FARM ORGANIZATION IN SOUTHWESTERN MINNESOTA 75 
distribution by weeks of all labor on a 160-acre farm in the Windom 
area. 18 
These charts illustrate the fact that although the labor requirements 
for each crop are characterized by peak demands at certain periods, 
the whole cropping plan is so adjusted that the peaks of different 
crops never coincide. During the second and third weeks in June 
there is a peak in the total man labor caused by the coincidence of 
high labor demands of three different crops. The lower livestock labor 
requirements during the summer are more than offset by the larger 
amount of crop labor during this season. The result is higher total 
labor requirements during the crop season. 
The distribution of horse work is much less uniform than that of 
man labor. Man labor is usually so scarce in this region as to be the 
limiting factor in the farm organization and the labor plan is adjusted 
to the supply of it rather than to the supply of horse labor. Suffi- 
cient horses are kept to handle the peak demands, and even with the 
best labor distribution that can be planned horses will be working at 
less than their maximum capacity during, most of the year. 
DAY-TO-DAY MANAGEMENT OF LABOR 
In addition to planning an adjustment of crop and livestock enter- 
prises that will result in a desirable seasonal distribution of labor, the in- 
dividual farmer must work out from day to day the details of his labor 
plan. The object of this day-to-day management of the labor program 
is to reduce to a minimum the interference with the crop or livestock 
work of a seasonal character that must be done during fairly definite peri- 
ods. Certain tasks, such as feeding and caring for livestock, must be 
performed every day without fail. There is no shifting or avoiding this 
type of work and it can be definitely planned for in advance. For other 
types of work almost as difficult to shift, the exact dates can not be 
known in advance. Seed-bed preparation and seeding of oats in the 
spring are in this class. Some years this field work can be started in 
March, other years not until the latter part of April. The farmer can 
predict only a few days in advance when his fields will be in condition 
to work; once they are ready, however, any delay in starting work will 
not only result in increased competition for his time later on between 
oats and corn, but will be attended with risk of reduced yields as a 
result of later seeding. Each day the farmer must decide what are 
the most important tasks to be done on that day. As conditions 
interfere with their performance, attention must be turned to others 
that are most urgent in view of the changed conditions. A classifi- 
cation according to fixity of time of the various kinds of work per- 
formed on these Windom farms is presented in Table 46. 
In the day-to-day management of labor the work listed in the 
first column takes precedence. Next in order comes the work listed 
in the second column, which is fitted in during its appropriate season 
after the more pressing tasks have been attended to. The third 
class of tasks may be done at any time of the year that labor is not 
demanded for the other classes of work. The farmer who most 
carefully fits together these three classes of work in accordance with 
their time fixity will find fewer and less serious peaks in his labor 
demand and will distribute this demand most uniformly throughout 
the year. 
18 This is the same farm for which the distribution of livestock labor is presented in Figure 22. 
