A G.I. Who Did

Many a city-born G.I. has yearned for a postwar farm. But agricultural wiseacres have warned that farming is no business for amateurs, G.I.s or otherwise. Lean, blond Peter Farrell Hudson, 36, medically discharged from the Army a year ago, disregarded such warnings. He settled in Nebraska's rolling North Platte valley, good land for wheat, corn and oats, dreamed of changing it into one mammoth, highly profitable truck garden. But Hudson had no luck when he tried to get a loan under the G.I. bill to start farming. Finally defeated by red tape, he went to work for the Union Pacific as a brakeman at $450 a month. His wife Helen got a $25 a week job as a bookkeeper. Together they saved $5,000. His father-in-law, by mortgaging his home, lent him an additional $6,000.

For $325, he bought a 600-pound experimental celery transplanter last spring (one of two being used in the U.S. for experimentation), converted it for tomato planting. The transplanter carries enough water in two drums to irrigate 1,000 plants, has a two-winged blade for digging trenches and flanged wheels for closing them. He showed his labor-saving machine to all & sundry, showed that it could plant at least twice as much as the old back-breaking hand method. But his big selling point was profits. Hudson told the farmers that they could make from two to four times more per acre from truck farming than they had from their conventional crop. They thought it over, then lent him 103 acres to try to prove it--a few acres from each farm.

In his spare time Hudson put his machine to work planting 42 acres of tomatoes, which he guaranteed to buy at a fixed minimum price. The rest of the acreage he planted in corn, cantaloupes, etc., which he promised to buy at market prices. He spent some $9,500 for shipping baskets, wrapping paper, etc. while he and his wife were doing some of the planting. Then Hudson started traveling up & down the valley, spreading his idea, hired a crew to run his planter. Three weeks ago he quit the U.P., got ready for the critical first harvest.

Last week, ex-G.I. Hudson shipped his first boxcar of tomatoes to the New York market. Before the harvest is over, he expects to ship another 59 boxcars of produce. He expects farmers to make from $300 to $600 an acre, to make enough for himself to live reasonably well, and to pay off his father-in-law. His idea has caught on so well that next year he plans to plant 800 acres. His newest dream: locally financed valley canneries to handle some of the new crops.

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