The Milan exchange. (Milan, Gibson County, Tenn.) 1874-1978, 1878-06-20
FARM TOPICS.
Specialties in Farming.


A system of mixed husbandry is I'M.
doubedly best adapted to most farmers
in sections where various kinds of farm
products can be grown. This, howev-
er, does not exclude the culture of spec.
ialties, to which more than average at
tention is paid, and from which greater
profit is expected. 1t is inevitable that
this should be so. The time will never
come when cotton will not be the lead
ing staple of some of the Southern
States, though every year more atten-
ton is, and will be, paid to the other
crops. This is only an illustration of
what everywhere occurs. One crop will
receive most care, and others will be
made subsidiary. The first will be re-
lied on for profits, and the others for
paying the expenses for running the
farm. Unless this is done, the cost of
the main crop is pretty sure to take the
most of the profits, sometimes more.
This has been the great difficulty with
southern farming. The money expend-
ed in buying provisions which the plant
er might himself produce, eats up the
profits on the cotton crop. 1t does not
follow that the cotton is improbable,
but only that exclusive cotton planting
is bad policy.
There is always q great amount of
needless idleness in growing one crop to
the exclusion of every thing else. Thus
with cotton, it employs labor on the
farm only few months in the year.
There is busy season at planting time,
another in cultivating, and the third
and last, in gathering and marketing
the crop. The exclusive Western corn
growing of few years ago was open
to the same objection, but the Western
farmer had the advantage of stock feed
ing in winter, so as to be proftably en-
ployed for a part at least of this usu-
ally Improbable season. Corn-growing
is usually recommended to Southern
farmers as a good substitute in part for
cotton. But corn is planted, cultivated
and harvested at the same time as cot
ton, and can not be extensively grown
without interfering with that. What
the Southern farmer needs is not to dis
card corn-growing entirely, but to get
some other crop which will better al
ternate the season of cultivation. In
the Northern farmers system of mixed
husbandry, there are corn, wheat, oats,
barley, beans. potatoes, live stock and
fruits, thus having something to do,
and something to sell, nearly every
month in the year.
Still, almost every farmer has some
speciality. What it is depends upon his
farm, location and taste. Farmers diff
fer as much as any class of workers,
and in the different kinds of husbandTy
there is variety enough to suit many
kinds of men. A farmer has not only
the right, but it is his duty to do what
he likes best, for this is the secret of sue
cess in any avocation. The farmer who
delights in horses or cattle, or sheep, or
pigs, will do better generally to devote
himself mainly to whichever of these
specialties he prefers, of course taking
into account the adaptation of his farm
and locality to the business, as we'll as
his own desires. There are still others
who, in addition to the love of one or
more kinds of these animals, have also
an appreciation of their fine points, and
the Judgment, skill and patience neces-
sary in a successful breeder. 1t does
not follow that because farmer likes
live stock, he is qualified to breed it
successfully and intelligently. A great
many who begin with enthusiasm only
succeed in breeding lot of scrubs.
The skill of the men who originated
such breeds as the Short-Horn cattle,
Cotswold sheep and Essex pigs, would
compel success in any avocation. The
same may be said of men who have
proved highly successful in growing
wheat, potatoes or any one of the
numerous kinds of fruits. The success
is due less to the kind of crop than to
the character of the man who grows it.
There is an advantage in making
some one crop specially, in the fact
that it enables farmers to grow, on a
small farm, something on large scale.
1t costs considerably less per acre to
grow fifty acres of wheat, harvest and
thresh it, than to grow five acres On a
small farm most operations must be on
a small scale, and therefore done at a
disadvantage. But if the small farmer
will select the crop which he is most
successful with, and it will usually be
one 10 which he is most enthusiastic, he
can devote his main attention to that,
and secure a more decisive success than
he could by treating all crops alike.
He need not abandon other products
unless experience proves this advisable,
but he will have the satisfaction not
only of gratifying his own desires, but
of making more money than it he