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Show TO RETAIN MOISTURE Necessary to Conserve Sufficient Water Supply. Deficiency of Rainfall During Past Season Sea-son Should Teach Farmers Great Value of Disk Harrow for Preparing Pre-paring Soli for Dry Year. As the active operations of another season end on the farm, the former should not consider all his duties done until he has reviewed in his mind or from his notes, the lessons he had placed before him the past year. The indifferent and careless farmer may think the problems presented are the same every year and that he learned them all years ago, writes R. B. Kest-ler Kest-ler of Ohio In the Orange Judd Farmer.. This farmer never makes any money, and is always telling his family and neighbors that "there's nothln' doln' In farmin', anyhow." The school-teacher observes that the pupils who most readily grasp and learn the underlying principles are the ones who can most fully master mas-ter the subject and solve the different problems when presented in different form. But the ones who neglect to master these few underlying principles princi-ples find in each new problem the same discouraging difficulty. So It Is with the farmer. Yet nature Is always al-ways presenting to the studious farmer, farm-er, plain, practical lessons with the answers at the end of the season, like an arlthmetio with the answers in the back of the book. But so often the farmer forgets both the lesson and the answer, and, like the dullard schoolboy again, begins the same place In the book this year that he began be-gan last year. One lesson nature presents every, year and Insists upon its being learned Is that since moisture is necessary nec-essary for the growth of plants, It Is possible for the farmer, by right cultural cul-tural methods, to conserve a sufficient moisture supply for the ordinary summer sum-mer crop even without the summer shower. In many parts of the country the past Beason, like the two preceding years, there was a deficiency in rainfall rain-fall and many farmers place the re-nonslbilltv re-nonslbilltv for noor crops upon Provi dence, not noticing that the same Providence dealt lavishly with the neighbor across the way. The observing ob-serving neighbor had learned years ago that a soil filled with humus, plowed deep, thoroughly and continuously contin-uously cultivated would retain moisture mois-ture through a long, dry season and produce a crop. The wheat crop Is made or marred before snow falls the autumn it is sown. If the ground is plowed when Coo dry, the wheat sown in the dust and a deficiency of moisture follows, the crop will In all probability be light. I saw a 12-acre wheat field that had been prepared in three different ways. One-third was plowed early In the summer and harrowed frequently. One-third was plowed at the same time, was not narrowea, dut. wan plowed again just before seeding. The remaining third was not plowed until seeding time, September 10. The weather had been very dry, yet on October the first part was green and thick on the ground. The second, or fallow-plowed part, was about one-half as good in appearance, while the third part showed scarcely a tinge of green, yet the field was all plowed at one time. Many farmers have not yet learned the great value of the disk harrow In preparing ground for plowing in a dry season. One of the many striking object lessons in this line was seen In the drought district of southern Pennsylvania this fall. Many farmers farm-ers did not plow, and those who did, too often turned the ground over in hard clods. One seeing and reasoning man disked his thoroughly dry oat stubble well both ways. He then left |