318 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



MIXED FARMING. 



BY GEORGE HINKSON". 

 [Read at Jeddo Institute.] 



On the evening of the 10th inst. I received a copy of the programme of this 

 institute. On looking through it I discovered I was named for a paper on the 

 subject of "Mixed Farming." This was the first intimation I hai that I was 

 on your programme at all. I am sorry the partiality of my friends took that 

 direction. First on account of my lack of time in which to prepare, and in 

 the next place my unfitness for the task. 



It is not necessary here to say to the older of my acquaintances, many of 

 whom I now see before me, that I have been all my life from boyhood up more 

 used to using the ax and holding the plow than using the pen. I have always 

 lived on the farm — came into what was then a part of this county with my 

 father in the winter of '45-6, a stripling of a boy, and with him settled on the 

 same farm I now live on and own — then a part of the vast wilderness that 

 extended from Port Huron north to Saginaw Bay, except here and there, and 

 frequently at long distances apart, settlers with a small log shanty or log house 

 with patches of clearing not much larger than their habitations, and parties of 

 lumbermen engaged in cutting and sending abroad the wealth of the forests 

 then almost untouched. That was a long time ago — thirty-six years — more than 

 the average lifetime of the human race. The little children of that time are 

 the middle aged men and women of to-day. The middle age of that time — the 

 pioneers, the men and women of willing hands and strong hearts, are nearly 

 all gone — have passed the bourne whence none ever returns. Peace to their 

 memories, "their works do follow them." 



The physical features of the country, too, have changed ; the forests have 

 given place to well cleared, well fenced, and in many cases well cultivated 

 farms. The small and often very uncomfortable log shanty, and the some- 

 what more comfortable and pretentious log houses, have been replaced by the 

 substantial, comfortable, and in some cases beautiful residences that dot the 

 landscape on every hand. The log stable and log barn, too, have been 

 replaced by the well built and capacious frame barns. During the time the 

 land was being cleared of trees, and indeed during the subsequent period, or 

 what I would call the second period of our agriculture, the time when we were 

 removing the stumps from our farms, there was little said and quite as little 

 thought about "systems of farming" so-called. 



Our lands, naturally of good fertility, were then in their virgin state. G-ood 

 crops were the rule, and though our farming was of the rudest sort, we never 

 failed to get paying crops. Such is not now the case. And why not? is a 

 very natural and at the same time a very pertinent inquiry. My answer is 

 we have removed from the soil in the form of cereal crops the fertility that 

 was ages in accumulating, without returning anything to speak of to the soil 

 to compensate for the drafts made upon it. That all our older lands fail to 

 produce as they did when new, will be conceded, I think, by all. As to the 

 best means of preserving the fertility of our lands and restoring that already 

 well worn, possibly we may differ. I think it can be done in no other way so 

 effectively and cheaply as by a well considered and thoroughly executed system 

 of mixed farming. By mixed farming I mean the practice of planting a cer- 



