TEN ACRES ENOUGH

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

I had long determined in my mind what sort of farming was likely to prove profitable enough to keep us with comfort, and that was the raising of small fruits for the city markets. My attention had always been particularly directed to the berries. Some strawberries I had raised in my city garden with prodigious success.

My friends, when they heard of my project, expressed fears that the market would soon be glutted, not exactly by the crops which I was to raise, but they could not exactly answer how. They confessed that they were extremely fond of berries, and that at no time in the season could they afford to eat enough a confession which seemed to explode all apprehension of the market being overstocked.

But my wife and myself had both examined the hucksters who called at the door with small fruits, as to the monstrous prices they demanded, and had begged them, if ever a glut occurred, that they would call and let us know. But none had ever called with such information. It was the same thing with those who occupied stalls in the various city markets. They rarely had a surplus left unsold, and their prices were always high. A glut of fruit was a thing almost unknown to them. It was a safe presumption that the market would not be depressed by the quantity that I might raise.

But here let me say something by way of parenthesis, touching this common idea of the danger of overstocking the fruit market of the great cities. It is a curious fact that this idea is entertained only by those who are not fruit growers. The latter never harbored it. Their whole experience runs the other way, they know it to be a gross absurdity. Yet somehow, the question of a glut has always been debated.

Twenty years ago the nurserymen were advised to close up their sales and abandon the business, as they would soon have no customers for trees since everybody was supplied. But trees have continued to be planted from that day to this, and where hundreds were sold twenty years ago, thousands are disposed of now. Old established nurseries. have been trebled in size, while countless new ones have been planted. The nursery business has grown to a magnitude truly gigantic, because the market for fruit has been annually growing larger, and no business enlarges itself unless it is proved to be profitable.

The market cannot be glutted with good fruit. The multiplication of mouths to consume it is far more rapid than the increase of any supply that growers can effect. Within ten years the masses have had a slight taste of choice fruits, and but little more. Indulgence has only served to whet their appetites. The more of them there is offered in the market, the more will there be consumed.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print