Idaho County free press. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho Territory) 1886-current, 1888-10-19
BRAIN AND MUSCLES.
The Two Indispensable Requisites to sue
cess in Farm Work.


cess In Farm Work.
Farming is laborious occupation
requiring good general health, and
considerable strength. Hard work is
not easy. and the city resident who
moves to the country and engages in
farming expecting to have light work,
good pay and an easy time will surely
be disappointed. Those writer's who
are constantly asserting that the farmer
should not be a drudge, and need not
be one, but can do all his hard work
with brain, don't know what they are
talking about, or have worked their
own brain so hard that they have be-
come weak, and will never more be o.
much use to themselves or anybody
else. After taking advantage of all
labor-saving contrivances and imple-
ments of husbandry, the strength OF
animals and steam-power, there is still
an urgent demand for the exercise OF
muscular strength and physical en-
durance. Flows, harrows and cultiva-
tors must be got out, loaded on the
wagon or stone-boat, taken to the
field, brought back and put into the
tool house. Flowing is easier than har-
rowing, but either will fatigue a man
who follows it twelve hours a day.
Grain, even when cut with the self
shocked pitched on the wagon, and
pitched off again into the NOW. Hay
has to be raked, cooked, pitched on the
wagon, and even when pitched off with
a horse-fork, it is very hard work to
NOW il, away. Potato digging and
drawing, corn husking and drawing,
flax pulling, threshing, hay and straw
pressing and hauling, handling bags OF
grain when threshing, are now, and
probably will always remain, laborious
and exhausting operations, no matter
how much judgment and skill are
used by the workers.
The exercise of Judgment and COM
mon sense are as necessary in farming
as in any other occupation. Good
planting is a good thing, but you
might as well talk about the strong
man in the circus show, or John L.
Sullivan in the prize ring, working
with their brains instead of their
hands, as to talk about the farmers
WOfhlflS Will MS ''DfalnS L ne TACT
is, both the prize fighter and the farm
er must use all the brains, all the sci
ence, and about all the strength they
have to win the battle. 1t is greatly
to be feared that some of the writer's
who are continually talking about
farmers working with their brains, :"
and 'mlnuring their fields with
brains" have a little brain trouble
somewhere, or perhaps have been too
generous with the small quantity that
nature bestowed upon them, and in
trying to furnish brains for newspa-
pers which did not need them, have
parted with more of the article than
they could prudently spare.
No more dangerous and harmful
heresy could ever be taught to young
farmers than that successful farming
can be done with brains. Profitable
farming must be done chiefly by hard
work. 1t is true now, as it was imme-
diately after the fall, that sin the
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread" Authors, inventors and spec
ulators may do their work mainly with
brains, but farmers, from the nature
of their business, must use brains and
mus les both, and especially the mus
cles.-Cor. Ohio Farmer.