Farm

A photograph of Goshen farmland taken by the Nelson brothers

A drawing of a farm nestled below mountains

               H. Nelson

"This poem," Arthur explains, "was written by papa in 1893 for one of our Lyceums which we had at home" (Sketches of Home Life Volume 1, p.7). The other poem of Hial's recorded in the boys' collected reminisences is more joking in tone, but also about farming. The Nelson boys tend not to mention their farm labors in their sketches, except as a point of comparison, as when  Arthur finds a climb through brambles during a hunting adventure to be "harder than any work we had done in haying by the time we got to the top" (Sketches of Home Life Volume 2,  p. 18). Though as they grow older and with retrospect their sense of the moral and economic value of farm work grows strong: "We have put in a good lot of hard work on that big farm" Arthur writes of his and Elmer's work for his Uncle Orren, "but after all it had done us good. It has given us confidence in ourselves and also a pretty good lot of money." (High School Notes, p. 18)

Nelson family in the 1900 Census

The 1900 Census lists both Hial and the by then 22 year old Elmer Nelson as "Farmers." It shows father and son each owning land, and carrying mortgages, while Arthur is marked as a "Farm Laborer" and the younger boys as "At School."

Elmer explains his purchase of land just a year earlier:

"The old Adam's Farm, so called, 100 acres more or less. In the month of November, 1899, Stephen Colby advertised and sold his farm and stock, the farm joined ours on the east, north of the highway, it was a good farm of 100 acres, with quite a sugar place and pasture. We (That is, Arthur and I) went to the auction but had no thought of buying the place until Uncle Oren suggested, "Why don't you boys buy it". We thought about it and bought it, making the writings, November 14, 1899. We then set out to earn it, how we succeeded in doing this, and what we did with the farm, the coming years will tell."

Intellectual Farmers

One significant strand of the boys' book production is decidedly agricultural. Farming might not be a source of story for the brothers, but it is a site of knowledge. They are clearly proud of their expertise and write with great detail and precision about farming practices. Their agricultural journal The Intellectual Farmer describes the purpose of their paper this way:

"Even in this modern time of ours there is still to few papers relating to farming, gardening and fruit growing and besides they are to high priced. There ought to be papers that were lower enough in price. That, however poor the farmer, he could offord [afford] to take one, and by taking, and studying it he might be made a wealthy farmer. Now this is the purpose of our paper, in the first place it is very cheap. Second it has many of the best agricultural writers, and third every piece has a valuable hint in it on farming, gardening or fruit growing. Now a farming is not a business that many get rich in, and many can get just enough of from their farm to keep them alive it is for their benefit that they should take some farm paper and find out what others have done to be successful and if there is something in which you have been extra successful in raising for several years and you know how you done it just send it in to this paper or some other farm paper that others may profit by your knowledge and live easier." (March)

The April Intellectual Farmer includes farming reports from the boy's imaginary continents: 80 million peanut plants up so soon on L.C. (Long Continent ) and its provinces, and peach tirals at the Experiment stations of the fictional New Poplington

Cover of the March Intellectual Farmer

Touting new varieties of tomatoes and cucumbers in the April issue

Fictional Harvests and Real Vegetables

By the second, April, issue of The Intellectual Farmer the boys' imaginary world has seeped into their farming knowledge--or perhaps it is the other way round. The Ignotum Tomato was developed at Michigan Agricultural College in 1887 and was widely praised in agricultural journals of the period for its fine shape and coloring and firm flesh (See American Gardening, 1889, p. 84 or The Nebraska Seed Co. Catalog of 1898). Clearly aware of the traits and origin of this new variety, which only went into wide distribution in 1891, the boys' account of the "Ignotum Tomato" describes its discovery by "Mr. Ferris of Hulkton" on Long Continent. "This grand new sort," like the real Igotum, "is a rich cadinal red they are as solid and as smooth as an apple."

Selling Seed

The Nelson brothers are not only knowledgeable and expert farmers, they are also entrepreneurial ones. Clearly they aim to be "wealthy farmers." The two longest and most elaborately illustrated books in the collection are seed catalogues, full of detailed illustrations, informative and exuberant praise for each variety, precise directions for planting and care, and suggestions for eating. Each seed package is priced, and in this venture they appear to be suggesting real, not imaginary prices comprable to those found in regular seed catalogues of the period (ranging from 5 to 25 cents). The varieties mentioned are either well known cultivars like Livingston Tomatos or often seeds they name after themselves such as "Nelson's Excelsior Musk Melon" or "Nelson's Early Broom Corn." It seems possible that the brothers really were selling seeds, though it is hard to understand quite how these laboriously produced and unique little books would have helped such an enterprise.

The Nelson brother's seed catalogues contained detailed, and often wittily written, cultivation instructions and the brothers clearly imagine a wide market. They sell red peppers "very hot and pungent in flavor" which "in latitudes farther south...can be sown out doors early in the spring and do well" and among their varieties of corn seed list some "best for middle and southern states." Their seed catalogue entries show knowledgeable engagement with recent agricultural trends and debates.  They include, for example, a long account of "Lost Nation" wheat, a topic much discussed in the popular press of the period, where, as Robert Ryan put it,  the "vitality of ancient mummy wheat of Egypt" was a controversial topic (see the August 25 1894 issue of The Outlook a Family Paper, pp. 304-6). Nelson Bros Novelties shares this excitement over the idea of ancient grains, waxing poetic:

this kind was first found in a tomb where lay a mumy, it was planted and grew when it got ripe it was found to be a prolific and early sort and also something not known before, this wheat might have been with the mumy hundreds of years but it had kept all right."