346 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ADDRESS OF WELCOME. 



L. E. SLUSSAR, MANCELONA, AT ANTRIM COUNTY INSTITUTE. 



I know of no more honorable calling than that of farmer. There are times, per- 

 haps, when you have envied the merchant, or the lawyer, or the banker and wished 

 yourself in a position to take life as easy as they. But did it ever occur to you that 

 the merchant, and the lawyer, and the banker have all envied the life of the farmer 

 and that throughout the country today will be found thousands of business and pro- 

 fessional men spending their vacations and their holidays upon farms of their own? 

 And there are thousands of others who would do so did they but possess the farm. It 

 is true that the comic papers crack jokes at the expense of the tiller of the soil and 

 take delight in picturing Uncle Silas or Uncle Reuben with an old fashioned carpet 

 bag in one hand and a dilapidated umbrella and lunch box in the other, falling an 

 easy victim to the wiles of the bunco-steerer on his first visit to the city. They take 

 delight in ridiculing the farmer and belittling his calling, but the fact remains that 

 there is no line of business today which requires as much brains to make it a suc- 

 cess as the one you have chosen. 



STRAWBERRY CULTURE. 



E. A. STARR, PONTIAC, AT OAKLAND COUNTY INSTITUTE. 



For the last few years I have set from one and one-half to three acres each year, 

 only taking one crop off and then plowing them under and planting some late crop. 

 Last year the plow followed the picker and the next day I planted beans. The sea- 

 son being very late when they got ripe this year I plowed under one and one-half 

 acres and set it out to cabbage. Had over 12 tons of cabbage. In following that 

 plan I get no crop from the ground the first year but two the second. I see mo^-.t 

 nursery men advocate setting plants as early as possible in the spring. I do not like 

 to set so early, in fact I think they do much better to let them wait until the ground 

 gets warm and the fine white roots get started. We often pick off the buds as we 

 are setting them out; I use Kellogg's perfection plant setter, one man making the 

 cones and two following with the plants. While we cannot get over as much ground 

 as some claim to be able to, yet they are set to grow when we do set them. We 

 mark the ground three and one-half feet each way and then set them 21 inches apart 

 in the row, use a planet Junior cultivator, twelve tooth with rake attachment, culti- 

 vating about every four or five days for the first few weeks; and right here let me say 

 a word about the Breed weeder that we hear so much about for strawberries, onions, 

 etc. If you value your patch you had better keep it out of it. I used it on one and 

 one-half acres last year and while I carried it almost, yet those steel fingers are so 

 sharp and so thick that they would root out from one to a dozen every time I went 

 across the field, and not only that, I found that it had loosened a great many so that 

 they might as well have been pulled out. In fact, the patch never got over it. 



THE EDUCATION OF FARMERS' BOYS. 



ADELAIDE D. SHICK, ROSE CITY, AT OGEMAW COUNTY INSTITUTE. 



Brethren, the world does move, and the farmer who reads the most and practices 

 what he reads moves on with it and invests his time to the best advantage and 

 receives the best interest. The state provides for the higher education in the science 

 of farming when it establishes its Agricultural College, its experimental station, its 

 annual crop reports, its farmers' institutes, all the expense of which is borne by the 

 lawyer, the doctor, the teacher, the editor, the banker, just as much as by you. And 

 yet we hear farmers grumble and say that all the other classes have the advantage 



