DAIRY MEETING. l8l 



I think that what Prof. Sanborn said here to the dairymen 

 and farmers will alone be worth enough to pay for this whole 

 conference. He said that he had been farming for fourteen 

 years and his farm was producing more than four times what 

 it did fourteen years ago. Let us stop to think of it a moment. 

 What does it mean? Have you doubled your farm four times 

 in fourteen years? I fear none of us have half done this. I 

 sometimes feel that we really ought to do better or go out of 

 the business. This meeting is going to be worth something to 

 the State of Maine, if we take home some of the things that 

 have been said and profit by them. Many of the men in the 

 State of Maine have been to Prof. Sanborn's home and exam- 

 ined his work. He went there as a poor man and was much in 

 debt and he has not held any lucrative office, he is not a specu- 

 lative man, but with his intelligence and his thorough knowledge 

 of crop production he has been able to build up his great estab- 

 lishment and make a profitable business out of it. What Maine 

 needs is a more intelligent agriculture. 



All of the papers presented at this meeting have been very 

 valuable. There is much for us to learn. If we will give our 

 farm work more intelligent thought, and give our nndivided, 

 earnest attention to our farms, we shall certainly be on the road 

 to better conditions. 



R. Alden. Our instructor is trying to lead us on to higher 

 ground. It is turning a search light on to our business, and it 

 is just here with me today. I am finding out that I have good 

 cows that are paying more than $30 a year, and then others 

 standing right by them, consuming the same amount of feed, 

 that pay scarcely anything. Are we willing to apply bookkeep- 

 ing to our business? Do we want to go on in this haphazard 

 way or do we want the search light turned on so that we can 

 tell at the end of the year just what every cow has paid for the 

 year? Are we going to keep the cow that has made 150 pounds 

 of butter and sell the one that has made 350 pounds? I have 

 one cow that I know will not make more than 150 to 200 

 pounds, and another I think will make 400. One was tested 

 the other day, that I have just started with, and I found she 

 was making 2 1-4 pounds of butter a day. This cow a man 

 could have bought of me at a reasonable price, but now she is 



