THE DIVERSIFIED FARM. g 



In diversified farming by irr/g-af ion lies 1he salvation of agriculture. 



THE AGE wants to brighten the pages of its Diversified Farm department and with 

 this object in view it requests its readers everywhere to sand in photographs and pic- 

 tures of fields, orchards and farm homes; prize-taking horses, cattle, sheep or hogs, 

 Also sketches or plans of convenient and commodious barns, hen houses, corn cribs, 

 etc. Sketches of labor-saving devices, such as ditch cleaners and watering troughs. 

 A good illustration of a windmill irrigation plant is always interesting. Will you help 

 us improve the appearancfe of THE AGE? , 



DIVERSIFIED AGRICULTURE. 



When I was a boy in northern Ken- 

 tucky my folks thought the only profitable 

 farm crop was tobacco, and our friends 

 down the Mississippi said cotton was king. 

 A few years later, as a young man, I re- 

 sided in central Illinois where the farmers 

 claimed corn as the only real money- mak- 

 ing product of soil culture. In my present 

 locality, a high mountain valley, 7,000 feet 

 above sea level, I am informed that wheat 

 is the money crop and it is useless to plant 

 any other cereal for profit. But a varied 

 experience on different farms> and prac- 

 tical observation of farming in twenty 

 states of the South and West, has proven 

 to me that the only profitable way to han- 

 dle the farm, applicable to all classes of 

 farmers, is to diversify the products. In 

 no community where the farmers are de- 

 voted to any special product, have I no- 

 ticed that independence and prosperity 

 characteristic of the small, well-tilled and. 

 diversified farms, managed by the modern 

 farmers who always have something to sell 

 from the barn, stackyard, meathouse, 

 granery or cellar. I hav learned that 

 while cotton may be king and corn queen, 

 they require the assistance of the many 

 field, garden and orchard products, wr}h 

 the animals and fowls of the barnyard to 

 complete the royal cash-producing family 

 of the farm. 



In my work as a census enumerator in 

 1890, 1 found a man who owned 57 

 acres, ten of which were not tillable, and 

 from that small farm he had an income of 

 about $9,000 a year. He had five acres in 

 orchard and small fruits, the yield averag- 

 ing over $500 an acre yearly. The three 

 acres of grapes, as his books showed, re- 

 turned $1,650 the third year after plant- 

 ing. In the orchard were 105 stands of 

 bees, producing 5,000 pounds of market- 

 able honey every year. The barnyard con- 

 tained 300 fowls, divided among the chick- 

 ens, ducks, geese and turkeys, every one 

 of which, I know by experience, returns 

 one dollar yearly to the owner. He had 

 20 or more milch cows in the yard and 

 pasture, raising calves and supplying milk 

 for making marketable butter and cheese. 

 An ordinary cow will pay for her feed and 

 yield a profit of at least $3.00 per month, 

 and a good one will give a profit of $7)11 a 

 year, so that this farmer lost nothing on 

 his horned stock. His hay meadow yielded 

 75 tons and about three tons of alfalfa 

 seed, while the fields gave good returns of 

 corn, beans, peas, pumpkins and root 

 crops. He had several sheep, hogs and 

 horses, the increase being sold once a year, 

 leaving the original number on the farm. 

 The farm was situated in a low, hot, sandy 

 valley, which produce sweet potatoes, pea- 

 nuts and fruits, but not wheat, oats or 

 potatoes. 



