114 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The judicious cultivation and mauagement of a farm, requires 

 a combined and practical exercise by the farmer of all the 

 knowledge and skill necessary for the cultivation of the articles 

 separately that are produced on the farm. 



It is obviously a different science from any other, more com- 

 plex, more difficult to learn, requiring judgment, experience, 

 and observation, to carry it into successful practice. Next in 

 value to an individual's own experience, is a true and particular 

 account by others, of a judicious and skilful cultivation and 

 management of farms like his own, where the expense of labor, 

 markets for crops, and habits of living are nearly the same, if 

 he can have their method and practice fully and accurately 

 communicated to him. 



Another great obstacle to farming well, is the want of capital, 

 which induces a waste. Many a young man having accumu- 

 lated a few hundred dollars by working on a farm, is prompted 

 by a laudable ambition to buy and act for himself, makes a 

 purchase of one for which he becomes largely indebted, orna- 

 ments it with a mortgage and skins the farm to pay interest, 

 Another common case is that where a farmer dying, one son 

 takes the farm to manage and pays off the other heirs ; to do 

 this he is to have money, a part of which he gets by selling every 

 thing he can; perhaps slashing into a valuable wood and timber 

 lot, or disposing of a choice lot of meadow and mortgaging his 

 farm for the remainder ; having thus a continued debt to pay 

 hanging always on him. In each of these instances, which are 

 by no means rare, a young farmer commences life with a burden 

 heavy to be borne under any circumstances, and which is likely 

 to be increased by sickness, or the failure of a crop, or the loss 

 of his animals ; and of all farm wastes, perhaps there is none 

 more consuming than paying interest money. John Randolph 

 once declared he had found the philosopher's stone, the secret 

 of living, it was "pay as you go." A false and ambitious style 

 of living is creeping in among the farmers, as foreign to their 

 real wants as it is to the way of life of those who preceded 

 them and the manner of their own " bringing up." 



Events crowded into the past year, strange in their design, 

 inception, execution, and results, beyond our wildest imagina- 

 tions, have tended to inspire us with a greater respect and 



