40 Farmers^ Institutes. 



many farmers are apt to think that there is no profit unless it appears in a grow* 

 ing bank account. The merchant can discern a profitable year's business from 

 his animal inventory, although he may perhaps owe more money than he did at 

 the beginning of the year. The manufacturer can prove his prosperity without a 

 dollar invested in government bonds the last twelve months. Both use their prof- 

 its to enlarge their business or to increase their facilities for business. They think, 

 and rightly too, that thus they are prospering, while farmers, as a rule, will not 

 count farm improvements or even improved or increased stock as profit. 



A well-laid plan, courage to begin operations, patience to wait and persistence 

 to hold on to the consummation will surely give us success. The plan ought to 

 be comprehensive and cover a series of years. Our business is not one that will 

 give return of principal and interest each year. Let the endeavor be to improve 

 the farm, increase its capacity to bear future crops, and to put it in such shape a 

 will reduce the cost of future tillage. This to be in connection with a system of 

 farming that will insure an income for necessary expenses, leaving the improve- 

 ments in farm and stock to show our profits. We have tried to farm it on the 

 western plan too long — I mean the plan of selling our farms by annual installment 

 and calling the process income. The resurrection of New England farming must 

 come from the keeping of more stock. If we were to adopt the plan of selling 

 off the hay and grain how long could we go on ? It is this method of agriculture 

 which has caused the ruin of so many of the hill farms. The pastures have grown 

 up to brush because the cattle and sheep have been sold off to enable the farmer 

 to sell hay. The mowings have run out because the hay was sold and no manure 

 made with which to keep them up, and this depletion has gone to the limit of the 

 farms' endurance. These farms have become valueless because they could not 

 run themselves at a profit. 



My thoughts, you will observe, have run principally to hill farming, to which 

 my experience has been chiefly confined. Having asserted that mother earth will 

 repay us for intelligent, liberal and earnest treatment, you may perhaps expect 

 me to prove it by my owe experience. I began on the old farm in the spring of 

 1860, after two years of mercantile life, which left me with a debt that took sev- 

 eral years to wipe out. With the exception of a year in the Union army during 

 the rebellion. I have been a farmer. I found the old farm under a mortgage of 

 nearly half its value, the buildings were dilapidated. My father was discouraged 

 by losses in manufacturing. The cattle upou the farm were an average stock of 

 grades, with one thorough-bred short-horn cow in the decline of life. We have 

 paid the mortgage, built new barns, improved farm and stock, and although we 

 yet owe some money there is to-day due us more than we owe. We have learned 

 something as we have gone along. For the first few years I attempted to do most 

 of the work with my own hands. But we found that by this plan we could not 

 be in season with our work, that very many things were not well done and that 

 some things of special importance had to be entirely neglected. This kind of 

 farming was quite unsatisfactory. There was no pleasure in looking back over 

 the year's operations. Neither were we getting ahead as fast as we thought we 

 ought, while worse than all the elasticity of youth was rapidly wearing away. So 

 we concluded to be influenced by our judgment and employ more help. For the 

 last ten years we have been gradually increasing the amount of help and we find 

 the more we employ for legitimate farm labor the easier we bring the year around, 

 both physically and financially. We bhould make a liberal estimate when we de-, 

 cide upon the amount of help to hire. There is no danger, but that work for an 

 extra hand can be found at any time, for there are always numberless improve- 

 ments waiting for the leisure spell. These jobs will pay, many of them are such 

 that their (.'fleets will be permanent, paying us large dividends upon their cost 

 during our life-time and afterward blessing our successors. 



I would not advise a farmer to put all his eggs in one basket, yet I believe 

 that to succeed he must have some specialty — that is, there should be a concen- 

 tration of effort toward one crop for a money crop, while other crops help out or 

 are incidental Let me here suggest that the creamery on the Hatfield plan would 

 be just the thing for the towns remote from market. By making a good and sure 

 home market for all the cream that could be produced farmers would be stimula- 

 ted to keep more cows, and this would be the entering wedge to a sound improve- 



