264 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



apparatus for carrying on the operations of the farm. My living room should be 

 made cheerful by opening into an extensive greenhouse, filled in Avinter with 

 rare and beautiful plants." That is an ideal picture of what a farmer's home 

 should be, and is so attractive that if one might have the wonderful wishing 

 cap of childhood fairy stories, every man would lose no time iu becoming such 

 a farmer; but unhappily for us the magical cap has lost its power, and we 

 have debts, and poor land, and adverse seasons to contend with. In short, we find 

 farming not an "unmixed good" by any means. Our strawberries and cream 

 are not obliging enough to walk on the table, already to be eaten, nor do the 

 fields produce bread already spread with butter. The weeds will grow, if noth- 

 ing else, and the potato bug occasionally claims a share in your potato crop, 

 has been known to claim all. Jack Frost gets a funny streak, and out comes 

 the clover by the roots ; while if you think to cheat the old fellow, and have 

 your wheat get such a root it can't ho. killed, the insect gives your field a call, 

 and it begins to look sickly, while the jwor farmer feels so. You care for and 

 cultivate your fruit trees continually, but after all the borer will infest the 

 tree and the codling moth your fruit, and once in a while a man in meeting 

 with the "hard reality," and finding it so devoid of beauty and attractiveness, 

 so different from the jjroad free life he would like to lead, declares in sheer dis- 

 gust, that farming is the worst hoax a man ever entered into. It is hard some- 

 times, this falling off from the ideal, for most are not wealthy who begin farm- 

 ing, many indeed poor. 



It needs what the New Englanders call gnmj)tion to make a successful farm- 

 er, — one who can take advantage of circumstances, and has the knack of know- 

 ing how and when to do, and the best and shortest manner of doing work. There 

 is so much time and force wasted in unproductive labor. Some men work in a 

 peck measure all their lives, and work hard. There are farmers and farmers, 

 but fortunately one class are growing rarer every year. I mean the farmer 

 Avhose sole idea is money-getting, — wlio never spends a cent for improvements, 

 who lives in an old tumble-down house, makes shift with a miserable old shell 

 of a barn, never has a decent fence on his place, and would think himself 

 ruined to plow under a crop of clover to enrich his poverty-stricken fields. 

 One who is poor and cannot improve, all heartily sympathize with ; but a man 

 of means, who will treat his farm and family in such a manner, deserves what 

 in most cases is felt, — the contempt of every neighbor farmer. Every year we 

 get nearer the ideal, slowly, but tliere is a growth, and people are beginning to 

 realize that 'tis the intelligent, systematic man who succeeds, — one who is will- 

 ing to pay interest to the soil for what is given him, and finds dame Nature so 

 generous that it is returned a hundred fokl. 



Only the few can reach the grand, substantial farm house, with beautiful 

 rooms and costly furniture. That is a shadowy ideal which we may never reach, 

 but they can have pretty and convenient dwellings, with picturesque gables, 

 and clinging vines, and, best of all, grand, old stately trees, instead of the 

 unsightly barn-like structures, whose windows stare at you, with no tree, no 

 flower, nor vine, to soften the ugliness and make it seem more attractive. 

 They can have cool verandas and nice roomy kitchens, where there is plenty of 

 light and air, instead of the little, tucked-up, close rooms where the farmer's 

 wife spends two-thirds of her time, and no small share around a stove cooking, 

 and then wonders why her head should ache so. I'm inclined to say it serves 

 her right, for the ladies are in fault full as much as the men, so afraid are we 

 of soiling other rooms, even though there be a dozen, when, if we only knew 



