Macon beacon. [volume] (Macon, Miss.) 1859-1995, 1896-10-03
FARMER AND PLANTER.
GOOD FARMING.
That Is the Only Kind that Wal Yield
Pref: able Returns.

Pref; able Returns.
II is probably rue in most kinds q
business that there is never any grea'
improvement except on compulsion
So long as careless and wasteful meth
dds Will give IA fair profit they arr
likely to be continued. But with tn,
increase % competition or the increase
of the difficulties of production, i'm
proved methods become a necessity,
This has mos. certainly been the fac
with regard to farming, While tn,
land vas fertile, and would produc,
good or ven fair crops with
out manuring, there was little
incentive TO change, The ob
iect then was to cultivate tn,
largest area of land, skim it of it,
available fertility, and to do this witt
as little labor as possible. To draw
ont and spread MANURE required labor
that to the average farmer seemed
better employed in cultivating more
acres
Hence it has been the experience OF
all settlers on fertile soil that has
never before been cultivated that the
value of manure has been generally
d~isregarded, until increasing difficulty
of securing good crops compelled
farmers to begin saving, buying and
using the manures heretofore thought
Of little value. In the fertile val.
ley of the Mohawk in New York II
is said that the earliest settlers
moved their barns when the accumu-
lations of manure around them were
likely to rot the timbers on which
they rested. Yet in those same local.
ties the successors Of those farmers
hunt everywhere for the soil fertility
that in the early days was so little re-
garded.
But so soon as %manuring becomes
necessary the farmer begins to find
that he has too much land. The farm
er on 200 acres can not ordinarily make
manure enough to give it a top dressing
o~ftener than once in six or seven years,
On a. 80 or s0-acre farm it is easy to
make manure to give u dressing
every four or five years, That with
clover seeding as often as any grain
crop is grown means a yearly increase
in fertility, But ii the manuring oc-
ours only once in six or seven years the
farm will be all the time growing
poorer, and what the farmer seems to
make rs yearly profits will be offset
and more ty the gradual wasting
away Of his capital.
Herein is the necessity of thorough
farming in every respect in order to
make It a success. No source of profit
must be omitted. The old and waste
full practice OF blowing under clover as
green manure was possibly a neces-
sity for the large farmer of olden
times, who could not afford
the capital to purchase stock that
would make a profitable use of this
clover by feeding it. The farmer who
would be successful must keep the best
stock. He will be all the more sue
cessful if lie has more of his capital
invested in stock than in land. 1t is
comparatively easy to double the value
of his stock, A very few years will do
it. Even if it is rapidly increasing in
fertility, it takes a long term Of years
to double the value of land.
The deficiency of stable manure may
be partly supplemented 10y using com
merclal fertilizers. But these must al
ways be used as supplements and not
as substitutes. The farmer who grows
grain by the use of mineral ma
nures, and who does not keep
stock to use up and turn into manure
the coarse fodder and coarse grain pro-
duced on his farm, will sooner or later
run himself aground. On the other
hand, for the farmer who keeps a good
deal Of stock, and who feeds all the
coarse grain and fodder he grows, the
purchase Of mineral fertilizers is the
wisest policy possible. They enable
him to supplement the deficiencies of
the manure that he makes.
This is the only kind Of farming that
pays. 1t is the only really good farm
ing. 1t necessitates with many farm
ers the selling off of land that they
are unable to make productive,
and putting the capital thus
saved into more labor, more stock
and more fertilizers. so as TO get
larger returns from the fewer acres to
which they will devote their attention.
This will not mean harder work. but
rather easier and pleasanter work, be.
cause in the future most of the really
hard manual labor will be done by
horse, steam or electric power, while
the farmer himself will be mainly oc.
cupied with planning to produce
larger results. When this time IN
farming will cease to be looked upop
as a hard, poorly-paid and laborious
occupation, but it will be recognized
actually, as it has always been ideally.
as the most healthful and pleasant EN-.
ployment in which a man can occupv
himself. 1t is, at least, an emplov.
ment in which man will be closer 10
nature than in any other. American
C%ultivator.