The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1884-04-12
Education Needed on the Farm.

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, etc, were nearly
unknown. But now such sayings are
far from true, and we are beginning to
realize 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. To-day some of
the finest machinery made is on the
farm, and the farmer needs skill and
brains to use these improved tools to
the best advantage, rather than muscle
to do heavy work.
The day has passed when muscle
rules the world The battle-ax and
spear were muscle; the rifle and the
cannon are brains. The siage-coach
and the courier were 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 large ex-
tent, an engineer and director OF labor,
| 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 chill
dren) accordingly, the more profitable
will our farming be. If ''any fool can
be a farmer" and make a 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 tC us every day, not only in enabling
us to direct our work to the best ad-
vantage, 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 | ever
saw | had told him there would be
over six loads of hay to get up, but not
! quite seven. He made the remark when
we were going to the barn with the
seventh load not quite full. Now, there
was no guess-work about it. | knew
the width of the strip cut, from the
number of swaths, each one of which
was six feet. knew how wide the rake
was, and how many rakefuls we could
put on load. SO, after raking once
| down through the piece. little mental
arithmetic told how many loads there
would be. One can tell how much
man ought to pillow, cultivate or harrow
| in day. | remember once that | went
away, to be gone all day leaving new
hand to harrow a piece of land for
wheat. At night | found he had got
| over only six acres with a harrow six
| feet wide. He insisted that he had done
all be could. But after he had seen the
| figures on board, and found he had
travelled less than one mile an hour. he
was quite ashamed, and said: Its no
use trying to fool you on days work,
and he never tried it again.
Suppose you have a big compost heap
which you wish to put on twelve acres
of ground. You walk around the heap,
if it is round one, stepping feet at
step. 1t is 81 PAGES around it. You
| look at it and see that if it was leveled
| down to where you walked, it would
average about 3 feet high. Therefore
you say 81 yards (the circumference
multiplied by A., half the radius, will
give the number of cubic yards in the
| pile-243. You know that your manure
spreader will hold Just about l cubic
yard at load; so you set it to spread
20 loads per acre, and come out all
right-no guess work about it. Some
years ago | had a heavy piece of corn
to cut. A faithful man was set at the
job, and he only made about iive-eighths
! of an acre day. | compared the
weight of stalks ana grain he had to
handle with what he would have to dc
on an average piece, and was satisfied
that he was doing well. One night one
of those blowing men came along
why" said he adam isn't doing
anything. | can 90 in there and cut an
acre a day just as easy as sitting on a
fence" Very WE'LL" said |, come
tomorrow and cut an acre; / will pay
you S1.50, and you can have the fun OF
showing Adam how little he knows
about cutting corn He came before
| was up, and at noon, beginning to
realize that he had something to do, he
never stopped for his hours incoming,
| but took bite and ran but it was
three o clock the second day before he
had his acre cut. When he was laughed
at about it, he used to say, The college
boy was too much for me-
Suppose you are a dairyman, and
raise wheat and potatoes to sell also.
| You want ten tons of corn meal to feed
your COWS in the winter, and so you
| plant corn. Now careful account
kept for term of years, may show you
that while you are making money from
your wheat and potatoes, YOU are losing
on your corn. Or on account of having
home market for the corn, and no
good market for the potatoes, and not
time enough to properly care for them,
the corn may pay best. Knowing the
| facts, you can raise what will pay you
best The day has passed when it is
necessary for farmer to raise every
thing he wants for his own use.
might go on showing you where educa-
ton would be of advantage to you
every day of your life, and in every lot
on your farm. Farming, or agriculture,
is an art, based on number of sciences,
and the more we know of these sciences,
or of the ones pertaining to our line of
farming, the better we can run the
farm.
Not long since, when coming out of