Another, it may well be called the lost opportunity—that grows out of the neglected ones alluded to, is that the cows are not kept in good milking condition more of the time of the year. The men who seize and utilize the few opportunities I have mentioned very soon learn that they have an almost perpetual fount of wealth; and that they can not afford to dry it up, and wait for spring. Putting in more time for the cow to produce, inevitably convinces them of the fact that the larger part of the cow’s earnings are made when dairy products are high in price; and they are dull, indeed, if they do not see in that a revelation that more winter dairying would pay. I am aware that the flippant answer made by those disinclined to adopt soiling and winter dairying, is, that they involve employment of more manual labor on a given number of acres, and that reliable farm labor is hard to get and troublesome to keep. This is the first superficial pretext of nine-tenths of those advanced enough to ever give these subjects a serious thought. Nevertheless, the practice of these innovations are essential in the higher grade of farming; and that practice, instead of being an ill, is a blessing to the farm, to the farmer, to his older children, and to the hired laborer; for it gives all of them steady and profitable employment, while the present system requires the far greater proportion of labor in the spring and summer months, and furnishes less to do in winter for the hired man and the grown-up boys and girls. They thus lounge, often, in debasing idleness, or are early weaned from the farm, and go away, never to return to partake of its real, invigorating life, its independence, and its joys. The dairy, with the accompaniment of soiling and more production of dairy products in the winter, would make the farm more like a factory, with every wheel in motion almost the entire year. The home and the family of the dairy farmer should be as large as the capacity of the man and the woman at the helm; and as steady employment as that which must be given to the store or shop would go a long way in developing and increasing the capacity of the whole force to manage more. Giving regular employment to good men on the farm makes it far easier to get and to keep them; and it retains a more brawny set of men, who are otherwise enticed to the factories and railways that give steady work, and so have the pick of the intelligent and most reliable ones. It is an accomplishment in a farmer and his wife to know how to get, and how to keep good, faithful hired men. I know of those who are slaves, because they don’t know how. Many of them ascribe it to the men, when they themselves are principally at fault. There is a mortal dread of “tramps,” especially among the more ignorant farmers. But I aver that the common system of almost exclusive grain farming that crowds most of the labor of the year into a few spring and summer months, is a direct