Norwich bulletin., 1909-07-31
A FARMERS TALK 10 FARMERS
Diversity Specialize Is the Question Many Farmers Worry Over-SchoIsrs and Manufacturers Specialize with Profithut Can the Farmer?-s he Uncertainty of Crops-The Crops Suited to the Farm Are the Reli- able Crops.

1 recall Yet the farmer who should confine himself solely to corn growing, as an Illustration must do something quite comparable with that. When his corn is planted and cultivated he
 must wait idly for it to grow and rip- en. When 1t is harvested his work is done. lie certainly cannot afford to hire laborers by the year just to get two months work out of them on a corn crop. Why. his whole crop
 wouldn't possibly pay their wages. And, just as certainly, he can't hire them at all for the short and varying service | his crop calls for There are none to be had oa such terms and conditions. Furthermore, the average farmer can't raise corn every year-good, pay | ing corn, that is. To parody Mir. Lin- coln's famous phrase, any farmer can raise corn most years, and few farmers can raise corn any year, but all farmers cannot raise good corn every year. One year the cutworms l may ruin half your field; another year | it may be the army worms; still an other the crows may pull enough to spoil the profit; another year late spring frost may nip" the tender shoots, or an early fall freeze may kill the fields while ears are still 'in tue milk" Or the season may be one Of | ILOSc buOIlr Wtlt COAQ hdAA oOAhAAAA - of when the heat-loving corn grows half heartedly and yellows prematurely and brings forth nothing but ''nubbins" and 1 innutritious fodder"
 What is true Of any one crop is true of all. Whether you plant corn or po- tatoes or wheat or oats or green peas; whether you raise apples or grapes or berries; whether you devote yourself to dairying or to early lambs or to hogs; whether you go in for bees or for broilers-in every case you will be confronted by the risk of barren years when your one hope ~ill fail you and your income will sink to zero. And every year you will be met by the practical impossibility of securing ade- quate labor to care for your speciality at the exact times when it must be cared for at the rate of sixty-five min utes to the hour and sixteen hours to the day.
 No, it simply will--not-do for us farmers to specialize to this extent. We have but about half a year to work in at the best Old Winter shuts his icy jaws on six months out of the twelve. We must keep busy all the time he leaves us-actively and productively busy. If we don't those who do will have to support us. And yet 1t is per- fectly true that no one farmer can proftably know and handle all sorts of crops Nor will any one farm produce, profitably, all sorts of crops. As a rule a. good corn or wheat farm isn't worth very much for potatoes. There are limitations of soil and season as we'll ss of farming knowledge and ca- pacity. Maine can grow phenomenal potato crops, but rice won't live there. Texas may not be able to raise all the potatoes 1t eats, but 1t can grow rice by the shipload Connecticut and Rhode Island are not wheat states. but they raise the only turkeys thought fit for a White House Thanksgiving, and buy their wheat from Dakota.
 What then? "We can't live if we
 specialize, and we can't succeed If we
 diversity. If that's your argument" I
 hear you say. whats left but to give
 up and ask the way to the poorhouse T'
 We'll think the common sense mid
 dle road is still left wide open-the
 road which neither runs between the
 narrow stone walls of the one-track
 specialization, nor rambles aimlessly
 over the spreading prairie of unfenced
 diversiication.
 We can learn what crops will, ordi-
 narily, do well on our own farms, in our own CllmdLe, uIueT lOCdl COnulLlOnS. We can pick out of these an orderly
 series the care of which shall keep us
 busy from April to November, and
 give us a fairly regular income. We can study those half dozen or dozen crops and get, at least, a primary
 working knowledge of how best to
 handle them on our particular farms. We shall probably not do as well with any one of them as some specialist
 may do on some special year with that one. Buff that one fails utterly, the specialist will be fin the soup" but without any soup in him, while we shall Lave the others to fall back on not 3ll of winch are likely to tumble down at the same time.
 The specializing farmer is a gambler who takes a gamblers chances and makes big winnings-when he wins The diversifying farmer puts out an chors to windward against all the storms that may blow, from whatever quarter of the compass they may come. He may never strike it rich' as the specialist sometimes will, but, at least. he will be safe. with something always in the locker for today and a reason able expectation of fresh supplies for tomorrow.
 THE FARMER.