

THE DIVERSIFIED FARM. 



*"*~'*~'*"?ffi!i4'5 







.7n diversified farming- by irrigation lies lite salvation of agriculture. 



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

 this object in view it requests its readers everywhere to send in photographs and 

 pictures 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 appearance of THE AGE? 



FOR THE FARMERS. 

 The Illinois Farmer's Institute proposes 

 to inaugurate a "Little Bed School House'' 

 campaign. Plans were laid recently for 

 the most important work in Agricultural 

 Education ever set on foot in the State, 

 The Illinois Farmers's Institute is an 

 organization under the laws for the pro- 

 motion of Institute work among the 

 farmers. The Farmer's Institute is a sort 

 of University extension movement. It 

 brings instruction in crop growing and 

 live stock breeding, right to the farmer's 

 door. The Agricultural Colleges are 

 growing constantly and largely in attend- 

 ance but only a tithe of the Agricultural 

 population can go away to college, and 

 hence instruction is being brought into 

 farming communities where all may have 

 a chance to take advantage of it. This 

 work has been of remarkable growth and 

 astonishing benefits. 



The Illinois Farmer's Institutevis corn- - 

 posed of one member from each Con- 

 gressional district and has a general 

 supervision, over the work in this State. 

 Three kinds of meetings are held one 

 State Institute annually and Congress- 

 ional district, and Coiinty Institute. 

 These latter"are usually held once a year, 

 sometimes oftener. 



Great as is the work done by those 

 meetings. it'has long been felt that they 

 were not brought close enough to the 



people and at the last State meeting a 

 committee was appointed to consider the 

 plan of organizing Institutes in every 

 township in the State, to be held once a. 

 month except in the harvest months of 

 July and August. This Committee 

 devoted sometime to the study of the 

 problem at a recent meeting at the Sher- 

 man House. 



Those present were Col. Chas. F. Mills,. 

 Springfield, Chairman; G. A. "Willmarth, 

 Seneca, President of the State Institute: 

 Amos F. Moore, Polo, and C. J. Linde- 

 mann and W. K. Goodwin, Jr. , Chicago. 

 An outline cf the plan adopted is as- 

 follows: The Committee will request 

 from the Presidents of the County Insti- 

 tutes the names of the representative- 

 active farmer in each township to organize 

 the Institute. 



In case these men are not named the 

 supervisor in each Township will be com- 

 missioned 'to put -the movement on foot. 

 He will be requested to associate with him 

 a school teacher in the Township, and one 

 woman, who will- look after the Home 

 Making part of the program. A constitu- 

 tion will be drafted by a sub-committee 

 (Messrs. Mills, Lindeman, and Mann) to- 

 be used as a working basis. Another sub- 

 committee (Messrs. Mills, "Willmarth, and. 

 Goodwin) will draft a program of the 

 topics for discussion for each month in the 

 year which may be varied to meet local 



