Norwich bulletin., 1910-12-03
WHAT IS IT MAKES A MAN A FARMER?

A "A
 wins by grating, but that's only change from one kind of apple to an- other, You can't make your apple tree bear chestnuts or cucumbers, graft you ne'er so cunninSly.
 fancy it's something so with us farmers. Some of us were started for hen farmers and some for potato farn- CTS and some for other branches of the great work. Some were by nature meant for thousand acre farmers and some for forty acre farmers-and some for about four acre farmers. Judging by what I have seen, I am inclined to believe that the one who was cut out for four acre man would be every whit as bad a misfit on a thousand acre farm as the owner of the latter would be on the four acre mans little lot. Right there, 1 suspect, is one of the causes for the failure of so many farmers to git thar with both feet" Somehow the square peg has got into the round hole and it doesn't fill the hole and it won't stay in, and there's trouble all day and on both sides of the road. Thereupon Mir. Thousand Acres gets disgusted and swears that there's nothing doing. and Mr. Hen Man throws up his hands and admits defeat, and MT. Truck Patch chucks his maggoty onions and his worm eat en cabbages and his won't head cauli- flowers into the manure heap and hires out to work on the railroad, tamping ballast
 All of this is really quite a pity if it be true that it is often or ever caus- ed by his making a mistake in the kind of farming he takes up Among actually good farmers-We'u leave out of account the ne'er do wells who wouldn't succeed at anything actually good farmers I suspect that more make the mistake of too many acres than of too few There's really a good deal to know about crops and soils and seeds and manures and sea- sons and cultivation. While it is un- doubtedly true that some men will spread out over a bigger area than others, l think the most of us won't stand very much thinning down, this way. Some butter will spread more slices of bread than other butter; but you can get most any kind so thin that it's little better than no butter. Some farmers think they can cover more than the real facts warrant. They have more conceit than judgment. And conceit never raised cabbages.
 Don't bite off nore'n ye kin chaw," is an old saying in the country. But that's exactly what he does when the forty acre farmer takes five hundred acre farm. He could have made some thing useful and profita ble out of the smaller area; he makes a failure from the larger. Because a farmer fails is not absolute proof that he isn't capable farmer. It may mean simply that he's bitten off more than he can chew; that he's undertaken to spread himself out too thin Before he con- victs himself of incapacity and admits defeat, he might do well to sit down and take account of himself and of his acres Did you never hear a farmer called Hand poOr?" There are some of us who are finding difficulty in getting a living of three hundred acres, who might get a profit off ten. if we would only sell the other 290 and ease our shoulders from their burden.
 It isn't always how much we farm that tells the story, but how well we farm. Whats the old rhyme about "a little farm well titled" There's more in it than mere jingle; it con- tains a nugget of wisdom worth gath ering There isn't the slightest doubt in my mind hat J. J. Hill is perfectly right when he says that our farms could be made to produce more than double what they do. Now hold on; don't begin to sheer and snort; I mean only what I say. They could be made to produce twice as much as they do; that's what I am saving I
 
 be thus doubled at a profit, for I don't know-any more than President James J. Hill does. In SCme cases I'm very much inclined to doubt it. I know fields which aren't producing an aver age crop, year by year, of a hundred bushels of potatoes per acre. which un- occasionally could be made to yield two hundred bushels. But whether the extra hundred bushels would sell for enough to pay the cost of the extra fer tilizer and labor and so on is another question. It's one for every farmer to settle for himself, from his own close knowledge of his own soils, his own markets, his own expenses, his own ability to secure labor, etc, etc.
 But ! do think that, in the ajority of cases, it would pay better to raise two hundred bushels of potatoes on not always, but more often than not I think the tendency of eastern farm ing is towards smaller farms better farmed. It is not regrettable ten- dency Instead 1t is cause for con- graduation While there will always be some who will find their ideal of farming only in broad stretching horizon, the best of us will, in the end. be better off if we concentrate ourselves upon a few acres. and bring and keep those few at their highest point of productivity and profit.
 "Ten acres enough?" It may not be for some of us. But it's two much" s, Artemas Ward used to say, for some others of us.
 THE FARMER. TO TRY NITROcL YCERINE SHELLS