The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1901-01-01
No46
A THINKING FARMERS sUeeEsT1oEs


mend it to Progressive Farmer read
ers. There's one fact especially to
which he calls attention that ought
to be carefully considered-that cit
is not the maturing of the grain but
Of the whole plant that exhausts the
soil" Mr.. Hillyer says:
In these days of close competition,
low prices and small profits, the
farmer must keep abreast with the
times, become a skilled laborer, put
brains into his work, and use everv
means possible to cheaper the cost
OF production, thus giving him fair
profit on his labor and capital There
are matters demanding our most
earnest consideration. All useful
knowledge comes to us by our own
experience, by observation, or read
ing of books and papers, for thereby
we can obtain the life time expert
ence Of practical men, adopt them as
our own, put them in practice and
improve upon them. The farmer is
too prone to believe he knows it all
and thus despise what he is pleased
to term "bOok farming"
I met very clever farmer not
long since and he told me he had
been raised on the farm, and could
make as good corn and cotton as
any one. I asked him how much
corn and cotton he raised per acre
the past season. He told me 80
bushels of corn and half bale of
cotton per acre. This was very good,
but pointed him to some of his
neighbOrs, upon no better land, who
had made one bale of cotton per acre
and so bushels of corn; evidently
they were better farmers than he
was. Again asked him how many
ears OF his corn it took to shell a
bushel. He said about 12O on an
average. Of my corn that year 80
ears shelled bushel, butI have seen
corn of which 80 ears would shell
bushel.
It is not the maturing of the grain
that exhausts the soil, but the whole
plant, and it is evident that the same
soil and cultivation would grow the
small ears or the large ones, while
the large ears would more than
double the crop. So in cotton man
who grows one bale per acre makes
nearly double the profit of the man
who grows half a bale moreover,
the man can gather in day twice as
much of large corn Or cotton as he
can of small stuff.
Now it has been a rule of my life
that whom I found a. man in my line
of business more successful than I
was, [ would sit at his feet and learn
of him. A man who knows it all
will not be an apt pupil.
Again, two farmers start in life on
about equal conditions. One stays
poor, the other gradually acquires
wealth. Why so? Not by doing
more work, but better work, using
more sagacity in his work, better
business methods, and practicing a
stricter economy. Now, there is an
economy that works loss, such as
poor, weak teams, insufficient feed,
poor farm implements, and worst of
all, poor farm seeds.
A man with a good, strong, we'll
| fed team and cultivators and other
improved farm tools can cultivate
! twice as much land as his neighbor
with pair of small, half-fed ponies
and old-fashioned plows. Hundreds
of thousands of dollars worth of
farm implements go to waste every
year for want of shelters that little
ingenuity and labor could make out
of corn cObs, hay or sorghum.
Thousands of hogs are butchered
every year whose weight are $50 to
200 pounds that with the same feed
and care could have produced $50 to
400 pounds Of meat. Mich COWS are
kept and fed that never pay for their
feed. Twenty dollar scrub colts are
raised when the same expense would
have grown $1OO horses. And thus
we see throughout our farm life in
Vulnerable possibilities lost sight of
or overlooked, and by-products left
to go to waste.
There is no reason why farmer
should work fourteen to sixteen
hours day while the artisan or me-
chanic works only eight or nine.
Improved farm methods, with ten