Vol. LXVII No. 3038. 
NEW YORK, APRIL 18, 1908. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
CROWDING THE SMALL DAIRY FARM. 
One Acre for a Cow. 
Part I. 
^ 0 
It has been said that “a little knowledge is a danger¬ 
ous thing.” but I doubt if that is true in all cases, be¬ 
cause the large majority of us farmers claim but little 
knowledge, and most of that has been gained by hard 
experience. Yet if each one would but take the time 
and trouble to publish his own experience which dif¬ 
fers in any respect from that of his 
neighbors and carefully state the facts 
as he has learned them, what a 
vast sum of human knowledge and 
useful information we would have. I 
have been convinced for several years, 
that farmers generally are trying to 
cultivate too much land. In other 
words, that farms are generally too 
large to obtain the best results, and 
the consequence is, that very few of 
our farms are properly cultivated. The 
constantly increasing price of farm 
labor, the scarcity of reliable and com¬ 
petent help, and the reduced fertility 
of most of our farm lands, are prob¬ 
lems which every thinking farmer 
knows, and must be prepared to meet. 
Almost every farmer can remember the 
crops which were produced by his 
father, or possibly his grandfather, on 
the old farm, when the land was fresh 
and fertile. Hay, wheat, oats, corn, 
potatoes and all the rest of it, double 
and sometimes three times the amount 
per acre which he is able to produce 
to-day; the best of labor was to be 
had for six shillings per day, and those 
days were from sun to sun. It is true 
that the price of farm products has 
advanced, as the price of labor has ad¬ 
vanced, but the quantity and quality of 
the crop per acre has steadily de¬ 
creased. The farm has been steadily 
growing poorer year by year, until 
farming has become a drudge and a 
failure, and the abandoned farm stands 
as a mute but impressive witness 
against a system which starved, robbed 
and despoiled the land, and “killed the 
goose which laid the golden egg.” 
With a view of seeing what could 
actually be accomplished on “a little 
farm well tilled,” I purchased, four 
years ago, a little farm of 56 acres 
near the village of Fayetteville, N. Y., 
of which about 40 acres are under cul¬ 
tivation at the present time. The farm, 
when I took possession, was so poor 
and run down that it would not keep 
goats; and certainly it would not raise 
white beans; I know, because I tried 
it- I had the heartfelt and kindly sym¬ 
pathy of all my neighbors, freely and 
often expressed, on the evil day which 
made me the owner of such a farm, and they gener¬ 
ally volunteered the advice that it was a good place to 
get away irom, until secretly, I began to feel sorry 
for myself. However, I had a theory, and went at 
d. . I first purchased a team of big farm horses 
weighing 2800 pounds, and hired a second team and 
man, and we literally turned that farm bottom side up. 
In doing so we put the plows down to a depth of 
ments with the Commissioner of Public Works of the 
city of Syracuse, N. Y., to furnish a convenient dump 
for all the manure removed from the streets of the 
city, which dump was located upon the bank of the 
Erie Canal. The result of that arrangement was that 
we loaded three canal boats with 500 loads of manure 
and brought it to within one-quarter of a mile of the 
farm, and the two men and teams drew it upon the 
land. The cost of that manure was about $300 along¬ 
side the canal near the farm. I then applied 1,500 
HEAD OF AN OHIO BEEF HERD. Fig. 148. 
dm . 
mz 
BABY BEEF AS FARM POWER IN MAINE. Fig. 149. 
pounds of slaked lime per acre, and sowed the whole 
to oats. Well, talk about oats! When harvest time 
came neither men nor teams could be seen when cut¬ 
ting those oats, and I thrashed that year something 
over 1,800 bushels of oats weighing nearly 40 pounds 
per bushel. While the oats were growing we built the 
barns, silo and stables, and followed the next year 
with the house and 800 fruit trees. 
T now maintain a herd of 43 purebred Holstein cattle 
10 inches, and exposed to the sun about four inches *_ „ ..wv* ^ -r„ j JU1 , uigu iluulull 
n j P had never seen the light of day since the and six horses, and purchase not one dollar’s worth 
e Q an. Piior to this time I had made arrange- of feed except a small amount of balanced rations used 
to feed some of the cows while being officially tested 
for milk and butter fat. Next year I propose to in¬ 
crease my herd to 50, and expect to raise plenty to feed 
all. I he only products sold from the farm are milk, 
stock and potatoes; of the latter I have usually from 
300 to 500 bushels to sell, and I have sold $2,300 worth 
of purebred stock since October 1, 1907. My milk 
brings me about $100 per month, besides feeding whole 
milk to every calf born for at least six months. Of 
course this system of farming eliminates all pasturage 
and requires two, and sometimes three 
crops from the same land each season. 
The Alfalfa, of course, produces three 
crops, and we generally manage to get 
two and sometimes three crops for 
soiling purposes. All animals are fed 
in the stable the year round, with out¬ 
door exercise every day, and all 
manure is drawn and spread upon the 
land every day, and it may readily be 
imagined that the land is rapidly in¬ 
creasing in fertility. 
It may be asked, of what particular 
advantage is all this? To me the an¬ 
swer is plain. I keep a stock that 
would tax the capacity of the ordinary 
150-acre farm, and do it with half the 
plowing, harrowing, seeding and cul¬ 
tivating. I grow upon one acre nearly 
or quite as much as is ordinarily grown 
upon three. , The question of fences 
upon a large farm is a serious prob¬ 
lem; to me it is nominal. Two men 
and two teams do all the work and do 
it well, except occasionally I help them 
out by mowing, raking, etc., with my 
carriage team. There are no long 
stretches of pasture lands to grow up 
to weeds and brush, but every foot of 
land is kept constantly cultivated and 
clean. But more important than all 
else is the fact that every year the land 
is becoming richer and stronger. Every 
year I am able to keep a larger stock. 
Every year my income is increasing, 
but my labor* account remains the 
same. In short, my theory has made 
good. I cannot undertake in this short 
article to set down all of the details 
and requirements of this system of 
farming; that is another and longer 
story. I have tried, however, to give 
in a general way my experience in put¬ 
ting into practice my theory, letting 
you judge of the results as you will, 
but for myself, I am firmly convinced 
that farming in the near future, if 
successful, must be conducted along 
similar lines, and when that day comes 
our country can maintain 300,600.000 
people as easily as we now maintain 
80,000,000, our present population. 
JOHN MCLENNAN. 
Onondaga Co , N. Y. 
R. N.-Y.—Next week Mr. McLennan 
will tell us how his crops are grown and handled. 
MUSLIN SCREENS FOR VENTILATORS. 
Replying to that little squib in “Brevities” we did 
not ventilate a stable with those muslin screens, but 
we have tried it all Winter as ventilation for sleeping 
rooms, also through the day. We took off a double 
window a few weeks after putting it up, and covered 
the whole lower half of window frame with common 
cheap cotton cloth, and kept the sash raised all the 
time unless there happened to be an extra strong wind 
