IShe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
643 
The Farmer of Fifty Years 
What Shall He Do With Himself ? 
PART I, 
Giving Up Work. —I wonder if any 
man goes past the 50-year signpost in 
life without giving it seriou-s thought? 
If a man has lived 50 years and has ac¬ 
complished but little, I should expect 
that the realization that half a century 
of life had been wasted would make him 
sit up and think of something to busy 
himself with for the rest of his life. It 
would surely be an awful thing to die 
with the knowledge that a whole life had 
been wasted. On the other hand, if a 
man has worked hard until he is 50 
years old, he is apt to think that per¬ 
haps he has done his share of this life’s 
work and is entitled to a perpetual holi¬ 
day for the Test of his life. Just for the 
sake of argument, we will suppose that 
this is so. There is no doubt that if a 
man has followed farming, for instance, 
and has worked hard until he is 50, he 
has done more manual labor than is done 
by the average man in a lifetime. There¬ 
fore he should be entitled to enjoy him¬ 
self for the rest of his life. But the 
question is, would he enjoy himself if he 
should throw up his life’s business and 
retire from the farm? I think it safe to 
say that the man who is a real farmer 
could not do this with pleasure. The real 
farmer is a producer, a man who cre¬ 
ates things, and his gi’eatest joy is in the 
creation of a superior product. Take 
away his opportunity to create things 
and you take away his source of enjoy¬ 
ment. 
An Individual Case. —At least that 
is how I have figured it out. I have 
passed the 50-year signpost, and, as 1 
drew in sight of it, I paused and pon¬ 
dered the situation. I have led a pretty 
busy life, and the thought of rest seemed 
good to me. Then I thought of a man 
who did that very thing—worked hard 
until he was .50, then sold his farm, 
bought a house in tlie village and invested 
the rest of his life’s earnings the best he 
could, and settled down to live on the 
interest of his money. 
A Narrow Life. —How does he spend 
his time? He spends some of it in try¬ 
ing to beat down his former neighbors 
on the price of their products. His in¬ 
come is none too large, so he must 
economize. Therefore, he who used to 
bewail the^ low price of farm products 
now has discovered that they are much 
too high. This does not help him in his 
friendship with his former associates. He 
has the time to visit, but his neighbors 
have neither the time nor inclination to 
visit him. Of course he can make the 
round.s of the stores on the pretense of 
wishing to buy something. But he is not 
a congenial companion for the town men, 
so he does not succeed in “mixing” to 
any extent. No, I don’t want to do the 
way that fellow is doing. 
The Pleasure of Planning. —I re¬ 
member that when I was a little kid I 
used to enjoy the laying out of a farm- 
.stead the most of any of my sports. I 
was the only child in the family, so most 
of my time was spent in playing alone. 
I would lay out a little plot out back of 
the woodshed and fence it into fields, and 
stock those fields with green pumpkin 
and squash horses and cows, and little 
green-apple pigs and sheep. I would build 
a barn from old shingles and sticks and 
be as happy as a king (or as happy as 
an old-time king was supposed to be) 
until I got the whole thing donp. Then 
there was nothing else to do—and the 
pleasure was gone. Then I would turn 
to something else for a time until, upon 
coming upon my farm some day and find¬ 
ing it ruined, I would set about building 
it all over again with as much zest as 
ever. And .so it has been all the way 
along. First the rented farm, where the 
first herd of cattle and the colts were 
rai.s(Hl. Then the little farm of our own, 
to be improved and lUe buildings to be 
repaired. Also, here was where the first 
herd of purebred and registered cattle 
was got together by buyttig one as we had 
the means, and raising more. And later 
on, when the children were in need of 
a better education, the larger farm near 
good schools was bought. The purebred 
cattle were sold to finish paying for this 
farm, and 1 worried along for a time 
with grades. But no lover of good stock 
can go back to grades after he has once 
owned a good herd of purebreds. So I 
went back to registered cattle of another 
breed which is more popular in my sec¬ 
tion of the country. The ever-increasing 
herd has demanded more food. So the 
fields have had to be worked better and 
the manure from the herd has furnished 
the fertility to make them respond to the 
cultivation. The barns have to be made 
larger to hold the increased crops and 
herd and there have been a thousand and 
one things to keep a fellow going. Oh, 
well, it has been a gloriously busy time, 
after all. And now, at .50. shall I throw 
all this aside? Shall I feed my green 
apple arid pumpkin stock to the pigs, 
kick over my playhouse and quit? 
Wouldn’t it be better to build another 
playhouse, and even die building play¬ 
houses? 
Carrying On.— Right next to our 
place is the farm which I first rented. 
When I was working that farm I used 
to think of the things that I would like 
to do to it if I owned it. Wouldn’t it be 
fun to take that farm now and do the 
things that I wanted to do, and also all 
the other things that I will be able to 
think of later on? Throw the whole 
thing up and go to town and make a 
howling nuisance of myself for the rest 
of my life? Not for me! No, I will buy 
that farm and have a brand-new i)lay- 
house. Friends, that is just what I have 
done, and later on I may tell you how I 
will play with it. J. grant morse. 
Culture of Yellow-eye Beans 
■^^^ould you give instructions how 
grow^ yellow-eye beans? I have bei 
growing beans of the pea variety the pa 
several years, but understand that tl 
yellow-eye is less susceptible to diseai 
and carries its beans well off the groun 
I have been dropping from four to fii 
beans to the foot when planting p( 
beans. Is this about right for the yollo 
they be planted furtln 
apart than the pea variety? Do the 
like tlie red kidney require a riclier sc 
than the pea bean, or will they do as wc 
moderate fe 
tility i Ho they require a longer < 
shorter time to mature than the d( 
^ W.L.S. 
Gap, Pa. 
Tellow-eye beans are considered prac¬ 
tically immune from disease, and grow 
up well from the groun(j, so they are less 
liable to damage by bad weather condi¬ 
tions. They require about the same 
length of season as the navy or pea bean. 
My experience has been that they are 
not adapted to soils where much clay 
abounds. A soil that produces satisfac¬ 
tory crops of the pea beans will grow 
the yellow eye equally well. Generally 
speaking, they are not considered as 
heavy yielders as the pea varieties, but 
make up the difference by being of light 
shrink at market time, because of so 
little weather damage. As to the plant¬ 
ing, I infer that W. L. S. uses the drill, 
which is being discarded almost entirely 
in bean-growing sections. We use a 
planter that drops and covers two rows 
at a time, placing the rows 28 to .80 
inches apart, with the hills from 1.3 to 
16 inches apart in the row. With the 
larger beans, like yellow eye, there are 
from three to four heans in a hill. Last 
year I planted both white kidney and 
yellow eye in hills 16 inches apart, and 
with exactly three beans in a hill. They 
were plenty thick enough in the row, and 
gave a good crop. If phosphate is used 
do not sow it in the row with the beaus, 
but rather drill it over the field and har¬ 
row in before planting the beans. As to 
the quantity of seed to the acre, I have 
found that from 16 to 18 quarts of the 
small beans, and from .32 to 38 quarts of 
the larger sorts give best results. All 
beans require soil that is in a good state 
of fertility, although it is poor policy to 
apply manure to the soil direct for the 
bean crop, because they are then more apt 
to grow too much to vines, and under 
some seasonal conditions to develop the 
root rot. All beans when planted should 
be covered lightly, not over one-half inch. 
This is important. H. E. c. 
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