EXTENTION OP HORTICULTURE 49 



Platte, though still too young to give results, gives sufficient proof that 

 l3y clean cultivation trees can be grown throughout all this region if the 

 •r'ght varieties are planted. 



Whatever neglect may have been excusable in the past relative to the 

 growth of gardens and orchards and the beautifying of home surround- 

 ings, these arguments no longer have force. The increased value of our 

 lands makes intensive methods necessary. Larger and more profitable 

 crops must be raised. A higher standard of soil fertility must be main- 

 tained to pay dividends on these increased values. This means that old 

 and wasteful systems must be done away with and new and more eco- 

 nomical ones must prevail. Rotations of crops and a diversified agricul- 

 ture must be followed, giving room for the garden, the orchard and the 

 shelter belt, because they minister to the general good of the family and 

 raise the whole standard of life upon the farm. The single crop system 

 of cultivation leads inevitably to the waste of fertility until cultivation 

 becomes unprofitable and methods are either changed or — the land is 

 abandoned. 



Over against this condition we have a most striking contrast when 

 better methods are followed and where the idea of home building has 

 been placed above the question of accumulating wealth. Experience 

 teaches us that, after all, intensive methods and the producticn of the 

 more perishable crops and a higher quality of farm products is more 

 profitable than farming a larger number of acres by old methods. The 

 western idea of farming has been to own large tracts of land and farm on 

 an extensive scale. With the rise in values, young men are discouraged 

 from attempting to buy such a farm. Horticultural practice teaches us 

 how a profitable business may be conducted on a small area of land. This 

 encourages land ownership as against either tenant farming or the deser- 

 tion of the farm for the city. Five acres or ten acres rightly located and 

 put under intensive methods of cultivation will support a family better 

 and with more comfort and luxury than many Kinkaid homesteads of 640 

 acres. Then why should we not have more people living on these small 

 farms and fewer in the tenement districts of the crowded cities? Why 

 should not the farmer on his forty or eighty acres of land with fruit and 

 poultry and a herd of dairy cows enjoy the life of the country as much as 

 the city dweller who comes out for a few weeks of the heated summer 

 enjoy the beauty and the broad expanse of the country as a corrective to 

 the intense and artificial life of the city? 



The development of artistic surroundings is not so much a matter of 

 money as it is of scientific knowledge. The humblest farmhouse can have 

 shade, flowers and fruit, if the owner has the desire for them and a little 

 Tinowledge to assist him in his work. 



The farmer is in better position than ever before to satisfy these finer 

 senses and develop these more artistic tastes. The profits of his industry 

 have made him reasonbly independent. He can now secure varieties for 

 almost any region of the state. Trees which are grown in local nurseries 



