142 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



verize the ground, to plant the corn, to cultivate it, to harvest 

 and bind it ; let him ride to sow and mow, to rake and to gather 

 in, and that boy is not going to leave the farm. He sees that 

 there is pleasure as well as profit in farming, that it gives health 

 and vigor to both body and mind, and more real happiness and 

 independence than any other calling known to man. But, you 

 may say, the small farmer cannot have all these privileges. I 

 affirm they are within the reach of all who will to have them, 

 for where there is a determined will there is always a way. 



In the first place, all of the more costly implements can be 

 used by half a dozen farmers just as well as by one. Again, 

 there need be but few small farmers. There are but very few 

 farms in the State which have not twenty-five acres or more of 

 tillage land, and on all such twenty-five cows can easily be kept. 

 Surely it is not a very small farmer who has a dairy of twenty- 

 five cows. 



In order to show how this could be done, I took the subject 

 on which I am now speaking, — The Dairy Cow as a Farm Reno- 

 vator. The dairy cow is always at home. For 365 nights and 

 at least 200 days she is housed where all her droppings can be 

 saved. She returns to the soil a larger per cent of what she eats 

 than any other living animal. In fact, ninety-nine per cent 

 of all she eats, except what nature requires to sustain life and 

 keep up the waste of the system, is returned to the soil, seventy- 

 five per cent in her voidings, liquid and solid, and twenty-four 

 per cent in the waste product of her milk. Less than one per 

 cent goes off in butter fat. 



In reckoning the profits of the dairy, these by-products do not 

 get the credit due them ; in fact, they are scarcely ever reckoned 

 at all. But when you take into consideration the depleted con- 

 dition of nearly all our farms, and the urgent need there is for 

 recuperation, they should be ranked first in importance, for with- 

 out the elements of fertility in the soil, our receipts in dollars and 

 cents would soon be gone. 



I propose now to give you some conclusions drawn from my 

 own experience with the scale and rod pole during the year 1901. 

 Three gallons of skimmed milk or buttermilk will make one 

 pound of dressed pork. The average cow will produce milk 

 enough in one year (with about four bushels of meal to finish 

 him off) to grow a 200-pound pig. The cow herself, if prop- 



