CHAPTER II 



THE PLACE OF THE FOREST IN FARM MAN- 

 AGEMENT 



THE time has come when the woodlot should be given 

 its proper place in every scheme of farm management. 

 There was a time when every man in the prairie country 

 considered it good farming to put all of the land he could 

 plow into wheat; that time has passed. Even in the old 

 East, the early farmer too often thought of his farm in 

 terms of tillage and mowings and pasturage rather than 

 including forests. All land is not suited to the produc- 

 tion of wheat, nor can the best wheat land maintain its 

 fertility if planted to wheat continuously for a long series 

 of years. 



The key to successful farming to-day is the careful 

 classification of land (see page 19) and the no less careful 

 selection of the crops best suited to each class. The 

 enormous yields secured in some parts of the older coun- 

 tries are partly due to very intensive methods, but are 

 more largely dependent on the detailed study of the same 

 piece of land through several generations so that every 

 peculiarity of the soil is known, the crop exactly suited to 

 it selected. These methods will bring the highest yields, 

 but of course the cost of production and the market must 

 be carefully considered in order to obtain the highest net 

 returns. The high cost of labor may in one case prohibit 



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