This likening of land to live stock was a fine idea. It impressed every man in the club. I know that in my own case I had always thought of land as about as fixed and abstract as a problem in geometry. This treating it as something living--as of course it really is--gave a man a new attitude towards it. It made plausible all the theories of care which followed. A man knows he has to feed and care for his live stock. If so, then why not his land, which is also a living thing? The second man took up the matter of fertilization--the restoring to the land such elements as have been used up by the previous crops and given back to the farmer in the form of produce. It’s an amazingly simple proposition when you stop to think about it. It’s merely paying back money you’ve borrowed. If, after doing that a profit isn’t left, you can’t blame the money. The third man covered the proper selection of seeds. Like the previous speakers he pleaded for the substitution of horse sense and care in place of the present haphazard methods. No more than all dirt is land are all kernels seeds. You must be sure that the seeds you plant are live seeds. The usual method is to plant them and if you get a crop, the seeds were surely alive; if you don’t get a crop, the seeds were surely dead. But there is no need of risking your season’s work on such an experiment. Take a sample fifty from your seeds a month or so before planting time, place these in a box and cover with earth, keep moist and warm and count the number of seeds which sprout. There you have as accurate a method of determining their germinating value as any chemist could give. If the seeds don’t come up in a decent percentage, get some more. If they do, you have insured your crop so far as the seeds are concerned. The whole scheme of modern farming is to eliminate from the beginning all elements of chance so far as possible, which is no more than every other business man does. The fourth speaker took up the rotation of crops, which is a somewhat more abstract proposition than the others. It seems that nearly every crop both takes from the land what it needs and gives back to a certain extent something else in its place. Nature is no hog and generally pays her way. The whole secret is to so alternate your crops as to take full advantage of this fact. The matter has been determined to a science. The fifth speaker dwelt upon the necessity of proper cultivation--of plowing deep and harrowing often. Here again was something that was within the understanding of the average man. Your soil and seeds need air and light as much as your live stock. You wouldn’t expect a cow to thrive shut up in a dark stall with little air. When you harrow you do no more than throw open the barn windows and let in the sunshine.