Norwich bulletin., 1909-08-21

month earlier, last season.
 had good crop of asparagus, and the bed. which is now grown up after cessation of cutting, is a picture of thriftiness-tne finest looking aspara- gus bed I ever happened to see. Sum mer squash are yielding big and fine; cucumbers, though starting late, are now; doing well; early beets and car rots are the best I ever had. Those five things -- asparagus, summer squash, cucumbers, beets and carrots are the only ones in my truck patch Gin which about a hundred and thirty varieties of seed are growing) which come up to the normal Nor are my neighbors any better off Late as were my peas and corn and tomatoes, I know of no one in five miles who had them as early. Poor as are my potatoes, have heard of no one Ind ing anything better in his fields.
 Now it hasn't been bad seed nor poor land, nor improper cultivation nor lack of fertilizer which has caused. all this with me. I can't speak for my neighbors. l have used the best seed that money can buy; I have put it in rich land, better land than the aver age, good deal; l have fertilized 1t heavily with stable manure and with the very highest grade of complete fertilizer. some of which has cost me $45 a ton; 1 have given the land the best fitting I know how and have cul- tivated it as well as blows and har- rows and cultivators and horse hoes and hand hoes and wheel hoes and f1n gers and thumbs can do it. I have used all the experience l have gained in six teen years trucking, and all the wis dom I have gathered from wide read ing of agricultural authorities, and all the suggestions from family traditions concerning my farm for century and a quarter. So far as I am concerned have done all that I know how to do all that has, in ordinary years brought comparative success. And the result is more or less complete failure in most directions.
 Now don't think that l am whmper- ing or seolding or even worrying. I'm not. The trouble isn't in me or my land or my seeds or my work-its in the season. Old Stepmother Nature that's all. She's doing what she pleases, when she pleases, as she pleases: and what she doesn't please to do isn't being done. From my point of view she's decidedly "off her troll ley" But I can't put her right any more than l can stop a thunder storm with palmleaf fan or sweep back an Atlantic tide with a whisk broom I'm at her mercy, just as much as a butter fly is at the mercy of the cyclone in which it has been caught. There's not only no use crying over split milk; there's no excuse for the whimperinlg baby that does 1t. Likewise, there's no use fighting the inevitable or trying to stop the irresistible.
 We can't govern the seasonal condi- tions under which we live and work We can't even foresee them. That's where we who try to dig greenbacks out of farm dirt are. all of us. "up against it." No matter how wise we may be, or how prudent, or how thrifty or how industrious, all our wisdom and thrift and industry are yearly at the mercy of the seasons. Take my corn and potatoes. for instance Hindsight is proverbially better than foresight; yet, as I look back now at my spring and early summer work on those crops, do not see single thing I could have done more than I did. Yet the season has vetoed the crop.
 Perhaps it's a good thing for US that we occasionally bring up against hard luck this way. I know a few farmers who have had unusually good luck. who are so self conceited and dogmatic that there's no living with 'em Per haps we'd all get that way if we weren't sharply taught now and then how ignorant and helpless we really are. Perhaps" I say. I'm not run ming this universe, nor am I in the secrets of the powers who do. What their councils are or what their ulti- mate intentions are, or what that dim far-off event may be towards which we are told the whole creation moves I do not know. Nor do you know. Nor does any man or any body of men know.
 We can all of US do the best we are able-the best we know how. Having done that we can, and should. accept results modestly if they are favorable bravely and smilingly if unfavorable Occasional great success gives no war rant for bumptiousness and dcgmatism occasional failure affords no excuse for whining. If we do our level best to make things come right, and they do come right, it doesn't mean that we've outwitted Providence. If we do our level best to make them come right and they come all wrong, it doesn't mean that Providence is maliciously ''swatting'' us with a big club Just what it does mean none of us know But one thing we do know-a knowl- edge rooted in the seldom sounded depths of our souls-and that is that however fate may overrule our pur- poses and wreck our plans. it cannot destroy our true selves or force us to unmanly surrender. That's one of the differences between man and mol lusc!
 THE FARMER.