ls. On one hand farmers were advised to
sink their all into poultry or dairying, only to hear that to
concentrate too completely on one area would limit their
self-sufficiency and mitigate the integrated quality of the farm. In an
increasingly technical world, however, specialization had many
attractions. Expensive machinery needed to be purchased for only one
kind of production, the farmer could cut down the vast influx of
information to only those subjects which directly interested him, and
the methods of mass production, first pioneered in factories, could be
applied to his concentrated effort. Moreover, specialization in market
commodities produced the cash which had become ever more important to
buy equipment, pay taxes and purchase manufactured goods which were no
longer made on the farm. In the end, Fairfax County farmers generally
effected a compromise: while focusing on one aspect of farming, they
retained many of the advantages of the general farmer. Vegetable
gardens, poultry houses, orchards, and sometimes sheep all kept their
place on the family farm. Even C. T. Rice, who liked to refer to his
farm as a milk producing plant, with "little time or space for anything
else" kept a few chickens and hogs.[126]

An early specialization in the county was truck gardening. The long
growing season and potential markets in Alexandria and Washington in
theory seemed to point to success in this field. The list of vegetables
and fruits grown for the commercial market was impressive and included
potatoes, corn, tomatoes, spinach, black-eyed peas, parsnips and
rhubarb, apples and several varieties of berries.[127] One man even grew
artichokes, making quite a substantial profit, but decided to move his
operation to more productive soils in New Jersey.[128] Yet those who
attempted raising large quantities of these crops found it difficult to
show clear profits. Fruit growers had to compete with the world-famous
produce of the Shenandoah Valley, whose strong cooperative organization
gave an added advantage to the area's natural abundance. Hay and forage
grains were of decreasing importance in a country rapidly becoming
enamored of the automobile. In addition, a slump in farm prices had
begun in 1920-21, the after-effect of the inflated agricultural revenues
of the World War I years.

A study of small truck farms in the Washington, D.C. area showed that
despite intensive labor and a double cropping system, a farmer was often