114 AGRICULTURE OF MAIXK. 



kets because the feeders of horses in the cities demand it, and 

 of course let them have it. Feed your clover, feed your rough- 

 age on the farm and keep it there, and do not carry stock enough 

 so but you can sell your timothy. Then I would suggest that 

 you raise potatoes. I raise potatoes and I have followed the 

 market and I find it profitable, on the whole, although there are 

 some years when it is not. It requires thorough tillage of the 

 soil to raise potatoes. If you are successful in potato growing it 

 handles the soil so as to put it in shape to grow a crop of oats 

 or barley, a crop of clover and a crop of timothy afterwards, 

 without any additional dressing except what we put on as fer- 

 tilizer at the time the potatoes were planted. 



I would also suggest that you raise cabbage, and 1 would also 

 suggest that you raise squash. Why I suggest this is because 

 some time ago I got in communication with a firm here in 

 Portland, and they come over to my farm and say things 

 that are of direct consequence to me. They come from the com- 

 mercial side and I am running my farm for the benefit I receive 

 commercially. They sent over a young fellow and I didn't pay 

 much attention to him. This was back two or three years ago. 

 I had a carload of cabbage and two or three carloads of pota- 

 toes, and I had hay to sell also, but no squash. He said to me, 

 "I think a man ought to diversify his crops." I said, "Yes," on 

 general principles. I did not expect he was going to say any- 

 thing to me that I would really care to hear, and I was thinking 

 that I would like to have him make me an offer for those cab- 

 bages and potatoes. He said, "If a man has diversified crops, 

 he will generally find that two or three of them are high in price, 

 while one of them he will get out of just whole. He will find 

 one of them cheap, and occasionally two. of them cheap." I 

 began studying what he had said and I have found that in the 

 last four years it has been about like this : For instance, today 

 squashes are very cheap ; they are worth eight or ten dollars. 

 Cabbage is doing pretty well, potatoes are doing pretty well and 

 hay is doing pretty well. Now if you have followed the system 

 of management suggested, you will have your stock on the farm, 

 to consume the stuff that you could not put on to the market 

 profitably, and in this way you will get it back on the farm to 

 assist in keeping up the humus in the soil. You will need to go 

 into the market and buy fertilizers, because you have got to 

 keep the fertility up to even a higher standard than if you put 



