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LECTURES AND ESSAYS READ AT INSTITUTES. 310 



tain area of our farms to each of the grains and grasses that grow and thrive 

 in our latitude ; also carrying on our farm all the stock we can keep well in 

 connection with our grain and grass growing. The ruinous practice of selling 

 our coarse grain, hay, and straw from the farm, should be abandoned at once 

 end forever. They should be fed on the farm, made into beef, pork, mutton, 

 wool, butter, cheese, sheep, cows, horseflesh, or any other product that will 

 bring cash and leave a large pile of good manure to put back on the land. 

 Some farmers act as if they believed wet straw to be good manure. Straw 

 manure is poor stuff anyway and in any form, but as an aid in making manure 

 it is useful and valuable. 



Every farm should increase instead of decrease in fertility, and it will with 

 good farming. No amount of theorizing is of any value in this matter unless 

 supported by facts. It is the testimony of eminent writers on the subject 

 that in England, France, and Holland, where a careful and systematic system 

 of husbandry prevails, their lands are far more productive to-day than they 

 were one hundred years ago. 



Pardon me just here for being personal. I do not desire to be, but I cannot 

 well avoid it. My own farm produces better crops and with more certainty 

 than it did fifteen years ago, with the single exception of winter wheat. That 

 grows as well as ever but winter kills. I have relied upon clover and thorough 

 cultivation. I try not to raise any weeds — rotation of crops and all the 

 manure I can make by keeping as large a stock as my farm will carry. 



I raised last season on eight measured acres of barley 45f bushels to the 

 acre of 46 and 47-pound barley. If the season had been favorable I think I 

 should have had 60 bushels of 48-pound barley to the acre. It was after 

 winter wheat, part of it manured with barnyard manure, and the balance with 

 superphosphate at the rate of 150 pounds to the acre. The part dressed with 

 superphosphate had as good barley as the part manured, and better wheat. I 

 had another piece of barley of 3^ acres, that yielded 37 bushels to the acre of 

 48-pound barley, without any special preparation except that the ground was 

 very clean. The moral here is that these are the crops the money is in. It 

 needs no argument to prove that it is better to raise 45 bushels to the acre on 

 8 acres, than 22^ on 16 acres. Fifteen years ago I could not raise such crops 

 on the same land. Such results, however, cannot be attained by sitting around 

 corner groceries. It requires energy, perseverance, industry, and intelligence. 



Some farmers seem to pursue almost fanatically a single branch of industry 

 long after it ceases to pay — the raising of wheat for example. The eminently 

 practical character of the average American seems in this case to desert him. 

 Changed conditions require changed practice. Wherever you find agriculture 

 lacking in diversity, you find the people ignorant, poor, and squalid generally. 

 In countries or sedlions where a diversity prevails, education, prosperity, and 

 plenty are found. This is true of the Old World, and it is equally true of the 

 new. 



In the north, where a mixed system so largely prevails, wealth, intelligence, 

 and general prosperity are found. In the south, where for generations they 

 have expended all their energies in the production of a few crops — tobacco, 

 sugar, rice, and cotton — we find the country sparsely settled, their lands worn 

 out and abandoned, the people poor and generally a lower type of civilization. 



Yes, I believe in mixed farming. I believe in mixed farming because it is 

 necessary. It is the only practicable way I know of to keep up the producing 

 power of our farms. If our farms are allowed to deteriorate it is only a ques- 

 tion of time when they will have to go into other hands. What would you 



