Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 July 1877 — Farm Intelligently. [ARTICLE]

Farm Intelligently.

Time was, in the history of our country, when, if.a man knew enough to hitch his team te a. plow and go into the field and turn ower; the soil in a rude, half-way sort of manner, and then plant and .sow his crops, he could safely rest in the assurance of an abundant harvest, for the sun and rain and. dwv of heaven would complete the wookhe had begun. But thabday has now past. The rich, virgin soil which was for.eeaturies in preparation, has, particularly, ini the eastern and middle sections of>our country, become exhausted; much of <it, it is needless to add, has been wantonly wasted. And he who would now hawe success in farming must, exercise brain as well as brawn, must<combine skill wife industry, or, in other .words, farm intelligently. “ Book farming,” to use a common expression, . can ino longer be profitably ignored. If, people were endowed .with an intuition ithat taught them how to. do all things eoirectly, there would be no benefit derived from an interchange of ideas, or if a man was endowed with an unusual faculty for learning thingslby observation, and was sc .circumstanced that he could spend a portion of each year traveling, he might be able to make such applications of the knowledge thus obtained as to.compete with men.who farmed on scientific principles. :But as.intuitive knowledge is scarce, and as farmers, as a class, are not; given to troweling,, there remains no better: . way, and indeed no other way of deriving information <on agricultural questions than by readmg books and papers devoted to such questions. It is no more to be expected that a man could farm sueeessfully who difl,not inform himself as to his business, than to expect a merchant, eor a lawyer, or*, physician would succeed tin his pariicatlar calling without infoumang himself as tothe nature of that calling. The man who, (ignorant of the art of navigation, would attempt to guide a vessel across the Atlantic, wou’d be deemed a lunatic or an idist, and yet it is scarcely more inconsistent than Che manner in which hundreds of men al! over our laud are conducting feeir fanms. But the leaven of light and knowledge,in agriculture sat work,and kt us hope it will continue to work .until our far mere, one and aJI, shall beaonae thoroughly waked, up to .the importance of farming intelli-t gently..— Cor. Ohio Farmer.