The Colfax chronicle. [volume] (Colfax, Grant Parish, La.) 1877-1981, 1896-10-31
FARMER AND PLANTER.
GOOD FARMING.
That Is the Only Kind that WIN Yield
Profitable Returns.


1t i. probably true in most kinds of
business that there is never any great
improvement except on compulsion.
So long as careless and wasteful meth
DDS viii give fair profit they are
likely to be continued. But with the
increase of competition or the increase
of the difficulties of production, i'm
proved methods become q necessity.
This has most certainly been the fact
with regard to farming. While the
land was fertile, and would produce
good or even fair crops with
out manuring, there was little /
Incentive to change. The OBJ i
ject then was to cultivate the |
largest area of land, skim it of its |
available fertility, and to do this with |
as little labor as possible. To draw
out 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
disregarded, 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 1t
Is said that the earliest settlers
moved their barns when the accumu-
lations of manure around them were
likely to rot the timLers on which
they rested. Yet in those same locali-
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
err on 200 acres can not ordinarily make
mature enough to give it top dressing
oftencr than once il six or seven years.
On 80 or s0-acre farm it is easy to
make manure to give a dressing
every four or five years. That with
clover seeding as often as any grain
crop is grown means n yearly increase
in fertility. But if 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 MS yearly profits will be offset
and more by the gradual wasting
away of his capital.
Herein Is the necessity of thorough
farming in every respect in order to
make it success. No source of prof
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 he 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 dc
1t. Even if it is rapidly increasing in
fertility, it takes long term of years
to double the value of land.
The deficiency of stable manure may
be partly supplemented by using com
mercial fertilizers. But these must al
ways be used as supplements and moi
Substitutes. The farmer who grow:
grain by the use of mineral ma
nures, and who does not keel
stock to use mp and turn into manure
the coarse fodder and coarse grain pro
duced on his farm, will sooner or latel
run himself aground. On the othet
hand, for the farmer who keeps a goot
deal of stock, and who feeds all th'
coarse grain and fodder he grows, thu
purchase of mineral fertilizers is tn
wisest policy possible. They enabl
him to supplement the deficiencies o
the manure that he makes.
This is the only kind of farming tina
pays. 1t is the only really good farm
ing. 1t necessitates with many farm
ers the selling off of land that the,
are unable to make productive
and putting the capital thu
saved into more labor, more stoc
and mere fertilizers, SO as to &c
larger returns from the fewer acres t
which they will devote their attention
This will not mean harder work, bu
rather easier and pleasanter work, bs
cause in the future most of the reall
hard manual labor will be done b
horse, steam or electric power, Will
the farmer himself will be mainly OF
cupied with planning to produc
larger results, When this time come
farming will cease to be looked upo
as hard, poorly-paid and laborior
occupation. but it will be recognize
actually, as it has always been IDEAL,
as the most healtbful and pleasant Ell
ployment in which a man can occur
himself. 1t is, at least, an emplo.
ment in which man will be closer
nature than in any other.-America
Cultivator.
The Farmers Boy.