i2o My Little Farm 



up. Have such a useless race of men been ever 

 before permitted to occupy such a fertile area of 

 the earth for such a length of time ? Our peasant 

 proprietor, now pampered to atrophy, must some 

 day try to answer this and nastier questions of the 

 kind, and he will never find the answer until he 

 enters on private property in himself, instead of 

 remaining a mental and moral instrument under 

 alien direction. 



When the great war broke out in the autumn 

 of 1914 and the cost of foods suddenly ran so high, 

 I stopped all bag stuff for every animal in the place 

 but a few of the younger calves. The following 

 weeks were an anxious time. At the prices of food 

 and of calves, the calves could not possibly pay 

 for the food. On the other hand, without bag 

 stuff, they might decline, perhaps die, and the loss 

 would be greater still. I had plenty of vetches, 

 with some cabbage, and the calves went on growing. 

 I never had them better grown, stronger or looking 

 more healthy, and the only difference I could see 

 was a little less meat on them, which was promptly 

 recovered later in the season, when the food prices 

 fell. The provincial vetch and the Imperial Navy 

 had enabled me to do it, and I doubled my pro- 

 duction of vetches for the following year. I have 

 never seen finer crops of vetches than I can grow, 

 on land at a purchase annuity of 35. yd. an acre, 

 and the soil is left nearly half manured by the 

 aerial nitrogen fixed through the leguminous 

 roots for a following crop of rape or mangolds. 

 Who would spend his life quarrelling about the 



