Back to the Land: 10 Acres Is Enough

Image Gallery Some people dream of a big city life and owning their own business. For the author of this excerpt, 10 acres was enough. PHOTO: FOTOLIA/SMULSKY

I don't know who said it first, but he or she was absolutely right: The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

Take today's "new" back-to-the-land movement, for instance. It isn't new at all. The whole history of this country is founded on one back-to-the-land movement after another, dating from the growth of the first towns established on this continent. In short, as long as great numbers of people have flocked to our cities, a lesser number of (possibly more intelligent) folks have been trying to getaway from them.  

Nor have the details of this constantly self-renewing swap changed in the slightest. Big farmers have always been squeezed out of the country by even bigger ones (and the lure of those "easy" dollars in town). And back-to-the-landers have always had a struggle getting enough money together to buy their little dream place out in the sticks. And they've always felt that most of the chunks of property offered to them "out there" are too big, or too small, or too expensive. And they've always worried about what life would be like once they really made the break and left the city behind. And they've always — at least the ones dedicated enough to roll up their sleeves and make a life for themselves out in the country — been damn glad in later years that they made the switch.  

You don't believe it? You don't think that the very same problems you're now facing have been faced ten times ten thousand times before? Then you haven't read the history of this country as it was written by the people who've gone before.  

Here, for instance (thanks to Mrs. Joe E. Hanauer of Dixon, Missouri), is an excerpt from Ten Acres Enough, a book penned by a fellow named James Miller away back in 1864. Sure, the prices were lower back then but everything Mr. Miller had to say 112 years ago is still being said in almost exactly the same words by the average homesteader of 1976.  

As the old saying goes, "The more things change."   

City Experiences — Moderate Expectations

My life, up to the age of forty, had been spent in my native city of Philadelphia. Like thousands of others before me, I began the world without a dollar, and with a very few friends in a condition to assist me. Having saved a few hundred dollars by dint of close application to business, and avoiding taverns, oyster houses, theatres, and fashionable tailors, I married and went into business the same year.

These two contemporaneous drafts upon my little capital proving heavier than I expected, they soon used it up, leaving me thereafter greatly straitened for means.

It is true my business kept me, but as it was constantly expanding, and was of such a nature that a large proportion of my annual gain was necessarily invested in tools, fixtures, and machinery, I was nearly always short of ready cash to carry on my operations with comfort. At certain times, also, it ceased to be profitable.