SIXTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. S47 



which sweep over his fields will he collected and harnessed to cultivate 

 his lands and do his bidding. He will plant belts of timber which 

 will equalize the rain fall and protect his home and his crops. He will 

 better conserve the moisture for his crops in times of drougth and drain 

 his lands for times of flood so that crop failure will almost be unknown to 

 him. Our possibilities are boundless, limited only by the power of man 

 to grasp them. "We need not look to other fields for the exercise of our 

 intelligence. Upon our horizon lies a bow of promise upon which is 

 written "All things are possible to he that believeth." 



WHAT IS UP-TO-DATE FARMING? 



F. .T. wiEK, before Humboldt County Farmers' Institute. 



The expression "up-to-date" might be construed by different people in 

 many different ways but I shall accept the expression as meaning, the 

 most profitable and excellent system considered from all points of 

 view. Up-to-date farming then would be that system of farming which 

 will bring the farmer the largest possible return on his investment 

 of money and labor. It goes without saying that up to date farming in 

 Iowa is diversified farming. 



The up-todate farmer so invests his money and labor that a profit may 

 be made on both, and having invested them he is as careful to reap that 

 profit as is the merchant on each article of merchandise in which he 

 invests, or the banker on each note and mortgagee in which he invests. 

 The up-to-date farm.er endeavors to make every acre of land he owns 

 bring him in as large a return as is possible; to make each head cf 

 stock he keeps pay a profit on the investment and its feed; to make 

 every piece of machinery he buys pay a profit either in the saving of labor 

 or the better work done. 



There was a time when we could buy land for $10 per acre, five per 

 cent interest on that land was 50 cents per acre and when we had made 

 50 cents per acre and expense of working it the rest was profit. Now 

 we pay $80 per acre and the interest on that is $4.00 per acre and every 

 man who does not make his land pay him an average of $4.00 per acre 

 and taxes and all expense of farming it is losing money. There was a 

 time when we bought land for from five to ten dollars per acre, half 

 farmed the high land and let the low land lie in soughs and ponds, and 

 the rise in land values still made us money. That day has gone by. 



There was a time when we bought calves for from four to seven dollars 

 per head in the fall; cows and steers for one to two cents per pound 

 when our pasture and hay land cost us nothing; raised our corn on five 

 to twenty dollar land; got men for twelve to twenty dollars per month 

 and made a profit on feeding and milking. Those days have passed away. 

 A large per cent of the farmers who we call well off have put in from 

 twenty-five to fifty years the best part of their lives in hard labor and 

 careful economy and have not made a penny in legitimate farming beyond 



