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Success With Small Fruits

E >> E. P. Roe >> Success With Small Fruits




The cloud did not prove a passing one, and the rain fell so long and
copiously that further picking for the day was abandoned. Some jogged
off to the city, at a pace that nothing but a fiery storm could have
quickened. A hundred or two remained under the sheds, singing and
laughing. Men and women, and many bright young negro girls, too,
lighted their pipes and waited till they could gather at the "paying
booth," near the entrance of the farm, after the rain was over. This
booth was a small shop, extemporized of rough boards by an
enterprising grocer of the city. One side was open, like the counter
of a restaurant, and within, upon the grass, as yet untrodden, were
barrels and boxes containing the edible enormities which seem
indigenous to the semi-grocery and eating-house. In most respects the
place resembled the sutler's stand of our army days. There was a small
window on one end of the booth, and at this sat the grocer,
metamorphosed into a paymaster, with a huge bag of coin, which he
rapidly exchanged for the strawberry tickets. Our last glimpse of the
pickers, who had streamed out of the city in the gray dawn, left them
in a long line, close as herrings in a box, pressing toward the
window, from which came faintly the chink of silver.

As night at last closed about us, we realized the difference between a
strawberry farm and a strawberry bed, or "patch," as country people
say. Here was a large and well-developed business, which proved the
presence of no small degree of brain power and energy; and our
thoughts naturally turned to the proprietor and the methods by which
he achieved success.

J. E. Young, Jr., is a veteran in strawberry culture, although but
twenty-nine years of age. Mr. Young, Sr., was a Presbyterian clergyman
who always had a leaning toward man's primal calling. When his son was
a little boy, he was preaching at Plattsburgh, New York, and to his
labors in the spiritual vineyard joined the care of a garden that was
the pride of the town. Mr. Young, Jr., admits that he hated weeding
and working among strawberries as much as any other boy, until he was
given a share in the crop, and permitted to send a few crates to
Montreal. He had seen but nine years when he shipped his first berries
to market, and every summer since, from several widely separated
localities and with many and varied experiences, he has sent to
Northern cities increasing quantities of his favorite fruit. When but
fifteen years of age he had the entire charge, during the long season,
of three hundred "hands," and the large majority of them were Irish
women and children. After considerable experience in strawberry
farming in northern and southern New York and in New Jersey, his
father induced him to settle at Norfolk, Virginia, and hither he came
about ten years ago. Now he has under his control a farm of 440 acres,
150 of which are to-day covered with bearing strawberry plants. In
addition, he has set out this spring over two million more plants,
which will occupy another hundred acres, so that in 1880 he will have
250 acres that must be picked over almost daily.

Mr. Young prefers spring planting in operations upon a large scale.
Such a choice is very natural in this latitude, for they can begin
setting the first of February and continue until the middle of April.
Therefore, nine-tenths of the plants grown in this region are set out
in spring. But at Charleston and further south, they reverse this
practice, and, with few exceptions, plant in the summer and fall,
beginning as early as July on some places, and continuing well into
December.

I must also state that the finest new plantation that I saw on Mr.
Young's place was a field of Seth Boydens set out in September.

This fact proves that he could follow the system of autumn planting
successfully, and I am inclined to think that he will regard this
method with constantly increasing favor. As an instance proving the
adaptation to this latitude of the fall system of planting, I may
state that 96,000 plants were sent to a gentleman at Richmond, in
October, 1877, and when I visited his place, the following spring,
there was scarcely a break in the long rows, and nearly fruit enough,
I think, to pay for the plants. From his Seth Boydens, set out last
September, Mr. Young will certainly pick enough berries to pay
expenses thus far; and at the same time, the plants are already four
times the size of any set out this spring. As the country about
Norfolk is level, with spots where the water would stand in very wet
weather, Mr. Young has it thrown up into slightly raised beds two and
a half feet wide. This is done by plows, after the ground has been
thoroughly prepared and levelled by a heavy, fine-toothed harrow.
These ridges are but four or five inches high, and are smoothed off by
an implement made for the purpose. Upon these beds, quite near the
edges, the plants are set in rows twenty inches apart, while the
depressed space between the beds is twenty-seven inches wide. This
space is also designed for the paths. The rows and the proper
distances for the plants are designated by a "marker," an implement
consisting of several wheels fastened to a frame and drawn by hand. On
the rim of these wheels are two knobs shaped like an acorn. Each wheel
marks a continuous line on the soft earth, and with each revolution
the knobs make two slight but distinct depressions twelve inches
apart; or, if the variety to be planted is a vigorous grower, he uses
another set of wheels that indent the ground every fifteen inches. A
plant is dropped at each indentation, and a gang of colored women
follow with trowels, and by two or three quick, dexterous movements,
imbed the roots firmly in the soil. Some become so quick and skilful
as to be able to set out six or seven thousand a day, while four or
five thousand is the average. With his trained band of twenty women,
Mr. Young calls the setting of a hundred thousand plants a good day's
work.

In April commences the long campaign against the weeds, which advance
like successive armies. No sooner is one growth slain than a different
and perhaps more pestiferous class rises in its place--the worst of
the Philistines being nut-grass, quack-grass, and--direst foe of all--
wire-grass.

This labor is reduced to its minimum by mule cultivation, and Mr.
Young has on his farm a style of cultivator that is peculiarly adapted
to the work. As this is his own invention, I will not describe it, but
merely state that it enables him to work very close to the rows, and
to stir the soil deeply without moving it or covering the plants.
These cultivators are followed by women, with light, sharp hoes, who
cut away the few weeds left between the plants. They handle these
tools so deftly that scarcely any weeding is left to be done by hand;
for, by a rapid encircling stroke, they cut within a half-inch of the
plant. For several years past, I have urged upon Mr. Young the
advantage of the narrow row system, and his own experience has led him
to adopt it. He is now able to keep his immense farm free of weeds
chiefly by mule labor, whereas, in his old system of matted row
culture it was impossible to keep down the grass, or prevent the
ground from becoming hard and dry. He now restricts his plants to
hills or "stools," from twelve to fifteen inches apart. The runners
are cut from time to time with shoe-knives, the left hand gathering
them up by a single rapid movement, and the right hand severing them
by a stroke. One woman will, by this method, clip the runners from
several acres during the growing season. To keep his farm in order,
Mr. Young must employ seventy-five hands through the summer. The
average wages for women is fifty cents, and for men seventy-five to
ninety cents. In the item of cheap labor the South has the advantage
of the North.

With the advent of autumn, the onslaught of weeds gradually ceases,
and there is some respite in the labors of a Virginia strawberry farm.

At Charleston and further south, this respite is brief, for the
winters there are so mild that certain kinds of weeds will grow all
the time, and early in February they must begin to cultivate the
ground and mulch the plants for bearing.

Bordering on Mr. Young's farm, and further up the creek, there are
hundreds of acres of salt meadows. From these he has cut, in the
autumn and early winter, two hundred tons of hay, and with his lighter
floats it down to his wharf. In December, acre after acre is covered
until all the plants are quite hidden from view. In the spring, this
winter mulch is left upon the ground as the summer mulch, the new
growth in most instances pushing its way through it readily. When it
is too thick to permit this, it is pushed aside from the crowns of the
plants.

Thus far he has given the bearing fields no spring culture, adopting
the common theory that the ground around the plants must not be
disturbed at this season. I advocate the opposite view, and believe in
_early_ spring culture, as I have already explained; and I think his
experience this year will lead him to give my method a trial in 1880.
The latter part of April and early May was very dry at Norfolk, and
the ground between the bearing plants became parched, hard, and in
many instances full of weeds that had been developing through the
long, mild spring of this region. Now I am satisfied that if he, and
all others in this region who adopt the narrow row system, would
loosen the ground deeply with a subsoil plow _early_ in the season,
before the plants had made any growth, and then stir and pulverize all
the surface between the plants in the rows, they would increase the
size and quantity of the berries at least one-third, and in many
instances double the crop. It would require a very severe drought,
indeed, to injure plants thus treated, and it is well known, also,
that a porous, mellow soil will best endure too frequent rains.
I have sometimes thought that light and air are as indispensable to
the roots of plants as to the foliage.

The winter mulch need not prevent this spring culture. Let the men
begin on one side of a field, and rake inward until half a dozen rows
are uncovered. Down through these the subsoil plow and the cultivator
can pass. Then the hay can be raked back again as the summer mulch,
and a new space cleared, until the whole field is cultivated and the
mulch left as it was before.

Now, however, it is not a surface like hard-pan that is covered, but a
mellow soil in which the roots can luxuriate.

Mr. Young uses fertilizers, especially those containing ammonia, only
to a limited extent, believing that while they undoubtedly increase
the size of the fruit, they also render it soft and unfit for long
carriage, and promote an undue growth of vine. This theory is true, to
a certain extent, but I think the compensating benefits of fertilizers
of almost any kind far outweigh the disadvantages. At his distance
from the market, firmness in the berry is essential, but I think he
will find this quality is dependent more upon the weather and the
variety than upon the fertilizer. Of course, over-stimulation by hot
manures will always produce an unwholesome, perishable growth, but a
good coat of well-rotted compost scattered down the rows, just before
they receive their fall or spring culture, would be exceedingly
beneficial in nine cases out of ten. I most heartily agree with him,
however, that all fertilizers containing potash are peculiarly adapted
to the strawberry.

Having considered his methods of planting and culture, we now return
again to the culminating period in which the hopes and labors of the
year are rewarded or disappointed. When we awoke the morning following
our arrival, we found the landscape obscured by a dense fog. Through
this, in dim, uncertain outline, throngs of pickers were streaming out
from the city to Mr. Young's place and the strawberry farms beyond.
The broad fields seemed all the more vast from the obscurity, and the
stooping forms of the fruit-gatherers took on odd and fantastic shapes
in the silvery mist.

But while we drank our coffee the sun sipped these morning vapors, and
when we stepped out under the pines, the day was hourly growing
brighter and warmer. The balmy, fragrant air, the meadow larks singing
in the distance, the cheery voices of the pickers in an adjacent
field, would tempt gloom itself to forget its care and stroll away
through the sunlight. The pickers were beginning to take possession of
a field containing thirty acres of Triomphe de Gands, and we followed
them, and there lighted on one of the oddest characters on the
plantation--"Sam Jubilee," the "row-man," black as night, short,
stout, and profane. It is Sam's business to give each picker a row of
berries, and he carries a brass-headed cane as the baton of authority.
As we came up, he was whirling a glazed hat of portentous size in one
hand and gesticulating so wildly with his cane that one might think he
was in convulsions of rage, but we soon learned that this was "his
way."

"Heah, you, dah!" he vociferated, to the slouching, leisurely pickers
that were drifting after him, "what's de matter wid yer j'ints? Step
along lively, or by--" and then came a volley of the most outlandish
oaths ever uttered by a human tongue.

"Don't swear so, Sam," said Mr. Young.

"Can't help it, sah. Dey makes me swar. Feels as if I could bust inter
ten thousand emptins, dey's so agerwatin. Heah, my sister, take dat
row. You, gemlin" (to a white man), "take dat. Heah, chile, step in
dar an' pick right smart, or I'll warm yer!"

Sam "brothers and sisters" the motley crowd he domineers like a
colored preacher, but I fear he is not "in good and regular standing"
in any church in Norfolk.

"He can give out rows more rapidly and systematically than any man I
ever had," said Mr. Young; and we soon observed that wherever Jubilee
led, with his stentorian voice and emphatic gestures, there was life
and movement. Thus we learned that although there might be 1,500
people in the fields, there was no haphazard picking. Each one would
be assigned a row, which could not be left until all the ripe berries
on it were gathered.

Passing to and fro across the fields are the two chief overseers of
the farm, Harrison and Peters, both apparently full-blooded negroes,
but in the vernacular of the South, "right smart men." They have been
with Mr. Young eight or ten years, and were promoted and maintain
their position solely on the ground of ability and faithfulness. They
go rapidly from one to another, noting whether they are picking the
rows clean. They also take from each tray a basket at random, and
empty it into another, thus discovering who are gathering green or
imperfect berries. If the fruit falls much below the accepted
standard, the baskets are confiscated and no tickets given for them,
and if the picker continues careless he is sent out of the field.

Mr. Young says that he has never found any white overseers who could
equal these men; and through the long year they drive on the work with
tireless energy.

Indeed, Peters often has much ado to keep his energy under control. A
powerful engine cannot always be safe, and Peters slipped his bands
one day to his cost. A woman would not obey him, and he threatened her
with a pistol. Instead of obeying, she started to run. He fired and
wounded her twice, and then tried to get off on the lame excuse that
he did not know the pistol was loaded. The trouble was that he was
overloaded. But his offence resulted more from these characteristics
than from innate ugliness of temper. To make the business of the huge
farm go has become his controlling passion; and he chafes at an
obstacle like an obstructed torrent.

Harrison, his associate overseer, unites more discretion with his
force, and he gave us an example of this fact. As we were strolling
about, we found, seated at the end of the strawberry rows, a group
consisting of two young women and two children, with a colored man
standing near. They had been picking in partnership, we were informed
by one of the young women, who was smoking a pipe, and who replied to
our questions, scarcely taking the trouble to look up. She was about
half white, and her face was singularly expressive of sensuousness and
indolent recklessness.

"This man is your husband?" I suggested.

"No, he's only my brudder. My ole man is pickin' on anoder farm," she
drawled out, between the whiffs of her pipe.

"I should think you and your husband would work together," I ventured.

"We doesn't. He goes about his business and I goes about mine," she
remarked, with languid complacency.

Here is a character, I thought, as we passed on--the very embodiment
of a certain kind of wilfulness. She would not resist or chafe at
authority, but, with an easy, good-natured, don't-care expression,
would do as she pleased, "though the heavens fell." A little later
there was a heavy rumble of thunder in the west, and we met again the
young woman whose marital relations resembled those of many of her
fashionable sisters at the North. She was leading her small band from
the field. The prospective shower was her excuse for going, but
laziness the undoubted cause. Harrison, like a vigilant watch-dog,
spied them and blustered up, never for a moment doubting that she
would yield to his authority.

But he had met his match. She merely looked at him with her slow,
quiet, indolent smile, in which there was not the faintest trace of
irresolution or fear, and he knew that the moment he stepped out of
the way, she would pass on. His loud expostulations and threats soon
ceased. What could he do with that laughing woman, who no doubt had
been a slave, but was now emancipated a trifle too completely? He
might as well try to stop a sluggish tide with his hands. It would
ooze away from him inevitably. The instincts of this people are quick.
Harrison knew he was defeated, and his only anxiety now was to retreat
in a way that would save appearances.

"I'se a-gwine home, M's'r Harrison," she said quietly. "You don't
catch us gittin' wet ag'in."

"Oh, well, if you is 'fraid ob gittin' wet, s'pose I'll habe to let
you off jus' dis once," he began, pompously; and here, fortunately, he
saw a man leaving the field in the distance. There was a subject with
which he could deal, and a line of retreat open at the same time; and
away he went, therefore, vociferating all the more loudly that he
might cover his discomfiture. The woman smiled a little more
complacently and went on, with her old easy, don't-care swing, as she
undoubtedly will, whithersoever her inclinations lead, to the end of
her life. To crystallize such wayward, human atoms into proper forms,
and make them useful, is a problem that would puzzle wiser heads than
that of the overseer.

I think, however, that not only Harrison and Peters, but all who have
charge of working people, rely too much on driving, and too little on
encouraging and coaxing. An incident which occurred may illustrate
this truth. My companion, Mr. Drake, soon mastered one of the labors
of a strawberry farm--the gathering of the fruit--and out of the
plenitude of his benevolence essayed to teach a little sable how he
could pick to better advantage.

"Put your basket down, sonny," he said. "Now you have two hands to
work with instead of one--so, don't you see?"

"Dat's mighty good in you, Mas'r," said a woman near. "Lor bress you!
de people 'ud jess jump over derselves tryin' to do the work if dey
got sich good words, but de oberseer's so cross dat we gits 'umptuous
and don't keer."

Still, to the majority, the strawberry season brings the halcyon days
of the year. They look forward to it and enjoy it as a prolonged
picnic, in which business and pleasure are equally combined. They are
essentially gregarious, and this industry brings many together during
the long bright days. The light work leaves their tongues free, and
families and neighbors pick together with a ceaseless chatter, a
running fire of rude, broad pleasantry, intermingled occasionally with
a windy war of words in a jargon that becomes all the more uncouth
from anger, but which rarely ends in blows.

We were continually impressed by their courage, buoyancy, animal
spirits, or whatever it is that enables them to face their uncertain
future so unconcernedly. Multitudes live like the birds, not knowing
where their next year's nest will be, or how to-morrow's food will
come. It _has_ come, thus far, and this fact seems enough. In many
instances, however, their humble fortunes are built on the very best
foundations.

"What can you do after the berry season is over?" we asked a woman who
had but one arm.

"I kin do what any other woman kin do," she said, straightening
herself up. "I kin bake, cook, wash, iron, scrub--"

"That will do," I cried. "You are better off than most of us, for the
world will always need and pay for your accomplishments."

The story of her life was a simple one. She did not remember when she
lost her arm, but only knew that it had been burned off. When scarcely
more than an infant, she had been left alone in the little cabin by
the slave mother, who probably was toiling in the tobacco field. There
was a fire on the hearth--the rest can be imagined only too vividly.
She is fighting out the battle of life, however, more successfully
with her one hand than are multitudes of men with two. She is stout
and cheery, and can "take keer of herself and children," she said.

Scattered here and there over the fields might be seen two heads that
would keep in rather close juxtaposition up and down the long rows.

"Dey's pairin' off," was the explanation.

"You keep de tickets," said a buxom young woman to her mate, as he was
about to take her tray, as well as his own, to the buyers.

"You are in partnership," I remarked.

"Yes, we is," she replied, with a conscious laugh.

"You are related, I suppose?"

"Well, not 'zackly--dat is--we's partners."

"How about this partnership business--does it not last sometimes after
the strawberry season is over?"

"Oh, Lor' yes! Heaps on 'em gits fallen in love; den dey gits a-
marryin' arter de pickin' time is done gone by."

"Now I see what your partnership means."

"Yah, yah, yah! You sees a heap more dan I's told you!" But her
partner grinned most approvingly. We were afterward informed that
there was no end to the love-making among the strawberry rows.

There are from fifty to one hundred and fifty pickers in a squad, and
these are in charge of subordinate overseers, who are continually
moving around among them, on the watch for delinquencies of all kinds.
Some of these minor potentates are white and some black. As a rule,
Mr. Young gives the blacks the preference and on strictly business
principles, too. "The colored men have more snap, and can get more
work out of their own people," he says. By means of these sub-
overseers, large numbers can be transferred from one part of the farm
to another without confusion.

Fortunes are never made in gathering strawberries, and yet there seems
no dearth of pickers. The multitude of men, women, and children that
streams out into the country every morning is surprisingly large. Five
or six thousand bushels a day are often gathered in the vicinity of
Norfolk, and the pickers rarely average over a bushel each. "Right
smart hands," who have the good hap to be given full rows, will
occasionally pick two bushels; but about thirty quarts per day is the
usual amount, while not a few of the lazy and feeble bring in only
eight or ten.

As has been already suggested, the pickers are followed by the buyers
and packers, and to these men, at central points in the fields, the
mule-carts bring empty crates. The pickers carry little trays
containing six baskets, each holding a quart. As fast as they fill
these, they flock in to the buyers. If a trayful, or six good quarts,
are offered, the buyer gives the picker a yellow ticket, worth twelve
cents. When less than six baskets are brought, each basket is paid for
with a green ticket, worth two cents. These two tickets are eventually
exchanged for a white fifty-cent ticket, which is cashed at the
paying-booth after the day's work is over. The pickers, therefore,
receive two cents for every quart of good, salable berries. If green,
muddy, or decayed berries are brought in, they are thrown away or
confiscated, and incorrigibly careless pickers are driven off the
place. Every morning the buyers take out as many tickets of these
three values as they think they can use, and are charged with the same
by the book-keeper. Their voucher for all they pay out is another
ticket, on which is printed "forty-five quarts," or just a crateful.
Only Mr. Young and one other person have a right to give out the last-
named tickets, and by night each buyer must have enough of them to
balance the other tickets with which he was charged in the morning.
Thus thousands of dollars change hands through the medium of four
kinds of tickets not over an inch, square, and by means of them the
financial part of gathering the crop is managed.

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