We have already abundance of information about almost every county in the Union, published by Boards of Trade and land boomers, like the following about “Oxnard, Ventura County, the center of the famous lima bean district in California.  For a year the returns from farm products alone, in this vicinity, are estimated at over $2,000,000.  The sugar factory, which uses 2000 tons of beets every twenty-four hours, requires the yield of about 1900 acres every season.  The beet crop is rotated with beans, and the factory’s supply is kept good by systematic methods.  Two thousand head of cattle are being fattened at the present time in the company’s yard on the beet pulp.  Much of the pulp is also sold to local stockmen, who value it highly for feed.  The factory turns out 5000 bags of sugar every day.”  And again: 

“Eastern farm lands steadily declined in price up to about 1902, so that Eastern land sold for less than Western land of the same quality and of like situation; but the tide seems at last to have turned, and much money is now being made in buying up cheap farms and especially in sub-dividing them for small cultivators.”

That sort of thing is interesting; but it is not what a man wants to know—­he is anxious to learn how much he can make and where and how to do it.

The man who seeks a comfortable living will do better to rent on long lease or buy a few acres convenient to trolley or railroad communication with a city; besides the returns which will come to the farmer from the use of a few acres, if he is the owner he will get a constant increase in the value of the land, due to the growth of the city.  If the city grows out so that the land becomes too valuable to farm, he will be well paid for leaving.

(Although progress is continually forcing laborers back upon less desirable land, their loss, unless they are the owners, is the landowner’s gain.)

The amount of product to be grown for one’s own use depends on the size of the family and its fondness for vegetables.

“An area of 150X100 feet [about two fifths of an acre] is generally sufficient to supply a family of five persons with vegetables, not considering the winter supply of potatoes; but the acres must be well tilled and handled.” (Bailey, “Principles of Vegetable Gardening.”)

“The produce that could thus be obtained from an acre of land well situated would abundantly supply with nearly all the vegetables named, nineteen families, comprising in all 114 individuals.”

In our garden we must know what we want and know how to get it.

(It is impossible to treat exhaustively of the various crops in a book of this kind.  On onion culture alone there are four standard books, besides seven or eight recent experimental station bulletins.