By Frank D. Gardner
Skyhorse Publishing, $16.95, 1108 pages
This massive volume of more than 1,100 pages was originally published as a hardcover book in 1916, and became the bible of American farmers both small and large. Successful Farming was reprinted (under a slightly different title), unchanged from the original version except for the soft cover. Author F.D. Gardner included everything farmers needed to know and illustrated his book with small black-and-white photos and sketches. By today’s standards, these illustrations are of very poor quality. Chances are the book was on most farmers’ kitchen shelf, a ready reference no matter what kind of information was needed.
“This book is written for farmers. It makes a popular appeal to all men engaged in farming.”
The volume is divided into nine books and each has several chapters according to subject matter. The tenth book is made up of 21 reference tables and charts. Naturally, such an old volume is now very out of date and of mainly historic interest. Why it was reprinted is a mystery, yet small farmers and gardeners may find useful information in it, like sheep pasturing on hilly land not suitable for agriculture or extensive chapters on weed eradication and hog pasturing. Index is thorough and very good.
Reviewed by George Erdosh
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