Let Us Be Sociable.

A happy new year to all of the readers of The Prairie Farmer, and may your labors of 1884 be crowned with success. Mr. Granger, what are you doing these long winter evenings? Can't you find time to write a few lines to the readers of The Prairie Farmer? You can send a little report from your county, at least. Come, let us be a little more sociable and talk more to each other through the columns of our paper. We can learn something by reading each other's views on different subjects. In my next I shall try and tell some of the careless fellows how to run a farm to make it pay. If I fail to give a little light on the subject perhaps some one else will try it. We are having what you might call winter, now. Snow is about six inches deep, but the weather is not very cold. The thermometer has not been below zero but once. Nearly all of the corn is gathered; only about one-third of the crop is sound enough to keep until next summer. Farmers are feeding their soft corn to hogs and cattle. In that way the soft corn will pay pretty well after all, for fat stock brings a good price. Stock cattle are wintering well, for feed in the fields is good, and most farmers have got plenty of good hay. The weather was so nice the first part of this month that the farmers did a large amount of plowing. Potatoes are plenty and cheap; worth from 30 to 40 cents. Apples are scarce, and good ones bring a big price. Butter is worth from 25 to 30 cents.

S.O.A. Knox Co., Ill.