The Forrest City times., 1902-08-29
FARMER AND PLANTER.
SOME FARMERS ERRORS.
Why Will Farmers Continue, Year After Year, to Work Against
 Their own Interests.

There are many strange things be- iDg done by our farmers. Why will 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 result of habit than as result of reason.
 It is one of the plainest things that gan be, for anyone who thinhs, that 1t costs more 10 work a stone or stump In farm for one year than it would to remove il from the field entirely. Yet we see men work stones and stumps for 20 years. And yet we nave never known a man to grow .rop of stones or stumTs which pad tor all of this extra work. We ought to have learned the lesson at once that it would pay to move stones and ;tumps. The boy who carried rock n one end of his sack was guilty of 10 more foolish thing than the farm er who for years worked stones and stumps
 Any man knows that good fruit tree does not take up any more room or cost any more to look after than sorry tree does But you go 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 r more wholesome than good fruit. Why does not every man have it 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 tke sale of fruit. But there are all over he 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 frt e. ly to us about what he thought was a great piece of folly in me, i. e.: plant .ng 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 - at everyone could enjoy all they wished.
 We should long since have learned to plant good trees. II we did not get the good of them, somebody would and we might enjoy someone else's planting,
 It does not pay to be narrow in any. thing. He that deyiseth liberal things shall be made fat"
 Long time ago most of us found cut that eultivating large farms of poor land did not pay. We saw this error, but we failed to learn the counter truth that small farms we'll worked brought plenty, profit and happiness. Why do we not learn that 1t is to our interest to quit cultiyating the large farms and give our time and at- l Ncullbi 10 slDdll 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 q great mis- take even if We can pay cash for the supplies. It is cheaper to raise them than to buy them for cash Ii this be true, how is it with those who buv them on time at greatly increased ! prices? We ought to have learned long since that it is foll4 to buy any thing that your farm can grow. II 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 1 learned that we can grow hay cheap CT than the people we buy it from. Grass grows as cheaply in the south as in the west. We have actually l spent millions of dollars hiring labor | to kill grass that we might grow l ~A l7 itoN WI LII as Ulutn as the hay We destroyed. We should long ago have learned the value of the hay we have been burning up and leay- | 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. It 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 ey- ! cry side, they are SO D1air .ha. -