Norwich bulletin., 1911-10-07
FARM LIFE IS NOT A MoNoIoNous LIFE

been a time when farming was mo notoneus. ] can imagine that it might be that way if man did nothing but hoe. hoe. hoe from May 10 November and nothing but chop cordwood from November to May. But I never heard oI just that thing happenir1g to any, ere. That isn't the way farm work goes. There is apt to be regular routine of chores which has to be gone through with every day But outside of that. there isn't a vocation to which man may be called which of fers hIm such variety of employment as farming. One reason why farmers SC seldom become experts in any line IS because they are never able to keep at any one sort of work long enough to become expert. They have to be another, and no two alike. They don't have time to get tired of the blow handles before they must get out the hoe. They don't have time to get tired of the hoe before there is call for the moving machine They don't have days come to harvest oats and dig potatoes and cut corn.
 And in between these biz jobs there are forty eleven small jobs coming up day by day. each one different and
 
 thing, it's another Of course it is. and thank the Lord for it. It's both one thing and another-and several others still every time and all the time. There's something to do with hand or brain every blessed minute of every blessed day. Something differ ent today from yesterday; something different tomorrow from today; some thing different this year from last year. There isn't 8 peel1-hole in the fence through which Ionesomeness can so much as squint at the farmer who has few cows to look after, and d few sheep. and q pig or two, and some hens, and probably a dog, and at least one calf, and perhaps some turkeys. and d patch of corn. and patch of potatoes, and a patch of oats. and q patch of garden truck, and a patch of bucl1wheat, and a hay-field, and 8 pasture tot, and wood-lot, and sev- enteen different kinds of fence, and three or four different sorts of neigh DOTS around him, and nobody knows how many different varieties of weath CT ard season and bugs and things
 Why, if Old Monotony himself should be caged up on the average farm with the average farmer for about one-haif of one busy summer day, it wouldn't be dinner time before Old Monotony would be whfmpering
 
 could crawl into it and pull the hole in after him.
 Moreover and furthermore, the pres ent degree of variety we farmers find in OUT employment is only a gently rolling meadow compared with the gulches and peaks of variety we are going to have in the future, as new and fresh possibilities of farming are exploited. We already have our hands fairly full of work we are going, more and more, to use our brains: to work with our minds as much as with our muscles. There is hardly science known to students which, in the fu- ture, the working farmer will not call to his aid
 One of the reasons why some bright boys leave the farm is because they are not taught to see what a field it offers for their sharpest wits and their bralniest efforts. Already we have nearly reached the stage when the farmer needs to be a good all-round mechanic. What with his complicated modern machinery, his mowers and his reapers and his threshers and his silage-cutters and his sulky blows and lis riding crltivators and his separa- tors and his gasoline engines and his other tools, he must be his own nas- ter mechanic, if he expects to keep them all up in ship-shape. His boy esoV2At | IlCSu tO SO tO LOW II ana 1llIO a big shop to find outlet and scope for all the mechanical ingenuity there is in him. He can find exercise for it all on the farm.
 No farmer will ever be as good a farmer as he might be unless he un> derstands at least enough of chemis- try to know the composition of his soils, the functions of different fertil- izers, the reactions of the sprays, etc, which he must use to fight bhghts and bugs. His boy doesn't need to enter q laboratory to become a mighty good biologist and chemist
 If. the lad takes to such phases of natural history as include the study of the rocks or the birds or the in- sects. the farm is the very source from which all knowledge on these subjects flows and the finest training school in the world.
 The thing for us to do is to reject with indignation the outworn idea that farming and monotony have anything i:1 common: to train ourselves and our children into an understanding of the almost infinite variety of interests it affords; to grasp the skirts of our happy chance and make the most of inc SinlnIN M darf11l