SEVENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 569 



WINTER AN IMPORTANT SEASON. 



Many people are inclined to regard winter as wholly a resting spell 

 for the farmer. The inexperienced speak of the chores on the farm in 

 winter and the cutting of the year's supply of wood as employment so 

 light as to hardly more than give the farmer the exercise he needs. To 

 the man who has had active experience on a profitably operated farm, 

 the work of winter will be recognised as fully as important as that of any 

 other time of the year. If the farmer is paying the proper attention to 

 keeping up the fertility of the soil and making the most possible revenue 

 out of his farm, his chores in winter will not be light. He will plan for 

 his winter's work. The feeding and care of enough live stock to con- 

 sume all the fodder and the greater portion of the grain raised on the 

 farm during the summer. However, crops should not be taken off the 

 farm year after year without any equivalent return in the form of fertil- 

 izers; and it will invariably be noticed that the farmer whose crops and 

 fields show a fine fertility of soil, is the man whose yards are alive with 

 stock of various kinds, converting feed into beef, pork, mutton and fertil- 

 izers, the latter to be of great value on the farm the coming year. On 

 that account the winter season of the "up-to-date" farmer, who is making 

 the best success of the business, is one of the busiest seasons of the year. 

 It takes good mental, as well as physical effort, to work out a campaign of 

 feeding in which there will be good profits; but the results are always 

 worth the effort. If the farmer finds a market at home for his hay and 

 grain, at good market prices, and leaves on the farm a good stock of val- 

 uable fertilizer, it is a winter's work well spent. 



WOULD NOT LIVE OX FARM. 



It is true that some people that live in the city could not be induced 

 to go on the farm to live for love or money. They say it is a dull, 

 miserable life to live. But let me tell you right here the "up-to-date" 

 farmer is strictly "in it" now-a-days, and what I mean by the "up-to- 

 date" farmer is the one that has the improved styles of machinery, 

 thoroughly prepares his seed-bed and plants his crops as I have stated 

 in preceding pages. Good barns to store them in and plenty of well bred 

 stock to consume what he raises. He also has the telephone and gets all 

 the latest news almost before it gets in print, also the rural free delivery 

 right at this door every day; and then some people in the city say 

 farmers are deprived of more pleasure than they are. Very well, two- 

 thirds of the people living in the city don't live near as well as those 

 on a farm, where you produce nearly everything consumed. Having 

 lived on a farm for nearly forty years, I know, and am sure, I have as 

 much pleasure as those people living in town. 



ENTERTAINMENT ON THE FARM. 



Could the farmers of this country who feel dissatisfied with their 

 position in life and yearn for a life of more variety and excitement, but 

 know of the actual grinding monotony of commercial life for the dealers 

 and workers in other lines of industry, whose net incomes at the end 

 of the year are considerably less than their own, they would be less 



