Читать книгу Success with Small Fruits - Edward Payson Roe - Страница 11

"There are so many circumstances connected with strawberry growing, such as varieties, soil, climate, location, markets, and the skill and management of the grower, that the results of a few cases cannot be relied on for general rules.

"We have grown over two hundred bushels per acre here, and realized upward of six hundred dollars per acre for the crop; but that is much above the general average. Having kept a careful record, for fourteen years past, of the yield per acre and price per quart at which our strawberries have been sold, we find the average to be about 2,500 quarts per acre, and the price eleven cents per quart in market, giving the following results:

"Commissions, 10 per cent $27.50

Picking 2,500 quarts, at 2c. per quart 50.00

Manure 17.50

Use of baskets 10.00

Cultivation, etc 25.00

Net profits per acre 145.00

"Gross proceeds, 2,500 quarts at 11e $275.00"

In the year 1876 the same gentleman had ten acres of Brandywine raspberries that yielded about eighty-two bushels to the acre, giving a clear profit of $280, or of $2,800 for the entire area. This crop, so far from being the average, was awarded a premium as the most profitable that year in the section.

J. R. Gaston & Sons, of Normal, Ill., have given the following record of a plantation of Snyder blackberries: "We commenced to pick a field of seven acres July 12th, and finished picking August 22. The total amount gathered was 43,575 quarts, equal to 1,361 bushels and 22 quarts. The average price was eight cents per quart, making the gross proceeds equal to $3,486. We paid for picking $435.75. The cost of trimming and cultivating was about $400; cost of boxes, crates, and marketing was $1,307.25, leaving a net profit of $1,343."

A gentleman in Ulster Co., N.Y., stated that 200 bushes of the Cherry currant yielded him in one season 1,000 lbs. of fruit, which was sold at an average of eight cents per pound. His gross receipts were $80 from one-fourteenth of an acre, and at the same ratio an acre would have yielded $1,120. Is this an average yield? So far from it, there are many acres of currants and gooseberries that do not pay expenses. Thus it can be seen that the scale ranges from marvellous prizes down to blanks and heavy losses; but the drawing is not a game of chance, but usually the result of skill and industry, or their reverse.

I might have given many examples of large, and even enormously large, profits obtained under exceptional circumstances; but they tend to mislead. I write for those whose hearts prompt them to co-work with nature, and who are most happy when doing her bidding in the breezy fields and gardens, content with fair rewards, instead of being consumed by the gambler's greed for unearned gold. At the same time, I am decidedly in favor of high culture, and the most generous enriching of the soil; convinced that fruit growers and farmers in general would make far more money if they spent upon one acre what they usually expend on three. In a later chapter will be found an instance of an expenditure of $350 per acre on strawberry land, and the net profits obtained were proportionately large.