Immediately on getting my raspberries in, I went twice over the six acres with the cultivator, stirring up the ground some four inches deep, as it had been a good deal trampled down by our planting operations. This I did myself, with a thirty-dollar horse which I had recently bought. Having eighteen feet between two rows of peach-trees, I divided this space into five rows for strawberries, giving me very nearly three feet between each row. In these rows I set the strawberry plants, one foot apart, making about 10,000 plants per acre, allowing for the headlands. I bought the whole 60,000 required for $2 per thousand, making $120. This was below the market price.
In planting these I got three of the children to help me, and though it was more tiresome work than they had ever been accustomed to, yet they stood bravely up to it. Every noon we four went home with raging appetites for dinner, where the plain but well-cooked fare provided by my wife and eldest daughter--for she kept no servant--was devoured with genuine country relish. The exercise in the open air for the whole week which it took us to get through this job did us all a vast amount of good. Roses came into the cheeks of my daughters, to which the cheeks aforesaid had been strangers in the city; and it was the general remark among us at breakfast, that it had never felt so good to get to bed the night before. Thus honest labor brought wholesome appetites and sound repose. Most of us complained of joints a little stiffened by so much stooping, but an hour’s exercise at more stooping made us limber for the remainder of the day.
It occupied us a whole week to set out these plants, for we were all new hands at the business. But the work was carefully done, and a shower coming on just as we had finished, it settled the earth nicely to the roots, and I do not think more than two hundred of them died. I intended to put a pinch of guano compost or a handful of poudrette into each hill, but thought I could not afford it, and so let them go, trusting to being able to give them a dressing of some kind of manure the following spring. I much regretted this omission, as I was fully aware of the great value of the best strawberries, and plenty of them. My wife thought at first that six acres was an enormous quantity to have--inquired if I expected to feed the family on strawberries, and whether it was not worth while to set about raising some sugar to go with them, feeling certain that a great deal of _that_ would be wanted.