Are you a real farmer who is reading this booklet—getting this invitation from the ATLANTIC COAST LINE RAILROAD COMPANY and the good people of the towns mentioned here? Are you a real man? Can you work an acre for all it is worth? Can you work it with your own hands at the plow? Can you wait for a good stand of crops before big yields? Can you take weather as it comes?—and it usually comes very easy down here. Can you take advice from the successful, and follow good examples? When information is needed, will you go to those who are competent to render it? If you cannot say yes in your heart to all of these questions, then hand this booklet to your neighbor and ask him to read it.
Successful farming is hard work and a fighter's battle. Half a dozen kickers and loafers can put an entire farming section of the best State in the Union out of tune with success.
We want real farmers or real men who will make good farmers down here in EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA, and there is plenty of real land for them to buy. It is not being given away nor are any gold bonds being thrown in as souvenirs, but it is cheap. It is cheap plus a climate that doubles its productiveness. Many of the Northern farmers who have come down here are getting rich, but they are sweating for every dollar of it. If this sounds good to you, come down to this section, stop at the various towns mentioned here and look this splendid country over.
This invitation is to the man who tills the soil, trims the tree and trains the vine, or who would like to do it.
The Life of the Eastern North Carolina Farmer
The life of the EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA farmer is one of healthfulness, profit and certainty. This is a country of large things and the right place for the small farmer to accomplish much with little. Being able to grow two and three crops upon the same land in the course of a year makes easy the problem of getting started which the farmer finds so hard elsewhere. When the right place is secured, if you are buying undeveloped land, erect a temporary house at small cost, that is, if your resources are limited. There are saw mills every few miles. Lumber is plentiful and reasonably cheap. It will protect you from the sunshine and rain; and, as for winter, there is very little of that, especially in the extreme Southern portion of this section, and in the Northern regions of the Coastal Plain, it is only of two or three months duration, but plenty of fuel is available at small cost. Sheds for your live stock should, of course, be substantial. Buy a good horse, preferably a mare, a good cow, a few chicks just hatched and some young hens. Start a garden. Then get something into the ground, watch it, tend it carefully, planting other crops as the season advances. The climate will favor you and the soil will respond generously to your labor. Stick first to the crops you have been used to. DO intensive rather than extensive farmingIntensive farming involves methods that maximize the production of a particular piece of land. It requires a great deal of work and often large inputs of money. Extensive farming, by contrast, seeks to maximize the production from a particular amount of labor, and so requires less work but more land to produce the same amount of a crop.. If you do your duty by them, the cow, the chickens and the garden will keep your table pretty well supplied—the most important item of farm economy—and after a bit your crops will come on for harvest. Gradually get together a herd of live stock. They are the best farm-builders in the world. Besides, there is good profit in them for market. Put your hens to work for you. EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA CAN BE MADE THE CHICKEN CENTER OF THE WORLD. Conditions are just right for it. Hogs should be raised. There's big money in them, and the hog, like the cow, is valuable in maintaining the fertility of your farm. Don't forget the trees. Almost all of the Coastal Plain section of NORTH CAROLINA is a good fruit country. Set out fig, peach, apple and pecan as soon as possible. Tomatoes and strawberries are usually sure profit-makers. Get an individual canning outfit, so that your surplus of vegetables and fruits can be preserved for carrying over the dormant periods of the year. It eliminates waste upon your farm and permits you to utilize and sell that portion of your products of a perishable nature that would otherwise rot on the trees or ground. The cost of living is low. Taxes are at a minimum.
A System That Will Be a Sure Winner in Eastern North Carolina
You must know your business to earn a good income. If you are growing cotton you ought to know all about cotton, and make it your principal business. BUT bad luck with labor and other vicissitudes hits the just and the unjust. You are depending upon cotton for your income and it might be taken away in a night.
Suppose you had a chicken coop, a garden, some live stock and a field of clover besides your cotton; also a few dairy cows and some pure bred hogs—you would be pretty independent, wouldn't you?
The farmer coming here from another State, or the one who is already here, who can rise above the temptation to raise all cotton, and raises live stock instead and feeds the man who raises all cotton, is a SURE WINNER. The soil and climatic conditions and experiments covering many years demonstrate that EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA is perfectly adapted to the growing of staple farm crops. With this rich soil and favoring climate, all that is needed is intelligent farming.
A Little Talk for Mrs. Farmer
Most of us think of the woman on the farm as "the farmer's wife." It wouldn't sound just right to speak of her as Mrs. Farmer, but we'll have to get used to it. There are more women farmers now than ever before—not those who work in the fields, but those who manage their own farms. And why should they not? It is easy to say that woman's place is the home. Woman's sphere is anything that she can do, and do well; just as man's work is that which he can do best. The mother-heart easily extends itself to the care of pets—their poultry, their horses, hogs and cattle. To raise grain to feed these animals is easy and natural. "Civilization began with the domestication of animals," says Alfred Russel Wallace. Women who care for animals and live close to the soil keep well. EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA presents some very alluring possibilities to those women who desire to "get back to the farm."
The number of women in America who own farms and successfully manage them is on the increase. Women have always raised the "garden sass"Garden sauce," spelled here as a southerner might have pronounced it, referred to vegetables. In the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, vegetables were considered just a kind of sauce to go with the meat and starch, the main parts of a meal." and poultry. She succeeded with these when often the men failed with the big things. And now she is taking a hand all along the line. Woman is a natural farmer. The word "wife" means weaver. Woman furnishes the home. She cooks, prepares and serves the food. Her business is to minister. Usually what women are interested in, they do well.
The Commercial Hen
Ideal Conditions for An Egg Farm
A handful of chickens in a back yard will never make an egg farm. And the man who is aiming to go into the poultry business as a bread and butter maker had better hit the thousand-layer mark right at the start. Nowhere in this country will you find conditions more ideal for poultry raising than in EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA. The mild climate, an abundance of green food easily obtained and the steady demand, means success to anyone who will go into it right, and apply that intelligent effort so necessary to success in any business. A good hen lays in a year from four to six times her own weight in eggs. It takes a strong, living machine to stand the strain of such an output. Every hen, young or old, lays in the spring. An old hen may draw her rations three times a day through the winter and not lay an egg, but when the leaves begin to come out, the grass starts, the air is warm and soft and the sunshine genial, that old hen lays every day. Spring conditions force hens to lay. Furnish spring conditions for nine months in the year, and if you keep the right kind of hens, taking proper care of them, they will lay steadily the year round. That is where the climate of EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA gets close to proper conditions for poultry raising.
Did you know that there are something like thirty-five grades of fresh-dressed poultry—chickens—sold on the New York market every day? Amazing, but it is a fact. On a chicken farm a chicken is a chicken, but in the market a chicken may be a broiler, a fryer, a roaster, or a good many other things, and the thirty-five grades sell at thirty-five different prices. So if you intend to go into the chicken business, look into this selling side of the business.
Ducks and geese are good money-makers down here and thrive splendidly along the water-courses, especially geese, as they live entirely by grazing.
"A Small Farm Well Tilled Keeps the Pocket Well Filled"—In Eastern North Carolina—TRY IT NOW.