the following: — A iiou.se of eleven rooms, with barn and other outbuildings, and fifteen acres of laud in a Berkshire village, 1,400 feet above sea level. The house is old, but solidly built, and in good repair; the barn only so-so. Water is piped into the house from a mountain spring. There is a six-acre meadow, a five-acre pasture, an orchard which gives me a dozen barrels of apples annually, and a three-acre grove of white pine. A fine, strong trout brook runs through the grove, from which brook and its tributaries one of my boys took last season 1,300 speckled trout. The house faces the village green and church. The villago store and post office (with telephone) is a few rods away. The village contains about thirty houses, and the population is all native American or " Yankee." The nearest rail way-station is eight miles away, and the " stage " or mail coach makes one trip a day. For this abandoned farm I paid 750d01. (£150).