166 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



all sorts of late vegetables with good success. Of the two acres of pota- 

 toes, one-half was planted in corn after the last plowing of potatoes; one- 

 half acre of German millet was sown the 24th of May, after the last plow- 

 ing of the potatoes; the millet harvested the 25th of August, and the 

 ground disked up twice ready for alfalfa early in September. 



"Five hundred loads of manure have been hauled onto the place in 

 the last three years besides what the farm has produced itself. As many 

 as thirty loads to the acre have been hauled from town, two miles dis- 

 tant. I do not know just how much good the large quantities of manure 

 did the land, but I think that the $1,000 is a good answer, and I will 

 hear more of it in the future. In years to come the crops will tell. I 

 have 326 bushels of corn at hand and the rest is cut up in the shocks 

 for feed. Of my potatoes, I still have about 200 bushels on hand, and, as 

 we raised considerable fruit and vegetables during the summer, we have 

 a good supply ready for winter. 



"Am I hauling more manure, to raise more corn, to make more money, 

 to buy more land? No! No! No! If I had more land I would have to 

 hire some help, and hired help is hard to get for my style of farming. 

 My 12-year-old girl knows more about my work than a great many men 

 do, and for the past two years I have never called upon my wife to 

 assist with the outside work. We neighbors exchange work and I always 

 aim to be ready for the work and look ahead and help out some other 

 fellow who is overloaded with more land than he can manage. 



"Farming carried on intensively looks to many persons like starvation, 

 and not profitable enough to support a family or lay something away for 

 a rainy day. There are two ways of looking at a small farm, and the 

 common one is that, rather than a place to make a good living, the small 

 farm is a hard place to live, and a place which should be sold as quickly 

 as anything else offers. The other way of looking at it, and the way 

 that it looks to me is this: the ownership of a few acres of land is a 

 mark of honor; to hold a clear title to a few acres of land is a title 

 which ranks above the titles of nobility; the ownership is absolute and 

 the proprietor is independent, and it is his duty to himself and to the 

 coming generations to keep up fertility and improvement on his land. 



"The more intensive the method of farming carried on, the more neces- 

 sary is experience, and the getting of this experience lies in working out 

 the problems of the field and getting the answer direct from nature, in 

 the garden, the orchard, the field or the granary. How to bring about 

 the rural changes necessary for a better education on the farm is a 

 question, the answer to which must come from the colleges. But the 

 colleges have failed in many ways to keep the college trained young man 

 on the farm and, this being the case, I contend that the world's best 

 agricultural college is a home on the farm. By this I mean the small 

 farm, for personal work is best for the man, the land and the coming 

 generation. There is no school or college in the country that gives as 

 varied an education and instruction as farm life, nor one which so strong- 

 ly and lastingly impresses the mind of the student. It is a school where 

 common rense is taught by common things, and how to use them to the 

 best advantage. And such wisdom comes only through doing common 



