Read an Excerpt
ni. WHERE TO FARM. When my father was over sixty years old, and had lived some twenty years in Erie County, Pennsylvania, he said to me: " I have several times removed, and always toward the "West; I shall never remove again ; but, were I to do so, it would be toward the East. Experience has taught me that the advantages of every section are counterbalanced by disadvantages, and that, where any crop is easily produced, there it sells low, and sometimes cannot be sold at all. I shall live and die right here; but, were I to remove again, it would not be toward the West." This is but one side of a truth, and I give it for whatever it may be worth. Had my father plunged into the primitive forest in his twenty-fifth rather than his forty-fifth year, he would doubtless have become more reconciled to pioneer life than he ever did,. I would advise no one over forty years of age to undertake, with scanty means, to dig a farm out of the dense forest, where great trees must be cut down and cut up, rolled into log-heaps, and burned to ashes ' where they grew. "Where half the timber can be sold for enough to pay the cost of cutting, the case is different; but I know right well that digging a farm out of the high woods is, to any but a man of wealth, a slow, hard task. Making one out of naked prairie, five to ten miles from timber, is less difficult, but not much. He who can locate where he has good timber on one side and rich prairie on the other is fortunate, and may hope, if his health be spared, to surround himself with every needed comfort within ten years. Still, the pioneer's life is a rugged one, especially for women and children; and I should advise any man who is worth $2,000 andhas a family, to buy out an " improvement" (which, in most cases, badly needs improving) on the o...\
