Norwich bulletin., 1911-06-24

to CO." The future historian will not
cite the big farmer as the leading
citizen. He with his holdings
will be considered something of
menace The story will not be about
the big farm but the many little ones.
We shall not be measured by the acre
or the section but by our profits"
And here is something that strikes
me as pretty near pure farm gospel;
Il fancy that Providence in planning
things for us intended the farm as
home for those not foolish enough to
live in town: that the farm unit
should be such an area as the farmer
and his family can well look after
and care for, conserving the waste,
doctoring the SOIL preserving or in
creasing it's fertility workshop in
which not only to produce bread and
meat but there raise the strong and
clean men and women of the next
generation, the land to be handed
down by us to the future better than
when taken by us. Farming
was intended to be a one family job
helped, not by hirelings, but by a fam
lily partnership Here is Mr..
Twitchell's conclusion of the whole
matter: IF you have ever had it in
your system to be a bonanza farmer,
forget it; rather, strive to be a good
farmer, as big as you can be good.
1t is far easier. far safer, far better
1t has been my good fortune, for a
couple of years, to have the reading
of a wide variety of western farm pa
pers. Their news columns are full
of stories and pictures from big farms:
their advertisements are largely of
traction engines and gang-p1Ows and
irrigation plants and forty man thresh
ing outfits. I confess it has some
times made me little discomfort with
my little farm of some swamp ano
some mountain and some pasture and
few acres of arabic intervale- I
have only one field with actually
square corners and straight sides. And
that has only four acres in it The
rest are of such shapes and sizes as
the LAY of the land" compels. A
traction engine with gang-plows would
be about as possible on these many
cornered patches of mine as a Maure-
tania in my two-foot trout-brook.
Yet I've sometimes looked with en-
vious eyes at the big farmer of the
western prairies. pictured as riding
comfortably on his tractor while ten
plows behind it turned ten burrows of
level sward down the center of a. field
apparently about thu ee miles long. The
comparison between that way of pillow
ing and my way of turning one fur
row at a time, and that often not five
rods long, with the seemingly unend-
ing alienation of twisting around
stones and Juggling around angles at
the ends,-it has occasionally made
my old plow-handles seem a little
harder than they really ought to be.
But, after all, don't suppose that
the riding of a traction engine back
and forth across a level prairie is all
a -'joy-ride." That engine has about
as many diseases that must be doctor
ed as any old pair of farm plugs
straining at a pillow. And I don't be-
lieve it turns around at the end one
bit easier or faster than my one
shared Landslide pillow. Just as likely
as not that farmer whose picture
made me envious was thinking. at the
very moment it was made, how much
pleasanter work was back on the old
New England hill farm, with the old
fashioned pillow and the steady old
team of horses, who didn't slip a cam
nor break an eccentric every time any
little thing went wrong.
I'm very much obliged to this Da-
kota farmer for his exposure of the
evils of big farming and his cham
pionship of the small farm. ALI the
time, down deep in the bottom of my
heart, I've felt assured that ten small
farms were better, anywhere and any
time, than one big farm But it's good
to have ones suspicious corroborated.
now and then, by somebody who
knows.
So far as the east is concerned,
he is everlastingly right. What is
wanted is not big farming but good
farming We little fellows on our lit
tie farms can't compete with the big
farmers of the west in the number OF
carloads of wheat and corn we can
raise and ship But we can compete
with them,-and beat them out of
their boots,-in the number of bushels
of corn and potatoes that we can
raise to the acre. Moreover. we can
raise corn and potatoes of better
quality. Furthermore and also. we can
sell 'em, even in small quantities, for
better prices, by reason of our near
ness to market. When we become in
telHgent enough to get all that is pos
sible out of every acre We work. and
shrewd enough to see that neighborly
cooperation in buying supplies and
| selling products is better than Is
hmaelitish aloofness- we shall
| have passed the stage when envy of
| bigger farmers is possible.
| "It's the little things that make up
| life" We've got to keep on learning
| that and repeating it. [ know that it
| is the age of big business. I know
| that there is something inherently at
| tractive in mere bigness. But I can't
! hold with those who urge that future
farming must tend towards the elm
| ination of the small farmer and the
| substitution of big farms, managed
| solely for money making, from a cen
| trail office building My ideal for the
| future in the east, anyway. is a land
| of little farms, divided into little fields
| each one cultivated to the last avail
| able inch and producing the last pos
| sible ounce or peck of product II
| that future our farming will be as
| careful. as painstaking, as resourceful
1 no hos c
| of market gardening are today.
i Our true aim ought to be, not how
/ much we can farm but how well.
| THE FARMER.
An Efficient Police Force.