THE FARM.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 19 June 1914, Page 7

THE FARM.

THE DOMINATION OF WRONG IDEAS. An English writer, whose name we cannot recall, once said : "There is nothing that takes deeper root.makea a more determined growth, and is harder to exterminate than weeds on the farm and wrong ideas of farming in the mind of the farmer." We will drop the weeds and conj sider the ideas for a • moment. First, i wrong ideas concerning the treatment !of the soil in the preservation of its I fertility. Fertility means producing' i power. There is scarcely a farm in j the range of our acquaintance but has Buffered great loss in this respect.' ,It seems almost impossible to get I the wrong idea of soil management ■; out of the heads of average farmers. |We have a great abundance of the j best knowledge obtainable on this ! question surrounding the. mind of the farmer like a cloud, but he does not believe it because he does not understand it. He does not understand it because he has so little mental training in the ways of that knowledge. He stumbles at once over the lan-i guage used to convey that knowledge. ! Had he been taken when a child in his district school and made acquainted with the terms used, given a> training in the elementary principles of soil fertility, see what a difference it would have made in his mental attitude towards the teachings of science in this one particular in all his subsequent life. Because the farimer boy studies arithmetic he at one* knows and recognises the mean-, in? of arithmetical terms in all after life. Because he has been taught the parts of speech, he always knows the meaning of noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, and adjective. But he has never been given a chance to study about the soil, the one thing of all others that must come closest to Mm during his whole life. It is for this reason to-day that the graet body of older farmers are as yet untouched in their, actual practice by the truth as it actually exists. A farmer once .said to us : "My father never considered it his duty except in the roughest, crudest sense, to teach me anything about the soil. He knew nothing of the elements composing it. These things; were never taught him, and consequently he had notMng to give to me. As he was, so was every farmer in my school district, and so they are today. I should have continued on in this wasteful ignorance had I not early seen that it meant destruction to the producing power of my land, and I broke out of the thick crust ?md went to studying by myself. I bought books and a dictionary. I read the best papers I could get. I did everything I could to give myself the knowledge my father and my district school should have given me when a boy. My farm bias come up wonderfully because I discarded the old, wrong ideas." Take that statement in its entirety. It constitutes both text and sermon. It tells the reason why wrong ideas destroy the farm and impoverish the farmer. It shows tbe' way for a better o"rdor of things. Tim farm district school has never done its duty to tbe farm boy. Consequently the nation has suffered great loss in the destruction of soil fertility, It never will do its}duty till ihr> farmers who control it .change their ideas of farm management. TV-i they may see what the little fanr\ school should do to make their boy." intelligent in the acquirement and use of better knowledge. The soil, the original gift of n generous Providence, has been cursr.-l with the ignorance of the farmer. Neglect of his mind has sent u~ wrong ideas like weeds upon the neglected farm, to mislead and Tiindfv his progress, and prevent the beneficent control of right ideas.--"Hoard* Dairyman."