The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1906-03-17
THn OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES PARMnR.


| V6H O1D-QA661ON9D = Anvil 1Aes
|
The Independent.
| We heard middle-aged man. not long since,
describing himself as "just one of the old-fasn-
toned farmers" He had come by trolley to the
club. and he gets his mail by rural free mail de.
| livery He keeps Jersey cows; eats oatmeal
| uses disk harrow and a steel plow: sleeps on
spring mattress and an iron bedstead braRs
about his success with alfalfa; and his wife be-
| longs to a woman's club He has a piano and
revolving hay rake; fills slo every autumn;
| has a telephone In his house and gold watch IN
his pocket. His boy plays football and his daugh-
| ter plays rag-tlme music he goes to the Epis-
copal church; and he votes for Philippine
tarif-or would. If he got chance.
We suspect that what he meant by old-fash-
toned farmer was that he was conscious of not
being quite up to date with the Department Of
Agriculture bulletins-for the modern farmer
must be scholar as well as a doer. Hehas never
taken term at Cornell, and he is little of on
some of the phraseology that is used by the pro-
fessors There is no good sense In his being
ashamed of this. for, On the whole, he has kept
fairly good pace with the age. farmer has
nowadays little to be ashamed of, If he does not
waste what nature provides for him, and does
not try to perform the part of brakeman on
the wheels of progress.
But this old-fashioned farmer of ours has not
eaten dish of old fashioned samp in forty years;
he imports his flour from Minneapolis, made by
the most modern patent processes. He could
not get an old-fashioned buffalo robe for the
value of the best acre Of his orchard land. There
is not single old-fashioned spinning wheel or
reel in his house; and his boy does not know
how to swing an old-fashioned scythe nor his
girl to knit stocking. His folk say hearth, and
Ia mod Nhor nd a.
instead of sparrow grass" He grows Concord
grapes instead of Sweet-water, and Burbank
plums instead of damsons and horse plums. He
reads daily morning paper, instead of the old
fashioned weekly Observer or Recorder. He sends
his BOYS to q union school, and pays as much
taxes in year as his father paid in all his life.
It Is very probable that he could not tell you
who Old Hickory was and he has onlya faint
notion of the leading politicians and statesmen
of the Civil War.
But he talks Of beans as legumes, and buys
bacteria with which to inoculatc his soil. He
reads bulletins more than he reads his Bible.
and has more faith in spraying than in praying
for good apple crop. He takes his milk 20
condensary, and he eats beef put up in Cni-
cago packing house. He prefers Florida oranges
to those from California, and is little particu-
lar about the bananas that he eats with his bowl
of milk. Shades of Thomas Jefferson and Ben
Franklin and George Washington Still this
man calls himself an ''old-fashioned farmer"
Instead of "lilac BUSH" q cinnamon rose"
and ''piny." his wife has a big flower garden.
and they talk about their lawns. He has Aus
TRAN pines, and Kentucky coffee trees. ana
tulip trees from the West, and German lindens.
growing along with his basswoods and his elms
and his naples. His wife talks huently of her
beds of Dianthus laciniatus and Gladiolus gan
dayensis. His mother just raised grass-pinks
and morning glories and damask roses. You
may look all around his place for old fashioned
things and look mostly In vain. There is no
old-fashoned pork barrel in his cellar, and when
they kill lambs or calves the neighbors do not
"swap quarters" The only old-fashioned crock
cry about the house is blue pitcher and few
blue plates, set up as bric-a- brac; while they
dine of fine stone china. Oatmeal mas come
In, with Force and Life and Grape Nuts and
Wheat Flakes, to crowd out the old-fashioned
Indian meal, and 1t is sorry breakfast that does
not have some new patented breakfast cereal.
The children do not dare to eat with their knives.
nor can they wipe their fingers on their aprons.
It has been no small matter to readjust farm
ing to modern science, since science means no
special thing or thought, but just continual
progress. 1t is not quite possible to keep up
with the pace of our Agricultural Department
agricultural colleges, agricultural experiment
stations and our agricultural clubs The Old
fashioned farmer likes to excuse himself for
being put to it in his paces He is at least three
quarters new-fashioned We have very few
really back looking land tilers left on our FARMS
The change has not gone on as fast as it might
have done, but the speed is greatly accelerated.
The farmer and farming have gone through
most remarkable revolution within the last
seventy five years they are going through
greater in the eepenty-five that are to come.
Land tillage is naturally becoming more popu-
lar and town life Is getting to be less attractive.
The country has about all the advantages OF the
| city. and it has what even the new city canno1c
get. freedom from contact. The od-fashioned
farmer, who survives into new conditions, must
do it by showing wonderful power or readjust-
ment (what the old-fashioned farmer called
horse sense-that is. common sense in the held
sense common to folk and beasts, but above
all things he should not boast of being old fash
toned, nor new-fashioned, but simply man
willing to be fashioned by exigencies and chang
ing conditions. When electricity gets full
hold of the times the farmer will not fleht the
| automobile but will own one or two himself.
| He will plow with an automobile, and he will go
| to market with vehicle of that sort. The COM
| ing automobile will be no more like the LUMBER
ing monster that scares our old-fashioned horses
| than Morgan is like cart horse. The charm
of it is not that the farmer will beat the auto,
| but that he will take possession of twill use
1t, and it will be. as everything else has become,
| q servant of agriculture. Old-fashioned farmer,
try to comprehend the situationl Feel your
| oats and straighten your spine! 1t is long
| road from the sickle to the reaper. and 1t will
be longer one from the wheelbarrow to the
automobile, but you will surely make it.