Various

“ Time and again have men who were good farmers, when looking over my grounds, said: “Well, it is too bad that I have not had a decent garden; but I am determined to have one after this, and will neglect it no longer.” I have no recollection of any farmer’s family among my acquaintances who would not enjoy its products. Perhaps the best reason, and often the only one, that can be given for so many almost entire failures in this respect is the want of time. It is a well-known fact that almost all of our farmers are short of the help they really need to keep their farms in good condition. ”

“ One of the fundamental truths in stock-raising, and in profitable milk production, is, that it takes a given amount of food to support the animal’s existence in such a way that it will simply maintain its status; and that growth in flesh or yield in milk, above an evenly balanced existence, must come from the food given to cause an increase of weight in flesh, fat, or milk products. Hence, all the profit must come from that excess, and is large or small just in proportion as the animal is capacitated to utilize and digest it, within the bounds of healthy, judicious feeding. ”

“ The gentleman who owns and controls this farm has never been president of any State dairymen’s association, nor has he ever been sent to Congress. But, gentlemen, he is one of the most thoroughly wide awake and enterprising, as well as one of the very best farmers that Wisconsin can boast of; and we have some good ones.
The question very naturally arises, Why is it that so many, not only of our common, but of our very best farmers, fail to have anything that can be called even a poor garden? It is not because they do not like its products. ”

“ For a few hundred farmers can communicate to each other through a good farm paper like The Prairie Farmer, so paged that it can be filed for future reference, and we can, as it were, have our meetings every week at our homes and with our families, and impress the lessons upon our children’s tender minds so they will not have to wait until they are of mature age before hearing discussions as to the best modes practiced in agriculture and horticulture. I have felt in attending these conventions like asking those old veterans who must soon pass away, where are the young men of our country? ”

“ The wandering cow feeds herself, in fact, from what might be the choicest product of her own milk, tramps the life out of much more, and tosses her head in disdain at much that if cut and properly fed in the stall, she would eat with a relish; so that it may be safely said that two, and some practical men say three, cows might be well-fed through soiling, on the same land that one is by the system of exclusive pasturing. ”

“ The very first neglected opportunity of the mass of farmers is, that they do not see, and do not make much effort to see, that there is a better way than to plow, and plow, and plow, seldom seed down, keep a few head of spindling cows, mostly to give birth to spindling calves, that by a stretch of the imagination may be called cows when five or six years old; sell such cows, instead of selling butter and cheese to buy their clothes and groceries, sell hay to buy their whisky, and their farms by the bushel to pay for them if in debt, or to add some improvements in buildings if they are not. ”

“ There is a mortal dread of “tramps,” especially among the more ignorant farmers. But I aver that the common system of almost exclusive grain farming that crowds most of the labor of the year into a few spring and summer months, is a direct cause of much of the tramp evil of which so many farmers complain. It manufactures the tramps who rove from necessity, and even drives out their own children to swell the ranks of those in search of a job. On the other hand, a large increase of milk-stock kept on the farm necessitates the retention of most of the manual force of the summer months. ”

“ Putting in more time for the cow to produce, inevitably convinces them of the fact that the larger part of the cow’s earnings are made when dairy products are high in price; and they are dull, indeed, if they do not see in that a revelation that more winter dairying would pay. I am aware that the flippant answer made by those disinclined to adopt soiling and winter dairying, is, that they involve employment of more manual labor on a given number of acres, and that reliable farm labor is hard to get and troublesome to keep. ”

“ The immense stock, the ample building, the splendid drives, the office connected with the Western Union Telegraph lines by telephone, and everything pertaining to the great nursery, is kept in the most perfect condition. Blight and borers are strangers to their 10,000 orchard trees of pear, peach, chestnut, and apples, all of varieties unexcelled, and adapted to the soil and climate of the West. ”

“ The bulk of every fortune steadily acquired, consists of the success of its possessor in getting, honestly or dishonestly, a profit from the labors of others. This must be so, so long as it is an axiom in political economy that labor is the basis of all wealth. The owner of the soil can succeed in winning more than a pro rata proportion, just in the ratio of his ability to make his brains help the work of his hands. ”

“ Mere ornament is not what strikes the visitor, and yet the nursery is one beautiful picture in its varied and blending colors of fruit, flowers, and foliage; for the orchard and garden are by no means neglected—the visitor can find the fruits themselves, the crucial test. ”

“ Possessions that by nature are as fair as ever the sun shone upon, that do not, and can not now pay five per cent interest on $25 per acre; when well managed dairy farms in the same county pay more than that per cent on a basis of $100 per acre. In view of these patent facts that stare us in the face, is it any wonder that some of us feel we have a loud call to dispense the pure dairy gospel to these perishing sinners who thus neglect their grand opportunities. ”

“ It is shameful to neglect to provide good and healthful stables for food-producing dairy stock—one that calls for vengeance on a criminality.
Another neglected opportunity of the dairymen to increase the number of head their farms might subsist, and thus increase their profits, especially those who occupy our highest priced lands, is in their declining to adopt the system of soiling. I do not know of a highly successful dairyman in the State who has not adopted it, in part, at least—enough to save his cows when famine is in sight. ”

“ At the next matin bell old Jasper died, and at curfew toll he was laid beside the wife who had died in his youth, but the memory of whom had been with him always.
—Bulletin, Haverhill, Mass.
Work every hour, paid or unpaid, see only that thou work, and thou canst not escape thy reward. Whether thy work be fine or coarse, planting corn or writing epics, so only it be honest work, done to thine own approbation, it shall earn a reward to the senses as well as to the thought. No matter how often defeated, you are born to victory. The reward of a thing well done is to have done it. ”

“ It might seem rather odd at this time of year, but you know that the farmers have more time now than in summer to read The Prairie Farmer. It is better for the farmer’s boys to become acquainted with the laws of nature than to spend their time in reading novels, or other books, which bring them little information. A little knowledge of the nature of plants is worth infinitely more to the farmer’s son or daughter, or even to the farmer himself, because it has special relation to his calling. ”

“ The legitimate profits of a higher grade of farming ought to be expended to elevate the farmer, his wife, his children, and all the attendants whom he directs. Part of them should appear in the form of better and more comfortable houses and barns, finer stock, better horses, better roads and school-houses, a larger list of newspapers and periodicals, better libraries and better housekeeping, and more cheery houses in which intelligence and music are not strangers. It is as important that a man should spend his earnings aright, as that he should use his energies and talents to earn. ”

“ Halifax is, as you all know, the capital of Nova Scotia, which is one of the provinces of British North America, and thus is under the dominion of the Queen. It is just what I should imagine a real old English city to be—very odd and antiquated, and yet picturesquely beautiful, and altogether a most charming place in which to spend a summer. ”

“ That they are often mistaken and baffled in taking such a route, does not deter a new crowd from going. They fly from what they dread, as much as they are inspired by what they hope to win. These things ought not so to be; and a wise improvement of the many neglected opportunities on the farm would go far to rectify the ills they fly from, but from which yet few escape.
Say what we will about all its defects, its uninviting toil, and low wages, agriculture disenthralled of its ignorance is the basis rock of our hope ”

“ One is in not properly testing the real profit-earning capacity of each cow, and weeding out those that are not only not profitable but are actually, year after year, eating into the profits derived from other, and it may be not so good appearing cows. Profitable performance not only at the pail, but at the churn and the cheese-vat, should alone give a cow respite from coming, in her youth, to the butcher’s block. ”

“ When purity of product has a great influence in gauging the price, and the health of consumers is at stake, this neglect in providing better and more cleanly stabling is one of the crying ills of our dairy system. I am glad to know that the supervision of the health officials of Milwaukee extends to the stables of the cows that produce the milk that is allowed to be sold in that city. ”

“ Something is sure to be neglected, and, in three cases out of four, if not in nine out of ten, the poor garden is the first thing that is left to care for itself, which it generally does by growing a tremendous crop of weeds.
It is perfectly useless to attempt to have a respectable garden, unless arrangements are made in the spring for its planting and cultivation with the same care that arrangements are made for the care of the wheat, oats, corn, or potato crop, or the care of the dairy. ”

“ It is to the paying yield of the cow what an untimely frost is to an unmatured corn crop. It is my firm belief that this is the great sin of the medium good dairyman of this and other dairy States,—the cause of the low average earnings of the cows; the reason why so many dairymen work so cheaply; the promoter of infidelity in the mind of the dairyman as to whether he has not made a mistake in entering upon the dairy business at all ”

“ It is to be regretted that men do not better recognize the fact that these little affairs of the world would move along just about as well if their management were sometimes resigned to other hands before death compels the change. But such is seldom the case. We have known a man, once a president of a State Agricultural Society and long one of its vice-presidents, who has really felt that many of his old friends and associates became his personal enemies the moment they aided in electing another man to his position. ”

“ The dairy, with the accompaniment of soiling and more production of dairy products in the winter, would make the farm more like a factory, with every wheel in motion almost the entire year. The home and the family of the dairy farmer should be as large as the capacity of the man and the woman at the helm; and as steady employment as that which must be given to the store or shop would go a long way in developing and increasing the capacity of the whole force to manage more. Giving regular employment to good men on the farm makes it far easier to get and to keep them ”

“ Let the hackneyed cry of woman’s intellectual inferiority prove its truth, conclusively, as it has not yet been proved, or let it be silenced forever! The cranial differences existent between the sexes, upon which the theoristic foundation of their respective superiority and inferiority of intellect has been laid, are, in truth, the exponents of sexual intellectual equality, science having proclaimed them the visible proofs of that mutual dependence and adaptability which, sexually, mind has for mind, as body for body. ”

“ Many of this class know that a paying flow of milk comes only from food judiciously given; but who have not yet learned the programme by which such food can be ever on hand, or do not possess the intelligent enterprise to put forth the means to obtain it. As this is, largely, the hopeful class, we may well pray for their growth in dairy grace, in the knowledge of the truth, as it is exemplified in the reliable experience of the few saints in the business, who know how to make good common cows earn $50 and $60, and more, each, per annum. ”

“ But the great-hearted woman, yearning for recognition as paramount forces of social regeneration—the great-minded women taking up the problems of life and grappling with them for the sake of their weaker sisters—these are many, confined and silenced within the gilded bars which society is daily drawing closer and stronger about them. ”

“ Then the conflict shall be ended and the intellectual growth of woman be revealed, the heightener, enricher, purifier of that emotional development which is the essence of ideal womanhood—an essence thrilling as deeply and tenderly the hearts of the humble followers in her footsteps as it thrilled the hearts of that greatest of woman poets, who sang:
What art can a woman be good at? ”

“ Now, I know the great difficulties that lay in the way of a farmer, located miles from city or town, to procure a daily supply of fresh meat from the markets, to say nothing of the unbearable cost of such a proceeding to those who live close enough to market to procure a daily supply. ”

“ During that time I have failed once to have a corn crop, and have a number of times failed to have a paying crop of potatoes; in fact, I have failed oftener with my potatoes than with any other of the long list of crops that I attempt to grow. Yet if I should say to the farmers of this audience that they did not know how to grow a crop of potatoes, they would consider themselves insulted, though I presume that not one of them has had complete success with them for any long series of years. ”

“ In all the large cities more or less willow is manufactured every year, and the amount thus worked in the city of Milwaukee is very large. This industry is a benefit to the whole community and deserves to be encouraged, and the West especially should take a deep interest in extending it. The fact that it gives employment to poor during the winter, thus making comfort take the place of want, should exert a great influence in its favor. Here then is a means by which the farmer can put money in his pocket and help his poor neighbor at the same time. ”

“ As on the stage, those actors who play best their parts are recalled and applauded after the curtain has fallen, so those in the brief drama of life, who have best performed their duties are, after their mortal costumes have been forever laid away in restful graves, again called out by their admiring cotemporaries, and thus their intellectual and moral personalities reappear before the lights, amidst tumultuous and emulative applause. ”