FARM MAXAGE^IENT. 



By \V. T. GuPTiLL, State .Dairy Instructor, 



Ladies and Gentlemen: 



I am not a professional man ; I am not in any sense of the 

 word a scientific man ; consequently anything that I have to say 

 in regard to farm management will bear directly upon the finan- 

 cial returns of the farmer, and any system of farm management 

 that does not provide at the end of the year a substantial finan- 

 cial gain, something with which the man can pay his taxes, aiM 

 keep his family up to standard and improve a little, I consider 

 defective, no matter whether the man is a professional man and 

 supports his family from other sources, whether he is a scien- 

 tific man and is farming for scientific purposes, or whether he 

 is farming for a living. 



Of course we have different conditions in different parts of 

 the State. For instance, up in Aroostook County there are 

 specialized farmers, and they are not entirely confined to Aroos- 

 took County. We find them in Penobscot County. We find 

 them in Waldo County and over in Kennebec ; and sometimes in 

 Oxford County we find men who are devoting their attention 

 entirely to orcharding. In other places, and particularly in the 

 southern and western part of the State, men are devoting their 

 attention entirely to dairying. In Aroostook County the 

 farmers absolutely buy their eggs, butter, pork and beef, as well 

 as their horses. vSome of the farmers who are fruit growers 

 just raise those things that are necessary for their family and 

 for the money crop depend entirely upon the apple crop. Now 

 it seems to me, as I have observed those things, that with those 

 farmers it is either a feast or a famine. If the crop is large, 

 or even if it is moderate, and the price is high, it is a feast; if 

 the crop is large and the price is small — below the cost of pro- 

 duction — it is a famine. They have to pay for their fertilizer 

 and other expenses and when they have a poor year it makes it 



