The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1890-06-18
Editorial NOtings.

"Good business judgment is often lack
ing among farmers. Very few old
time farmers can tell what it costs them
to raise bushel of corn or potatoes,
or ton of hay. 1t is just this kind
of data that are needed, however, on
every farm" All of this is true, but it
is not strange. 1t would be very ca
pable accountant indeed who could
keep the accounts of a farm where
mixed husbandry is followed, and tell
correctly what it costs "to raise
bushel of corn or potatoes, or ton of
hay" We do not say this because we
think it useless for farmer to keep as
close account of his business as pos
sible. We have been doing that for
quarter of century; but in doing it
we have learned how difficult, in fact
how impossible it is, to exactly assess
and divide the elements of cost, so as
to say with positive correctness what is
the cost of bushel of corn or po-
tatoes. Take last year, for instance.
On ten-acre field we planted potatoes
with 600 pounds per acre of potato fer
tilizer. The crop of merchantable
tubers was about seventy-five bushels
per acre. AS good a crop would have
been yielded in favorable year with
out any fertilizer - perhaps even a
larger one. This year the same ground
is sown to small grain, with 200 pounds
of fertilizer broadcasted on it. Already
Dune 3) the lines of last years potato
rows show distinctly by the greater luXu-
rance of the young grain above them.
Will this field of grain get the benefit
of the whole 500 pounds of fertilizer?
If not, how should it be assessed? The
grain crop may possibly be as great
failure as the potatoes. Should this be
the case, could we ever recover the cost
of those fertilizers-and how could the
real cost of the successive crops on that
land be determined? Take another in
stance. We left piece of apparently
"run out" pasture unpasLured last
year. This year there is grass enough
on part of it to cut about one ton of
hay per acre. Say we get four tons of
hay from four acres of this pasture
who can say how much it cost? A
neighbor sowed an acre of new burn
to turnips without any fertilizer, and
got an immense crop. How much did
those turnips cost bushel?
OUR conclusion from what expert
ence we have had in farm book excepting
is that it is chiefly useful in helping us
to get at the probabilities in any par
ticular case, and thus to enlighten us as
to the general drift of things on the
farm. And even then the value of this
information depends much Iupon the
good or bad judgment of the farmer
himself, and his freedom from notions
and prejudices which interfere with,
and often greatly impair the value of,
his conclusions. Still we believe fam
bookkeeping will pay any farmer who
knows how to keep accounts, keeps
them carefully, and has judgment good
enough to rightly interpret them.
IRRIGATION is subject which has
not occupied much of the thought of
Vermont farmers lately. They have
been irrigated a good deal too much.
Yet there are not unfrequently cases
on our farms where water may be led
from brook and distributed over grass
land at so small an expense as to be
very profitable. All plants take up
their food dissolved in water, and with
out sufii Gent water all crops show star
walton. Besides this, the water of our
streams always contains more or less
plant foot dissolved in it, so that irri-
CATION not only helps the crop to get
food, but also actually brings food to
it, and this acts as manure.
THIS worlds sympathy is rather cold
and uncertain. We all Cor almost ally
like sympathy; but we are apt to for
get that those around US like it, too.
Once in awhile the drollery, if not the
pathos, of the situation strikes a versi-
fer, as in the following:
g The world is sympathetic. The statement
none can doubt;
When AS in trouble, don't we think that
should help him out?
OF course we haven't time ourselves to care
for any one,
But yet we hope that other folks will SEE
that it is done.
We want the grief and penury of earth tt
be relieved.
We'd have the battles grandly fought, the
victories achieved,
We do not care to take the lead, and stand
the brush and brunt.
At lifting, we're a failure, but we're splen
did on the grunt."