The Colfax chronicle., 1902-11-22
FARMER ANDPLANTER
SOME FARMERS' ERRORS.
why VIII Farmers Contlnue, Yeas
After Year, to work .Against
Their own Interests.


There are many strange things be-
ing done by our farmers, Why will a
RAN work against his own interest?
1t does not seem reasonable to say
that any man will do that. But a lit
tie close study of men and their
practices will show us that very
many men work against their own in
terest. They work more as a result
of habit than as result of reason.
1t is one of the plainest things that
can be, for anyone who thinAs, that it
costs more to work a stone or stump
in farm for one year than it would
to remove it from the field entirely.
Yet we see men work stones and
stumps for 20 years. And yet we
have never known a man to grow
crop of stones or stumrs which paid
for all of this extra work. We ought
to have learned the lesson at once
that it would pay to move stones and
stumps. The boy who carried rock
in one end of his sack was guilty OF
no more foolish thing than the farm
er who for years worked stones and
stumps
Any man knows that q good
fruit tree does not take up any more
room or cost any more to look after
than a sorry tree does But you 60
all over this country and find trees
growing which bear very sorry fruit,
many of them fruit that is utterly
worthless.
There is nothing more enjoyable T
more wholesome than good fruit.
Why does not every man have il and
plenty of it? He ought to have
learned long ago that it was the
cheapest food and medicine he can
get.
Thousands and thousands of dol
lars will be brought into the south
this year and every year from the
sale of fruit. But there are all over
the country farmers and landowners
who have none to eat or to sell.
They have never broken the early
formed habit of carelessness.
We once had a friend to talk free
ly to us about what he thought was
great piece of folly in me, i. e.: plant
ing a watermelon patch by the public
road. His strongest point was that
they would be stolen. My reply was
that if all of us would grow enough
watermelons, there would be no temp
tation to steal them.
So in this loved southland, we
might soon have such an abundant
supply of choice fruit lat everyone
could enjoy all they wished.
We should long since have learned
to plant good trees. III we did not
get the good of them, somebody
would and we might enjoy someone
else's planting.
1t does not pay to be narrow in any
thing. He that deviseth liberal
things shall be made fat"
Long time ago most of us found cut
that cultivafing large farms of poor
land did not pay. We saw this error,
but we failed to learn the counter
truth that small farms well worked
brought plenty, profit and happiness.
Why do we not learn that it is to
our interest to quit cultivating the
large farms and give our time and at
tention to small farms?
The feed and labor bills are the
items that keep the landowner poor.
The mules and hands needed to run
large farms cost too much money.
Another item in our bill of errors is
the purchasing of supplies with which
to run our farms. This is great mis-
take even if we can pay cash for the
supplies. 1t is cheaper to raise them
than to buy them for cash. If this be
true, how is it with those who buy
them on time at greatly increased
prices? We ought to have learned
long since that it is folly to buy any
thing that your farm can grow. 1t is
greater folly to buy it at time prices.
We ought to have learned to raise
all of our home supplies.
One very patent error we practice
| is buying hay. We ought to have
learned that we can grow hay cheap
er than the people We buy it from.
Grass grows as cheaply in the south
as in the west. We have actually
spent millions of dollars hiring labor
to kill grass that we might grow
crops not worth as much as the hay
we destroyed. We should long ago
have learned the value of the hay
we have been burning up and leav-
ing to rot
Pulling fouder is another of these
remarkable errors. Fodder is only .
part Of the cornstalk that we have
been saving for hay. 1t is the most
expensive part. We should have
learned that the entire stalk can -e
made into hay at about the same cost
as saving the fodder, thus making
more than four times the hay for the
same cost. But many of us are slow
to learn this.
We might go on indefinitely in this
line. Our errors are so numerous
that they stare us in the face on ev-
cry side, they are> so plain that any
one can see them. Why then do we not
learn the plain lessons< constantly be-
fore u.s.?
For two reasons, we think. One s
our intellectual laziness. Me are too
lazy to try and see which IS the bet
ter way to do.
The second reason is the power of
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