AGRICULTURAL APHORISMS. 1205 



water supply, convenient to markets reached by good roads, and 

 in a moral, wide-awake community. Mr. Intensive Farming 

 bought out his neighbor, Mr. Extensive Farming, some years ago, 

 and put up a new house and barn, while the latter went West, 

 where land was cheap and the cow could run on the range. 



Underdrains make soil faster than the glaciers. When a 

 man plants tile he plants that which needs neither manure nor 

 cultivation, and which yields many crops. God sends his rain 

 upon the just and the unjust alike, and he makes his seasons 

 the same for all men; but tempered drought and lessened flood, 

 earlier spring and later fall has the man with a well drained 

 farm. I have seen men add acres to their farms by putting in 

 the earth tile, or manure, or labor. 



For all parties it is cheaper for a man to fence his own stock 

 in than to fence all others out. Reduce the amount of fencing 

 by grouping plowed and mowed lands together. Have fencing 

 like Aunt Jane's onion : little, but strong. Weak fences are the 

 teachers that graduate breachy stock. The crops grown in the 

 fence corners mar many a farm. The man who puts up a gate 

 adds a day to the year. 



An idle plow half hid by the weeds in a fence corner sug- 

 gests improvidence kicking success out of the front door. Waste 

 and ill luck are twins. Rot and rust eat faster than wear and 

 tear. Paint to the wood, and oil to the steel of farm machinery 

 not in use, is gain to the farmer. Paint costs less than new 

 boards and beams. A workshop both makes and saves. Re- 

 pairs made early are made with ease and cheapness. It is bet- 

 ter to strengthen a weak place than to mend a break. It is 

 fully as important to utilize completely as to produce abun- 

 dantly. The man who burns his own straw is not accounted a 

 felon; yet he robs his stock, his farm, his family, and his coun- 

 try. It is said that this man raises thirty and that man sixty 

 bushels of corn per acre, but no note is taken of the fodder, so 

 little of it is saved ; yet of corn the fodder is almost as valuable 

 as the grain. If straw and corn fodder were saved, we could 

 winter more than twice the number of cattle we now have. 



Uncle Sam could better afford to lose half the revenues of 



