1909. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
123 
DAIRYING IN VERMONT. 
The Bashful State Again. 
Business Progress.— Although there 
are in Vermont, as in other States, too 
many men dairying with poor cows 
and carrying on their business in the 
backhanded, haphazard way which 
comes of poor cows and poor thinking, 
still the general trend of dairying in 
Vermont is toward better cows, better 
fed and housed. In every neighbor¬ 
hood are men who keep a registered 
bull and are raising the standard of 
•their herds with each generation of 
heifers raised. The State also contains 
many fine herds of purebred cattle of 
the four dairy breeds and milking 
Short-horns. The secretaries of the 
Ayrshire and Holstein-Friesian cattle 
clubs reside in the State, and have fine 
herds of their respective breeds, and 
President E. A. Darling of the Jersey 
Cattle Club has a fine farm in the 
neighborhood of the writer. The State 
has a wide-awake Dairymen’s Associa¬ 
tion and a Board of Agriculture ap¬ 
pointed by the Governor. Tuberculosis 
is the cause of the destruction of many 
animals, and even' herds, each year, 
and there appears to be need of more 
knowledge concerning the disease, and 
especially a letter understanding of 
prevention and control by sunlight and 
pure air. isolation of affected animals, 
etc. A bill now before the Legislature 
provides for $40,000 to be used to re¬ 
imburse cow-owners for animals con¬ 
demned and slaughtered by the State, 
and it is a question whether one-half 
that amount used in educative work 
would not have more effect in control¬ 
ling the disease than the present indis¬ 
criminate slaughter of every reacting 
animal. This is a matter which will 
doubtless take care of itself satisfactor¬ 
ily as the years go by. 
Characteristic Cases. —Now for a 
few concrete instances of what has been 
done by men in this neighborhood; men 
who, starting out with little capital in 
money but plenty of the capital of grit 
and determination, have won out. One 
young man, after marriage, carried on 
his father’s farm “at the halves” for 
three years, getting a little “nest-egg” 
thereby, which he paid down and hired 
the remainder necessary to buy a farm a 
few miles from his old home, the price 
being $ 2200 . This farm had a fair house 
and usable barns, a fair sugar place and 
some lumber, and after getting out 
enough lumber to modernize the barns, 
the remainder of soft timber and sugar 
maples were sold for an even thousand 
dollars on the stump. Seven or eight 
years after the farm was bought the 
young man owned it clear and had on 
it a herd of 15 grade Holsteins which 
were good for 300 pounds of butter per 
cow each year. About this time the 
farm was sold for an advance of $300 
over purchase price, the nice Holsteins 
sold for a good price, and a larger farm 
bought for $6500 with 30 cows and 
necessary tools. This farm and herd 
were handled in the careful, business¬ 
like manner which had proved so suc¬ 
cessful on the smaller farm, until the 
mortgage was paid, when again he sold 
out everything, farm and equipment, for 
$7500, and has bought another farm in 
the same neighborhood. This man is 
only a little past 40 and. it goes without 
saying, is a wideawake, progressive 
dairyman. Another young man with 
money saved from working out, pur¬ 
chased about a dozen years ago a small 
farm a mile from Newport for $2500. 
Some cows and a team were included 
in this deal, and this man, by doing most 
of his work himself and selling his dairy 
products and poultry, eggs, early pota¬ 
toes, etc., direct to consumer or to fancy 
grocery trade, has turned off each year 
$1200 to $1400, and on account of a 
death in his family sold out a few 
months ago for $3500. This was only 
an 80-acre farm, but the location was 
first class, enabling him to obtain top 
prices for all his products. 
Increasing Small Capital. — An¬ 
other young man purchased a farm 14 
years ago for about $3,000, including 
stock and tools. Four or fine hundred 
dollars was the extent of this man’s 
capital, and the remainder was hired 
from a prosperous farmer in the neigh¬ 
borhood. The last dollar of this mort¬ 
gage was paid last Spring, and in this 
time the man has been twice married 
and buried both wives and had eight 
small children left, and has now for 
some years run his house with hired 
help. Much of this man’s profit has 
come from raising cows to sell, and his 
farm and equipment would sell now 
for over $7,000. One more: A man 
past middle age bought a $2,500 farm 
with borrowed money. This farm had 
a poor reputation as a money-maker, 
and the general verdict was “Stung!” 
He laughs best who laughs last, how¬ 
ever, and this man sold the sugar 
place, which was a large one, for 
$1,200 on the stump. This gave him a 
good start, and now, at the end of 15 
years, he owns his farm and equip¬ 
ment and has a herd of grade and 
purebred Jerseys which bring in about 
$5 every day in the year. This man 
likes horses, and sells one or two nice 
young ones every year. These are a 
few instances of men who have worked 
their way out, depending on cows and 
cow products for an income. 
Hay Farmers. — Occasionally, how¬ 
ever, there is a man who prefers to 
sell hay for profit and keep only cows 
enough to pay running expenses. I 
will give or three instances where this 
plan has worked out wellOne young 
man, near here, went in debt with his 
father for a 400-acre farm. Their 
mortgage was seven or eight thousand 
dollars, and a couple of years after 
they started in the older man died, 
leaving the young man to fight it out 
alone. This was a dozen years ago, 
and now the young man owns the 
farm, having bought out the other 
heirs. A herd of 25 cows has been 
kept to pay running expenses, but the 
real crop has been hay. It is a river 
farm, and natural grass land, and be¬ 
sides feeding the cows and teams, cuts 
annually enough hay to firing in $800 
to $1,000 or more. The house has been 
recently repaired, and a modern barn 
will soon replace the old ones. An¬ 
other man, in Addison County, pur¬ 
chased a 265-acre farm for $6,000, with 
a good house and fair barns. This 
man had a couple of thousands to pay 
in and hired the balance; keeps 20 cows, 
lots of young cattle, 50 to 75 sheep and 
half a dozen horses, and sold last year 
$1,200 worth of hay. This man is a 
worker, makes butter and gets top 
prices, and speculates in cows some¬ 
what; is sending his children through 
high school and college, and, although 
he has been on this farm only a half 
dozen years, is looked upon as a win¬ 
ner. All these men have succeeded in 
spite of the handicap of lack of capital. 
They were all born and brought up on 
farms, and had a fair measure of, not 
only the “know how,” but the spirit of 
the proverb that “All things come to 
him who hustles while he waits.” Of 
course there are lots of other instances 
like these, and also many instances of 
men who, starting in with more money 
and seemingly brighter prospects, have, 
for one reason or another, fallen by 
the way. • 
Family Settlements. —The story of 
the unfortunate young man who figured 
as the youngest son in the article in 
The R. N.-Y. recently would never 
have a counterpart in this section. I 
Lave in mind several younger sons 
who have stayed on the old farm until 
the time came to divide the estate, 
when they put in a bill for services for 
the time since they were 21, and with 
this for a starter to add to their share 
of the old folks’ estate they soon own 
the old farm and have money to lend 
to the brothers and sisters who went to 
the city. This is no fancy picture, for 
I know personally men who have done 
this. In conclusion I would say: Farm 
lands have begun to feel the advance 
in price, and cannot help but go much 
higher in the next few years. Real 
estate is changing hands nearly every 
day about here, and there are in Ver¬ 
mont to-day many farms for sale 
which, with proper management, will 
be worth 10 to 20 per cent more in 
five years, and shrewd, far-seeing busi¬ 
ness men, as well as practical farmers, 
are buying these farms both for specu¬ 
lation and to make homes. I believe 
eastern agriculture could offer no safer 
or better proposition than a Vermont 
dairy farm. l. c. litchfield. 
The Sign 
of Quality 
UALITY has made the Sharpies Separator Works the largest factory of its 
kind in the world. Quality has made the sale of Tubular cream separa» 
tors greater than that of any other separator. Quality will be found in 
every part of the 1909 Tubular 6 ‘A” separators and will place Tubular cream 
Separators still farther in the lead. 
We Ivish ebery dairyman lvho reads this could come to our factory and see for himself the difference be* 
tlveen Tubular “A” separators and other separators, thousands of which come to us each year in exchange. 
We would like to demonstrate to every dairyman the many points of superiority in 
Tubular “A” separators, a few of which we mention below:— 
Perfection in skimming, 
Ei treme simplicity of construction. 
Remarkable ease of cleaning, 
Most convenient oiling arrangement. 
Low, convenient milk supply tank. 
Freedom from complicated bowl parts. 
And twenty other especially desirable featuresm 
Our free catalog No. 153 will tell you all about it. Ask for it. 
The Sharpies Separator Company, 
Tubvtap “A" 
Tofouto, Can. 
San Francisco. Calif. 
West Chester^ Penna< 
Chicago, Ills. 
Portland. Ore. 
