38 BULLETIN 582, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
the country. This is in large measure a heritage of the Indian 
days, when communal settlements were necessary for protection, and 
a man's land lay outside the stockade in more or less intermingled 
strips, after the fashion of mediaeval European agriculture. Much 
the same system still holds in parts of Europe, as well as in other parts 
of the world. "When all the land farmed is in one piece, or where the 
fields are located quite close together, the inconvenience of this 
arrangement is not so pronounced. But some farmers in this region 
have land lying in three or four different directions and none of 
it as close as 2 miles to the home. For example, a man will have a 
field -± miles from town in one direction, another field 3 miles away 
in another, and the remainder as far or farther away in a third. 
The roads may be so planned that the quickest route to any other 
field from one in which work is going on is back to town and then 
out. Under such conditions the time wasted on the road is a serious 
handicap to successful farm management. 
Even with the least inconvenient arrangement, that of having all 
the land in one block or in neighboring blocks at a distance of 1 
or more miles from town, many small economies are not possible. 
When the fields are widely separated the problem is intensified. Few 
men in the former situation have their land as close as 1 mile to town. 
A number from whom farm management records were secured live 
from 3 to 3.5 miles from the farms, sometimes farther. Each day 
during the busy season they lose from an hour and a quarter to two 
hours on the road. They rarely return for dinner in the middle of 
the day, but when they do so the time lost is doubled. 
These men find it practically impossible to use cows, hogs, or 
chickens as a side line. They therefore buy a pig or two in the 
spring to fatten for home use and sometimes have a few hens at the 
house, but their grocery bill for eggs and poultry often amounts to a 
large sum in the course of the year. A flock sufficient to supply the 
family throughout the year would be a serious nuisance to the neigh- 
bors in town, as would the pigsty. One team is kept in town prac- 
tically the entire year, as is the cow as long as she is fresh. She is 
grazed on hired pasture throughout the summer, driven out in the 
morning and back at night. The milk bill for a large family often 
is a considerable item after the cow goes dry. The remainder of the 
stock — that is, practically all the work horses or colts — is kept at 
the farm. During the winter about two trips are made per week 
to look the animals over, salt them, and see to the feed. For a part 
of the winter a considerable portion of the feed is picked up on the 
beet land if it is not fall plowed or on that part of it which is not 
so plowed. 
The farm garden usually is a very minor enterprise, if present at 
all under these conditions, and a considerable part of the family liv- 
ing, which otherwise would be raised in spare hours during the sum- 
