1650 
November 8, 1910 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Not long ago a farmer of about my age 
fame to see us. Naturally, after we felt 
free to talk, we began to discuss the 
outlook for farming and the results of 
the war. I made the statement that no 
man of our age can expect to live his old 
life. By that I meant the life we led 
before this country entered the war. I 
think changes are at work which will 
force us, in spite of ourselves, to take up 
new methods and new ways. There may 
be some communities where these changes 
will be slower to make themselves felt. 
There may be a few individuals who can 
keep going for a while on the old lines, 
but sooner or later their lives will feel 
the change, and they must get out of the 
way of the big business and social “tanks” 
which are slowly pounding away our old 
life intrenchments. That is my convic¬ 
tion, and we are acting upon it. 
:*< i\s 
My friend was inclined to deny this 
idea. lie did not intend to change his 
farming in any way. The farm was paid 
for and in good condition, lie had some 
Liberty bonds and a little money laid 
aside. His children had left the farm 
and were doing pretty well. lie had 
always worked a rotation of corn, pota¬ 
toes. wheat and hay. and when lu> couldn’t 
do that he would sell out and go to town 
fr» live. lie even got a little boastful, 
saying that lie would show them that big 
battles in Europe never can change life 
on his American farm, lie went on to 
say that rather than change his plan of 
perfectly clean culture for corn and pota¬ 
toes he had hired men and boys at. $3 
and $4 per day to hoe out all the weeds. 
Of course he admitted that this made 
expenses so heavy that there will be no 
profit to speak of this year, but “they 
didn’t make me change my plans”—and 
that was victory enough for him. I tried 
to show him how by using cover crops 
and seeding down some of those fields he 
could turn in hogs or sheep for a few 
years. That would save him expense of 
labor, and with present meat prices the 
stock would handle his crop at a profit 
and leave the farm richer than ever if lie 
wanted to (tome back to his rotation 
later. No use talking, he would not 
change. lie is going to prove that his 
farm with its fixed crops and habits is 
bigger than the whole of Europe in re¬ 
sisting change! 
$ # # 
There are a few such men. It. may be 
that for a time they will seem to defy 
the world successfully, but sooner or later 
grinding fate will get to them in unex¬ 
pected ways, and they will be stranded. 
The fact is that society is making read¬ 
justments, as if seems to with every 
generation or so. T have been through 
at least two of these great changes, and 
in spite of my friend's obstinate convic¬ 
tions I know that the American farm 
cannot resist these big world changes. _ It 
must, sooner or later get into the swing 
or be swung off the map. I know a 
community in which some 20 years ago 
there were three blacksmiths. There was 
good business for all in those days. A 
car on the road was a far greater novelty 
then than an airship is today. Farmers 
did not wear out an implement, and then 
run to buy a new one. When the old 
machine failed it went to the blacksmith, 
who patched it up as the country doctor 
patched up the middle-aged farmers when 
their joints creaked. There was work 
for all, and the average man in those days 
rather envied the blacksmith his trade. 
It was a sure thing apparently that no 
matter what might happen to farming, 
the blacksmith was sure of his job. He 
seemed to be :j fixture, welded to the needs 
of society as securely as the banker, the 
doctor or the minister. Yet, in that 
community today, there is only one half- 
ruined shop left. Its fire burns only a 
few hours each week. 
* * * * sjc 
The world was too big for the black¬ 
smith’s shop. Year by year the cars in¬ 
creased. until a driving horse was a rare 
thing. Tractors and trucks began to ap¬ 
pear. Gasoline cleaned up the horses 
about as it cleans the stains from a gar¬ 
ment. I have seen the time when half 
a dozen horses stood before the smith’s 
shop waiting to be '•hod. There came a 
time when days passed without bringing 
one! Thus through changes which no 
man could - stop, the blacksmith’s trade 
faded away. Congress or the Legislature 
could not stop it. Unseen, unchange¬ 
able. undirected, this great social and 
industrial change ate its way into that 
community and forced the three black¬ 
smiths to change their plans or get out 
of tin' business. Very much tin* same 
thing is happening to farming today. 
These things strike the town industries 
which stand by the side of the road 
quicker than they do farming, which is 
more a business of the remote hills. 
Farmers do not always see it coming as 
the blacksmith or the carpenter can, and 
thus the farmers are slower to change 
their plans or adapt themselves to new 
conditions. The three blacksmiths got the 
change rapidly. They did a cash business 
and kept accounts. Soon their books 
.showed that fate had put them right on 
the hot anvil and hammered them. Many 
farmers do not keep books, or depend on 
a cash business, and thus they do not 
know what is coming. 
After a time there was only work 
enough for two blacksmiths. One of them 
dropped out. lie had a few acres of good 
land and had seen the change coming. 
So he weut to gardening and small fruit 
growing. He had no prejudices to over¬ 
come and could take advice and study. 
Hi- can produce celery, berries, onions and 
similar crops, and has a small dairy of 
good cows. His shop makes a good hen¬ 
house. but he is doing far better than he 
ever did as a blacksmith. He will stop 
now and then to shoe a horse, but that is 
no longer a business. In a year or so 
there was not enough work for the two 
shops that were left. . One was run by 
an elderly man very much “set in his 
ways.” lie was something like my farmer 
friend, and vowed he would not give up. 
No automobile factory could beat his 
shop out of- a living. He would not 
change. As trade melted away lie got 
excited, said it was all due to the ■Republi¬ 
can party, and he began to drink a little. 
Finally he could not buy any more steel 
on credit, and he went, out for any odd 
jobs that turned up. The third man was 
the youngest of the h>t. and he was 
quicker to see that his old business was 
doomed. Instead of getting out of the 
business lie determined to get into it. He 
knew how to shoe a horse and mend a 
mowing machine. Now if the car and 
the tractor wen* to chase the horse off 
the stage, why go running after the dis¬ 
card? Why not learn how to shoe and 
mend the gasoline horse? So he went to 
an automobile school and became some¬ 
thing of an expert on car machinery. lie 
fianally opened a garage in the little town 
and has several men working for him— 
including his old rival in the blacksmith 
shop! 
* * * * * 
These three men combined have more 
property and business than in the old 
days. Two of them at least are happier 
and more independent, though the trade 
in which they were brought up has nearly 
faded away. The change came upon them 
abruptly, and they had to face it. I 
think similar changes are coming to most 
of our farmers. They are coming slowly 
but none the les-s surely. Perhaps I 
might say that they are coming like the 
loss of hearing as it comes to most of us. 
No one thinks much of it at first, but 
slowly the trouble grows, until the suf- 
ferer finds that lie is hopelessly deaf. 
Those who can realize what is coming to 
them can begin early and study lip-read¬ 
ing and thus lie prepared. T think many 
of the troubles of Eastern farming could 
have beeu at least partly prevented if we 
could all have had vision and thought 
like that of the blacksmith who learned 
to transfer his skill from the horse to 
the car. For I do not believe there is 
any possible escape from the conviction 
that great change* which have been work¬ 
ing out quietly for years have been 
brought to a head by the great war. HY 
nnuiot lire utt we hove hern doinff in the 
joist. A\ e have got to change our methods 
and adapt our work so as to accomplish 
more with the labor of one pair of hands. 
We have got to get rid of a lot of habits 
and prejudices which have unconsciously 
grown upon us like the shell on an 
oyster. 
***** 
Tt. will be hard for older men to do it. 
I know a case where a man had a hard 
lesson piled upon him. This man had 
an orchard and grew general farm crops. 
He had been taught that a weed is evi¬ 
dence of the unpardonable *in—and 
especially a ragweed. The first year of 
the war his help left just after potatoes 
and corn were planted. He could not 
get men to hoe, and that potato field was 
a sight to make old Jethro Tull rise out 
of his grave. By August the ragweed 
was shoulder high—and the Farm Bureau 
was to A’isit the farm on its annual “run.” 
That farmer was in despair. The Farm 
Bureau agent came from Southern Ohio, 
where the plan of mulching orchards' is 
practiced. _ lie advised this farmer to cut 
over the field with a mower and pile the 
weeds around the apple trees. If seemed 
nonsense, and the boys grumbled and 
scoffed, but they cut those big weeds and 
hauled them about a quarter of a mile 
to the orchard. Every tree had a great 
bunch piled around it. The crowd smiled 
at such farming and the farmer felt 
humbled enough : but the following year 
those trees were bent to the ground with 
the most beautiful fruit ever seen in that 
country. The soil had been cultivated 
and. cleaned until it was drained of or¬ 
ganic matter. Those big ragweeds car¬ 
ried potash from that potato field, and 
as they decayed around those trees gave 
the soil what it lacked. Thus that farmer 
learned that in parts of Ohio trees are 
planted on the hills and “cultivated” by 
cutting weeds, grass, or trash in the lower 
fields and hauling it up to pile around 
the trees. As one little illustration of 
what I am getting at I claim that thou¬ 
sands of acres of fruit are now being 
cultivated laboriously and expensively in 
a hatred of all weeds when by using a 
modified plan the weeds could he cut and 
piled to save labor and manure. 
* * * * * 
We have all got to overhaul our meth¬ 
ods, and I am hopeful that the work will 
be carried out. I think there is to be a 
great big future in farming. A great 
shortage of food is coming, and in one 
way and another we are going to learn 
how to get our share of the price. The 
world is full of unrest, and all this trouble 
is being advertised more than the solid 
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