84 ILLINOIS dairymen's association. 



BOOK-KEEPING ON THE FARM. 



BY E. L. LAWRENCE, BELVIDERE, ILL. 



When asked to prepare a paper for this meeting, I replied, "I am not a 

 dairyman." When this objection was met and overcome, I replied, "I am not 

 a farmer. For five years the current of my thoughts and my reading has 

 been in another channel." We, at this time, are supposed, in all progress- 

 ive movements, to beat our progenitors of 100 years ago at least four to one. 

 History repeats itself. The five years that I have slept exactly corres- 

 ponds with the twenty years sleep of my illustrious prototype. If I am a little 

 old-fashioned or behind the times, like Rip Van Winkle, I offer this as an 

 excuse. 



The object of farming is to make money. The object of book-keeping is to 

 show what has been accomplished — where money has been made or lost. 

 Bookkeeping on the farm means systematic farming, not book farming, but 

 farming by some systematic plan, and keeping an account of the results. As 

 book-keeping will regain a plan or system in farming, and such a plan to be suc- 

 cessfully carried out will demand that accounts be kept and results noted, the 

 one involves the other and may be considered as synonymous terms. 



I thus define the title to this paper, and by such definition shall not confine 

 myself to the simple matter of keeping accounts on the farm, but shall roam 

 over the field at leisure, picking up a morsel here and there as occasion seems 

 to demand. Before going further I will more definitely define my position. 



As the object in view in farming is to make money, not this year only, but 

 the next and the following years, the necessity of keeping up the fertility of the 

 soil becomes apparent. The lands of the farmer constitute, in a majority of 

 cases, a large share of his capital. If the farm be allowed to become less fertile 

 or productive, the farmer is living off of his invested capital, and not from 

 profits. Further, book-keeping on the farm means something more than noting 

 the result in dollars and cents, of profits and losses on the farm, and this should 

 be the first thing attempted in systematic farming. I will here name it. It 

 will be a diagram of the farm, dividing it into lots, assigning different crops to 

 each lot for the present and succeeding years. This we will call a system of 

 rotation of crops. 



As book-keeping demands a system in farming, and a system demands rota- 

 tion of crops, rotation of crops will demand that the farm be thoroughly 

 drained, in order that all the farm may come under the plow as this rotation 

 proceeds. The advantage of tile-draining has been so often demonstrated and 

 admitted, that I shall not stop here to repeat what has been so often said. 

 These benefits are found on pasture land (perhaps less at first view) as well as 

 on cultivated fields. 



How shall we know what land needs draining ? is a question often asked. 

 I reply : below or at the surface of all land is what is known as water line, that 

 is, where water will stand or run if a ditch be dug in a wet time ; not during a 

 shower, but say twenty-four hours thereafter. If water will run in such a 

 ditch, say 2 feet deep, at such a time, the land needs draining ; if not, it needs 

 no draining. 



So, by this it will be seen, that draining on our moderately rolling prairies 



