Throughout Eliza Burhans Farnham’s California, In-doors and Out, the subject of agriculture was a major theme for those who inhabitedCalifornia that were not involved in the mines. The presence of agriculture was described as being very ‘natural’ by Farnham because “With such a climate and soil it will readily be supposed that the farmer may have always planting or harvesting in hand” (31) implying that the farmer is a ‘natural’ part of the land. Following the agriculture theme Farnham discusses the agriculture seasons of the east compared to the west that follow the ‘natural’ cycle:
In most of the older States, some portion of the year, if not a very considerable one, is spent in preparing to meet the severity of winter. Here, no such preparation is needed. The season of growth commences soon after the first rains fall (unusually in the latter part of October), and continues until some time in May, when the country is become a vast, rich meadow, wherein the hay is already cured and spreads for the innumerable herds; and in which oat-fields, millions of acres in extent, offer a subsistence nowhere else to be found by animals who feed without the care of man (31),
arguing that the use of agriculture is more ‘natural’ inCaliforniabecause of the timely rain season that allows less processing of the land like in the ‘older States’ in the east. Farnham distinguishes the ‘natural’ from the ‘unnatural’ based on whether or not it follows an unchanging order or cycle like in the example Farnham gives about the account of the grasshoppers destroying the crop, “The former, he knows, will not fail, if they have had anything like fair treatment, unless, indeed, the grasshoppers overtake them in their season of tenderness, in which case a few days cropping by them will save him the labor he has been dreaming in the harvest” (35). The grasshoppers disrupt the farmers crops that would have produced if the grasshoppers where not as prominent.