Norwich bulletin., 1915-02-13
SMALL FARMS OR BIG FARMS

area there would be much greater opportunity for thorough and scientific work all along the line
 This, in the long run, would lead not alone to an increased production per acre, but to an increase Of pro- dtction per individual as well, so that where now a section of land often maintains only four families, 1t would as readily maintain from eight to six teen families and each Of these would have greater advantages and get more out of life than is the case with the four families first mentioned
 Not only does his own experience,- which I remember summarizing for our mutual information, some months agoy-sustain his argument, but in this latest article he cites several other cases among his neighbors where the efficient use Of a few acres has brought greater prosperity than us uaI4y IoITows the more haphazard management of larger areas
 One of these men began farming S --- u,,4 9 eosv. tie Fought a tract of .islashed" land of 120 acres. When he had made the small initial pay ment he had $500 and some household furniture left to begin with. In seven years he has cleared eighteen acres, paid off the mortgage, built a good house and barn. He maintains on the elgIl6en acres LWSiVS COWS ri1IlG nedu of young stock and two horses. His income from his cows averages $60 a mCnth, and he also sells about $500 worth of calves, hogs, etc, each year.
 voNed $50 a year for feed. his stock being otherwise
 e.. ,~. ny the eighteen acres. He plans to clear seven acres more, making twenty five in all. That he says, will give him all the work he wants to do, and supply a. good living.
 Another young man. six years ago, bought siXty-siX acres of slashing, which had no improvement other than one four-acre bit of old clearing. He has cleared up about twenty five acres and states that this is all the land he shall ever care to develop. His "rota- ticn' is clover, corn, COWS, manure" and then more clover, corn and cows, 50 as to get more manure. Says MT. NordmaR: The fact 1 want to en- phasize is that this farmer is making a better living than the average pro- fesstonal man gets out of a S1,500 in come
 Still another neIghbor eleven years ago bought a forty-seven acre tract He borrowed S1,000 to pay for it. Since then he has paid this off, has built a good house, barn, siIo, etc. has in stalled a water supply from a, con-
 
 and kept filled by a gasoline engine and pump and an electric lighting plant, run by the same engine Last fall he added an automobile Not a penny of debt has been incurred for any of these improvements and llxu- rtes, All have been paid for. from current income Last year his re- ceipts from his forty-seven acres of land were $2,o0o.
 -
 Read little like fairy stories, don't
 Quite a few eastern farmers, I fancy would be glad to swap their two or three hundred acre farms for one of these better paying twenty five to forty-Seven acre plots, if they could fully believe what is told Of them.
 Yet I have no doubt the records are quite true, both as to details and az gregate results.
 Why, then, can't farmers in Con- necticIt do as well or better?
 We'll, suspect that MT. Nordn,an and his ncighDors of whom he writes are not afraid of work I suspect that they are able and willing to drive their brains as hard as their muscles. suspect that they are rather shrewd managers
 Furthermore. Wisconsin is one of the ceuters of cooperation. The state is thickly soEn with co-opera- tive creaIneries CO., operative egg buying unions. One phase of what has come to be called the Wisconsin idea Is that the farmer who turns out to help his neighbors helps him self quite as much, if not more The result Is that the average Wisconsin farmer gets more than the thirty five cents which farmers in less advanced