Norwich bulletin., 1917-11-23

Good farming is the sort which
 yields the farmer an adequate living
 enables him to lay up some profit each year; and leaves his farm just a little better each fall than it was th- spring before. -s ] That, at least, is the idea I'm not set upon the form of words in which | it is clothed.
 The mere raising of a hundred bu she corn or five hundred busheI potatoes or forty y-eight-pounds-t to- the bushe l oats or the biggest pumpkins in tf1= county or the highest percentage o1 butter-fat at the creamery-none ot
 these are. necessarily, good farming It is quite possible to do any one or all of these things at an expense which
 shall leave no balance for profit an,i leave it poorer. each season, than it was the preceding. Nor is it good farming to try to J make the poor farm do what it isn't fitted to do nor capable of doing. Yo,i wouldn't think of trying to raise navel oranges in the Thames valley Why try to raise potatoes or onions or cab page on land which God and Nature
 Intended h,sen S for rye or buckwheat or
 ble, with sufiicients hot-houses and
 enough artificial heat, to ripen oranges
 at Gales Ferry. There's no saying
 what money and time and patience
 d
 turvyffcation of the climatic conditions
 should be accomplished, it wouldn't be
 good farming. It would be simply freak work:--a curiosity. and nothing
 better. endeavor in which skill and good workmanship may be judged in other ways, but, in farming, the test of ef- nciency is in it's success. Now don't quote something I said.., months ago. and ask me now make that and this agree. Heaven bless you, it isn't any or my business to make things agree: consistency is the prime virtue oe class, We farmers have to deal with, naked, undisguised Nature, year in and year out. If there is anything or anybody in the widest universe more utterly and inoonseauentially ,incon- sistent than that saHRe Nature, I haven't heard the name. It's a good deal better to be right than to be merely consistent. There are at leas. iour sides to every stump and itsmay of them But it'll be the same pesks oid stump, frap whichever side you view it. Let it go at thatI
 It is more than possibIe that the and industry which was followed by a bumper crop, this year, may give n poorer one, next year,47-owing to the freakishness of weather, etc.. :. Rnt good farming takes into, account. that chance and insures against it so fa- as may. be, by refusing to stake its all on one throw of the d;ce. It does not pack all its eggs in ons basket. Tt puts out anchors to windward. and casts its nets on both sides the boat. Recognizing the utterly ruthless and immoral (there's a differerce between
 unmoral' and ''immoral') Character or it's opponent. it does not hesitate fo keep an extra ace up its sleeve and a few spare dice in it's right hand poct<- ct. By which characteristica1ly gam bling methods it is much more likely to pull in the stakes.
 The fact remains that uood sfa rynina has to be judged, in the end, hy its results. Does the farmer get a good living off his farm? Does he. ss .. rule, come out ahead each year? Most important of all, is his farm richer more productive. worth more acre for acre not in the real estate narkdt but In the measuring of it's bins and it's granaries than it was ten years ago?
 If so, then you have at least priYf1a lacie evidence that there's been some good farming done in that localityT-.
 If not, then it's high time to taJxe