GENERAL FARM MANAGEMENT. 19 



a large farm the proportion of fencing to the number of acres 

 may be greatly reduced, and thus one heavy item of investment 

 and expense be materially lessened. It must be remembered, 

 however, that to conduct successfully a large farm, requires 

 executive ability and business habits, and that many men can 

 successfully carry on a small farm who would fail on a large one. 



On the other hand, there are many advantages connected 

 with small farms. They are usually cultivated by their owners, 

 and this gives a more densely settled neighborhood and better 

 improvements. The man on the small farm can largely dispense 

 with hired help, and save his wife the extra labor which their 

 board and lodging brings upon her, often when she is already 

 overburdened with the care of little children. The man on the 

 small farm can usually control his expenses so that a failure 

 of crops will not be so disastrous to him as to the man with a 

 large farm. As a rule, small farms are more thoroughly culti- 

 vated, and produce more, in proportion to their size, than larger 

 ones, and this means larger yields per acre and less cost per 

 bushel. 



Adaptation of Farm to Individual is another important 

 consideration. Tastes differ in farming as well as in other mat- 

 ters, and while one man prefers to make a specialty of sheep, 

 another will prefer cattle or hogs. One man delights in "high 

 farming," and will succeed best as a "truck farmer," cultivating 

 a few acres with a large amount of labor and manure, while 

 another has no taste for this method, but wants to follow the 

 regular order of large breadths of staple crops. Now, each man 

 will succeed best in that which he likes best, and should consult 

 his taste in purchasing a farm. If he wishes to make a specialty 

 of sheep, a high, rolling farm will be best for him. If hogs, he 

 will require rich bottom lands or loamy upland. If he wishes 

 to follow truck farming, he must locate near a village or .city 

 where labor is abundant and he can obtain manure and find a 

 market for his products, and he must have warm, sheltered land, 

 or he can not get his vegetables into market early and realize the 

 best prices. Thousands of farmers have worked at a disadvan- 

 tage all their lives simply because they did not consider this 



