Norwich bulletin., 1916-03-18
A HAzARDED OPINION WRECKED
whole state to supply one poor house
with short commonsi

whole state to supply one poor house |
with short commonsi
But, after some study of both east
ern and western farming methods I |
am convinced that the intensive Guilt |
walton of ten acres on an average New |
England hillside or intervale farm i'm |
plies and compels not only quite as |
much work, but much more skilful |
work and vastly keener observation |
than the usual cultivation of a hum |
dred western acres, in the usual west |
ern manner.
Some years ago, a western farmer, |
who had visited before in my town, |
sold his Iowa quarter section and
moved here, buying one of the two or
three big, level-lying farms of the
neighborhood. He blandly informed
us all that he had made a big sue
cess, out in Iowa and now he'd show
US fasteners how to farm it," He
brought his western tools and his
and a husky bunch of western-bred
sons with him.
1t took him just three years to
show us benighted fasteners how
to farm. In all those years he had
but one good crop and, as it happen
ly good if not better ones of that par
ticular thing that year, the price for
it was so low that he couldn't sell it
for the amount it had cost him to
raise it
He's back in the southwest, some
where now, where he plows with a
tractor, doesn't have to manure or Gull
tivate, and let's the cattle and hogs do
the harvesting.
His remarks about New England
foy L, Lea g.
his own place, were emphatic and,
perhaps, edifying, but needed expur-
eating.
"The man who said that farming is
a gamble has had no experience eX-
cept possibly raising geraniums in
window garden in a side street of
Considering that his comment comes
from the editorial room of a paper
published in a big city, While I am
writing in an old farmhouse ten miles
from even a small city and haven't
so much as seen really big city for
twenty years-am writing in the inter
walls stolen from the practical work of
an actual farm, and rely mostly upon
my personal experience with dirt and
seeds and bugs and weather and my
sidering this, the somewhat sopho-
n1oric ana superior tone of my critic
is jest leetle malapropos.
"If there 10 one sure game where APP
piled intelligence and industry has
its full reward, it IS in agriculture"
WhooDee! Ring the guns and fire the
bellSi There's discovery and pro-
nunciamento which assumes the char
acter Of an ultimatum.
Sure game" Ell?
How about my neighbor Alden OF
the West Part? He's man Of moro
than average intelligence end Of great
industry. He put in a biggish field of
corn last spring. He prepared end
fertilized well got good seed. culti-
waited thoroughly, and had. when the
stalks began to ear, one of the finest
looking and most promising pieces of
! corn in the neighborhood. Then along
came hail storm and in fifteen min
utes the entire patch was a riddled
! ruin. He didn't save enough corn
from eight acres to feed one sick pig
week
But corn wasn't his only crop. He
had, also, several acres in potatoes.
The same hail tore and shredded their
tops and so weakened their vitality
that they fell an easy prey to the
blight and following rot.
lie also had several large meadows
of hay. TIL same hail beat the grass
down, drove muddied currents of hail
drift and sidehill washings over it,
anu MOI only SpOlleQ It's marketable
quality, but precluded the possibility
of even cutting more than quarter of
it.
In order to make his agricultural
operations still more certain, to cIinch
and cable-sew and copper-bottom
| them, as it were, Alden had provided
himself with an extra herd of live
stock to which he intended to feed
his corn and hay and Gull potatoes, etc
The result of the years operation for
him was failure of his corn, potato
| and hay crops, and the enforced SELL
ing of his livestock at bankruptcy
| prices.
Any element of the gamble" in that,
| Ell?
1t may be answered that this was an
| exception, that hail doesn't ruin every
| farmers crops, every year. OF course
not. If it did farming wouldn't be a
| gamble against hail, for one thing, but
a sure loss. But that same hail-storm
did comparable if not equal damage
to the corn and potatoes and oats and
hay and rye and fruit and garden veg
etables of more than forty other far
mers within the range of my telephone
hearing. Others escaped. And there
you have it. We all bet our land and
our manure and our seeds and ou1
labor that hail wouldn't destroy them