VOL. XLIX. NO. 21 3 1 . NEW YORK, NOVEMBER ?9, i89o. pr Sp f ^ e v1Se ts ' 
FARM MANAGEMENT. 
“ If I Could Be Young Again ! ” 
C. 8 RICE. 
Farm Experiment Stations.— If I could throw off 
half a century, I would make my farm practically an 
experiment station. If a man expects to succeed as a 
farmer he must be industrious. If the farmer wishes to 
accumulate property he must be economical. But in¬ 
dustry and economy combined will not insure successful 
farm management. Sound judgment is indispensable in a 
measurement, should be made, and on this and in a note¬ 
book provided for the purpose, careful records of all ex¬ 
periments and of the management of each field should be 
kept. A new map may be made each year, the old one 
being preserved for reference. Planning and conducting 
experiments year by year and keeping a careful record of 
the same will be very sure to develop ability and establish 
habits of observation and comparison in themselves of 
prime value to a farm manager. Especially will this be 
true if the young farmer occasionally attends a meeting of 
the Grange or a farmers’ institute and after listening to 
but as the bone and ashes and salt were applied to the 
whole field alike, I could not determine their value either 
to the potatoes, wheat or meadow, and to day I do not 
know whether the continued productiveness of that field 
was due to the bone and ashes, or to the light coat of rich 
manure applied, or to elements of fertility contained in 
dead Quack Grass roots, or to the very thorough cultiva¬ 
tion given the soil with the potato crop, the previous corn 
crop, and also in the preparation for wheat that followed. 
These all may have had an influence, but if at that time 
I had been in the habit of deliberately planning experi- 
CHAMPIONSHIP GAME BETWEEN THE FARMERS AND POLITICIANS. 
WILL IT BE “DEUCE” OR “GAME”? See Editorial Page. Fig. 3S9. 
UMPIRE UNCLE SAM: “Advantage In-Bless you, my Girl! Are you ready? Play!” 
first-class farmer. Correct judgment depends on ability to 
observe and compare. Observation and comparison, like 
other powers of mind, are susceptible of cultivation and 
the young farmer will act wisely in pursuing a course 
calculated to develop these useful faculties with which 
Nature has endowed him. How can this be done ? By 
making his farm practically an experiment station. Very 
little expenditure of time, labor or money will be required 
to make experiments sufficiently accurate to prove of 
great value in farm practice. An hour’s thought will 
suggest 20 useful experiments that may be commenced 
during the first year of farm management. To begin such 
a course is to awaken interest. To watch progress and 
note results, is to cultivate those qualities of mind on 
which success of a farmer largely depends. A map of the 
farm as accurate as possible without actual survey and 
others, gives a carefully prepared account of his experi¬ 
ments and of any marked success or failure that may have 
occurred in his own experience. 
I have made some experiments in farming; but in re¬ 
viewing results can see many places where a little more 
diligence might have proved very useful, and would cer¬ 
tainly have been of much interest. Some years ago I dis¬ 
solved or softened several tons of bones by mixing them 
with wood ashes and keeping the whole in a moist condi¬ 
tion for several months. About oOO pounds of bone and 30 
bushels of ashes mixed with a barrel of refuse salt were 
applied to each acre of the potato crop just as the plants 
were coming up. This I regarded as an experiment at the 
time, and thought it successful as the crop was the best 
raised in town that year. Afterwards the field proved un¬ 
expectedly productive in wheat, and, later, as a meadow. 
ments and keeping careful record of them by means of 
a map and note-book, no doubt one part of the field would 
have been left without the application of bone and ashes, 
and another part without the salt. If that had been done, 
I would now be telling The Rural of the approximate 
value of hone and ashes as a manure for potatoes and of 
the permanence of their effects on the productiveness of 
the soil, and also of the value of salt to a potato crop in a 
dry season. 
Well, the crop was a very profitable one any way, and 
was followed by one of the best wheat crops that I ever 
raised, and for the next five years the meadow gave me 
more satisfaction than auy I ever owned. The potato tops 
remained green several weeks after all others in the neigh¬ 
borhood had died; but how much the salt had to do with 
this or how much was owing to late continued cultivation 
