The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-02-11
PREPARING TO FARM.
BY HORACE GREELEY.

1 write mainly for beginners-for
young persons, and some not SO young,
who are looking to farming as the vo-
cation to which their future years are
to be given, by which their living is to
be gained. In this chapter, | would
counsel young men, who, not having
been reared in personal contact with
the daily and yearly round of farmers
cares and duties, purpose henceforth to
live by farming.
To those 1 would earnestly say, 4" No
haste J" Our boys are in too great hur-
ry to be men. They want to be bosses
before they have qualified themselves
to be efficient journeymen. l have per-
sonally known several instances OF
young men, fresh from school or some
city vocation, buying or hiring a farm
and undertaking to work it; and can
not now recall single instance in which
the attempt has succeeded while speedy
failure has been the usual result The
assumption that farming is a rude, sim
pie matter, requiring little intellect and
less experience, has buried many a we'll
meaning youth under debts which the
best efforts of subsequent years will
barely enable him TO pay off. In my
opinion, half our farmers now living
would say, if questioned, that they
might better have waited longer before
buying or hiring farm.
When / was ten years old, my father
took job of clearing off the mainly
fallen and partially rotten timber
largely white pine and black ash-from
fifty acres of level and then swampy
land; and he and his two boys gave
most of the two ensuing years QS2I-2)
to the rugged task. When il was fin
ished, la boy of twelve years-could
have taken just such tract of half
burned primitive forest as that was
when we. took hold of it, and cleared
it by an expenditure of seventy to eighty
per cent. of the labor we actually be-
slowed upon that. / had learned, in
clearing this, how to economic labor
in any future undertaking of the kind /;
and SO every one learns by experience
who steadily observes and reflects. He
must have been very good farmer at
the start, or very poor one afterward,
who cannot grow thousand bushels of
grain much cheaper at thirty years of
age than he could at twenty.
10, every young man who has no
farming experience, or very little, yet
who means to make farming his voca-
ton, ] say, Hire out to the very best
farmer who will give you anything like
the value of your labor. Buy a very
few choice books, Gf you have them not
already,) which treat of geology, chem
istry, botany, and the application of
their truths in practical agriculture I;
give to these the close and thoughtful
attention of your few leisure hours !;
keep your eyes wide open, and set down
in notebook or poeket-diary each
night minute of-Yhatever has been
done on the farm that day, making a
note of each storm, shower, frost, hail
&C., and also of the date at which each
planted crop requires tiIlage or is ripe
enough to harvest. and ascertaining, so
far as possible, what each crop produced
on the farm has cost, and which of them
are produced at a profit, and which
at loss. AT the years end, hire again
to the same or another good farmer and
pursue the same course: and so do till
you shall be twenty-four or TWENTY-FIVE
years of age, which is young enough to
marry, and quite young enough to I'M
'deftake the management of farm. By
this time, If you have carefully saved
and wisely invested your earnings. YOU
will have several hundred dollars !; and.
if you do not choose to migrate to some
region where land is very cheap, you
will have found some one willing to sell
you a small farm on credit, taking a
long mortgage as security. Your mon
ey-assuming that you have only what
ed to fix up your buildings, buy q team
and COW, with the few implements need
ed, and supply you with provisions nn-
til you can grow some. If you can be-
gin thus experienced and full-handed,
you may, by diligence combined. with
good fortune, begin to make payments
on your mortgage at the close of the
second year.
I hate debt as profoundly as any one
can, but 1 do not consider this really
running into debt. One has more land
than he needs, and does not need his
pay for it forthwith; another wants
land, but lacks the means of present
payment. They two enter into an agree
ment mutually advantageous, whereby
the poorer has the present use and uIti-
mate fee simple of the farm in question.
in consideration of the payment of GER
tain sums as duly stipulated. Tecbni-
cally, the buyer becomes debtor prac-
tically, do not regard him as such, I'M
til payments fall due which he is unable
promptly to meet. Let him vigorously
avoid all other debt, and he need not
shrink from or be ashamed of this.
have high regard for scientific at
tainments; / wish that every young
man were thoroughly instructed in the
sciences which underlie the art OF farm
ing, But all the learning on earth,
though it may powerfully help to make
a good farmer, would not of itself make
one. When young man has learned
all that seminaries and lectures, books
and cabinets can teach him, he still
needs practice and experience to make
him good farmer.
But wouldn't you have a young
man study in order that he mar become
a good farmer?v
If he has money, Yes. I believe a
youth worth four or five thousand dol
lars may wisely spend q tenth of his
means IN attending lectures, and even
courses of study. at any good seminary
where natural science Is Taught and