FARM MANAGEMENT AND FARMER CULTURE. 427 
Putting tocTs and machinery in repair at leisure hours, 
against the time their use will be required, saves much time of 
all the laborers on the farm, while neglect in this particular, is 
sure to interpose delay just when labor is most valuable. 
Care in preserving all the implements of farm labor from ex¬ 
posure to the elements when, not in use, will double, and even 
quadruple their durability. Sinking a few hundred dollars, in 
a period of two or three years, by unnecessary wear and decay 
of tools and machinery, is a gratuitous addition to the cost of 
carrying on a farm. 
Deep plowing—plowing in the fall—supplying ingredients in 
which the soil becomes deficient by cropping—changing seed— 
judicious rotation of crops—every one of the items of thorough 
culture, repays attention by enhanced yields, or punishes inat¬ 
tention by diminished returns, with no corresponding difference 
in the cost of cultivation. 
Permit me to express, in passing, a surprise I have often 
felt, that farmers will persist in raising rye vdth winter wheat; 
oats, wild buckwheat, and other foul stuff, with spring wheat; 
and inferior qualities of all kinds of grain ; when, in all the 
main items of cost, use of land (or interest on the purchase 
money), plowing, sowing, harvesting, threshing and getting to 
market, it takes the same outlay to raise a bushel of weed- 
seeds, or of mixed grain, as it does to produce a bushel of the 
best quality, and pure of its kind. The difference in the yield 
of merchantable grain, per acre, and in the market value of 
what is sold, must equal a fair profit on the entire crop. 
I know it is said that shippers make no proportionate differ¬ 
ence between clean and foul grain—the ostrich stomach of the 
Eastern Market devouring all without discrimination. That it 
is only the home miller, who manufactures what he buys, who 
keeps appealing to the farmer, as the distressed boarder did to 
his landlady : u My good madam, if you will give me dirt and 
butter, be so kind as to bring me the dirt on one plate and the 
butter on another, and permit me to mix it to suit myself.” 
The eastern miller is only farther off than the home miller, and 
