HAPPY HOLLOW FARM 215 



to run the cultivators in both directions and to 

 keep the rows entirely clean of weeds through 

 spring and early summer. In a dry time like 

 that we've just been through a heavy growth 

 of weeds in the rows would have done a lot of 

 harm by wasting moisture the corn needed. 

 We're strongly "agin" weeds in our crops at 

 Happy Hollow. I've had many chances for 

 measuring the advantages of both methods in 

 all parts of the state on the lands of good farm- 

 ers, and I haven't been able to find that the 

 new has anything on the old at harvest time. 

 A clean field after harvest counts for a lot 

 with us. So there's one proposition in which 

 we'll follow the old fashion against the new. 



That's been our rule on the farm to try 

 without prejudice any new cropping method 

 that gives a reasonable offer of better results, 

 but not to persist in it to our own cost just be- 

 cause it is new. We've know men who seemed 

 to think they weren't practicing modern farm- 

 ing unless every scrap and shred of every 'idea 

 in use belonged to the twentieth century. 

 That's foolish. There's a great deal of good 

 sound usage in the "old" farming. Indeed, 

 so far as I've been able to discover, modern 

 farming consists simply in doing the old things 



