FARM MANAGEMENT Farm management is the application to personal farming of all the facts, principles and sciences related to agriculture. It includes the conducting or organizing of the farm, not only as regards present success and profits, but also with refer ence to the future fertility of the land. It is the crowning study in agricultural practice. A knowl edge of the natural sciences and good judgment as to their applications, and skill in producing large crops and fine herds are important factors, but proper executive management of the farm and the farming business is the essential feature which largely determines success.
The discussion of many subjects may properly be included in a treatise on farm management. The proper consideration of this subject is a study of the farming business in all its wide variations of class, character and place, and it is possible in a short article to discuss briefly only some of the important phases of the subject.
The subject of crop management and rotations is likely to have strong local color, depending on the region in which the writer lives ; but the nature of the problem is similar everywhere and many of the principles can be elucidated by any system. It is probably needless to say that this article is written from the prairie-states point of view.
Laying out the fields.
The first essential in introducing a definite sys tem of soil management and crop rotation is that the farm be laid out uniformly in fields of nearly equal area. So far as possible the division lines of the several fields should follow the natural division lines of the land, which separate quarter-sections, sections, eighties, forties and so on. The size of the fields will be determined largely by the size of the farm and the kinds and number of crops. Often the average farm is cut up into many small fields, irregular in size and shape, while with large farms sometimes the fields are very irregular in size, some being very large and others small, mak ing a regular system of crop rotation impossible. Figs. 130 to 133 illustrate practical plans for lay ing out the fields, and also show how the fields of a badly managed farm may be rearranged and made more uniform in size and shape, thus making it pos sible to rotate crops in a systematic way and to pre scribe some definite system of maintaining the soil fertility. When possible, the fields should be laid
ont in rectangular form, with the longer distance extending east and west in order to give the crop as much protection as possible from the sun and wind. Small grain drilled east and west breaks the force of prevailing southern and northern winds more than the grain drilled north and south ; also, the shading of one row by another seems to be of some benefit to the crop. The writer has observed that wheat drilled north and south rusted and blighted worse than that drilled east and west, and it is often remarked by farmers that larger yields of wheat may be secured by planting in drills east and west, than by drilling north and south. Also with corn, in dry, hot climates, there is an advantage in rowing east and west when the corn is planted in drill rows, as is the practice through a great part of the West and South, because the greater shading of the ground, when the corn is planted in this way, prevents to some extent the excessive heating and drying of the soil.
In some instances, as on sloping land, it may be advisable to lay out the fields with the longer dis tance extending north and south, in order that the tillage and cultivation of the crop may be across the slope, rather than up and down the slope, and other factors may make it desirable to lay out irregularly formed fields ; but as a rule the prac tice should be to follow natural division lines of the land in dividing the farm into fields.
The sketches and diagrams and the discussion refer particularly to the laying out of new farms, or the rearrangement of farms that have not been improved to any extent, but many of the suggested features may be adapted successfully to the remod eling of old farms.