GENERAL FARM MANAGEMENT. 25 



forty years, with many farms two-thirds of which are kept under 

 the plow. Some of these farms have not during that time pro- 

 duced an average of ten bushels of wheat or thirty of corn to 

 the acre, and yet the owners keep on in the old ruts, producing 

 crops which five minutes' calculation would show them do not 

 pay the expense of cultivation, and apparently deluding them- 

 selves with the idea that they are doing something because they 

 are going over so much land each year. Their management 

 recalls the anecdote of the German clothier who solemnly assured 

 his customer that he was selling his goods at less than cash cost, 

 and on being asked how he made a living, answered : " Pecos I 

 sells so many." 



There are a few facts connected with this question of the 

 amount of land to plow that should be understood by every 

 farmer : 



First All the profit in farming comes from maximum crops. 

 From the statistics, as shown by the census reports of the 

 United States, it appears that the average yield of the corn 

 crop is about thirty bushels per acre, and that the average yield 

 of the wheat crop is about fourteen bushels per acre. That 

 these averages will give no profit is evident to every experi- 

 enced farmer, and as these are the averages, there must be many 

 who grow less, for we know there are many who grow much more 

 to the acre. We might, then, divide farmers into three classes 

 those who are growing crops above the average and make money, 

 those who grow average crops and make a living, and those who 

 grow crops below the average and barely keep soul and body 

 together. 



Second The man who cultivates a smaller part of his land 

 can do it more thoroughly, and can have it richer. It is often of 

 the greatest importance to a crop that the cultivation should be 

 at a certain stage of growth or condition of soil; for example, 

 on our heavy clay lands a heavy rain forms a crust, which should 

 be broken as soon as possible after the land is dry enough to 

 work. The farmer who undertakes to cultivate forty acres with 

 one team is obliged to neglect this at this critical time,- and his 

 crop is often permanently injured. If, as I believe, the adage 



