The Denison review. [volume] (Denison, Iowa) 1867-current, 1911-05-31
The Old and the New on the Farm

i Tic Via dfIQ lIlS iNSw OI ktiC ! al tis
1t is a JOY to see the modern farmer
with a complete equipment-and the
modern farmer must have complete
equipment or get out of the way of the
man with a complete equipment-it is
a pleasure to see that man do his
work Those of us who worked on a
farm in the seventies see the differ
ence 1t is marvellous change.
Tools, implements, methods and hours
have changed. The farmer has also
changed. Nineteen hundred eleven is
a foreign country from 1875,
Men in real farming country hate
to milk. Don't you remember the
scrap over who should do the horse
chores and who the milking in those
old days when you got up at a. m.
and finished the chores at 8 at night?
The modern farmer may slip out to
the COW stable, stick few tubes in
place, start the motor and come back
to carry away the milk after he has
harnessed the team. Remember how
you hated to dig potatoes? Took six
tined fork and bowed your back over
one hill after another Picked up after
what you had dug through the day.
Carried them down cellar in bushel
bitches four good horses to contrap-
ton, puts wagon alongside and
starts the thing moving. 1t delivers the
potatoes in the wagon box. He hauls
them to the potato elevator, dumps his
load and machinery does the rest. Re-
call the two weeks siege of hauling
manure? The new farmer hauls it
with a spreader He drives with
jocund glee afield while the machine
does the work. The weary plowman
has quit plodding his weary way. He
sits in state on gang pillow or rides
enthroned upon the corn cultivator.
Plod nothing! Ever pitch hay in the
field or to the stack? Yes? Well, that's
gone with the plodding. Nowadays he
bitches thing of cogs and scratchy
looking wires behind the hay wagon
and says "giddap." When the load is
on he drives up to the side of the barn
or the stack, bitches horse to a rope
and says "giddap" again. Perhaps he
gets tired OF saying "giddap" over and
over again, but he is fresher at 6 p. m.
than you used to be when you negoti-
ated twenty tons with a three-tined
fork. When harvest comes he gets
out the twine binder and bundle car
rier. He has heard of an ancient Gus
tom of binding by hand and of gath
ering to the shock. You and l, how
ever, retain a distinct remembrance
of a reaper with seven-fOot cut and
four horses driven by the man who
was paying wages, coming up the
side of an oats field like a destroying
angel. Why this modern farmer does
not even carry away oats from the
machine at threshing time or even
shovel from the load into the bin. He
has elevators. He let's the machine
do the work. Actually he unloads at
husking time by the same process.
And it is told that he is considering
a corn husker which shall do away
with picking" as the corn binder has
relegated to the limbo of useless
things the corn knives and the twine
with which we used to put up shocks
twelve hills square in the stone ages
of agriculture.
1t is pleasure, not entirely I'M
mingled with regret, to see the mod
ern farmer operate. In his automobile
with his gasoline engines and modern
labor saving devices he is long way
from the lumber wagons and "a"