336 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Happy is the man who takes his wife into his confidence. In prosperity or adver- 

 sity It always pays to make her your confidante. Morally, socially, and intellectually 

 woman is man's equal, and if she desires to extend a helping hand toward the attain- 

 ment of our ideal civilization, she is prompted in her efforts, in that she believes 

 that the human race is as a whole destined to attain to a status hitherto undreamed 

 of. In that ideal civilization woman shall walk hand in hand with man, and as 

 Paul Jean has said: "No man can live piously or die righteously without a good 

 wife." The wife shall be the man's helpmeet in this ideal civilization. The selfish 

 element in man shall have disappeared and the nobler elements of his nature shall 

 be developed under the benign influence of woman, and much that is coarse and 

 unwholesome shall have been rooted out of his nature, and in time Shakespeare's 

 eulogy may apply: "What a creature is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in 

 faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, 

 in apprehension how like a god!" 



GROWING AND STORING ONIONS. 



OSCAR INMAN, AT MIDLAND COUNTY INSTITUTE. 



I formerly grew the Yellow Danvers or Globe Danvers; but I found out that if the 

 season was backward, a good many of them had green tops and large necks at the 

 time of the year when I ought to be pulling them, so I began to look around for 

 something earlier and surer of getting ripe. I found just what I was looking for In 

 a variety called the Early Yellow Cracker. It is a good yielder, a good keeper, and 

 at least two weeks earlier than the Yellow Danver and with no tendency to grow 

 scalliohs. Before closing this talk I want to give you a little advice about buying 

 seed. Don't buy seed that you know nothing about, because it is cheap. Buy of no 

 one but perfectly honest and responsible growers. Onion seed will all grow until it 

 is two years old. The third year about two-thirds will grow, and after that it is no 

 good. I would not sow seed that I know nothing about if it was given to me, as 

 there is too much at stake in growing onions, and it costs just as much to grow one- 

 half a crop as it does a large one. I have grown 750 bushels on one acre, and have 

 measured small pieces in my field that yielded at the rate of 900 bushels. But of late 

 years I have not done so well on account of the ravages of the onion maggot, which 

 I can find no way of exterminating, but I think I can check them somewhat by 

 changing the ground on which I grow them from one part of the farm to another. 

 If not troubled with the maggot they can be grown any number of years on the 

 same ground if kept supplied artificially with fertility. 



MIXED FARMING. 



BYRON BRAY, UNION CITY, AT BRANCH COUNTY INSTITUTE. 



The most important thing is the different varieties of soil. The next is the 

 fertility of the soil. With this we have a basis to commence the practical work of 

 mixed farming. The farmer should study the nature of soil of each and every field 

 on his farm until he finds what crop will turn a good yield, and that is the crop to 

 be sown or planted on that field. If the farmer wishes to sow oats, he should select 

 out the fields that are adapted for oats, and then sow good seed, and there will be 

 no mistake in the crop of oats. The same may be said of corn, and there is no crop 

 that is raised in southern Michigan that is of more value to the farmer than a 

 good crop of corn, and it should be one of the leading crops on the farm. There is 

 no crop from which we can receive as much benefit, there is no grain that will 

 return as many dollars to the farmers' pocket, it will produce more pounds of 

 mutton to the sheep breeders, than any other variety of grain, and it will pro- 

 duce more beef and solid pork than any grain we can raise. Now, this crop 

 should have special care and attention. I would advise early plowing, as soon as 



