The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1892-01-22
JOHN MOORE. JR-
COLUMBIA JERSEY FARM

five dollars will purchase a good,
practical working library, one that
will include standard works on soils,
pasturage, tiliage, manuring, dairy
ing, stOck-raising, sheep husbandry,
fruits, gardening, and be, in fact, q
complete reference library for every
department of the farm. Such a Ii
brary, if we'll studied, would save or
help to earn mucn more than it's cost
every year, and would be of more
value than any other tool or
implement in your possession. If
you have children these books will
help to educate and interest them Just
in the lines of work that you wish
them to follow, and will frequently
he the means of intoxicating a liking
for some specially that they can take
up aud pursue profitably, without in
terfering at all with the ordinary
course of the farm work. Have Ii
brary of such tools by all means.
A correspondent says he cannot
figure out any profit in stOck-grOw
ing, and asks upon what we base our
frequent assertion that the best profit
in farming comes from combining
stOck-feeding with the growing of
crops. 1t appears to us, and practice
amply bears out the theory, that
ing crops and feeding them upon the
farm, as compared with growing and
selling them direct. There is the
profit in the crop above cost of pro-
duction; there is profit made in the
growth of the animal and in being
able to utilize much rough and cheap
food for which there would otherwise
be no profitable market, even if one
is not a sufficiently skillful feeder to
get a direct profit from the grain fed
for fattening; and there is the very
direct profit in the enrichment OF the
land by the production of manure, a
point that can not be too highly esti-
mated as against the continual inn
punishment of the land when crops
are grown and sold away from the
farm. The keeping of stock is the
beginning and end of profit in diver
sified agriculture, aud we may add,
parenthetically, that the better the
stock the better the profit. 1t is quite
possible that our correspondent has
been figuring for profit with scrub
stock, and in that case we are not
much surprised that he failed to find
1t. We have never advocated farm
ing for profit with that sort.
The first item toword procuring q
good garden for the coming season is
wise plan to rely upon the village
grocer, and when you are Just ready
to plant buy of him such sorts as he
may have on hand. You may get
good, fresh stock, and you may get
some that has been on hand a season
or twO-lOng enough to have lost
their vitality, or large proportion of
it; but, in any event, you will not
have the same chance of making a
careful selection of best varieties that
you would if you will take the cata-
logue of some trustworthy scotsman
and study and select from it, and
place your order direct, or get a deal
er TO do it for you; but the great thing
is TO be sure to have fresh seeds and |
OF getting the very best varieties. |
The list should be made up 80 as to
include every thing that you will want |
through the season, so there may be |
no delay or annoyance through hav- |
ing to wait for seeds when you are |
ready to go on with your WORK. The |
order for seeds should be placed with !
a view to keeping up a succession of
of the principal vegetables |
throughout the season; corn, beans, |
peas, beets, cabbage, etc are quite as
for late garden as for early. |
A garden that is all planted at one |
time will have almost entirely ceased |
to be productive by August, yet a
supply is quite as necessary
for the table, and quite as profitable
during the late summer and autumn
as it is in the spring.
If you have never done so before,
make up your mind that YOU will
know the cost this year of every crop
that you produce. Upon almost all
farms some crops are grown at a
h In -, |
along at a loss; yet, because no seper-
ate account is kept of the cost of pro-
iucing each, we can not determine
ust what to cut off or to change in
order to increase our total profit. In
the cost of a crop one
must begin with the rental value OF
he land. Your farm Is not all of
equal quality, and some fields would
nave high rental value because of
heir special fitness for producing
certain especially valuable crops.
Let each field 'stand upon its own
bottom" in your account, and the
crop grown on it be charged with just
what that field is worth. Then the
,rop must be charged with the value 4,
If the seed The manure and the labor.
rhis latter may seem rather a trouble
,ome item to keep account OF, but If |
you go at il systematically it will not
prove difficult. Have q certain value
day for your own labor and for the I
abor of each man, boy and team, and
nave a book in which each field is
known by a certain number. Then Z
It night It will he very easy to mark
he number Of hours labor OF boy,
nan or team against each, and to
lgure II up at the certain price at the
nd Of the season, Such an accounts