WHAT AN OLD FARMER SAYS
This is the advice of an old man that has tilled the soil for forty years:
I am an old man, upwards of three score years, during two scores of which I have been a tiller of the soil. I cannot say that I am now, but I have been rich and have all I need, do not owe a dollar, have given my children a good education, and when I am called away will leave them enough to keep the wolf from the door. My experience has taught me that:
- One acre of land well prepared and cultivated, produced more than two which received only the same amount of labor used on one.
- One cow, horse, mule, sheep or hog well fed, is more profitable than two kept on the same amount necessary to keep one well.
- One acre of clover or grass is worth more than two of cotton where no grass or clover is raised.
- No farmer who buys oats, corn, wheat, fodder or hay, as a rule, for ten years, can keep the sheriff away from the door.
- The farmers who never read the papers, sneer at book farming and improvements, always have a leaky roof, poor stock, broken down fences, and complain about bad “seasons.”
- The farmer who is above his business and trusts it to another to manage, soon has no business to attend to.
- The farmer whose habitual beverage is cold water, is healthier, wealthier and wiser than he who does not refuse to drink.
Thanks to National Farmers Union historian, Tom Giessel
