THE FARMER AND HIS HOME
=Farming in the Past.=--In the past, successful farming was easier than
it is at present or is destined to be in the future. In the prairie
regions of the great central West, the virgin and fertile soil, the
large acreage of easy cultivation, and the good prices made success
inevitable. Indeed, these conditions were thrust upon the fortunate
farmer.
But those days are passed. Increased population is reducing the acreage
and cultivation, while it is eliminating the surplus fertility;
competition and social and economic pressure are reducing the margin of
profits. Thrift, good management, and brains are becoming increasingly
important factors in successful farming.
=Old Conceit and Prejudice.=--Twenty years ago, when the agricultural
colleges were taking shape and attempting to impress their usefulness
upon the farmer, the latter was inclined to assume a derisive attitude,
and to refer to their graduates as "silk-stocking farmers"--or, as one
farmer put it, "theatrical" sort of fellows, meaning _theoretical_! In
the farming of the future, however, the agricultural college and its
influence are bound to play a large part. There is plenty of room on a
good farm of one hundred and sixty acres for the best thinking and the
most careful planning. Foresight and ingenuity of the rarest kinds are
demanded there.
We wish to enumerate, and discuss in brief, some of the important points
of vantage to be watched and carefully guarded, if farm life, which
means rural life, is to be pleasant and profitable. If rural life is to
retain its attractions and its people, it must be both of these. Let us,
in this chapter, investigate some things which, although apart from the
school and education in any technical sense, are truly educative, in the
best sense.
=Leveling Down.=--One thing that sometimes impresses the close observer
who is visiting in the country and in farm homes is that there exists in
some rural localities a kind of "leveling down" process. People become
accommodated to their rather quiet and unexciting surroundings. Their
houses and barns, in the way of repairs and improvements, are allowed
gradually to succumb to the tooth of time and the beating of the
elements. This process is so slow and insidious that those who live in
the midst of it scarcely notice the decay that is taking place. Hence it
continues to grow worse until the farm premises assume an unattractive
and dilapidated appearance. Weeds grow up around the buildings and along
the roads, so slowly, that they remain unnoticed and hence uncut--when
half an hour's work would suffice to destroy them all, to the benefit of
the farm and the improvement of its appearance.
In the country it is very easy, as we have said, to "level down." People
live in comparative isolation; imitation, comparison, and competition
enter but little into their thoughts and occupations. In the city it is
otherwise. People live in close proximity to each other, and one
enterprising person can start a neighborhood movement for the
improvement of lawns and houses. There is more conference, more
criticism and comparison, more imitation. In the city there is a kind of
compulsion to "level up."
When one moves from a large active center to a smaller one, the life
tendency is to accommodate one's self to his environment; while if one
moves from a small, quiet place to a larger and more active center, the
life tendency is to level up. It is, of course, fortunate for us that we
are able to accommodate ourselves to our environment and to derive a
growing contentment from the process. The prisoner may become so content
in his cell that he will shed tears when he is compelled to leave it for
the outer world where he must readjust himself. The college man, over
whom there came a feeling of desolation on settling down in a small
country village with one store, comes eventually to find contentment,
sitting on the counter or on a drygoods box, swapping stories with
others like himself who have leveled down to a very circumscribed life
and living. Leveling down may be accomplished without effort or thought,
but eternal vigilance is the price of leveling up.
=Premises Indicative.=--A farmer is known by the premises he keeps, just
as a person is known by the company he keeps. If a man is thrifty it
will find expression in the orderliness of his place. If he is
intelligent and inventive it will show in the appointments and
adaptations everywhere apparent, inside and outside the buildings. If
the man and his family have a fine sense of beauty and propriety, an
artistic or aesthetic sense, there will be evidences of cleanliness and
simple beauty everywhere--in the architecture, in the painting, in the
pictures, and the carpets, in the kinds and positions of the trees and
shrubbery, and in the general neatness and cleanliness of the premises.
It is not so necessary that people possess much, but it is important
that they make much of what they do possess. The exquisite touch on all
things is analogous to the flavor of our food--it is as important for
appetite and for nourishment as the food itself.
=Conveniences by Labor-saving Devices.=--If there are ingenuity and the
power of ordinary invention in common things, system and devices for
saving labor will be evident everywhere. The motor will be pressed into
service in various ways. There will be a place for everything, and
everything will be in its place. Head work and invention, rather than
mere imitation, characterize the activities of the master.
=Eggs in Several Baskets.=--The day is past when success may be attained
by raising wheat alone. This was, of course, in days gone by, the
easiest and cheapest crop to produce. It was also the crop that brought
the largest returns in the shortest time. Wheat raising was merely a
summer's job, with a prospective winter's outing in some city center. It
was and is still the lazy farmer's trick. It was an effort similar to
that of attempting the invention of a perpetual motion machine; it was
an attempt, if not to get something for nothing, at least to get
something at the lowest cost, regardless of the future. But nature
cannot be cheated, and the modern farmer has learned or is learning
rapidly, that he must rotate and diversify his crops if he would succeed
in the long run. Consequently he has begun rotation. He also replenishes
his soil with nitrogen-producing legumes, along with corn planting and
with summer fallowing. He engages in the raising of chickens, hogs,
cattle, and horses. This diversification saves him from total loss in
case of a bad year in one line. The farmer does not carry all his eggs
in one basket. A bad year with one kind of crops may be a good year with
some other. Diversification also makes farming an all-year occupation,
every part of which is bringing a good return, instead of being a job
with an income for the summer and an outlay for the winter. Live stock,
sheep, hogs, and cattle grow nights, Sundays, and winters as well as at
other times, and so the profits are accumulating all the year round.
=The Best is the Cheapest.=--The modern farmer also realizes that it
takes no more, nor indeed as much, to feed and house the best kinds of
animals than it does to keep the scrub varieties. In all of this there
is a large field for study and investigation. But one must be interested
in his animals and understand them. They should know his voice and he
should know their needs and their habits. As in every other kind of work
there must be a reasonable interest; otherwise it cannot be an
occupation which will make life happy and successful.
=Good Work.=--The good farmer has the _feel_ and the habit of good work.
The really successful man in any calling or profession is he who does
his work conscientiously and as well as he can. The sloven becomes the
bungler, and the bungler is on the high road to failure. It is always a
pleasant thing to see a man do his work well and artistically. It is the
habit, the policy, the attitude of thus doing that tell in the long run.
A farmer may by chance get a good crop by seeding on unplowed stubble
land, but he must feel that he is engaged in the business of trying to
cheat himself, like the boy playing solitaire--he does not let his right
hand know what his left hand is doing. The good farmer is an artist in
his work, while the poor farmer is a veritable bungler--blaming his
tools and Nature herself for his failures.
=Good Seed and Trees.=--The successful farmer knows from study and
experience that only healthy seed and healthy animals will produce good
grain and strong animals after their kind. He does not try tricks on
Nature. He selects the best kinds of trees and shrubbery and when these
are planted he takes care of them. He realizes that what is worth sowing
and planting is worth taking care of.
=A Good Caretaker.=--The successful and intelligent farmer keeps all his
buildings, sheds, and fences in good repair and well painted. He is not
penny-wise and pound-foolish. He knows the value of paint from an
economic and financial point of view as well as from an artistic and
aesthetic one. Knowing these things, and from an ingrained feeling and
habit, he sees to it that all his machinery and tools are under good
cover, and are not exposed to the gnawing tooth of the elements. This
habit and attitude of the man are typical and make for success as well
as for contentment. As it is not the saving of a particular dollar that
makes a man thrifty or wealthy, but the _habit_ of saving dollars; so it
is not the taking care of this or that piece of machinery, or that
particular building, but the habit of doing such things that leads him
to success.
=Family Cooeperation.=--Such a man will also enlist the interest and the
active cooperation of his sons and daughters by giving them property or
interests which they can call their own; he will make them, in a
measure, co-partners with him on the farm. There could be no better way
of developing in them their best latent talents. It would result in
mutual profit and, what is better, in mutual love and happiness. One of
the greatest factors in a true education is to be interested,
self-active, and busy toward a definite and worthy end. Under such
circumstances both the parents and the children might be benefited by
taking short courses in the nearest agricultural college; and a plan of
giving each his turn could be worked out to the interest and profit of
all the family. Such a family would become local leaders in various
enterprises.
=An Ideal Life.=--It would seem that such an intelligent and successful
farmer and his family could lead an ideal life. Every life worth while
must have work, disappointments, and reverses. But work--reasonable
work--is a blessing and not a curse. Work is an educator, a civilizer, a
sanctifier.
A family like that described might in the course of a few years possess
most of the modern conveniences. The telephone, the daily mail, the
automobile, and other inventions are at hand, in the country as well as
in the city. The best literature of to-day and of all time is available.
Music and art are easily within reach. With these advantages any rural
family may have a happy home. This is more than most people in the
cities can have. More and more of our people should turn in the future
to this quiet but happy and ideal country life.