Farmers

“ If you owned a mill, which of two millers would you choose—the one who could make forty pounds of flour to the bushel, or the one who could make forty-five—the quality being equally good? Of two acres of land, which would you choose—the one which would yield fifteen bushels of wheat, or the one which, with the same cultivation, would yield thirty? Our farmers are willing enough to hunt for good lands; but why, on the same reasons, should they not hunt for the best breeds of cows, cattle hogs, and horses? ”

“ The farmers are a large class, and they associate and converse principally with each other. “Their talk is of bullocks,” it is true, but to them it is the most interesting talk of all. What is so delightful to them as to meet at each other’s houses, and with bright glasses of nectarous ale, or more potent spirit sparkling before them, and pipe in mouth, to talk of markets, rents, tithes, new improvements, and the promise of crops? To walk over their lands of a Sunday afternoon together, and pronounce on the condition of growing corn, turnips, and grass ”

“ We may paraphrase the sordid, "raise more corn to feed more hogs to buy more land to raise more corn, etc.," into the divine, "train better farmers to make better farming to grow better farmers, etc." We want trained men that we may have an advancing agricultural art, that we may make every agricultural acre render its maximum. ”

“ Most that I know about soils, and fertilizers, and plant development, and the like, I learned from my father, who kept abreast of the times by reading and experiment.
“You can stumble along, working at your trade of farming, and only half knowing it all your life; that's what most farmers do, in fact. ”

“ The landowners, the farmers, and the agricultural workers have come to recognise that they all have something in common touching agriculture, touching the trade or industry in which they are brought into close touch day by day. ”

“ It should be recollected, too, that amongst farmers are to be found men of all ranks and grades. Farming has been, and is, a fashionable pursuit. We have ducal farmers, and from them all degrees downwards. ”

“ A group of [pg 187] farmers, well acquainted with the possible advantages, may classify their farms as grain farms, dairy farms, breeding farms, feeding farms and market-gardens. Such a community of interests would find not only the advantages of exchange between each other, as well as the rest of the world, but would soon build up bodies of expert young men in the several specialties, whose work would be at a premium everywhere. ”

“ Agriculture is also the most [Pg 211] widely-extended of all occupations, and it lies at the foundation of all other industries. Daniel Webster once said, "When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of civilization." Unless man were fed and clothed the race would perish. ”

“ In this connection it is significant to note that farmers themselves are already quite as interested in the social problems of their particular calling and in the general economic and political questions of the day, as they are in science applied to their business of tilling the soil. ”

“ A superior class of farmers has sprung up, whose minds are as much improved by cultivation as their lands, and who are comfortably settled on farms supposed to be exhausted of their fertility by their predecessors. ”

“ Then if the farmers are changed, it is also all for the best without doubt. Changed they are, beyond all question. They are a different class of men from the old species of farmer who existed fifty years ago, and who seldom went further than his market town. ”

“ He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. ”

“ He offered the farmers on his estate every inducement to cultivate their land on the most approved principles, and himself set the example by instituting near each of his seats a model farm, where agriculture and cattle-breeding were carried on under his personal supervision. ”

“ I am going to advise my brethren, the farmers, if they have more land than they can fence, to sell, rent, or throw it out to the commons, and secure one acre at least, and from that to ten, or as much as they can actually enclose as it should be, and then cultivate it in good style. Do not haul off the straw to burn, but save it all, and all the manure you can produce. ”

“ Now the wealth of a farming community is always to arise from the products of the farm. Whatever [Pg 109] withdraws attention from assiduous cultivation, or plants the hope of gain in other sources than in the herds, the dairy, the grain and the grass field, will, eventually, insure disappointment and even poverty, as many of our farmers can testify. ”

“ If our most energetic farmers would abstract ten hours each per week from their incessant drudgery, and devote them to reading and reflection with regard to their [Pg 321] noble calling, they would live longer, live to better purpose, and bequeath a better example, with more property, to their children. ”

“ Our farmers round, well pleased with constant gain,
Like other farmers, flourish and complain.—
These are our groups; ”

“ Even the settled land, in those days, was only half cultivated; and on good land, unreclaimed or only half reclaimed, the skill and energy of a company of first-rate farmers would soon produce great results; barren commons would be dotted over with sheep, and rushy valleys would become rich pastures covered with cattle, and great clearings in the forest would grow green with rye and barley. ”

“ The wealth of great farmers, and the assistance of bankers given to lesser ones, have, in some people's opinions, enabled both to keep their corn, and such other things as their farms produce, from market ”

“ "I see a time when the farmer will not need to live in a cabin on a lonely farm. I see the farmers coming together in groups. I see them with time to read, and time to visit with their fellows. I see them enjoying lectures in beautiful halls, erected in every village. I see them gather like the Saxons of old upon the green at evening to sing and dance. I see cities rising near them with schools, and churches, and concert halls, and theatres. ”

“ In the country, yon may see flocks of sheep and herds of cows and oxen feeding on the fresh sweet grass of the pastures. Those animals are called stock. The business of those who raise them is called stock-raising.
Most farmers raise cows, horses, and other animals. Which land does the farmer use for pasture? What is a pasture? What is a meadow?
Grazing means feeding on grass. What animals have you seen grazing? Does a dog graze? A cow?
Mountains, so rough and rocky, are not good for farms and gardens. But many of them contain coal, on which millions of people depend for heat and light. ”

“ The farmers of this State must remember that conditions have changed in regard to the products of the farm. Eastern farmers cannot, because of natural conditions, produce grain and meat products as well as Western farmers can. ”

“ The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone? ”

“ Let there be, moreover, a "League for Rural Progress," in each state or, at least, an annual conference on rural progress, in each state, in which the representatives of the farmers' societies, of the schools, of the churches, and indeed all other people who have the slightest interest in rural advancement may meet to discuss plans and methods which shall better agriculture and the farmer. ”

“ Our South Australian farmers left their holdings in the hands of their wives and children too young to take with them, but almost all of them returned to grow grain and produce to send to Victoria. ”

“ Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have set out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a rotation of crops, from the breaking in of the lea to the sowing out in grass, with the sun and winds and sweet rains to ripen and swell the grain—the crying of the harvesters and the laughing of lassies among the stocks in the gloaming, the neighing of horse and the lowing of kine in the evening. ”

“ In the old States the representative farmer is a man of long training in the difficult and honorable art of diversified agriculture. He knows much of soils, of crops and their wise rotation, of domestic animals and their breeding, and of a hundred distinct phases of the production, the life, and the household economics that belong to the traditions and methods of Anglo-Saxon farming. ”

“ All those who own farms here are educated; they study agriculture, and gradually work their way to wealth and happiness. A farmer here is loved in the same manner as a banker or king on earth, only more. ”

“ R. S. Hawker.
People may talk if they please about the march of agriculture, and they may boast that by the discoveries of science a man will soon be able to carry into a large field enough manure for its soil in his coat-pocket, but there has been the ready answer, “Yes, and bring away the produce in his fob.” I am half inclined to agree with an old parishioner of mine, who used often to say, “It was an unlucky time for England when the phrase ‘gentleman farmer’ came up, and folks began to try their new-fangled plans—such [235] as clover for horses and turnips for sheep.” ”

“ All the methods of agriculture are pictured for us on the monuments. We mark the peasant as he breaks up the earth with a hoe or plows a shallow furrow with a sharp-pointed stick. We see the sheep being driven across sown fields to trample the seed into the moist soil. ”

“ I regard the Agriculture of this country as very far below the standard which, it should ere this have reached: I hold that the great mass of our cultivators might and should farm better than they do, and that better farming would render their sons better citizens and better men. ”

“ The very farmer who tells you that he never opened a book which treats of Agriculture, and never wants to see one, will ask his neighbor how to grow or cure tobacco, or hops, or sorgho, or any crop with which he is yet unacquainted, when the chances are a hundred to one that this particular neighbor cannot advise him so well as the volume which embodies the experience of a thousand cultivators of this very plant instead of barely one. ”

“ What is the first principle of good agriculture? To plough well. What is the second? To plough again; and the third is to manure. When you plough corn land, plough well and in good weather, lest you turn a cloddy furrow. The other things of good agriculture are to sow seed plentifully, to thin the young sprouts, and to hill up the roots with earth. ”

“ There strides the burly form of the farmer; there waits the ruddy hind with his flock; there, patient, sits the miller with his samples of corn; there, in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form the luxuries of cottage and farm. ”

“ THE FARMER AND THE TROLL
There was once a man who owned a little farm, as fine and fruitful as you would care to see. He had always tended it himself, too, driving his own plow in the spring, and taking his two-wheeled cart to market in the fall with a load of apples, potatoes, and carrots.
All of a sudden, though, things began to go badly with the farmer. His milk curdled in the dairy and his horse kicked the traces on market day, spilling the load and laming herself into the bargain. The eggs were addled, and weeds choked and overran his garden, faster than he could pull them out. ”

“ It is one of the most baffling mysteries of history, that agriculture—the first industry to be learned, was the last one to be developed. For thousands of years the wise men of the world absolutely ignored the problems of the farm. ”

“ When we understand better the importance of concentrating labor, instead of scattering it,—when we shall come to estimate duly the superior profit of “a little farm, well tilled,” over a great farm, half cultivated and half manured, overrun with weeds, and scourged with exhausting crops,—we shall then fill our barns, and double the winter fodder for our cattle and sheep by the products of these waste meadows. ”

“ Agriculture shows it in better methods of irrigation, the skillful employment of manures, the raising of improved breeds of cattle, the enactment of wise codes of rural laws, the introduction of the culture of rice, and that of sugar and coffee. ”

“ Suffice it to say that the farmer without an abundance of fruits in their season is like the lad with empty pockets outside the circus tent: lots of fruit and fun, ready to be enjoyed by those who have made thoughtful provision for the gratification of desires which always come, sooner or later. Every farmer should grow most of the fruits suited to his soil and climate,—enough to eat and to sell and to give to the worthy poor. ”

“ Progress less in agriculture than in other branches of production.—Still, when all is said, agriculture is the branch of production which has been affected least by the changes of the century. The farmer is still bound to the soil and subject to the weather. ”

“ Cattle, corn, pastures, vines, to make hearts glad,
Earth’s gifts to Man, her glory, and her pride.
A changed scene ours; no longer Nature heaps
The barns with sheaves; well, if the farmer keeps,
After cost of labour and grain he sowed,
A balance from the harvest that he reaps.
His land in ancient days required no toil,
Except to clear the corn from off the soil;
Much less, an armoury of tools, with beeves,
And a train of hirelings to drudge and moil.
Some aged ploughman will be heard complain,
That “labour as he may, how small the gain! ”

“ THIS is only farming in a common sense fashion, or rather, using your own sense and reason when putting in crops, studying the soil, its capabilities, properties and suitability for certain crops. When a practical farmer buys land for farming purposes he first examines it thoroughly, drains it if necessary, and manures the impoverished portions. ”

“ But, in truth, he has much higher motives for learning agriculture here; for a thorough acquaintance will enable him to make the best use of inadequate means—to know to apply cheap animal instead of dear manual labour,—to suit the crop to the soil, and the labour to the weather;—to construct appropriate dwellings for himself and family, live stock, and provisions ”