Success with Small Fruits Part 9

And now Florida, with its unrivalled oranges, is beginning to furnish tons of strawberries, that begin ripening in our midwinter; and, with its quick, sandy soil and sunny skies, threatens to render the growing of this fruit under gla.s.s unprofitable. I saw last winter, at Mandarin, quite an extensive strawberry farm, under the care of Messrs. Bowen Brothers, and was shown their skilful appliances for s.h.i.+pping the fruit. At Jacksonville, also, Captain William James is succeeding finely in the culture of some of our Northern varieties, the Seth Boyden taking the lead.

I think I can better present the characteristics of strawberry culture in the South by aiming to give a graphic picture of the scenes and life on a single farm than is possible by general statements of what I have witnessed here and there. I have therefore selected for description a plantation at Norfolk, since this city is the centre of the largest trade, and nearly midway in the Atlantic strawberry belt, I am also led to make this choice because here is to be found, I believe, the largest strawberry farm in the world, and its varied labors ill.u.s.trate most of the Southern aspects of the question.

The reader may imagine himself joining our little party on a lovely afternoon about the middle of May. We took one of the fine, stanch steamers of the Old Dominion line at three P.M., and soon were enjoying, with a pleasure that never palls, the sail from the city to the sea. Our artistic leader, whose eye and taste were to illumine and cast a glamour over my otherwise matter-of-fact text, was all aglow with the varied beauties of the scene, and he faced the prospect beyond the "Hook" with no more misgivings than if it were a "painted ocean."

But there are occasions when the most heroic courage is of no avail.

Only in the peace and beauty that crowned the closing hours of the day as we steamed past Fortress Monroe and up the Elizabeth river, did the prosaic fade out of the hours just past, and now before us was the "sunny South" and strawberries and cream.

In the night there was a steady downfall of rain, but suns.h.i.+ne came with the morning, and we found that the spring we had left at the North was summer here, and saw that the season was moving forward with quickened and elastic tread. Before the day grew warm we started from our hotel at Norfolk for the strawberry plantation, rattling and bouncing past comfortable and substantial homes, over a pavement that surpa.s.sed even the ups and downs of fortune. Here and there, surrounded by a high brick wall, would be seen a fine old mansion, embowered in a wealth of shrubbery and foliage that gave, even in the midst of the city, a suburban seclusion. The honeysuckle and roses are at home in Norfolk, and their exquisite perfume floated to us across the high garden fences. Thank Heaven! some of the best things in the world cannot be walled in. St. Paul's Church and quaint old burying-ground, shadowed by trees, festooned with vines, and gemmed with flowers, seemed so beautiful, as we pa.s.sed, that we thought its influence on the secular material life of the people must be almost as good through the busy week as on the Sabbath.

The houses soon grew scattering, and the wide, level, open country stretched away before us, its monotony broken here and there by groves of pine. The sh.e.l.l road ceased and our wheels now pa.s.sed through many deep puddles, which in Virginia seem sacred, since they are preserved year after year in exactly the same places. A more varied cla.s.s of vehicles than we met from time to time would scarcely be seen on any other road in the country. There were stylish city carriages and buggies, grocer and express wagons, great lumbering market trucks laden with barrels of early cabbages, spring wagons, drawn by mules, piled up with crates from many a strawberry field in the interior, and so, on the descending scale, till we reach the two-wheeled, primitive carts drawn by cows--all converging toward some Northern steamer, whose capacious maw was ready to receive the produce of the country. We had not proceeded very far before we saw in the distance a pretty cottage, sheltered by a group of tall, primeval pines, and on the right of it a large barn-like building, with a dwelling, office, smithy, sheds, etc., grouped about it. A previous visit enabled me to point out the cottage as the home of the proprietor, and to explain that the seeming barn was a strawberry crate manufactory. As was the case on large plantations in the olden time, almost everything required in the business is made on the place, and nearly every mechanical trade has a representative in Mr. Young's employ.

As we drove up under the pines, the proprietor of the farm welcomed us with a cordial hospitality, which he may have acquired in part from his residence in the South. On the porch stood a slender lady, whose girlish grace and delicate beauty at once captivated the artists of our party.

There was the farm we had come to see, stretching away before us in hundreds of green, level acres. As we drove to a distant field in which the pickers were then engaged, we could see the ripening berries with one side blus.h.i.+ng toward the sun. Pa.s.sing a screen of pines, we came out into a field containing thirteen acres of Wilson strawberries, and then more fully began to realize the magnitude of the business.

Scattered over the wide area, in what seemed inextricable confusion to our uninitiated eyes, were hundreds of men, women, and children of all ages and shades of color, and from the field at large came a softened din of voices, above the monotony of which arose here and there s.n.a.t.c.hes of song, laughter mellowed by distance, and occasionally the loud, sharp orders of the overseers, who stalked hither and thither, wherever their "little brief authority" was most in requisition.

We soon noted that the confusion was more apparent than real, and that each picker was given a row over which he--or, more often, she--bent with busy fingers until it was finished. At central points crates were piled up, and men known as "buyers" received the round quart baskets from the trays of the pickers, while wide platform carts, drawn by mules, were bringing empty crates and carrying away those that had been filled.

Along the road that skirted the field, and against a pretty background of half-grown pines, motley forms and groups were moving to and fro, some seeking the "buyers" with full trays, others returning to their stations in the field with a new supply of empty baskets. Some of the pickers were drifting away to other fields, a few seeking work late in the day; more, bargaining with the itinerant venders of pies, made to last all summer if not sold, gingerbread, "pones," and other nondescript edibles, at which an ostrich would hesitate in well-grounded fear of indigestion, but for which sable and semi-sable pickers exchange their berry tickets and pennies as eagerly as we buy Vienna rolls. Two or three barouches and buggies that had brought visitors were mingled with the mule-carts; and grouped together for a moment might be seen elegantly attired ladies from New York, slender mulatto girls, clad in a single tattered, gown which scantily covered their bare ankles and feet, and stout, s.h.i.+ny negro women, their waists tied with a string to prevent their flowing drapery from impeding their work. Flitting to and fro were numberless colored children, bare-headed, bare-legged, and often, with not a little of their sleek bodies gleaming through the innumerable rents of their garments, their eyes glittering like black beads, and their white teeth showing on the slightest provocation to mirth. Indeed, the majority of the young men and women were chattering and laughing much of the time, and only those well in the shadow of age worked on in a stolid, plodding manner.

Mingled indiscriminately with the colored people were not a few white women and children, and occasionally a white man. As a rule, these were better dressed, the white girls wearing sun-bonnets of portentous size, whose cavernous depths would make a search for beauty on the part of our artist a rather close and embarra.s.sing scrutiny. The colored women as often wore a man's hat as any other, and occasionally enlivened the field with a red bandana. Over all the stooping, moving, oddly apparelled forms, a June-like sun was s.h.i.+ning with summer warmth.

Beyond the field a branch of Tanner's Creek s.h.i.+mmered in the light, tall pines sighed in the breeze on the right, and from the copse-wood at their feet quails were calling, their mellow whistle blending with the notes of a wild Methodist air. In the distance rose the spires of Norfolk, completing a picture whose interest and charm I have but faintly suggested.

Several of the overseers are negroes, and we were hardly on the ground before one of these men, in the performance of his duty, shouted in a stentorian voice:

"Heah, you! Git up dar, you long man, off'n yer knees. What yo' mas.h.i.+n'

down a half-acre o' berries fer?"

Mr. Sheppard was quick to see a good subject, and almost in a flash he had the man posed and motionless in his att.i.tude of authority, and under his rapid strokes Jackson won fame and eminence, going to his work a little later the hero of the field. The overseer's task is a difficult one, for the pickers least given to prayer are oftenest on their knees, crus.h.i.+ng the strawberries, and whether they are "long" or short, much fruit is destroyed. North and South, the effort to keep those we employ off the berries must be constant, especially as a long, hot day is waning. Indeed, one can scarcely blame them for "lopping down," for it would be inquisitorial torture to most of us to stoop upon our feet through a summer day. Picking strawberries, as a steady business, is wofully prosaic.

While the sun had been s.h.i.+ning so brightly there had been an occasional heavy jar and rumble of thunder, and now the western sky was black.

Gradually the pickers had disappeared from the Wilson field, and we at last followed them, warned by an occasional drop of rain to seek the vicinity of the house. Having reached the gra.s.sy slope beneath the pines in the rear of the dwelling, we turned to note the pretty scene.

A branch of Tanner's Creek came up almost to our feet, and on either side of it stretched away long rows of strawberries as far as the eye could reach. Toward these the throng of pickers now drifted, "seeking fresh fields and pastures new." The motley crowd was streaming down on either side of the creek, while across a little causeway came a counter current, the majority of them having trays full of berries. The buyers, like the traders with the nomad Indians, open traffic anywhere, and at the shortest notice. A mule-cart was stopped, a few empty crates taken off and placed under the pines at our feet, and soon the gra.s.s was covered with full quart baskets, for which the pickers received tickets and then pa.s.sed on, or, as was often the case, threw themselves down in the shade. The itinerant venders came flocking in like so many buzzards. There was at once chaffering and chaffing, eating and drinking. All were merry. Looking on the groups before us, one would imagine that the sky was serene. And yet, frowning upon this scene of careless security, this improvident disregard of a swiftly coming emergency, was one of the blackest of clouds. Every moment the thunder was jarring and rolling nearer, and yet this jolly people, who "take no thought," heeded not the warning. Even the buyers and packers seemed infected with a like spirit, and were leisurely packing in crates the baskets of berries scattered on the gra.s.s, when suddenly Mr. Young, with his fleet, black horse, came flying down upon us. Standing up in his buggy, he gave a dozen rapid orders, like an officer on the field in a critical moment. The women, who had been lounging with their hands on their hips, shuffled off with their trays; half-burned pipes are hastily emptied; gingerbread and like delicacies are stuffed into capacious mouths, since hands must be employed at once. Packers, mules, everybody, everything, are put upon the double-quick to prepare for the shower. It is too late, however, for down come the huge drops as they can fall only in the South. The landscape grows obscure, the forms of the pickers in the distance become dim and misty, and when at last it lightens up a little, they have disappeared from the fields. There they go, streaming and dripping toward the barns and sheds, looking as bedraggled as a flock of black Spanish fowls. Such of the mule-drivers as have been caught, now that they are in for it, drive leisurely by with the heavy crates that they should have gathered up more promptly.

The cloud did not prove a pa.s.sing 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 gra.s.s, 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 c.h.i.n.k 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 s.h.i.+pped 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 quant.i.ties 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 lat.i.tude, 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 lat.i.tude 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 s.p.a.ce between the beds is twenty-seven inches wide. This s.p.a.ce 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 k.n.o.bs shaped like an acorn. Each wheel marks a continuous line on the soft earth, and with each revolution the k.n.o.bs 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 cla.s.s rises in its place--the worst of the Philistines being nut-gra.s.s, quack-gra.s.s, and--direst foe of all--wire-gra.s.s.

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 gra.s.s, 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.s. Then the hay can be raked back again as the summer mulch, and a new s.p.a.ce 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 bra.s.s-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 a.s.signed a row, which could not be left until all the ripe berries on it were gathered.

Pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.sion; and he chafes at an obstacle like an obstructed torrent.

Harrison, his a.s.sociate 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 partners.h.i.+p, 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.