No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 175 



liver, he preferred to make his money out of it and farmed simply 

 as a secondary matter, only enough to feed himself and his stock, 

 generally even falling short on that. The best powers either of mind 

 or body were not given to the farm. With the passing away of the 

 timber, his occupation was gone, and it too often became a serious 

 problem for the old farmer to know how to make it go. We may 

 truthfully say, therefore, that the Clearfield county farmer of past 

 generations lived and died in the firm belief that farming here was 

 a failure, and did not pay, and he was right from his point of view. 

 So too, the boys, as a rule, left the old farm in the same belief, 

 and became the professional man, the merchant, the mechanic and 

 the miner of this generation, perhaps not to their advantage, either. 

 The result is too apparent to anyone traveling through the country 

 and ^hows itself up in hundreds of abandoned farms and vacant 

 farm buildings with cleared fields surrounding them now grown up 

 with briars and weeds. 



Now it is perfectly apparent to any one who gives this subject 

 thought, that the future welfare of the county, demands that more 

 and more intelligent farming shall be done, or a source of great 

 wealth be lost. Large areas of cleared land now idle with the soil 

 being washed off annually by rains, should be redeemed, cultivated 

 and made to produce something, if not an annual crop, then let it 

 by all means be re-forested intelligently. It is of course too true, 

 that in many parts of the count}', at least, we have positive disad- 

 vantages of both soil and climate, and there was probably more 

 truth than poetry in the complaint of the old lumberman farmer 

 that it did not pay to farm as he did it. I take it too, that there may 

 still be serious drawbacks in making it pay if followed on the old 

 lines, and where mere grain growing is attempted; but what is the 

 matter with dairying, raising poultry, truck farming and fruit rais- 

 ing? Are they not profitable? The handicap of soil and climate 

 is amply recompensed by the higher price obtained for such pro- 

 ducts; quality too, is all right. For instance we get strawberries in 

 our market from Florida in the early spring, and so on up along 

 the coast, until the home berry is marketed in the summer. Now 

 the plain fact is, that the best flavored and best strawberries gener- 

 ally speaking, are our own berries, grown in the Grampian Hills. 

 So too, the best peaches marketed in Clearfield, are home grown, 

 and I hope soon to see the day when we will not need to go to New 

 York state for our best apples. 



Now all this leads to one thought and one conclusion, and that 

 is, that there is successful and profitable farming to be done in this 

 county in spite of tradition to the contrary. Our only trouble is, 

 as I view it, that not enough of our people have been giving the 

 subject intelligent and thoughtful attention. With our vast popu- 

 lation engaged in other trades, we of course cannot hope to be self- 

 supporting and self-sustaining in all food products for man and 

 beast, but a proper study into the nature of our soil and the un- 

 certainties of our climate should demonstrate what to attempt to 

 raise and what to leave alone, and will surely bring success along 

 some lines. 



May we not hope that the next generation will see our hills and 

 valleys covered with fruit orchards and truck farms, financially 

 successful beyond our dreams. If that day ever comes, however, 



