Iht RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1111 
Farm Bureaus in New York State 
What They Are Doing For Farmers 
Change in Sentiment. —And to think 
that so recently as five or six years ago 
there were communities and counties that 
were so skeptical of the practicability of 
the Farm Bureau idea as to refuse to fur¬ 
nish the agent a machine to ride in ! It’s 
a fact; when 1 began riding around New 
York State with Farm Bureau agents 
they traveled with horses and buggies. 
Folks had not grasped the big idea yet. 
and they were saying, “Why should we 
he buying an automobile for this man to 
go riding around the country in? We 
don’t ride in automobiles.” Well, there 
has been a revolutionary change in things 
since 1912 and 1913. Since then farmers 
in New York State have reached a point 
; 1 1 which they have gone down to New 
"ork twice with their milk, and demand¬ 
ed their price, and held up the great city 
until the dealers came across. Since the 
day when the first Farm Bureau agent 
began to drive about a portion of New 
York State an entirely new aspect has 
been put on farming. Since the day 
when they objected to the Farm Bureau 
agent riding about in a machine, most of 
the farmers themselves have indulged in 
this pastime, and a Farm Bureau without 
at least two cars would be hard to find. 
Personality Needed.— Everybody con¬ 
ceded from the start that the success or 
failure of the idea lay in the personality 
of the agent, the man who was selected to 
go out to carry the gospel of better crops 
and better prices back among the farms 
where that gospel was sorely needed. I 
have ridden hundreds of miles through 
Central New York with Farm Bureau 
men. T have seen them enter communi¬ 
ties which were openly skeptical, and not 
a few that were hostile. I have been 
with them when they met with farmers to 
organize in the Winter cow-testing as¬ 
sociations. I have accompanied them on 
visits to district schools where they set 
up corn clubs, potato clubs and pig clubs. 
I have gone out in the Spring when the 
roads were still almost impassable, and 
seen them put the dormant spray on or¬ 
chards which had been given up as hope¬ 
less. and I have followed them through 
potato fields where the fog from the spray 
they helped mix and administer shone an 
iridescent cloud in the sunshine, and in 
its rainbow the bright colors of hope ap¬ 
peared. And it has been my good for¬ 
tune to go over those same roads, among 
those same farmers, into those same fields 
and orchards bending under heavy crops, 
and to hear the words of praise, and see 
the results of better methods, and watch 
prosperity enter where dull despair had 
ruled. 
A Case in roiNT. —It is ouly five years 
ago that the snub-nosed flivver of the 
agent in our county pushed its way down 
into an old orchard on a farm which had 
been bought by a man fresh from a mill, 
lie was innocent of all farm lore. All 
he had was a mortgage, a brave wife and 
indomitable courage, beside his own good 
health. This young man had reasoned 
that there was not much ahead of him in 
the mill, tending a loom all day. lie rea¬ 
soned that if the county had a farm ex¬ 
pert he was going to use him. and he did. 
I have seen that same orchard yield ap¬ 
ples that broke the boughs, a yield that 
paid all the expenses of the farm for the 
year, a yield that made a dent in the 
mortgage, and last Fall the young man. 
the disciple of the Farm Bureau, cleaned 
up, they tell me, around $3,000 from that 
old orchard. 
Dairy Interests.— Credit seems to 
have been lacking for the great work the 
Farm Bureau did in connection with the 
milk war. It is not too much to say. as 
I have sized up the situation, that with¬ 
out the groundwork of education laid by 
the Farm Bureau men. the two big milk 
strikes could not have been held. It was 
the Farm Bureau man who started cow¬ 
testing. When he began his circuit-rid¬ 
ing through New York State it is doubt¬ 
ful if there was a single Cow-testing as¬ 
sociation to be found. The gospel of 
weeding out the boarder cows was 
preached early and late, far and wide. 
In the cold Winter months, when field 
work was out of the question, Farm Bu¬ 
reau men called farmers on the back hill 
farms together at the district school 
houses, and on the same blackboards 
where during the day their boys and girls 
did their sums, these agents of better 
farming figured it out with chalk that 
the only way they could hope to make a 
dairy pay was. in the first place, by find¬ 
ing out whether each individual cow paid 
a profit, and the only way to find out this 
fact was, they demonstrated, through cow¬ 
testing. 
Betting Down to Facts. —Closely 
connected with this was the course in 
farm bookkeeping which these agents car¬ 
ried on. It was upon the facts—not 
guesswork—obtained through the cow¬ 
testing associations and through book¬ 
keeping that the argument was based 
which led to the winning of the first milk 
strike. They had figures to show that 
the price of milk did not equal cost of 
production. The turning point in New 
York State farming may be said to have 
been reached when the Farm Bureau be¬ 
gan to spring up. Consider what the 
Government had done prior to 1910; it 
had established numerous costly schools 
and colleges of agriculture, and experi¬ 
ment stations which were doing valuable 
work. The Government was publishing 
learned pamphlets, the quintessence of 
scientific knowledge on farming. The 
Government was maintaining experts to 
find out things. But the findings of all 
these costly institutions fell far short of 
reaching the man on the soil; so far as 
practical application was concerned, 
these progressive ideas did not get across. 
There were farmers’ institutes, and they 
did valuable work ; there were fairs and 
contests, where the horse racing and bal¬ 
loon ascensions used to draw crowds— 
pretty largely city folks—but as for new 
ideas reaching the farm from the agricul¬ 
tural college, they were rare and far be¬ 
tween. 
Where the County Agent' Comes 
In.—B ut here comes a man. chugging 
up the road in a much-spattered flivver, 
a man who has the practical points of 
the newest ideas at his fingers’ end. a 
man who was brought up on a farm, and 
who knows farming from the hardscrab¬ 
ble end, a man who has run a farm 
project of his own successfully, a man 
who knows what the farm attitude is 
toward new ideas. When he stops his 
engine on a sunny March day, and dis¬ 
engages his lanky form from the steering 
wheel, and grins as he extends a great 
brown paw to the waiting and wonder¬ 
ing farmer, the latter knows instinctively 
here is one of his own sort, a man to 
whom he can tell his troubles, who will 
have an understanding ear and a sym¬ 
pathetic heart. After he has seen the 
newest calf, looked over the seed pota¬ 
toes and the unshelled seed corn, and 
after the farmer has told him how he 
just managed to scrape through last year 
and pay his interest, the Farm Bureau 
man edges carefully around to talking 
lime. 
“Yes; I’ve heard about lime, but I’ve 
never tried it. It looks sort of theoretical. 
Then it costs money.” 
Figuring on the smooth side of the 
barn door, the Bureau man proves that 
lime is a good investment. He stays by 
him all that year on the liming propo¬ 
sition. because he sees that lime is the 
great need of that particular farm. 
Reconstructing an Orchard. —There 
was one farm I visited with the Farm 
Bureau man in our county which had 
20 to 25 acres on a well-sloped side hill 
planted to apple orchard. The trees were 
about 10 years old. all lusty, vigorous 
trees, bearing nothing but gnarly fruit. 
If there was ever a worse bramble 
thicket than that orchard I’d like to see 
it. I reckon it. had not been trimmed 
since the day it was set out. Right 
away the Farm Bureau agent saw that 
the greatest asset of that big farm was 
this neglected orchard. They were peg¬ 
ging away at milk and potatoes, and 
making expenses. 
“I suppose you spray your orchard 
once in a while?” tentatively spoke the 
Farm Bureau man as he started to crank 5 
his flivver. 
“Wal. no ; we never got around to it. 
We’ve got so many other things going. 
I don’t believe ’twould pay, do you?” 
That’s what the Farm Bureau man 
had been edging around toward ever since 
he’s been there, and he stayed on an hour 
or two before he turned the engine over 
and started home. In that hour or two 
he had figured out for them that the 20 
to 25 acres in apples was the best paying 
prospect on the place. He got their con¬ 
sent to begin work cleaning up the or¬ 
chard. He hunted up two or three apple 
tree pruners, fairly skillful men, and, 
although it took two seasons before that 
orchard was finally made so you could 
see daylight through it, he got them to 
spraying that very Spring, and proved 
by the part which he did get pruned that 
apples pay. There never had been such 
apples in that neighborhood as came from 
those trees. 
The Doubter’s Attitude. —Across 
the road was an orchard whose owner 
refused to have anything to do with the 
Farm Bureau man, refused to talk with 
him. That same Summer his trees were 
defoliated by apple tree pests, and he 
called it “bad luck.” I’ve seen it work 
the same way with potatoes. The potato 
club that was first started in our county 
has now grown up. Some of the boys 
are proving to dad that what they learned 
that Summer about seed selection, check 
rows and spraying is practical and pro¬ 
fitable. Alfalfa was almost unknown in 
some sections, and Soy beans never had 
been heard of, purebred bulls were looked 
upon as playthings of the rich, and vetch 
was only a word in Government bulle¬ 
tins which the farmer saw when he took 
out a page for shaving paper. 
The Business of Farming. —When 
the Farm Bureau came there had been 
no way of coupling up the farming busi¬ 
ness with the Chamber of Commerce. 
The folks in the city thought it a joke 
at first that “hayseeds” were going to 
have an office in the Chamber of Com¬ 
merce. That “hayseed” establishment 
soon became the busiest part of the build¬ 
ing. They had two or three men work¬ 
ing in the office or in the field all the 
time, two or three girls hammering type¬ 
writers and answering the telephone all 
day. When it came Fall they had the 
place looking like a county fair with the 
(Continued on page 1114) 
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