52 WE FARM FOR A HOBBY 



practice has not only altered profoundly in the 

 last thirty years, it is changing and improving 

 all the time. 



The state courses generally share a defect com- 

 mon to all government publications (and our na- 

 tional farm policies) and to many books: they are 

 written namely for or at the commercial or money 

 farmer. In principle commercial farming and 

 farming for home use are essentially the same. In 

 practice they can, and usually do, differ radically. 

 The capital investment needed for even a modest 

 commercial enterprise is generally quite beyond 

 the reach of one designed to pay out only a living 

 in kind. This is not a fatal defect, since anyone 

 with a modicum of imagination can adapt the 

 teachings of commercialism to his amateur ends. 

 Altogether the state courses have been worth much 

 more to me than the time and postage spent on 

 them. For they not only taught me a lot I did not 

 know; they revealed mainly by indirection plenty 

 more that I did not realize was to be known. And 

 they saved my feet from many erroneous pitfalls. 



The beginner's tendency is to create what he 

 fondly supposes are startling new and revolution- 

 ary theories of procedure. Except for what is predi- 

 cated on new scientific findings there is practically 

 nothing under the sun agriculturally that has not 

 been tried and tested somewhere, sometime. The 

 state courses helped me to a fuller appreciation 



