Norwich bulletin., 1919-03-07

strawberry growers to use wood ashes
and lime? Not by jug full! Or to
set the particular variety which has
! done SO well with me? Not on your
| life!
If he should so far condescend as
to ask me for my advice it would be
| simply and solely to try all things and
hold fast to what he found good
good for his garden and his condi-
tions not mine. Of course, if he in
sisted, would tell him the name of
| the plants and my methods of treat
ment. But l should be sedulously
careful. after doing SO, to warn him
! that what was sauce for the goose was
| NOT always sauce for the gander, and
| that he was more likely to wear a
nose-ring than diamonds if he follow
ed, in a different soil, the system
(, had found wise on mine.
I think it has been said before, but
it is worth saying again, that every
farmer should be an experimenter and
every farm an experiment station.
Other mems failures will never save
Iyou,' said the old Sunday school
hymn. Nor will other mans successes
ever insure yours. Each farmer must
find out what he wants to do, what
his farm is willing to do, and how he
can best make his wants fit the farm s
lCdkptC1LltS. ne call 90 IEdI DIV DIV
learning his farm as we old grey
boards used to learn Colburt1's Men
tai Arithmetic, sixty years ago: viz,
by studying out each problem by it
self, and not trying to make the an
sWer to one sum in simple addition
fit a conundrum in decimal fractions
on another page.
I am very tired of hearing so much
advice about concrete and practical
farm or garden problems. Whether il
comes from the Washington bureau:
or from state experiment stations OF
from other farmers or-wOrst of all
from city men and subur5anites, It Is
too generally based on gross mis-
conception of the thing which the
eastern farmer is always up against
| mean the difficulty Of managing
, widely varying soils hotch- potchei II
seemingly inextricabIe confusion dur
ing infinitely varying seasons, 50 as
to get the most and the best off them
, II this world were all prairie o.
level loan, every acre indistinguisil-
able in character or content from al
other acres: and if every spring al
!, ways opened on the same day OF the
same month; and if the average sum
mer temperature were always tht
7 same-why, then. the methods which
fit my fields would also fit yours. an(
what fit yours would fit mine, an(
| we'd all know just what to do, every
t time, and could tell each other, if W,
! felt like it
!. But that isn't the way condition;
$ here in the east are arranged.
There are few general principles
( which govern farming operations
: But, the more you consider them, tht
Z fewer you'll find them to be. Their,
, are two or three which hold for til,
= whole United States: and two O.
three which hold for all Connecticut
I and perhaps two or three which hoIl
: for one small town. But, nine time
I ! cut of ten, the rules for success on an
/ particular eastern farm have got Il
be learned on that particular farm
e with small regard for any other
t I don't believe anybody ever le0rn
4 ed to swim by lying on the shore ant
: waving his arms and kicking his legs
= The place to learn how to swim is i
e the water. The place to learn how t
n manage q Hardscrabole Farm is on
s Eardscrabble farmland not out i
= North Dakota nor even on Iilinoi
n prairies.
I'm not going to set out an orang
; grove over in The Little Yellow 10
d Everybody knows the trees woul
t winter-kill. Nor am l going to SOY
= it ever again to buckwheat l hap
pen to be the only fellow VINO know
5, that buckwheat won't grow on it. Jus
r why I can't yet tell, but it won't, an
= I know it. So far as this farm is con
S cerned, that's quite as definite knowl
e edge as is required in practice. Nc
S body in Washington or Chicago {
It Cheyenne could have told me tina
n But the field told me; told me So EN-
Il phaticaIly and repeatedly that shoul
= be a Ounce to misunderstood It.
s Perhaps. if should spend te
times the value of any possible Gro
Y on it, I could make it produce bucR
n wheat But that wouldn't be farm
n ing: it would be fiddle fading.
q THE, L1tpaTE-rp