Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 29

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“The touch of a woman’s hand” is what turned eight and one-half acres of unattractive, idle land on the shores of Long Island Sound into a productive little farm that is now netting it’s owner a profit of over $5,000 a year! Don’t believe it? Listen!

To be sure, she had a few hundred dollars—just enough to buy it and improve it with a cheap little cottage, a small barn and some poultry sheds, and plant it to fruit trees, besides every sort of vegetable that enjoyed the greatest demand. She now has an orchard containing the best varieties of fruit trees, 1,000 apple, 500 peach, 100 pear, 100 quince, 100 cherry—besides one-fourth acre in grapes, one-half acre in raspberries, blackberries, etc., and still has plenty of room left for vegetables, planting them between the rows of fruit trees, thus affording ample cultivation for all. She employs one man regularly at $40 per month, and hires extra help in the busy seasons of the year.

To supply the immediate demand for the less common garden products she grew okra, French finochio, endive, chicory, etc., getting many ideas from seed catalogues, Government publications that are sent for the postage. She plants large quantities of all vegetables, and cultivates every foot of the ground, fertilizers are freely used, and crops changed from year to year. She finds early asparagus and peaches the most profitable of all the things she raises, and while her first garden was growing she wrote letters to her friends in the city, asking them if they would not like a few samples of her fresh vegetables. They did and said so, and each one became a regular customer. As she produced more, she kept increasing her list of patrons by the same means, and to these she ships her products in “knock-down” crates that cost her 2¹⁄₂ cents each, and, unless otherwise ordered, she fills these crates half with fruit and half with vegetables. The crates each hold six great basketfuls of produce, and cost the customer $1.50, besides 25 cents each for expressage.

By picking her products early in the morning, she has them delivered in the city for dinner, while they are fresh and much preferred to those bought at corner groceries. Having her own horse and wagon, the cost and labor involved in shipping is very small, and 500 crates easily net her $750.

Realizing from her own experience, the longing of city women for a quiet, rural spot in which to spend the week-ends, she informed a limited number of her lady friends in town that for $1.50 per day she would give them room, board and transportation, to and from the station, and so many of them gladly accepted her invitation that the capacity of her small cottage was soon taxed to the utmost. But she will not take regular boarders, and thus has the greater portion of her time to herself, to be devoted to such activities as best suit her. Those women who are given the privilege of spending the week-end on the farm not only cheerfully pay the moderate charges, but many of them render valuable assistance by working in her garden, as a pleasant means of relaxation and an agreeable change from the exacting requirements of city life.

The little 8¹⁄₂ acre farm wasn’t much to look at when she first took it over, but she has made it a veritable bower of beauty, a haven of rest, and a revenue producer to the extent of $5,000 a year, all set down in the column marked “net profits.”