Another great field for reform which is frequently entirely 

 overlooked is the adequate and careful preparation beforehand 

 for each particular job, and the longer beforehand the better. 

 Too many of us do not discover that there is a broken casting 

 on the mowing machine until we drive out into the hay field 

 with it in July and start to mowing. This ought to have been 

 discovered way back in February or March, and the repairs 

 ordered then. We order our apple barrels in September, when 

 they are harder to get and cost us more than they would have 

 in May or June. We discover in March that the power sprayer 

 is out of order, when we ought to have found that out in 

 November, and have had the engine expert give it a thorough 

 overhauling. Another phase of the same question is preparing 

 one day for the work of the following day. If planting corn is 

 the job, we must not only see to it that the corn-planter is in 

 working order, but we must be sure that there is a neck yoke 

 and set of whiffletrees on it; that the oil can has not been 

 borrowed from it and not returned; that there is a monkey- 

 wrench in the tool box, and that the seed corn is ready. 

 Unless some thought is put on just such details as these we are 

 pretty sure to get out in the field and find something missing 

 and have to return to the house for it. An old neighbor of the 

 writer's out in Kansas used to remark, when he had to go 

 back to the house after a clevis or a wrench, " Well, he who has 

 not brains has legs;" and more than one of us has to depend a 

 good deal on our legs. It makes a vast deal of difference in 

 the work accomplished during the day whether we get on the 

 job in the morning at the drop of the hat, or whether it takes 

 us till 9 o'clock before things are really in running order. 



One ought also to have a special list of work for rainy days 

 and parts of days posted up somewhere or carried in the hip 

 pocket, so that it is ready at a moment's notice. A good many 

 days' work is lost on the average farm in the average climate 

 because the boss does not know what to put the men at when 

 a sudden shower stops haying or spraying. Some loss is in- 

 evitable, but most of it could be avoided by a little fore- 

 thought. 



Another point worth considering, though of less importance 

 than the last, is the shifting of men and teams from a job that 



