70 BULLETIN 1271, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
The relative amount of this maintenance work varies widely 
between different farms and different years. In 1921 the range 
was from 5.2 per cent to 25.1 per cent of all man labor on the farm 
and from 2 to 15.9 per cent of the total horse labor. There was much 
less of this type of labor in 1921 than in 1920. The much larger 
amount of real estate work in 1920 as compared with 1921 is due to 
building construction and tiling undertaken that year. On account 
of the low prices of farm products prevailing in 1921 practically all 
construction work was postponed until the farmer should be better 
able to finance it. This type of work can be shifted at the farmer's 
convenience during any given year and can usually be shifted con- 
siderably during a period of years. In planning the labor supply for 
a farm or in planning an organization that will best utilize the avail- 
able supply of labor, due allowance must be made for these items of 
manure hauling, indirect labor on crops and livestock, and the various 
kinds of maintenance labor in addition to the direct labor already 
considered in the discussion of labor requirements for the individual 
crop and livestock enterprises. 
THE PLACE OF THE CROP, LIVESTOCK, AND MISCELLANEOUS LABOR IN THE LABOR 
PROGRAM OF THE FARM 
A representative distribution of labor for each of the important 
crops and kinds of livestock has already been shown. In order to 
avoid an undesirable piling up of the labor requirements, the farmer 
must have a knowledge of the way in which these requirements are 
distributed. The usual dates for performing the various operations 
characteristic of the major crops grown in the Windom area are 
shown in Figure 21. These dates may vary somewhat from year to 
year, but their general sequence remains substantially the same. 
There are certain periods during the growing season when several 
crops compete with each other for the farmer's time. Small-grain 
seeding conflicts with plowing for corn, alfalfa, and tame hay with 
corn cultivation, and stack threshing and rye seeding with silo filling 
and corn cutting. At other times such as during corn cultivation in 
June or corn husking and fall plowing, only one crop provides em- 
ployment for labor. Small grains conflict with each other in their 
labor requirements but compete with corn very little. The different 
kinds of hay conflict little with each other but compete with either 
small grains or corn for labor. The cropping plan for a farm must be 
so adjusted as to reduce these conflicts to a minimum and yet pro- 
vide as regular and continuous a succession of crop work throughout 
the season as possible. 
The labor on crops is seasonal and comes only at certain fairly 
definite periods during the year, but the livestock labor is distributed 
throughout the year. The different classes of livestock require labor 
simultaneously, but this competition for labor is not so important 
in the case of some classes of stock as the competition for feed, 
pasture, and building equipment. 
The distribution of man labor on livestock by weeks on a farm 
maintaining 34 animal units 17 of livestock is presented in figure 22. 
The "all-stock" labor corresponds to the " other" livestock labor 
in Table 45, and includes such work as hauling feed, grinding feed, 
and hauling bedding. The different classes of stock vary somewhat 
1* Sir foot ni.lcC, p. H. 
