Norwich bulletin., 1915-10-09

A yVin5ham county reader sends me a rather elaborately workedout plan for the management of his farm or about a hundred acres in part or the county which he describes as "a grass country"
 He asks me to tear it to pieces" if I can or comment upon 1t in any other way. N Now, Pm certainly not going to "tear it to pieces,' or even try to: don't know that I could, if I wanted to, and most emphatically wouldn't want to, if could.
 Nor do I feel myself competent to criticise constructively and helpful Iy its details. I doh't know the farm: I don't know the labor conditions: don't know the marketing facilities: most important of all, I don't know the farmer, whether he is conserva- tive chap or a radical fellow-a practical expert at working dirt or man who directs others how to work it-a hard listed, big-footed, horny handed son of toll. or visionary sort of being given more to dreaming dreams than to grubbing out quack- grass and hoeing corn
 There are too many conundrums on my own farm which I can't answer with any degree of certainty to in- cline me towards tackling the puzzles on any other farm of which I know comparatively little.
 I've know professedIy agricultural papers, to whom plans like my cores pondent's have been submitted, to comment on them at great length and with a surface air of profound wis dom-though the commentators plain Iy showed through every line to a practical reader that they were pure theorists, having no more face-to-face knowledge of the problems they were
 
 ham county friends conditions.
 Just that sort of thing has disgust ed a good many of us real farmers with the professional farm papers. Don't never prophecy onless ye know is pretty good advice in a great many callings: certainly in farming matters.
 As l understand it, my correspond ent's idea is to devote his hundred acres mainly to stock, cows, sheep and hogs with just horses enough to do the work. and a little hay and a few apples to have in reserve. He has "unit' system, meaning by his unit the greatest amount of animals that can be handled by one man without spelling his efficiency in respect to productive labor" This unit he hnds in his case to consist of five ewes, a hundred pigs and two ol three horses" He lays chief stress or labor, even going so far as to say thai brains don't amount to row o1 shuclks when it comes to making the dollars roll in from farming. It all depends upon labor His unit, therefore, is based solely on labor ef- ficiency. He writes:
 "Ten thousand pounds of cows and eheep and twenty thousand pounds o1 pork when it is marketed, or rath- CT say the crops are heaviest in the fall. The chief beauty of the hog is that in the spring when crops are pretty well fed out it only weighs 200 pounds, but as the crops grow il grows and attains its maximum ef. ficiency just at harvest time. Int cows and sheep are the balance wheels of the whole business. F'urth. ermore, in harvesting ones crops al he has to harvest is enough to carry 13,000 pounds of live stock through tht winter, plus his brood sows, or a. I intend to do. I expect to have fit. fall pigs and fifty spring pigs, but tn, tall pigs will merely be carried. Thi will spread out the skim milk from my cows and give each fifty a fairl! good start in life. But the wealth O farm depends upon what one pro duces per acre, and to show the crop necessary for this unit is the chic proof of my plan. It will take twelv