CHAPTEE VII 



NECESSARY PREPARATION FOR THE BUSINESS OF 

 FARMING 



ACCORDING to government investigations 

 forty per cent, of the farmers of the coun- 

 try believe that the business of farming can only 

 be learned by personal experience, and they take 

 no stock in farmers' institutes, demonstration 

 agents, farm papers or Department of Agricul- 

 ture publication as aids in the business of farm- 

 ing. 



We have ever been taught from our youth that 

 experience is the best teacher, but we forget that 

 experience "is the extract of suffering, " that it 

 is the name given to our follies. The chief trou- 

 ble with most of us is we will not learn from the 

 suffering of another, we must suffer ourselves. 

 Experience is of no value unless it is made to 

 illuminate the path we are yet to tread. We who 

 say we can learn only from our own experiences, 

 should remember the words of Benjamin Frank- 

 lin who said that "Experience is a dear school 

 but fools will learn in no other way and scarce 

 in that." 



There has been such a changed condition in the 

 character of our soils and the methods of farming 

 necessary to bring success that it is the height of 



folly to try to conduct much of the business of 



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