The Ely Miner

THE OLD-TIME DAIRY.
Much Fun Was Poked at It, But Its Owner Usually Acquired a Bank Account.

Only under certain conditions, the dairy means wealth to the farmer, and fertility to his farm. If these conditions be not secured, and maintained, dairying will exhaust the farm and impoverish the farmer more speedily and more hopelessly than almost any other form of farming. When the milk is sold off the farm, it carries with it the fertility of the soil, and generally the net price of the milk is too low to pay for making it and to replace the fertility removed with it. This hard fact underlies all the complaints of dairy farmers about the profitlessness of dairy farming.
Old-time dairy farming sent from the farm only the butter, and the old-time farmers made money and were the most independent men on earth. When farmers once more take up home churning, dairy farming will once more become steadily and satisfactorily profitable, and dairy farms will once more increase, instead of decrease, in fertility.
The most forlorn thing in the farming region is the large dairy farm, once fertile and operated profitably by its owner, who made butter, now worn-out and starving and working to death the tenant who occupies and operates it. It produces only fractional crops of grass, corn, rye, wheat and other crops, and the milk it makes is poor in quality, small in quantity, and high in cost. It goes away in cans while the churn rots in the shed or garret. It nets the tenant 75 cents for each dollar he puts into it. He can't pay his rent. The owner says he is no good. The tenant says the farm is no good-and both are right. The churn, substituted for the can, would change such farms decidedly and profitably for both owner and tenant. When will farmers open their eyes to the business folly implied in the senseless work that is miscalled "dairy farming?" Butter is the basis of farm wealth and fertility, but farmers in these days seem to think that butter-making is hard work in comparison with milk shipping. On this fundamental error they have built and are maintaining the losing shipping business, throwing away the soil of their farms along with their own strength, health, work, comfort and lives.-Midland Farmer.