A Study of Small Holdings

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1893 Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX. SMALL FRUIT FARMS. Evidence in relation to fruit farming in several counties brings to the front one prominent fact, namely, that success or failure is mainly dependent upon soil, climate, and situation. In the Maidstone district of Kent, in May last, I visited fruit farmers whose experience strikingly illustrated this fact. Situation, it may be explained, has a double signification, as it may refer to altitude or aspect on the one hand, or to nearness to a railway or a good market on the other. It is in the former sense that the word is used in reference to fruit-growers in the Maidstone district. One occupier of 50 acres of rich soil, on a hill facing the south, has been remarkably successful, as his father was before him, although he pays no less than 8 an acre for the land, part of which was formerly under hops. When the farm was under hops and fruit there was a clear average profit of 1,000 a year for several years in succession. Then came a period of hop failure, and for five years there was an annual loss of 500. The farm grows gooseberries remarkably well, and in one year, but only once, the father of the present occupier obtained a gross return of,200 an acre from this fruit. He happened, as usual, to have a large crop, and in the particular year in question the gooseberry crop was nearly a failure in most parts of the country. Apart, however, from such a remarkable windfall as this, the usual return from 13 acres of plums, apples, pears, gooseberries, and currants (the bushes being grown under the trees) is from 800 to 900. Now this farm, besides being an exceptionally fertile one, is situated at a high altitude, where frost is much less destructive than it is in the valleys or other low grounds; and, being on a hi...