and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to
pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight
dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was “good for
nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on.” I put no manure whatever
on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not
expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all
once. I got out several cords of stumps in ploughing, which supplied me
with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould,
easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of
the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood
behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the
remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the
ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes for the
first season were, for implements, seed, work, &c., $14.72½. The seed
corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you
plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen
bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn
and turnips were too late to come to any thing. My whole income from
the farm was $ 23.44 Deducting the outgoes,........... 14.72½ There are left,................. $ 8.71½,
beside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made
of the value of $4.50,—the amount on hand much more than balancing a
little grass which I did not raise. All things considered, that is,
considering the importance of a man’s soul and of to-day,
notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly
even because of its transient character, I believe that that was doing
better than any farmer in Concord did that year.
The next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I
required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience
of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on
husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply
and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate,
and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and
expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground,
and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to
plough it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure
the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were with
his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be tied
to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak
impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the success or
failure of the present economical and social arrangements. I was more
independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a
house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very
crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they already,
if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been
nearly as well off as before.
I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as
herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and
oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen
will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the
larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks
of haying, and it is no boy’s play. Certainly no nation that lived
simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would
commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. True, there
never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am
I certain it is desirable that there should be. However, _I_ should
never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work
he might do for me, for fear I should become a horse-man or a herds-man
merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we
certain that what is one man’s gain is not another’s loss, and that the
stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied? Granted
that some public works would not have been constructed without this
aid, and let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it
follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of
himself in that case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or
artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is
inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in
other words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only
works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works
for the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of
brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the
degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to
have
