Norwich bulletin., 1909-08-21

N
 You may have observed that I've had good deal to say about the irn- portance of seasonal conditions. Fer haps you think I may have "harpeds- too much on that string. Nevertheless I'm going to sound the note agaln. Just at present it is the one tune that rings loudest in my own ears
 While the farmers of the west are working from dawn till dark to gather in and care for the biggest crops or wheat and oats. ever raised, ana are reporting prospects for bumper
 crop of corn this particular corner or agricultural America in which i've, move and have my being seems 10 have been overlooked in the distribu- 1ion of the blessings. We are not starving thank you, and do not ex- pect to- That is one of the great re- wards of being a farmer. You may he d bad business man; you may lose money on three quarters of your crops; VOL may not make money on any one of them, but there's always something on which you can worry through the winter.
 A recent article in a New York pa- per on the milk situation tells good deal of truth in it's closing paragraph. After showing how dairy farmers with LII 16SS llldu d uuuuICQ IIlACo VI ANCN York city have been compelled, this summer, to sell at less than two cents a quart the milk which, five hours later was sold to consumers at from seven to twelve cen-s quart, and how this price to the dairyman does not return him his outgo for grain and feed, to say nothing of labor and taxes and interest and insurance and de- preciation--after showing this by plain Arabic figures, the article concludes:
 If the farmer were a business man he would have stopped this a long time ago. The reason he does not stop it is because he is not business , farm, he is able to work for nothing without starving to death."
 We are not in danger of famine, in this mountains walled interva1e of which know most. We don't have to sell our milk at less than it costs: we can feed the skim milk to the pigs and get more food; we can eat the small potatoes. if they are not big enough to sell and there are going to be. some corn nubbins here and there and little rye in the old side hill lot, from which we can get rye md injun" bread. But we, in this vicinity aren't going to buy any auto mobiles, or do much re-painting of our old houses out of our profits this present summer.
 The season has been the most re- narkabIe and inexplicable of any in my remembrance. I've known springs as wet and cold as we have had this time; I've known drouths much longer and hotter than that which followed our backward May and June; I've known one year which gave Us a frost
 l. r,+F11 in both July and August, while this time we haven't had a bad one since middle May; but I've never known a season when the wet and cold seemed to discourage crops so much, and the drnuth seemed to hurt them so badly.
 All the wisdom of our ancestors has been made foolish by the weather. ing
 "A cold, wet May
 Means a barn full of hay"
 This year we had as cold and as wet a May as anybody ever had-and the majority of us nave a much lighter crop of hay than the average. On the other hand, corn has been supposed to revel in hot, dry weather; yet our cOrn-f1elds made no response to the intense heat of July-other than to wither and droop sadly in the sunny fields and to yellow and die in the shady areas. Potatoes on low, wet land have run to vines, with small and "scabby'' tubers; on the drier fields they are generally yielding but small potatoes and mighty few in a hill
 From garden patch, one-haIf of which yielded me, last year, about forty bushels of salabIe potatoes. I have this year dug less than twenty five bushels. There are six rows more to. dig, which, according to what the other rows have done, will yield about a bushel to the row. That is. there will be thirty-one bushels from patch, just half of which, last year, yielded forty bushels. Up to the 14th of August. I hadn't found a single de- cent ear of sweet corn in my four corn-lots, planted with eight varieties of seed. Last year, I was selling bunkum good ears by the hundred, the last week in July. Green peas were exactly two weeks later in 1909 than in 1908, and the total yield was no better than the very poor yield of last summer. Tomatoes, of which I raise quite a lot, and in the early production of which I take some pride. came on twenty days late, are rotting badly on the vines, and producing only a sparse crop Onions, after seeming to stand the queer season better than any other crops are now blighting or rusting at the tops in most depress- ing way. Early cabbage and caul- Mower were both complete failures. I haven't head of cabbage, yet, and my two hundred and fifty early cauli- Mower plants haven't yielded me, thus far, a dozen heads fit to sell. Nor are