ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 55 



Question. Would you lay tile in the center of a deep ravine ? 



Answer. If you lay but one tile, it wants to be the lowest point you can 

 possibly find, and let it follow the ravine through, if the ravine goes all over 

 the country. If there is much water running through the ravine you com- 

 mence with a 5 or 6 inch tile ; if it is a narrow ravine, you may calculate it will 

 drain from three to four rods on each side. If it is wider than eight rods, you 

 must have more than a single tile drain to drain it. • 



Mr. Cohoon : I understand Mr. Patrick is running two farms, and hiring 

 all his help, and I would like to hear what he has to say on that point ? 



Answer. I keep a careful account of all the outgoes and all the incomes of 

 my farm, just as careful as I would a bank account, and, on the whole, I make 

 my farms pay something — that is, pay a fair interest. It runs all the way from 

 three to ten per cent., but, I will say I do not think I could now make any 

 money on the farms in farming it in the way in which many farmers do. On a 

 small farm of 169 acres, I have seventy head of cattle, and my gross profits on 

 that farm last year, 1884, were $2,762. Of course, I did not raise all on 

 the farm that the animals ate. We had an average of 35 cows, and on 

 the milk of those cows I averaged $54 and some cents each, taken to the 

 factory and made up into butter and cheese ; that is what my 169 acres did. 

 That land paid me for the year 1884, 2 cents less than $6 an acre above all ex- 

 penses. It cost me about $53 an acre, that is, the land and the improvements ; 

 I suppose it is now worth $60 an acre ; I did not reckon any advance on the 

 land. This year the receipts will be about the same, and my expenses a little 

 less. I think the net profit on this year will be between 6 and 7 dollars an acre. 

 On my large farm I cannot do as well. In the first place, there is some waste 

 land on it, and I cannot manage five men to work there to make it as profitable 

 as the two men on the other farm. I have been trying to solve the question for 

 some time why I cannot make it pay as well, and I think that is the principal 

 thing. I can work two men along and accomplish a great deal more than I can 

 the five men together. They will take better care of 40 cows than the others will 

 of eighty. The last farm is 460 acres. I will say right here, I do not believe 

 there are 160 acres of land in this country but what may be made to produce from 

 50 to 100 per cent, more than it now produces, in five years, if you take hold of 

 it with a determination to do it. In the one matter of cutting the corn, I think 

 there is a great saving. A man who does not cut his corn, down in our neigh- 

 borhood, is not called a very good farmer now-a-days. If he kept 25 cows 

 before he cut up his corn, he can keep 35 now. We are studying up this thing 

 to see how much stock we can keep on our farms, and at the same time we 

 want to improve not only our land, but our buildings. For instance, the way 

 the old fashioned barns were built, the good is to a certain extent washed out 

 of the manure by its laying out in the barn-yard. Every farmer who builds 

 a barn now, builds it so he can drive straight up through it, and he takes every 

 shovel full right from there to the field every day. You can manure fifteen 

 acres now a year, where you could ten before. It is in the consideration of 

 such things as that that you can make a farm pay. We have got to make our 

 farms produce more hay, more grass, and more money. 



Question. Do we understand you to say that no manure is kept around 

 your barns ? 



