Norwich bulletin., 1918-11-29
THE FARMERS TALK TO FARMERS
soMErHMa TO THINK -Bour BEFORE BUYING FARM

better not buy any farm of any size till you've previously given farming tryout and make up your mind, first, whether you're physically fit for the l work and, second, what particular phase of farming you want to tackle. Don't jump even out of the frying pan till you're sure you won't land in hotter place.
 Perhaps you could rent farm. The papers are full of advertisements re- l garding such. Certainly you could get | a job as hired man most anywhere 1 in these days of scarce help.
 # you can't make the ends meet on I rented farm, the first year, you may confidently infer that you wouldn't get rich on one of your own. If you can't 1 stand the hard work that falls to a i hired mans lot, then you may conclude with fair certainty that you'd never be l able to go through the harder work of 1 the boss. If, however, your first years experience shows you that you've, got 1 the stamina to do farm work, and the managing capacity to get farm results, it will also have suggested to you the exact sort of farm work you will find | it wise to take up.
 1 No one year, in any situation, will i suffice to teach you all the practical details of farming. But, if you're in dustrious and energetic and economical and foresighted, year may see you l through your A B, C'S, and into easy words of one syllable. It will at least, 1 have given you a "huneh" whether you want to go into dairying or poultry or hay growing or orcharding or potato producing or w1at-not. You will have got one eye partly open, anyway, and won't have to go it blind.
  Then again, it makes a great differ ence what sort of chap you are yourself. I don't know you from Adam. You don't tell me anything about your personal idiosyncracies. You may be a quiet, modest, retiring man, with tendency to butter" and a dislike of notoriety. You may have a knack for handling small fruits or vegetables which will tend to make yu successful with them.
 Or you may be a 'slambanger' of those chaps who can't turn round lon less than hundred acres, and can't be satisfied unless he is able to tel you that hes got the biggest field oi potatoes in town,'' or the biggest silo or the biggest something else. In the former case, very likely you'd find ''ten acres enough" I know g gardener who is now intensiyely culti- vating seven acres and half and get ting more off it, gross or net, than he ever got when he tried to work 8 hundred acre farm. In the latter case, you would need two or three hundred acres. in order to feel that you had room enough tc plunge in days when the steam was sizzling in your boilers and the goose hung altitudinously elevated.
 But, for heavens sake, don't bu, any sort of farm unless you are frs sure that you are really farm minded In these days, more than ever, farm i2r is a constant struggle merely tt isske things come out even. If yot can think farm and talk farm ana dream farm and work farm and BE farm, then the chances are perhap: even that, after you have learned thu practical details of farming, you may earn your salt at it.
 But, if you've got the idea that al you have to do is to buy a farm, ploE up some of it. SOW some seed, and the1 bank the profits. my sincere advice t you is exactly the same as Punch famous Advice to Those about t.
 Marry-DON'T.""
 | THE FARMER.