Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1870-03-08
THE HERALD.
PREPARING TO FARM.


ter, | 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 farm
ing.
TO those | would earnestly say.
mo hasteW Our boys are in too
great hurry to be men. They want
to be bosses before they have quail
ted themselves TO be efficient Jour
neymen. have personally known
several instances of young men, fresh
from school or from some city voca-
ton, buying or hiring a farm and
undertaking to work it; and | can
not recall IS single instance in which
the attempt has succeeded while
speedy failure has been the usual re-
suit. The assumptitn that farming
= rude, simple matter, requiring
little intellect and less experience.
has buried many a well-meaning
youth under debts which the best
efforts Of several 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 long
er before buying or hiring farm.
When | was ten years old, my
father took a 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 (1S21 p to the rug
ged task. When it was finished, |
IA boy of twelve years-could have
taken just such o tract of halEburn-
ed primitive forest as that was when
we took hold Of it, and cleared it by
an expenditure of seventy or eighty
per cent. of the labor we actually
bestowed upon that. I 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 a
very good farmer at the start, or q
very poor one afterward, who can
not grow thousand bushels Of grain
much cheaper at thirty years of age
than he could at twenty.
To every young man who has had
no farming experience, or very little,
yet who means to make farming his
vocation, | say, hire out, for the
coming year, to the very best farmer
who will give you anything like the
value of your labor. Buy q very
few choice books, (if you have them
not already which treat of Geology,
Chemistry, Botany, and the applica-
ton of their truths in Practical Ag-
riculture give to these the close
and thoughtful attention of your few
leisure hours keep your eyes wide
open, and set down in a notebook or
pocket-diary each night minute .of
whatever bas been done on the farm
that day, making note of each
storm, shower, frost, hail, &c, and
also OF the date at which each plant
ed crop requires tillage or is ripe
enough TO harvest, ascertaining, so
far as possible, what each crop pro-
duced at a profit, and which at loss.
At the years end, hire again to
the same or another good farmer
and purse the same course and so
do till yon shall be twenty-four or
twenty-five years of age, which is
young enough to marry, and quite
young enough to undertake the man
of a farm By this time,
it you have carefully saved and
wisely invested your earnings, you
will have several hundred dollars
and if you do not choose to migrate
10 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 money--assuming
that you have only what you will
have earned will all be wanted to fix
up your buildings, buy team and
COW, With a few implements needed,
and supply you with provisions till
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
IN your mortgage at the close of
your second year.
] hate debt as profoundly as any
one can, but do not consider this
really running into debt. Ono 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 agreement mutu-
ally advantageous, whereby the poor
er has the present use and ultimate
fee simple of the farm in question, in
consideration of the payment of
certain sums as duly stipulated =
Technically, the buyer becomes a
debtor; practically, | do not regard
him as such, until payments fall due
which he is unable promptly to meet.
Let him vigorously avoid all other
debt, he need not shrink from or be
ashamed of this.
l have high regard for scientific
l wish every young
man wore thoroughly instructed in
the sciences which underlie the art
Of farming. But all the learning on
earth, though it may powerfully help
TO make a good farmer, would not OF
itself make one. When o young
man has learned all that seminaries
and lectures, books and cabinets, can
teach him, he still needs practice and
to make him good
farmer.
"But wouldn't you have young
man study in order to become good
farmer ?"
If he has money, Yes. | believe
q youth worth four or Eve thousand
dollars may wisely spend tenth of
his means in attending lectures, and
even courses of study, at any good
seminary where Natural Science is
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