Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, March 18, 1916, Page 10

A HAZARDED OPINION WRECKED (Written Specially for The Bulletin.) A not-any-too-highly-esteemed con- temporary from 'way out west rises up to disagree with my remarks about farming as 2 gamble. Hear it:— “A witty writer, (Oh, Great Caesar!) who is more superficial than observing, made the claim recently that farming, above all lines of business, was a gambling industry. He said the far- mer was always betting his crop against the weather or asainst the merket. It is true that King Pluvius and King Drought have a zood deal to gay about the farmer's crops and the farmer’s income, but it is generally the farmer that confines himself to the one crop system that ever loses out seriously in his fight with rain and drought. If one confined his crop, for instance, to potatoes or cabbage, or even wheat or corn, there would be many a year when weather conditions would down him. - It is the man who spreads his risk over a considerable number. of crops that is generally in- vincible. If, for instance, last year, the man in the corn belt had relied entirely on corn, he would have found a good deal of it frost-bitten and un- salable, but the man who had 60 acres of corn, 60 acres of small grain and 40 acres of hay found that his enormous crop of hay and small grain easily off- set the depreciation in the quality of his corn. Those farmers who go one step further amd make provision for whole state to supply one poor house with short commons! But, after some study of both east- . ern and western farming methods 1 " ’ ’ \ ' am convinced that the intensive culti- " 3 < 5 L s ) v cxi3 vation of ten acres on an'average New - England hillside or intervale farm im- plies and compels not only quite as much work, but much more skilful work and “vastly keener observation than the usual cultivation of a hun- dred western acres, in the usual west- ern manner. Some years ago, a western farmer, who had visited before in my town, sold his Iowa quarter section and moved here, buying one of the two or three big, level-lying farms of the neighborhood. He blandly informed us all that he had made a big suc- cess, out in Towa and now he'd show us easterners “how to farm it He brought his western tools and his western methods and his western ideas and a husky bunch of western-bred sons with him. It took him just three years to us_benighted easterners how to farm. In all those vears he had but one good crop and, as it happen- ed that every other farmer had equal- ly good if not better ones of that par- ticular thing that yvear, the price for it was so low-that he -couldn’t sell it for the amount it had cost him to the feeding of the bulk of their pro- duce by running live stock are in a position still more impregnable against the assaults of misfortune. “Nosiree, the man who said that farming is a gamble has had no ex- perience except possibly raising gera- niums in a window garden in a side street of some big city. If there is one sure same where applied intelli- gence and industry has its full re- ward, it is in agriculture, at least in this favored land, where every ra where, tra farms and soils, his_own place perhaps, edifyi 2ating. ise it. rle's back in the southwest, some- now, where he plows with a actor, dvesn’t have to manure or cul- tivate, and lets the cattle and hogs do the harvestin: His remarks about New England when he left us for were emphatic and, ng, but needed expur- pros- [\ . 5 pect, pleases, and even man is not so|_ o he man who said that farming e el a gamble has had no experience ex- cept possibly raising geraniums in a window garden in a side street of £ SR in¢ | Some big city So says my eritic. Df";:;“;“;-;whisfi‘;er"n-fl stod, nar Tine | Considering that his comment comes maR whio £aid that farming is a gam- | Lom (he editorial room of a paper e ‘;(’?;I’ds““o% — e onte™ | writing in en old farmhouse ten miles fr western :ditor ever knew exis My special phase of ing truclt. It involves th. duetion, so far as condition: low, of batween forty and si ent. sorts ‘of crops, each five distinot kinds of soi ar so much 3 om even a small city and haven't seen a really big city for cars—am writing in the inter- stolen from the practical work of n actual farm, and rely mostly upon personal experience with dirt and s and weather and my ay T oon- sandy loara, gravel loam, re adidualy dedug Sheretrom oo swamp and straight gravel, With six | B0m S n Sperior tone. of . eriie variéties of fertilizer —hon ool . cow manure, hen manure, acid phos: |'® icst a lestle malapronds. phate, ground lime ard complete| « 3 = (chemical) fertilizer—the same com- | ;1% there I3 one sure game where ap- bined in more than a dozen different n : its full reward, it is in agriculture.” proportions and_applied at more than | i - < : : Vhoopee! Ring the suns and fire the a dozen different rates, per acre. pa: S atnaang feithe — { ch nssumes the char- | Of course, it doesm't imply sixty [“Cig Of an ultimatum. i acre fields of corn or wheat. OP Sixty | o apont’ mor ‘ acre flelds of anything else. The dif- | tne West Pabt o fogEnbor Alden of ferent ‘crops are so many and their | than syerame intelinance oog of More requirements of soil, fertilization, cul- | inqusten 1o oee prence end of great tivation, etc, are 5o various and dif- | cora toct sncine’ e iseish feld of ferent that it is scldom any one Kind |fortiised wonl Sxot coodr Rared ond Tt el besiton o Xind | fertilized well. ot good seed, culti- Many of them could be measured by square rods, rather than by acre: acre-fractions. ~ Furthermore, it is eastern farm which acr into one fleld. many mountains and ledges brooks and swamps and forests up with our agriculture yor any things as sixty-acre fields:. It no one farmed it in' Connecticut unless he could swing his tiactors over sixty-acre fields, there wrouldn’'t be enough farm produce grov/n in the "“?? 39 Humphreys’ Seven ty-seven For Colds, Influ enza, st 1o a mighty cculd rare sicty dThere are too and fr a tor th bl of a th ) - To get the best results, take “Sew~ enty-seven” a\* the first cliill or shiver. If you wait until you begin to cough in and sneeze, have sore throat and in- |eh fluenza, it may take longer. Z5c. and $1.00, at all mai druggists or ‘After Grip take TONICTABLETS after any long illness, physical ex- haustion, loss of strendth, or appetite, take Humphreys’ Tonic Tablets—price $1.00 at drug stores or sent direct. Humphreys’ Homeo. Medicine Co,, 156 William Street, New York. fa a di al 7 7z 7 New England answer the essential re after year they have *'On May 31st I planted (signed) ‘There is a dealer in you able season for you. See corn in the neighborhood. came a hail utes the entire ruin. had, also, The same hail tore and shredded their {arift ‘and sidehill washings and not only spoiled it. In order to make his opelra(\ons still more certain, to clinch and prices. not. gamble against hail, for one thing, but 7 ANIMAL FERTILIZERS ~ Are Effective. They give all-around satisfaction year after year. They are cheaper than home-mixed chemicals. ' They will contain more valuable plant food than ever in 1916 at no increase in cost. uirements for crop production. te lemonstrated the superior animal substances— BONE, plant food of powerful productivity. And now that the supply of potash has been cut off, we offer the same best fertilizers, tested and proven good wwithout potash! Soils need organic food to kéep them always rich and pro- ductive ; New England Fertilizers furnish just that food ! Fertilizer without potash. The yield was large, and 1 did not have 50 many small potatoes on this kind 2s on the others. While I firmly believe that potash is needed for potatoes, and a good large percentage of it, I am convinced that it will pay for a year or so0 10 use New England Animal Fenilizers without potash. NEW ENGLAND FERTILIZER CO., BOSTON, MASS. vated thoroushly, and had. when the alks began to ear, one of the finest oking and most promisine pieces of Then along orm and in fifteen min- patch was a_ riddled He didn’t save enough corn om eight acres to feed one sick pig weelk. But corn wasn’t his only crop. several acres He in potatoes. Ps and so weakened thelr vitality at they fell an easy prey to the ight and following rot. He also had several large meadows hay. Th same hail beat the grass n, drove muddied currents of hafl- ) over it, its marketable but precluded the possibility cutting more than a quarter of agricultural cable-sew and copper-bottom em, as it were, Alden had provided mself with an extra herd of live- to which he intended to feed his corn and hay and cull potatoes, etc, The result of the years operation for him was a failure of his corn, potato and hay crops, and the enforced sell- g of his livestock at bankruptcy l}}ny element of the “gamble” in that, It may be answered that this was an exception, that hail doesn’t ruin every Tmer’s crops, every year. Of course If it did farming wouldn't be a sure loss. But that same hail-storm d comparable if not equal damage to the corn and potatoes and oats and hay ang rye and fruit and garden veg- etables of more than forty other far- mers within the range of my telephone hearing. Others escaped. And there you have it. our manure and our seeds ‘We all bet our land and and our bor that hail wouldn't destroy them. Some of us won and some of us lost. D Animal Fertilizers iy BLOOD and MEAT —as a potatoes with New England Animal V. E. WILDER, Washbura, Maise.” r town who can make this a profit- him or write us. If that isn't a gamble, what on earth is? We bet agalnst a hail storm which we couldn’t possibly foresee or avoid or protect ourselves from,—took our chances that one wouldn't come or, if it did, would skip us. Just. plain, straight betting against absolute chance. That's what Alden and I both did. -The hail hit him and he lost: it skipped me, thank heaven! and I didn’t lose. But the chances of one against that August hail-storm were just as good—and just as bad— as those of the other, when we planted in May. We . didn't either one of us know a durned thing about it! That was last summer. The year be- fore, another hail-storm devastated another strip of country, a little far- ther to the northward. Three years ago another destroyed all the crops of half a township to the southwest of me. Twice, within twenty years, sud- den July freshets, caused by _cloud bursts on the surrounding mountains, have . plunged down the valley- below me, coming both times in the night and without warning, sweeping crops away, overturning . barns, drowning cattle. There doesn't a week pass in any sum- mer when. one may not read in his daily paper harrowing accounts of losses by. similar. storms in _different parts of the country. Compared with the areas which are not ravaged, they are of course small, and their ~occurrence comparatively rare. . So is the occurence of four aces in & poker hand. But they have been keld and: will be agaifi, and the fel- low that's- up against them always has beén and aiways will be a loser. When he “sits into”.a .poker game he just takes his chance of not having to “buck against” them. _But nobody disputes that he's a gambler when he does it. Nor.is it only the weather, by any manner. of means, that the farmer has to gamble with. There are new worms and new bugs and new blights all the time coming at him, or old ones Te- fusing to get out at his biddins, no matter how much “intelligepce and In- dustry” he may apply-to the attempted Grive. There are variations in the seasons, too, mysterious influences at work, hiddenly holding back some par- ticular crop, when no Solomon of the farms or the experiment stations can discover the why or the how. As | have , I regularly try to grow some half hundred different va- rieties of vegetables for my truck mar- ket. The experience of many long, bard years, with my nose on the grind- stone and my fingers in the dirt, has taught me that a certain very con- slderable proportion of the crops I try to raise will always be a failure. If 1 knew which ones it would be, be- forehand, I wouldn’t plant them. But I never do. -The very ones which were most productive and profitable, last season, may be, this, sorry Hures, though given as nearly identical con- ditions of soil, man: and cultiva- ton as are ably every farmer who diversifies pro- duction knows and recognizes the fact that some years are vod” for grass, and some are “good” for clover, and some are “good” for corn or buck- wheat, while the same may be “poor” for potatoes or cabbages or apples or berries. Ile doesn't know, nobody knows or can know, when the spring work has to be done and the plant- ing. planned, which the coming sum- mer is going to be. He Jjust goes ahead and takes his chance, and trusts to that. If it happens to turn out his way, he wins; if it happens to turn out the other way, he loses. He hasn't any more knowledge of which it's going to be than the man who “sits In” at a_poker game has of how the shuffled cards will fail and whether he'll get four aces or a “nine- spot high.” There are quite a bunch of us far- mers in New England who have both “intelligence and industry,” who are not “more superficial than observing, and who have had more ‘“experience’ than comes from “raising geraniums in a window garden,” who would now be limousine-riding into town to cash our coupons or draw our dividends, if we hadn't been so often compelled by the laws of the game to “ante up” & full season’s work and expense against Old Stepmother Nature's beating hand- tul of higher cards., Naturally, the longer a farmer plays the game and the better he comes to understand the tricks of it, the better player he becomes. But he isn't playing any ‘“sure thing”; not yet. Nor will he, till he has come to predict six months in advafice the run of the weather, and has learned how to beat all the bugs and slugs and worms and blights and mildews and fungl at their own game. ‘When that blessed time comes, if it ever does, there'll be fewer professedly “farm papers” than there are now. For the excellent reason that farm- ing will then ‘be more profitable than sitting on the tenth floor or a city block and writing editorials telling "em how to do it! THE FARMER. Tolland County COLUMBIA Mrs. Howard W. Yeomans Dies Sud- donly at Redlands—Lyman Family to Move to Coventry—Ground Hog Caught. Friends in this place were surprised and saddened to lear of the death of Mrs. Howard W. Yeomans, of Cleve- Iand, Ohio, which o¢curred suddenly at Redlands, Cal, Saturday evening, March 4th. She is survived by her husband, a eon and two daughters, al- be in spring. ‘Howard W. Yeo- mans with his family has been practically ‘Jossibis;’ Frob-iing the wigthr &t Stipui. Cob, ‘where he was joined by his mother, Mrs. Mary B. Yeomans of this place, and his aunt, Mrs. J. V. B. Prince of Cov- entry. The family thus brought to- gether were enjoying a happy winter, but the suden death of Mrs. Yeomans makes a sad ending. Mr. Yeomans was born in Columbia, where he spent his early boyhood. Early in life he went West and located in Cleveland, O. He has been very successful in business and now has a ranch in Car- bondale, Colorado. His Columbia friends eorrow with him in his bereavement. Leap Year Dance. The Leap Year dance given by the young women_last Saturday evening proved a most enjoyable affair. The young men especially were delighted. Bungalow Moved on lce Mr. Twomey of Willimantic, who has a summer bungalow at Columbia Lake has moved it from the ground on which it originally stood to a site on the same side of the Jakc w purchased from Mrs. Welch east shore. The building wes moved upon rollers on the ice; a tance_of several rods to its new loca n. The east shore is fast being taken Chester is reported. to have land of Mrs. Welch and w bungalow at an early date Will Move to Coventry. It is reported that the fam of E. E. Lyman, who have resided here since last summer are to move to Coventry, about the first of April, a son Raymond E. Lyman having received an excel- lent offer to assume the management of a farm in that place. Mrs. Lyman who has done so much to improve the singing in the church choir will be greatly missed, as will also her hus- band, who, though engaged in business at Brooklyn, N. Y. came here quite often to spend Sunday with his family, and when here always gave his ser- vices as organist. Ground Hog Caught. Conrad Schreiffer's dog caught a woodchuck early this week. ' The ani- mal was looking for his “shadow” that he didn’t see on Candlemus day, and got nabbed. Served him right. ‘Théy have given us so much of the “peautiful” this winter on the install- ment plan that our people think there is something wrong with the ‘weather factory if it isn't. snowing when they get up In the morning. A “skunk” was discovered early this week in close proxmity to J. A. Utley's walking now and was making and was easily dispatched with a club, The news. of his death rapidly. Mr., Utley and his neighbors were - the chief mourners. Columbia Lake is at present within about 20 inches of high water mark. SOUTH COVENTRY Mre. F. E. Hull entertained the Missiona t her Ladi Association sl e anirbi e AP bl weather only seventeen were present. Mrs. Erwin of New Rochelle has been the guest of Mrs. L. J. Sweet. Mrs. F. E. Hull is visiting her sis- ter_in Lowell, Mass. First Selectman John H. Reynolds has been visiting relatives in Abing- ton, ‘Those who took the recent examina- tlon for rural mall carrier for this town were Willlam A. Wolfe, Burton Flint and Frank Day. Mr. and_Mrs.- Francls Green have moved to Pomfret. s Washington County, R. I USQUEPAUGH Mrs. Anna Wells, has returned aft- spending the winter with her son annock. Mrs. E. L. Simmons spent last Fri- day in Providence. Mrs. C. C. Kenyon _ entertained triends from Mystic, Sunday. Master Edward C. Kenyon of West Kingston, spent Saturday and Sunday with his grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Kenyon. Mrs. C. B. Kenyon spent S with friends in_Providence. Rev. C.-H. Paimer was a caller at Hope Valley Tupsday afternoon. Some havé maved out of the village while others have moved In. Gideon Palmer was a caller at Hope Valley, Tuesday. John Briggs called on friends West Kingston Tuesday, Mrs. Arthur Cook and little daught- er, Phyllis, visited last week with relatives in Providence. Mrs. Cook re- turned home Saturday but Miss Phyllis remaingd for a longer visit. Mrs. J. S. Lamond, €alled on rela. tives at Wyoming Tuesday, Bradford Sutton of Shannock HIlL called on friends here Sunday. Mrs. Nellle Ferguson visited Sunday and Monday, with relatives in Provi. denice. - R._H. Moore and children of Rich- mond, were' callers here Sunday. J. C. Webster spent Tuesda: Providenice. rurday at easily stops skin-troubles 5 Doctors have prescribed Resinol . lr‘-s-ol Ointment .-Ann-l: - 241 Seep bresnld prver for over twenty years in the treat- s A o ment of eczema and similar itching, bumning, unsightly skin -diseases. 3 They use it regularly because they = koow that it usually gives destant relief and soon clears away the erup - 3 tion. They know, too, that it con- tains nothing harmful’ or ‘irritating.” to the most delicate skin. - See if Resinol doesnot = stop your skin 5, 5