The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-05-28
Living Issues.
ACTUAL RURAL INDEPENDENCE.

Worked Perhaps the Greatest Revolution
Since the Days of Abraham.
written by Walter +. Andrews, for In" May
Worlds Work. Published in The Progress
i've Farmer by special permiSsion.l
To show the modern organization
of agriculture under the best conIi-
tions in a well-developed community
in one of the central States, / take
the actual instance of Mr.. Russell,
a farmer who owns eighty acres
of land and makes a specially OF
dairying and fruit raising. OF course
he hires a man and his wife by the
year gives them a neat, separate
tenant house, and pays them $500 a
year in cash for their services. An
electric a line runs past the farm
to a good market town, about four
miles away. A creamery and car
ming factory is reached by this same
trolley route.
At five o'clock in the morning,
whir-r, whir-r goes an automatic
electric alarm in the tenant house.
The hired man gets up and hurries
to the big barn. He feeds and
grooms the COWS and cleans out the
stalls. Then the proprietor arrives
in time to help at the milking. Both
men wash their hands and put on
clean white duck suits used only
whop @hou ri1E
The milk goes t. a neat milk-rOOm
adjoining the barn and is fed into d
centrifugal cream separator operated
by electric power derived from the
trolley line. A touch on a lever and
the little motor huns merrily. Al
most before you knowit the separator
has whirled all of the cream out of
the fresh milk into the shipping
cans while the skim milk-still
warm and appetizing-is ready for
feeding to calves and pigs.
The filled cream cans are hooked
to a wire carrier, which spins them,
by force of gravity, direct to the
trolley platform on the road. In a
few minutes a trolley a GENES
along, with a freight car attached,
stops at the platform, takes the cans
on board, and then whirls away With
them to the creamery. The freight
charges are but a few cents (Which
are collected weekly and the empty
cans are returned later in the day
free of charge. Mr. Russell is cred
tied by the creamery with so much
cream and on settlement day he re
ceives a check in payment.
Thus the milking is done and the
cream is on its way to market before
Mrs. Russell is out of bed. She does
not have to bother with setting
the milk in pans, or with ripen.ng or
churning the cream. She is no longer
a slave to milk pans and churns
and the old unsatisfactory Way o.
Grading out" the butter at d local
grocery store is done away with en-
tirely. Butter OF cream now means
cash.
The COWS, instead of picking q
poor living from uncertain pastures,
are stabbed in clean stalls, cool in
summer, warm in winter, and al
ways we'll ventilated. Instead OF
''guess-work feeding, they are given
a scientific ration exactly adapted To-
their needs.
A windmill, a tubular we'll, aid a
tank supplies pure water for barn,
house, lawn and milk-rOom. The
windmill has an automatic governor
which stops or starts pumping a.
cording to the needs of the big SIT
age tank. There is fresh water he
fore each cow constantly, regulated
by an automatic watering device.
The stable floor is of cement, ana =
flushed clean with the hose twIce a
day. The stable walls glisten with
whitewash, and everything IL u
neat and clean as it once was dirty
and untidy. Dairying is now 1t
science.
The COWS are fed various grains
and large quantities of ensilage-tbe
latter from u big round silo holding
200 or more tons of s~ucculent, pre-
served CORE fodder. Corn is planted
and fortified with the aid of specit Il
machinery, worked with u riding
c~Ultjvator, and cut by horsepower
Not a single clip from an oI1-fash
Toned hoe is required, and the opera,
tor rides comfortably at his work
with a sun awning rugged up ovel
his head. One man and team car
NOW do the wnrL Of rnnnr man nnE