FARM PROVERBS.

Otaki Mail, Volume XXVIII, 2 June 1920, Page 4

FARM PROVERBS.

! Every farmer must exercise his own backbone, cultivate independence, instead of harrowing his neighbour by borrowing his plough and bringing it hfome coated With rust; or his mower and bringing it homo with dulled knives and oilless, complaining bearings. I believe in the act of borrowing, but not in the habit of borrowing; and 1 believe in treating a borrowed tool with as much respect as if it were of royal blood. Sometimes I think the farmer’s treatment of a borrowod tool shows whether or no he belongs to the royalty of earth.

The farmer who heeds this old proverb will not lean on his neighbours. He will keep up his line fences—he will have no holes in the bottom of his tub. The farmor-leauer, the fellow who expects his neighbours to lift ninctenths of his load —and possibly to pat him on tho back for lifting the other tenth—is on the highway to failure; his tub will know only failure and decay. This reminds me of a witty coloured preacher who was lecturing to raise money for repairs to his church. He said: “The dry rot is getting into the floor of my church.” Then he added: “From present indications I fear that the dry rot is getting into some of my members.”

Run your engines with your own steam! He who is always helped becomes helpless! Row, and not drift! Plant instead of dreaming! Be a lifter, hot a leaner! A dependable farmer is self-dependent and not. dependent on his neighbours. You remember the old fable of the lark whose nest, was in the farmer’s grain. As long as the old farmer was looking to die neighbours for help to cut. his grain lie lark was unmoved, but. wheD she n>ard the old farmer say to his sous: • AVc will wait no longer for the neiglihours. to-morrow we will cut the grain A-itbout their help,” the wise lark said to her mate: “This very night wo must move our little ones, for the grain nil be surely harvested to-morrow.”

He who stands in his own tub will improve to-day, but he who is trying to get both feet in his neighbour’s tub may lose both to-day and to-morrow.

The farmer who is always longing to stand in his neighbour’s tub becomes fussy and irritable. A man’s own shoes are best for his feet. Use what the Lord gives you, and give the neighbour a rest. The farmer who hoes his own row is a winner.—Home paper.