Southern standard. (McMinnville, Tenn.) 1879-current, 1884-03-15
Education Needed on the Farm.

Cor. Country Gentleman,
One often hears a remark made to
the effect that any fool can be farmer,
or that education is wasted on one who
only tills the soil for a living. These
remarks were nearer the truth, perhaps,
years ago, when the country was new.
The virgin soil would yield abundant
crops almost without care on the part
of the husbandman, and insect enemies,
blight, rust, &C.. were nearly un-
known. But now such sayings are far
from true, and we are beginning to re-
alize that knowledge is power" on the
farm just as surely as anywhere else in
the world. Forty years ago our tools
were of the simplest and rudest kinds,
and not much intelligence was required
to use them. Today some of the finest
machinery made is on the farm, and
the farm needs skill and brains to use
these improved tools to the best advant-
age, rather than muscle to do heavy
work.
The day has passed when muscle
rules the world. The battle-axe and
spear were muscle, the rifle and the
cannon are brains. The stage coach
and the courier we're muscle, the rail-
way train and telegraph are brains.
On the farm the scythe was muscle;
the moving machine is brains. The
grain cradle and sickle were muscle;
the self.binder is brains. The farmer
of the future will need to be, to a large
extent, an engineer and director of la
Dor, and student, instead of simple
laborer, as the farmer of the past was.
The sooner we accept this and govern
and educate ourselves (and our child>
REM accordingly, the more profitable
will our farming be. II "any fool can
be farmer" and makes living out of
it, what are the possibilities of farming
under skillful and intelligent manage
ment? Even in the most simple opera
tons of the farm, education will be OF
use to us every day, not only in en-
abling us to direct our work to the
best advantage, but in giving us the
ability to keep account of everything
and know whether certain practice
or crop pays us or not.
A hired man once said to me: "You
are the best hand at guessing l ever
saw" I had told him there would b.
over six loads of hay to get and no
quite seven. He made the remark
when we were going to the barn witt
the seventh load not quite full. Now
there was no guessing about it.
knew the width of the strip cut, from
the number of swaths, each one o
which was six feet. knew how wild
the rake was, and how many rakeful
we could put on load. So, after rak
ing once down through the piece,
little mental arithmetic told how man,
loads there would be. One can tel
how much man ought to pillow, cult
yate or harrow in day. remembe
once that / went away, to be gone al
day, leaving new hand to harrow
piece of land for wheat. At night
found he had got over only six acre
with harrow six feet wide. He in
sisted that he had done all he could
But after he had seen the figures on
board, and found that he had travele
less than one mile an hour, he was quit
ashamed, and said: ats no use tryin
to fool you on a days work. and h
never tried it again.
Suppose you have a big cOmpOl
heap, which you wish to put on twelv
acres of ground. You walk aroun
the heap, if it is round one, steppin
three feet at a step. 1t is ffty-for
PAGES around it. You look at it an
see that if it was leveled down
where you walked, it would averag
about three feet high. Therefore yO
say 6fty-four yards (the circumference
multiplied by four and One'half, ha
the radius, will give the number
cubic wards in the pile--243. Yo