1270 
THE re.UR.AI> NEW-YORKER 
November 2!) 
effect on tlie quality is of importance in crops grown 
for manufacturing purposes, such as sugar beets, 
potatoes, barley, etc. When the German farmers, 
due to the steadily advancing soil prices, had to in¬ 
crease the yield of their crops, to apply more man¬ 
ure and fertilizers, the sugar beets grown at that 
time were badly affected by it. They grew large, 
had an objectionable high salt content and a low 
sugar content. It is difficult to say what would 
have become of the beet sugar industry had it not 
been for the plant breeders who came to the assist¬ 
ance of the farmers. It is well known that a large 
percentage of the salts assimilated by the beets be¬ 
come deposited in the leaves. By increasing the 
leaf growth (the old beets had 75 pounds of leaves 
for every 100 pounds of beets, the modern beets 
have 100 pounds of leaves) a larger quantity of 
the salts becomes deposited in the leaves, making it 
possible now to grow sugar beets in large quanti¬ 
ties with directly applied manure and fertilizers, 
without bad results in regard to the quality of the 
beets. The success made in the growing of sugar 
beets cannot, however, be entirely credited to the 
efforts of the plant breeders. The agricultural 
chemists come in for a large share of it. They 
have not only kept the farmers informed in regard 
to the greater demands of the modern beets, es¬ 
pecially of nitrogen, but have called the farmers’ 
attention to the four important points in the appli¬ 
cation of commercial fertilizers, viz., what to apply, 
in what form to apply, when to apply, and how much 
approximately to apply. 
However interesting and profitable an intensive 
management is, there are certain disadvantages con¬ 
nected with it. In an intensive management the 
soil is almost constantly occupied, every crop is 
waiting, so to speak, for the preceding crop to clear 
the field. Even in favorable weather it is not 
always possible to get the soil ready in time for 
the next crop. In wet weather the hauling of the 
manure onto the field, or the turning under of a 
green crop, may be so delayed that the organic 
matter is only partly deeomi>osed when the crop has 
to be sown, or, worse yet, decomposition has hardly 
set in. Through the preparation of the seed bed, 
with its smooth, closed surface diminishing the flow 
of air through the soil, the decomposition of the 
organic matter is retarded, resulting in some cases 
in a peaty decomposition, in others in molding, and 
still in others in the formation of transition pro¬ 
ducts, often without doubt of a harmful nature. 
The dense soils, the clay and loam soils, may be¬ 
come unsanitary, unhygienic, resulting in weak 
plants, with little resistance, easily succumbing to 
attacking insects and plant diseases. The larger 
crops, to mention this here, also require more barn 
room, and to use the more nourishing crops profit¬ 
ably, the best breeds of live stock have to be kept 
Intensive farming also requires more help and con¬ 
siderably more working capital. I do not want to 
discourage going into intensive farming, but it Is 
well to consider all these points. 
And now for the remedy of the discontent of many 
young farmers fresh from college with their fathers’ 
management of the farm? There the opinions will 
differ. I personally am inclined to believe that in 
many cases there is too much education, the educa¬ 
tion is out of proportion to the use the young man 
can and likes to make of it, causing discontent. A 
young man who is supposed to take charge of his 
father’s 60 or 80-acre farm, or intends to buy or- 
rent a farm of that size, who has to do the farm 
work himself or with the assistance of one or two 
men, cannot make full use of a college education. 
What this young man wants is a good, common farm 
education, learning things which are of direct use 
to him in making a living on such a farm, and 
which will also enable him to get a college educa¬ 
tion if he should later desire to do so. 
To get the right kind of agricultural education, 
when the demands made on a young man vary 
so much under different farm conditions, is quite 
a problem. In Europe this problem has apparently 
been solved by having, besides the college or agri- 
cultural high school, agricultural schools. There 
are at present three different schools with different 
curriculums, giving a young man the chance to 
fit himself for the position of owner of a small 
farm, manager of large farms or industrial establish¬ 
ments, or owner or lessee of an estate, according to 
his means, his education, his capacities and his in¬ 
clinations. If this will work here, I have no way 
of knowing, but I would like to hear from men who 
have experience in teaching agriculture at our agri¬ 
cultural institutions. h. winkelman. 
R. N.-Y.—This problem is now being taken up 
tentatively in several States, and definite plans will 
be worked out as we progress in practical application 
of the farm idea. 
LIVE NOTES FROM THE NORTHWEST. 
PRACTICAL AGRICULTURAL TEACHING.—On 
page 981 the editor says: “From several Western 
States comes the demand for a new course of study 
in the agricultural college. There are farmers who 
believe that their boys should be at home, working 
on the farm during the growing and harvesting sea¬ 
sons. In theory the plan is a good one. Would it 
work out in practice.” 
This theory has been worked out In practice in 
the Minnesota School of Agriculture for 25 years. 
Several other States have followed the example, 
and to those who know the success of the plan, the 
great wonder is that every State has not done like¬ 
wise. In Minnesota the school year opens the first 
week in October and closes the last week in March. 
This allows the students to be at work on their home 
farms during all the growing season. They are also 
obliged to bring to school with them as a part of 
the regular requirements for graduation, a report 
of the work done during the Summer. If a boy is 
unfortunate enough to have parents who live in the 
city he is obliged to find work on some farm for 
the six months of vacation. City boys are also re¬ 
quired to have six months or more of actual farm 
work before entering the school. That this plan 
is a success is shown by the results accomplished 
by the graduates of the school, and by the demand 
for more schools of the kind. Two such additional 
schools of agriculture have been in operation for 
several years, and the subjects of agriculture and 
home economics have been introduced into a large 
number of the high schools of the State. To the 
writer there seems to be no very good reasons why 
a college course could not be arranged so as to 
have the same plan for a shorter year as our school 
course. Beside being of great advantage to the 
farm boy. such a plan would allow the poor student 
a chance to earn enough in the vacation period to 
more than pay his school expenses. This is being 
done by a large number of the students of the school 
of agriculture. 
A rather interesting experiment is being tried in 
Minnesota by several students of the college course 
in agriculture. The State has rented three farms 
which are typical of the average Minnesota farm, 
and placed a senior student on each farm with the 
understanding that he is to run the place for one 
year under the general supervision of the college 
authorities, and following a plan which he and the 
professor of agriculture' have worked out together. 
If he makes a success of the year’s work he is to 
have credit for a half year of college work and all 
profits from the farm for the year. If he does not 
make a success of farming he is not to receive his 
degree. If this plan works out well with the three 
farms under experiment more farms will be rented 
in the future. It is found that a large number of 
farmers are willing and even anxious to rent their 
farms for this purpose. 
PARCHED SWEET 1 * CORN.—Farmer’s Bulletin 
No. 554, mentioned by you on page 12}1, tells all about 
popcorn and different ways of serving it; but it says 
nothing about a near relative of popcorn which the 
members of my family think should have a wider 
acquaintance among people who have farms or 
gardens and can have it for a very little effort. I 
refer to parched sweet corn. Sweet corn which 
has been allowed to ripen makes, when parched, a 
food which most people, after getting a taste of it, 
like better than popcorn. We parch it in an ordin¬ 
ary corn popper. It takes a little more time than 
for popping corn, and may be parched over a little 
slower fire. The trick is to stop the process just 
short of scorching. If not cooked long enough it 
will stick to the teeth. When parched just right it 
is crisp and mildly sweet and may be served in any 
of the ways mentioned for popcorn. Our folks often 
make what they call parched corn brittle by melting 
granulated sugar over a slow fire, and as soon as 
it is all liquefied mixing in the parched corn and 
then allowing it to cool in a buttered tin. 
SHOOTING TO KILL.—I was very glad to learn 
that John Campman, the New Jersey boy who shot 
the thief, was acquitted. We had a very similar case 
in this State several years ago. The man who was 
shot was found dead between the farmer’s house 
and the road the morning after the farmer’s son 
had fired off his shotgun at random to scare away 
a supposed chicken thief. Something had disturbed 
the chickens in the night, and the boy and his 
father had gone out to investigate. They found 
nothing amiss, but the boy fired off his gun to 
frighten any thief who might be near. In the 
morning they noticed a horse hitched to a buck- 
board and tied to the fence at the road in 'front 
of the house. On going toward the outfit they found 
the dead man. The buckboard was well loaded 
with chickens, which had been gathered up from r 
wide stretch of country. The horse was found to 
belong to a liveryman in Minneapolis, who said he 
had rented the same horse and buckboard to this 
man for several seasons. The man had always had 
the rig for about a month each Fall. One day the 
following Winter this same buckboard was recog¬ 
nized by a farmer living near Lake Minnetonka, 14 
miles west of Minneapolis, as the same vehicle that 
had been driven by a man who had tried to rob his 
henhouse the previous Fall. This farmer had a 
tussle with the thief and they nearly tore the clothes 
off one another in the scuffle, but the thief managed 
to get away with the rig. Before he could get well 
started the farmer managed to pull a crate of 
chickens off the rear of the buckboard. He was 
not able to find the owner of the chickens, and 
wonders how far the thief had brought them before 
reaching his place. The place where this tussle oc¬ 
curred and the place where the thief tried to make 
his last raid are about 30 miles apart. Nothing 
was ever done with the boy on account of the shoot¬ 
ing. j. M. DREW. 
Minnesota. v 
THE BACK-TO-THE-LANDER. 
I A Carpenter’s Chance. 
I have been a carpenter for a good many years, and 
am sick of it; in fact my arm gave out so I could not 
drive a nail. My wife has a little piece of land, 38 
acres. My father has a farm of 112 acres. I am an 
only child, and have not done any farming since I was 
18 years old, but have kept pretty well posted. I have 
one good horse, one colt two years old, 70 purebred 
White Leghorn hens and a lot of farming tools. Do 
you think I stand any chance of success? I should 
like to hear your opinion, also from others who have 
been in the game longer than I. u. b. 
New York. 
We never give direct advice to such questions, 
because we know it is simply a matter of the man 
and the woman. If farming were simply a matter 
of muscle and skill it might be safe for a stranger 
to give direct advice. But that thing we call “char¬ 
acter”—will power, patience, love of home, cheer¬ 
fulness and bulldog persistence—all enter into the 
problem. Unless the man and wife have outside 
capital or that spirit which will lift them up above 
the discouragements and drudgery of the first few 
years they should not try going back to the land. 
This carpenter seems to have a good chance to suc¬ 
ceed. He knows how to work, and has a trade, and 
he is under no illusions about the easy job of farm¬ 
ing. His wife seems to be a farmer’s daughter. 
Without knowing about the man and woman side 
of it this seems like a fair prospect 
An Experienced Hand. 
I am a back-to-the-lauder myself and have 
read your article on page 1137 with great in¬ 
terest I had the bug for years; read The 
R. N.-Y. for years and was in a position to ob¬ 
serve truck raising and chickens for years. I 
started in one and one-half years ago on a $3,000 
place, paid for; plenty of capital and a moderate in¬ 
come. I find that it costs much more than I had 
any notion to get started. I am not making my 
expenses as yet. I live about 20 miles from a large 
city and get good prices for everything I sell; am 
now getting fifty cents per dozen for eggs, but as 
ray 100 hens are moulting I get less than one dozen 
eggs per day. I have about 300 pullets, some of 
which are laying. My feed bill, for hens and 
chickens, is $15 to $16 per week, which indicates 
where some of the money goes. My hens earned a 
little over one dollar each, per year, during my 
first year. I work from 6 a. m. to dark, lost about 
30 pounds in weight the first year, which did me 
no harm. I raise all my own vegetables, and sell 
enough fruit and vegetables to pay my taxes. I 
think the sum of $500 income per annum is too 
little, and would place it at $750. My advice to 
most back-to-the-landers is to forget it. I am doing 
the work of a laborer for less than a laborer’s pay, 
and any man whose occupation pays him better 
than this should think a long time before turning 
to the land for a living. 
In my own case I do not regret my move to the 
country, but I must confess that there is much more 
work than I had any notion. I aim to keep about 
600 hens, and am working up to that number grad¬ 
ually. I am 50 years of age, have always done light, 
professional work, but am husky enough to do the 
heavy work which is necessary on a farm. I ad¬ 
mire your attitude to this back-to-the-lander; wish 
to add my mite to prevent misguided persons from 
the certain ruin which would follow in the majority 
of cases of migration from city to country without 
adequate means. a. c. 
Massachusetts. 
