CALLING NEW FARMERS
Teller, Walter Magnes
Calling New Farmers A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR THE BEGINNING FARMER, by Herbert Jacobs. Harper & Brothers. 237 pp. $3. Reviewed by Walter Magnes Teller SPRING comes on, the grasses turn green, the...
...That's the way it's been for a long time, one gathers...
...But his background, as much as I know of it...
...One of the best of its kind which has come to my attention is A Practical Guide [or the Beginning Farmer...
...There are more books on farming, and some of them are better...
...Part I describes the kind of life a countryman or farmer can lead...
...Part III deals with choosing the land and the community, financing, getting advice, marketing, taxes—that sort of thing...
...Several recent books for beginning farmers have been written from the point of view of farming in the Northeast, and there has been one for the South...
...Jacobs divides his book into three parts...
...Part II speaks sensibly of things one can do with land and animals...
...I recommend it to anyone contemplating moving to a farm, or a few acres near town, with the idea of being close to animals and growing things...
...He has a nice attitude toward aspirant farmers...
...To this reviewer it is one of several 'hopeful...
...Obviously, there will continue to be men and women who will find in farming the old satisfactions and values...
...However, it would be a great mistake to think that its usefulness ends with that region...
...There is a handy appendix of data and tables, a good index, and thoughtful suggestions for further reading at the wind-up of each chapter...
...Jacobs is a Wisconsin man, and his book is especially valuable for those who choose the Middle West...
...He is a working farmer and a Harvard graduate, which may explain how he comes to write common sense with a literate touch...
...Often I have noted in farming that the easier ways are the ways of cooperation with nature...
...I feel sure it would have saved me time and money and helped me to find my way around, both on my own acres and in the larger world of farming, with less of the error of trial...
...I wish I had had this handbook when, some years ago, I began my experiments in part-time farming...
...Yet there is no kidding the reader into thinking it's going to be easy...
...Furthermore, Herbert Jacobs has emphasized throughout the easier ways of doing, and there he is on solid ground, I think...
...signs that after a long siege of the most dismal kind of farm journalism (pretty much coincident with the rush to industrialize farming), we may now be entering a period which will be productive of good farm writing as well as good farm practises, and not unworthy of the writing on matters agricultural which appeared in the earlier years of the nation...
...I especially like the author's remarks on The Thrifty Pig...
...Some will fail, and some will succeed, and some will fatten the real-estate men...
...He knows his sheep, too, and has me ready to start all over, only this time with purebred Suffolks...
...But farming, like many another way of living, is more complicated than it used to be...
...I never met Mr...
...The changes keep coming faster...
...Reviewed by Walter Magnes Teller SPRING comes on, the grasses turn green, the peach blossoms burst into pink, and a new generation of migrants is ready to go forth in search of dream farms...
...And it's a comfort to know that these things will not soon pass away...
...One gets the feeling of kind and sensible goodwill toward those who want to begin...
...If this is a bit of a digression, still it may be of interest to the new men going onto the land...
...It does not...
...Thus the easier ways become the better ways—and of a, certainty, the more enjoyable ones...
...Jacobs' book is one to be read for pleasure as well as useful information...
...appeals to me...
...Jacobs, and if I had, I would not want to make the mistake of reviewing him rather than his book...
Vol. 15 • June 1951 • No. 6
