Norwich bulletin., 1922-04-28
WHAT SPURS THE FARMER ON.

Cwritten Specially for The BuIletln) Half the happiness we get from farming is in thinking Chat we will do better next year So reads a paragraph which l clipped the other day from some newspaper "colyumist's' reflections. l knew the in- stant ! read 1t that the writer was an- other country boy in town. No city born and bred paragraDhist could ever lay so sure a finger on the solar plexus of farming.
 Stop and think Of it q minute, fellow veteran of many years struggle against frosts and freshets and bugs and blights and droughts and worms and crows and foxes and woodchucks and rats and quac5-grass and pussley and the thou sand other pests which Stepmother Ma ture lets loose on us. season after sea son. from her Pandora's box of trouble. Isn't 1t about true?
 Did we any of us ever have a season when everything worked together for our agricultural good? Did we any of us ever know @ year at the end of which we hadn't about as many disappointments scored up as achievements? Did we any of us ever harvest as good all-round crops as the early promise of the season indicated, or ss our careful preparatory work gave us the right to expect?
 Worst of all can any one of us renem- Der a single years work which, when it was all over didn't disclose to us some more or less disastrous mistake of our own making2
 I certainly aeyer met a farmer yet who was willing uU own up that his year had been 8 complete success. If 1t wasn one thing, 1t was another if 1t wasn't t early in the season, then 1t was late, that something had happened to nip his hopes either in the bud or the full fruit. The farm game is an mcessant and endless struggle against often invisible and unfghtabie forces of opposition. h. svjably some of them will get through our best guard and deal us staggering blows often from the most unexpected quarters. Sometimes the yearly contest ends with a partial victory for our tao ties, sometimes t ends in drawn game sometimes in 90 sorry defeat
 But while the defeat Is seldom utterly disastrous while we are usually able tc salvage something from the wreck it is quite as true that the occasional victory Is never complete. The farmer may ms, an the ten pins, or he may knock dowr five or six of them. But he never make, a ten strike
 Nevertheless. he is always dreaming that he could have done so with better luck. aEd always hoping that he will hay, that better luck next time.
 Dit the cutyvornts eat of half his corr tu the sloot3 They won't do it again le'u fix 'em' next spring. Did the rai1 wash his spray off t1le potato vines a, fast as re put i- on? That won't happer next season. Did the hah beat down hi hen ff k rorJ we don't have such storms very often perhaps there won't be any next time Did the Waggots eat up his onions? Hel change the location of the onion bed mex year and get a bouncing crop. Did tn green worms riddle his cabbages in spit of pepper and Salt and soap and soda Well he's just read that saltpetre is sur death to them and hejl tend to thei cases next summer.
 And so it goes through the whole list Really. there is nothing in all thi peculiar to the farmer. It is the fairI common experience of all humanity Man never is, but always wants to bt blest." Somebody once sang that "'Ti love which makes the world go round. There Is no doubt that it is love whic makes great many young people heads go round. But hope has more { do with keeping the denizens of cart moving than any other one thing. "Hop springs eternal in the human breast"
 Which is mighty lucky for the huma stomach. at any rate. For if the averae farmer didn't blow and SOW and cultivat and hoe and spray and pray in hope hoping often against hoDe-the worlc bread basket would soon lack eve crumbs Of consolation.
 When T was actively engaged in true gard en-ug-l suspect that I've told th before, but we old fellows must be alloy ed to repeat our old stories-I do IT recall a year when from a third to ha of all my carefully nutured crops didr prove comm ercial failures. ] never cou f0resee which were going to miss fiji The very ones which did finely in 19 petered out to worthlessness in 1910. C vice versa those which did poorly in 19 might be inc very best of the gardens 1911 Each season l planned and work for 100 per cent. crop all round Al each season garnered a 50 to 75 D cent. croD-and looked as pleasant as could under the c-rcumstancesl
 Nevertheless, though long and aImc unvarying experience had taught me expect failures as Inevitable in certa