Norwich bulletin., 1914-12-17

| farmers could supply these, and with l the freight added Oh make a decent | profit2 Cabbage is one of the easiest | crops to raise yet a carload has been received in Norwich during the last | week from Homer, N Y. This is the town that the county agent visited on his return from Chicago. Cabbage is | their standardized cash crop. Every farmer in the community raised at | least two or three acres. They do not have to bother with the market, for l they hire a man to do this for them. The buyers come to them
 l Potatoes, hay. cabbage, grapes and small fruits are crops that could easily be grown as community crops and by materials together and selling CO., | operatively.
 | Talk this over with your neighbor. | Fundamentals of Good Farming. Inasmuch as certain farmers are op- | posed to the control of modern ideas in farming, they ought to stop and ask themselves certain questions, like the | following, for instance:
 Did I ever know of an instance \ where a farmer, or his farm, or the community, has suffered by carrying out the principles of good farming?
 Did I ever know of a farm. that ever went down in fertility by follow ing those principles2
 Are not all of the abandoned farms in the east and the rundown farms | aged by men who were ignorant of these principles and who did not cul- tivate their brains as we'll as blow their lands?
 Did 1 ever see an ignorant, mulish
 kind of a farmer develop and. improve | g. farm?
 Did ever see such a man take hold | of herd of scrub cows and by the use of well bred, registered sires l grade up his herd, say, from 15O fO .NP fof
 Can look around me and say that T ignorance and refusal to be progress sive in knowledge and good methods has ever brought prosperity to any farmer or any community On the contrary, has not such prosperity fol- lowed always the footsteps of those who have tried to make themselves in- telligent?
 Now, there are two ways for the 1 farmer to oppose progress. First by open opposition, such as we used to meet when Wisconsin first established the farm institutes. What would we think nowadays of leading farmers coming to an institute meeting, as we once heard them. and bitterly de- nouncing the whole scheme? But such men have been converted from the error of their ways and we hear no more of 1t. Second, by stubborn indif- steps to inform themselves of what is the true view of this thing we call farming.
 It is time that the average farmer got over his conceit. It is time that he looked the facts in the case full in the face. It is time that he saw how the land is losing Its fertility, to be an intelligent man and farmer. It is time that he saw in full the tremendous tax that poor cows, the product always Of ignorance of the laws of breeding are loading him down with It is time that he woke up and shook off his foolish conservatism that is holding him back from the rewards that ought to come to him. Mistakes will be made, of course, but the mis- takes that come to a man when he is earnestly seeking the best truths are not half so hard to correct, or expen- sive, as those mistakes that come from refusal to know what we ought to know about our own business From Hoard's Dairyman
 Common Sense in Buying Fertilizers. Il Following hint in one of our weekly farm papers, the agent drove out the other day to the farm of what we call one of our up-to-date and pro- greSsive farmers. Els land is good, his buildings in repair, his stock clean, contented and profitable. All around there wer signs of thrift and far l sightedness- He was one that others could well look to for example, yet upon talking with him 1t is found that in spite. of all his labors at the end of the year his showing is poor. We looked at his potatoes and asked sev- eral questions as regards to their cul- ture, etc. He told us that potatoes fol- l lowed corn, were thoroughly cultivated and sprayed several times with Bor- deaux mixture for blight and with paris green for bugs. We then asked him about his fertilizer, and to our great surprise he did not know; he knew the prices, and that is all.
 Here was what we would call an in telligent man, hard working, whose stock was the envy of his neighbors, and yet he did not think. His hard work could not stop financial leaks caused by his neglect of study and reading.
 He did not know the analysis of the fertilizer, but he knew the price. He didn't know whether he paid a big price for a poor fertilizer or a fair price for a good one. He had no idea of ammonia, phosnhoric acid nor pot l ash, yet he paid his hard earned cash l for tons of fertilizers ''just as good" as some other brand dollar cheaper. Here was one leak.
 This farmers case is parallel to hun dreds of others; the price and not the worth governs the transaction. It is hard to understand this attitude of the 1 farmers when they have countless numbers of government and state bull letins explaining all these facts to them. These contain wonderful fund I or 1nIOrmdIlOn- concerning the uSes Ino l composition and other facts about fer tilizers. Agricultural papers are con- tinually hammering also to help the farmers in their selection of the prop CT kind amounts and for what crops. Any farmer who blinds himself to these opportunities and is mentally ! too lazy to study into this important subject will probably find that fertiliz- ] CTS do not pay and in fact it will be found that in 99 cases out of 100 where farmer concludes that fertilizing does not pay it will be found that the fault is with the farmer and not the fertil- izer.
 AS a general rule, fertilizers low in plant food are too expensive, in pro- portion to the higher grade fertilizers, to be used economically; while the ones containing a larger amount of plant food are cheaper in the long run. Re suits at a fair cost are what the farm CT works for. In most cases fertilizer will pay big interest on an invest ment but you should know what your crop requires and what analysis you are buying.
 Send in list of the crops you are going to plant to your agent and let | I,;,,, haIu rvifI1 fhiG DrOh1pno IT will