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Un des symboles suivants apparaitra sur la dernidre image de cheque microfiche, selon le cas: le symbole — »- signifie "A SUIVRE" le symbole V signifie "FIN". Maps, plates, charts, etc., may be filmed at different reduction ratios. Those too large to be entirely included in one exposure are filmed beginning in the upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bottom, as many frames as required. The following diagrams illustrate the method: Les cartes, planches, tableaux, etc., peuvent dtre filmds d des taux de reduction diff^rents. Lorsque le document est trop grand pour dtre reproduit en un seul clich6, il est filmd d partir de Tangle sup^rieur gauche, de gauche d droite, et de haut en bas, en prenant le nombre d'images ndcessaire. Les diagrammes suivants illustrent la m6thode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 6^ '^ t J- PRICE FORTY CEWTS. of Farmiiig* A SERIES OF BRIEF AND PLAIN EXPOSITIONS OF PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE AS AN ART BASED UPON SCIENCE: By HORACE GREELEY. " / know " That whore the spado is deepest driven, That best frusts grow." John G. Whittier. i" TORONTO The Canadian News and Publishing Company. 1871. 'i' X, lJArABRII>0£D. •^i^HiiiF-v 1 r / What i Know OK li\iEMINa. Ajn ^^ A SKRIKS OF BRIEF AND PLAIN EXPOSITIONS OF PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE AS AN ART BASED UPON SCIENCE: By HORACE CJREELEY. " / know That where the spade is deepest driven, That best fruits grow.'' .loiiN CJ. Wiirmrn! r5^^^_^- TORONTO: Thf Canadian News and Publishing Co. 1871. Il I , ! . \/ I u co:^jTEiSrTs. I I PAGE I. Will Farming I'ay ? i;> II. Good nncl Bad Husliandry KJ III. WlieiL' to l firm , ... ly IV. Prepari iig to T'nrm 22 V. Buying u Farm 25 VI. Laying off a Farm ; Pasturing 28 VII. Trees ; Woodlands ; Forests 31 VIII. (trowing Timber ; 'J'ree-Planting. ,34 IX. Planting and Cirowing Trees 38 X. Draining ; My Own 41 XI. Draining Generally 45 XII. Irrigation ; Means and Ends 48 XIII. Possibilities of Irrigation 51 XIV. Plowing, Deep or Shallow 54 XV. Plowing, Good and Bad 5S XVI. Thorough Tillage Gl XVIII. Alkalis — Salt, Ashes, Lime (57 XIX. Soils and Fertilizer.* TO XX. Bones, Phos])liates, Guano 73 XXI. Muek— How to Utilize It 76 XXII. Insects; Birds 79 XXI II. About Tree-l'lanting 82 XXIV. Fruit Tree.s— The Apple 85 XXV. More about Apple-Trees 88 XXVI. Hay and Hay-Making 91 XXA^II. Peaches, Pears, Cherrijs, Grapes 95 XVII. Commercial Fertililers — Gypsum G4 XXVIII. Grain-Growing— Ease and West 98 XXIX. Esculent Roots—Potatoes 102 XXX. Root.-J — Turnip.s, Beets, Carrots 107 XXXI. The Farmers' Calling 110 XXXIT. A Lesson of To-day 113 XXXIIJ. Intellect in Agriculture 116 XXXIV. Sheep and Wool.Growing 119 I it ■•iSii-, / y IV CONTKNTS. XXXV. Accouuts in Kftriiiint; 1 2S XXXVI. Stor/j on 11 Farm 12(J XXXVU. Fences ami Fencing 130 XXXVJIl. Agricultunil Exliibition'- l.'i:! XXXIX. Science in Agriculture \'M\ XL. Fiinii liniilenicnts i:iii XIJ Steam in Agii(Milture 142 XLIl. Co-oiieiatiiin in I''anuing HO XIJII. Farnu'i.s' Clubs l.^iO XL! V. AVestern Irrigation 15;{ X L V. Sewage 157 XLVl. More of Irrigation KJli XLVII. l^uili'veloped Sources of Power 1(;5 XLVIII. llura! Depopulation 108 XIJX. I.aige and Small Farms 1'72 f,. Kxcliange and Distribution 175 LI. Winter Work 1 78 LI I. Summing up 181 I .It 1 PREFACE. .^ i Mkn have written wisely and usefully, in illustration and aid of Agri- culture, from the platform of pure science. Acquainted with the laws of vegetable growth and life, they so expounded and elucidated those laws that farmers ai)prehended and profitably obeyed them. Others have written, to equally good purpose, who knew little of science, but were adepts in practical agriculture, accordin^r to the maxims and usages of those who have successfully followed and dignified the farmers calling. I rank with neither of these honored classes. My l)ractical knowledge of agriculture is meager, and mainly acquired in a childhood long bygone ; while, of science,, I have but a smattering, if even that. Tliey are right, therefore, who urge that my qualifications for writing on agriculture are slender indeed. I only lay claim to an invincible willingness to be made wiser to- day than I was yesterday, and a lively faith in the possibility — nay, the feasibilty, the urgent necessity, the imminence — of very great improve- ments in our ordinary dealings with the soil. I know that a majority of those who would live by its tillage feed it too sparingly and stir it too slightly and grudgingly. I know that we Jo too little for it, and expect it, thereupon to do too much tor us. I know that, in other pursuits, it is only thoroughly well done that is liberally compensated ; and I see no reason why farming should prove an exception to this stern but salutary law. I may be, indeed, deficient in knowledge of what con- stitutes good farming, but not in faith that the very best farming is that which is morally sure of the largest and most certain reward. I hope to be generally accorded the merit of having set forth the litde 1 pretend to know in language that few can fail to understand. I have avoided, as far as J could, the use of terms and distinctions unfamiliar to the general ear. The little I know of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, ike, 1 have kept to myself; since whatever I might say of them would be useless to those already acquainted with the elementa.y truths of Chemistry, and only perplexing to others. If there is a paragraph in /: VI PREFACE. the following pages which will noi be readily and fully understood by an average school-boy of fifteen years, then I have failed to make that paragraph as simple and lucid as I intended. Many farmers are dissuaded from following the suggestions of writers on agriculture by the consideration of expense. They urge that, though men of large wealth may (perhaps) profitabl)- do what is recommended, their means are utterly inadecjuale : they might as well be urged to work their oxen in a silver yoke with gold bows. 1 have aimed to commend mainly, if not uniformly, such improvements only on our grandfathers' husbandry as a farmer worth $1000, or over, may ndoj)! — not all at once, but gradually, and from year to year. I hope I :;hall thus convince some farmers that draining, irrigation, deei) plowing, heavy fertilizing, c^c, are not beyond their power, as so many have too readily presumed and pronounced them. That I should say very little, and that little vaguely, of the breeding and raisin^:^ of animals, the proper time to sow or plant, iVc, (^:c., can need no explanation. Hy far the larger number of those whose days have mainl)- been given to farming, know more than I do of these details, and arc better authority than I am with regard to them. On the other hand, 1 l;ave traveled extensively, and not heedlessly, and have seen and pondered certain broader features of the earth's improve- ment and tillage whic:h many stay-at-home cultivators ha\e had little or no opportunity to study or even observe. liy restricting the topics with which I deal, the ])robability of treating some of them to the average farmer's i)rofit is increased. And, whatever may be his judgment on this slight work, I kiwio that, if I could have perused one of like tenor, half a century ago, when J was a patient worker and an eager reader in my father's humble home, my subsequent career would have been less anxious and my labours less exhausting than they have been. Could I then have caught but a glimpse of the beneficent possibilities of a former's life- could I have realized that he is habitually (even though blindly) dealing with pro- blems which retiuire and reward the amplest knowledge of Nature's laws, the fullest command of science, the noblest efforts of the human intellect, I should ha\e since pursued the peaceful, unobtrusive round of an enthusiastic and devoted, even though not an eminent or fortunate, tiller of the soil. Even the little that is unfolded in the ensuing pages would have sufficed to give me a far larger, truer, nobler conception of what the farmer of moderate means, might and should be, than I then attained. I needed to realize that observation and reflection, study and mental acquisition, are as essential and serviceable in his pursuit as in others, and that no man can have accjuired so much general knowledge that a farmer's exigencies will not afford scope and use for it all. I abandoned the farm, because I fancied 1 had already per- I PREPACK. VII J ceived, if I had not as yet clearly conii)rchcnded, nil there was in the farmer's calling ; whereas, I had not reaKy learned much more of it than a gooil plow-horse ought to understand. And, though great progress luis been made since then, there are still thousands of hoys, in this enlightened age and conceited generation, who have scarcely a more ade(|iiate and just conception of agriculture than I had. If I coukl h()i)e to reach one in every hundred of this class, and induce him to ponder, impartially, the contents of this slight volume, I know that I shall not have written it in vain. We need to mingle more thought with our work. Some think till their heads ac;he intensely ; others work till their backs are crooked to the semblance of half an iron hoop ; but the workers and the thinkers are apt to be distinct classes ; whereas they should be the same. Admit that it has always been thus, it by no means follows that it always should or shall be. In an age when every labourer's son may be fairly educated if he will, there should be more fruit gathered from the tree of knowledge to justify the magnificent j)romise of its foliage and its bloom. 1 rejoice in the belief that the graduates of our common schools are better ditch-diggers, when they can not otherwise employ themselves to better advantage, than though they knew not how to read ; but that is not enough. If the untaught peasantry of Russia or Hungary grow more wheat per acre than the comparatively educated farmers of the United States, our education is found wanting. That is a vicious and defective, if not radically false, mental training which leaves its subject no better qualified for any useful calling than though he were unlettered. But I forbear to pursue this ever-fruitful theme. I look back, on this day completl.:g my sixtieth year, over a life, which must now be near its close, of constant effort to achieve ends whereof many seem in the long retrospect to have been transitory and unimjjortant, however they may have loomed upon my vision when in their immediate presence. One achievement only of our age and country — the banishment of human chattelhood from our soil— seems now to have been worth all the requisite efforts, the agony and bloody sweat, through which it was accomplished. But another reform, not so palpably demanded by justice and humanity, yet equally conducive to the well-being of our race, presses hard on its heels, and insists that we shall accord it instant and earnest consideration. It is the elevation of labor from the i)lane of drudgery and servility to one of self- respect, self-guidance and genuine independence, so as to render the human worker no mere cog in a vast, revolving wheel, whose motion he can neither modify or arrest, but a partner in the enterpri^'f which his toil is freely contributed to promote, a sharer in the outlay, ..le risk, the loss and gain, which it involves. This end can best be attained through the training of the generation who are to succeed us to observe viH. PREFACE. and reflect, to live for other and higher ends than those ot present sensual gratification, and to feel that no achievement is beyond the reach of the'r wisely combined and ably self-directed efforts. To that part of the generation of farmers just coming upon the stage of re- sponsible action, who have intelligently resolved that the future of American agriculture shall evince decided and continuous improvement on its past, this little book is respectfully conunended. '^ h:o -Q New York, Feb. 3, 1871. >j@ ^."S© Vt£ y^ , •esent d the o that of re- ire of ement G. o "> ^ Xk^ WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. WILL KARMING PAY? I coMMKNCK my essays with this question, because, when 1 urge the superior advantages of a rural life, I am often met by the objection that Farming doesn't pay. That, if true, is a serious matter. Let us consider : I do not understand it to be urged that the farmer who owns a large, ferf'lc estate, well-fenced, well-stocked, with good store of effective implements, cannot live and thrive l)y farming. What is meant is, that he who has little but two brown hands to depend upon cannot make money, or can make very little, by farming. 1 think those who urge thi.j point have a very inadequate conception of the difficulty encountered by every poor young man in securing a good start in life, no matter in what pursuit. I came to New York when not ([uite oi a^^^e, with a good constitution, a fair common-school educa- tion, good health, good habits, and a pretty fair trade — (that of printer.) I think my outfit for a campaign against adverse fortune was decidedly better than the average ; yet ten long years elapsed before it was settled that I could remain here and make any decided headway. Meantime, 1 drank no li(juors, used no tobacco, attended no balls or other expen- sive entertainments, worked hard and long whenever I could find work to do, lost less than a month altogether by sickness, and did very little in the way of helping others. I judge that quite as many did worse than I as did better ; and that, of the young lawyers and doctors who try to establish themselves here in their professions, quite as many earn less as earn more than their bare board during the first ten years of their struggle. John Jacob Astor, near the close of a long, diligent, prosperous career, wherein he amassed a large fortune, is said to have remarked that, if he were to begin life agiin, and choose between making his first thousand I 14 WHAT 1 KNOW OI- KARMINC. dollars with nothing to start on, or with that thousand making all that he had actually accumulated, l:e would deem the latter the easier task. Depend I'pon it, young men, it is and must be hard work to earn honest- ly your first thousand dollars. The burglar, the forger, the black-leg (whether he play with cards, with dice, or with stocks), may seem to have a quick and easy way of making a thousand dollars ; but whoever makes that sum honestly, with nothing but his own capacities and energies as capital, does a very good five-year's work, and may deem himself for- tunate it he finishes it so soon. I have known men do better, even at farming. I recollect one who with no capital bv.t a good wife and four or five hundred dollars, bought (near Boston) a farm of two l.iuidred mainly rough acres, for $2,500, and paid for it out of its products wiil.'n the next five years, durijig which he had nearly doubled its value. I lost sight of him then ; but I know that, i he lived fifteen years longer and had no very bad luck, he was worth, as the net result of twenty years' effort, at least $r 00, 000. But this man would rise at four o'clock of a winter morning, harness his span of horses and hitch them to his large market-wagon (loaded over night), drive ten miles into Boston, unlond and load back agaii., be home at fair breakfast-time, and, hastily swallovsing his meal, be fresh as a daisy for his day's work, in which he would lead h;s hired men, keeping them clear of the least danger of falling asleep. Such men arerore, but they still exist, proving scarcely anything impossible to an indomitable will. I would not advise any to work so unmercifully ; 1 seek only to enforce the truth that great achievements are within the reach of whoever will pay their price. An energetic farmer bought, some twenty-five years ago, a large gra."- ing fann in Northern Vermont, consisting of some 150 acres, and cost- ing him about $3,000. He had a small stock ol cattle, which was a!i his land would carry ; but he resolved to increase that stock by at 'east ten per cent, per aimum, and to so improve his land l)y cultiva'ion, fertilizing, clover, HAK HUSBANDRY. »7 as they eat ; nipping and often killing in their infancy the finest trees, such as the Sugar Maple, and leaving only such as Hemlock, Red Oak, Beech, &c., to attain maturity. Our race generally emerged from savageism and squalor into industry, comfort and thrift, through the Pastoral condition — the herding, taming, rearing and training of animals being that department of husbandry to which barbarians are most easily attracted : hence, we cling to Pasturing long after the reason for it has vanished. The radical, incurable vice of Pasturing — that of devouring the better plants and leaving the worse to ripen and diftuse seed — can never be wholly obviated ; and I deem it safe to estimate that almost any farm will carry twice as much stock if their food be mainly cut and fed to them its it will if they are reciuired to pick it up where and as it grows or grew. I am sure that the general adoption of Soiling instead of Pasturing will add immensely to the annual product, to the wealth, and to the population, of our older States. And yet, I know right well that many farms are now so rough and otherwise so unsuited to Soiling as to preclude its adoption thereon for many years to come. Let me indicate what I mean by Ciood Farming, through an illustration drawn from the Great West : All over the settled portions of the Valley of the Upper Mississippi and the Missouri, there are large and small herds of cattle that are pro- vided with little or no shelter. The lea of a fence or stack, the partial protection of a young and leafless wood, they may chance to enjoy ; but that it is a runious waste to leave them a prey to biting frosts and pierc- ing north-westers, their owners seem not to comprehend. Many farmers far above want will this Winter feed out fields of C'orn and stacks of Hay to herds of cattle that will not be one pound heavier on the ist of next May than they were on the ist of last December — who will have required that fodder merely to j)reserve their vitality and escape freezing to death. It has mainly been enqjloyed as fuel rather than as !• nirishment, and has served, not to put on flesh, but to keep out frost. -Now 1 am familiar with the excuses for .his waste ; but they do not satisfy me. The poorest pioneer might nave built for his one cow a rude shelter of stakes, and i)oles, and straw or prairie-grass, if he had re- alized its importance, simply in the light of economy. He who has many cattle is rarely without both straw and timb r, and might shel- ter his stock abuinlantly if he only would. Nay, he could not have ne- glected or omitted it if he had clearly understood that his beasts must someliow be supplied with heat, and tliat he can far cheaper warm them from without than from within. The broad, general, uncpiestionable truths, on which 1 insist in behalf of Oood Farming are th^ese; and 1 do not admit that they are subject to e.xception : 1. It is very rarely impracticable to grow good crops, if you are willing to work for them. If your land is too poor to grow Wheat or (Jorn, and you are not yet able to enrich it, sow Rye or Buckwheat ; If you cannot i8 WHAT 1 KNOW OF KARMING. coax it to frrow a good crop of anything, let it alone ; and, if you cannot run away from it, work out by the day or month for your more fortunate neighbors. The time and means squandered in trying to grow crops where only half or quarter crops can be made, constitute the heaviest item on the wrong side of our farmers' balance-sheet : taxing them more than their National, State, and Local governments together do. II. (iood crops rarely fail to yield a profit to the grower. I know there are exceptions, but they are very few. Keep your eye on the farmer who almost uniformly has great Grass, good Wheat, heavy Com, &€., and, unless he drinks, or has some other bad habit, you will find him growing rich. I am confident that white blackbirds are nearly as abundant as farmers who have become poor while usually growing good crops, III. The fairest single test of good farming is the increasing produc- tiveness of the soil. That farm which averaged twenty bushels of grain to the acre twenty years ago, twenty-five bushels ten years ago, and will measure up thirty bushels to the acre from this year's crop, has been and is in good hands. I know no other touchstone of Farming so unerring as that of the increase or decrease from year to year of its aggregate product. If you would convince me that X. is a good farmer, do not tell me of some great crop he has just grown, but show me that his crop has regularly increased from year to year, and I am satisfied. — I shall have more to say on these points as I proceed. It suffices for the present if I have clearly indicated what 1 mean by Good and what by Bad Fanning. in WHKRK TO FARM. When my father was over sixty years old, and had lived some twenty years in Erie County, Pennsylvania, he said to me: "1 have several times removed, and always towards the West; I shall never remove again ; but, were I to do so, it would be towards the East. Experience has taught me that the advantages of every section are counterbalanced by disadvantages, and that where auv crop is easily produced, there it sells low, and sometimes cannot be S')ld at all. I shall live and die right here ; but, were I to remove again, it would not be towards the West." This is but one side of a truth, and 1 give i»" for whatever it may be worth. Had my father plunged into the primiuve forest in his twenty- fifth rather than his forty-fifth year, he would doubtless have become more reconciled to i)ioneer life than he ever did. 1 would advise no one over forty years of age to undertake, with scanty means, to dig a farm out of the dense forest, where great trees must be cut down and cut up, rolled into log-heaps, and burned to ashes where they grew. Where half the timber can be sold for enough to pay the cost of cutting, is different ; but I know right well that digging a farm out of the high woods is, to any but a man of wealth, a slow, hard task. Making one out of naked prairie, five to ten miles from timber, is less difficult, but not much. He who can locate where he has good timber on one side and rich prairie on the other is fortunate, and may hope, if health be spared, to surround himself with every needed comfort within ten years. Still, the pioneer's life is a rugged one, especially for women and child- ren ; and I should advise any man who is worth $2,000 and has a family, to buy out an " improvement" (which, in most cases, badly need im- proving) on the outskirts of civilization, rather than plunge into the path- less forest or push out upon the broken prairie. I rejoice that our Pub- lic I^ands are free to actual settlers ; I believe that many are thereby enabled to make for themselves homes who otherwise would have no^ thing to leave their children ; yet I much prefer a home within the boundaries of civilization to one clearly beyond them. There is a class of drinking, hunting, frolicking, rarely working, frontiersmen, who seem to have been created on purpose to erect log cabins and break paths in advance of a different class of settlers, who regularly come in to buy WHAT I KNOW OK FARMING. them out and start them along after a few years. I should here prefer to follow rather than lead. If Co-operation .shall ever be successfully applied to the improvement of wild lands, 1 trust it may be otherwise. He who has a farm already, and is content with it, has no reason to ask, "Whither shall I go ?" and he may rest assured that thoroughly good farming will pay as well in New Kngland as in Kansas or in Minnesota. 1 advise no man who has a good farm anywhere, and is able to keep it, to sell and migrate. I know men who make money liy growing food within twenty miles of this city quite as fast as they could in the West. " If you have money to buy and work it, I believe you may find land really as cheap, all things considered, in Vermont as in Wisconsin or Arkansas. And yet I believe in migration — believe that there are thousands in the Eastern and Middle vStates who would improve their circumstances and prospects by migrating to the cheaper lands and broader o]jportunities of the West and South. For in the first place most men are by migra- tion rendered more energetic and aspiring ; thrown among strangers, they feel the necessity of exertion as they never felt it betore. Needing al- most everything, and obliged to rely wholly on themselves, they work in their new homes as they never did in their old ; and the consequen- ces are soon visible all around them. '• A stern chase is a long chase, " say the .sailors ; and he who buys a farm on credit, intending to pay for it out of its proceeds, finds interest, taxes, sickness, bad seasons, hail, frost, drouth, tornadoes, floods, &c., &c., deranging his calculations and impeding his progress, until he is often impelled to give up in despair. There are men who can surmount every obstacle and defy discouragement — these need no advice ; but there are thousands who, having little means and large families, can grow into i good farm more easily and far more surely than they can pay for it ; and these may wisely seek homes where i)opulation is yet sparse and land is consequently cheap. Doubtless, some migrate who might better have forborne ; yet the instinct which draws our race towards sunset is nevertheless a true one. The East will not be depop- ulated ; but the West will grow more rapidly in the course of the next twenty years than ever in the i)ast. The Railroads which have brought Kansas and Minnesota within three days, and California within a week of us have rendered this inevitable. But the South also invites immigration as she ne\'er did till now. Her lands are still very cheap ; she is better timbered, in tiie average, than the AVest ; her climate attracts ; her unopened mines and unusod water- power call loudly for enterprise, labor and skill. It is absurd to insist that her soil is exhausted when not one-third of it has ever yet been l)lowed. I do not advise solitary migration to the South, because .she needs schools, mills, roads, brids;es, churches, &c., &c., which the soli- tary immigrant can neither provide nor will do without : and I have no assurance that he, if obliged to work out WHKRK TO FARM. 21 for present bread, will find those ready to employ and willing to pay him ; but let a hundred Northern farmers and mechanics worth $i,ooo to S.^j'oo each combine to select (through chosen agents) and buy ten or twenty thousand acres in some Southern State, embracing hill and vale, timber and tillage, watei-power and min- eral, and divide it equitably, among themselves, after laying it out with roads, a i)ark, a village plot, sites for churches, schools, &c. , and I am confident that they can thus make pleasant homes more cheaply and speedily there than anywhere else. Good farming land, improved or unimproved, is this day cheaper in the United States, all things considered, than in any other country — cheaper than it can long remain. So many are intent on short cuts to riches that the soil is generally neglected, and may be bought amazingly cheap in parts of Connecticut as well as in Iowa or Nebraska. When I was last in Illinois, I rode for some hours beside a gray-coated fivrmer of some sixty years, who told me this: " I came here thirty years ago, and took up, at $1^ per acre, a good tract of land, mainly in timber. I am now selling off the timber at $ioo per acre, reserving the land. " That seems to me a good operation — not so cjuick as a corner in the stock- market, but far safer. And while I advise no man to incur debt, I say most earnestly to all who have means, " Look out the place you would prefer to live and die in ; take time to suit yourself thoroughly ; choose it with reference to, your means your calling, your expectations, and, if you can pay for it, buy it. Do not imagine that land is cheap in the West or the South only ;itis to be found cheap in every State by those who are able to own and who know how to use it. " I earnestly trust that the obvious advantages of setf'ing in colonies are to be widely and rapidly improved by our people, nearly as follows : One thousand heads of families unite to fomi a colony, contribute $ioo to $500 each to defray the cost of seeking out and securing a suitable lo- cation, and send two or three of the most capable and trustworthy of their number to find and purchase it ; and now let their lands be survey- ed and divided into village or city lots at or near the centre, larger allot- ments (for mechanics' and merchants' homes) surrounding that centre, and far larger (for farms) outside of these ; and let each member, on or soon after his arrival, select a village-lot, out lot, farm, or one of each if he chooses and can pay for them, Let ample reservations of the best sites for churches, school-houses, a town-hall, pub'ic-park, etc., be made in laying out the village, and let each purchaser of a lot or farm !)e re- quired to plant shade-trees along the highways which skirt or traverse it. if irrigation l)y common effort be deemed necessary, let provision be made for that. Run up a large, roomy structure for a family hotel or hoarding house ; and now invite each stockholder to come on, select his land, pay for it, and get up some sort of a dwelling, leaving his family to follow when this shall have been rendered habitable ; but, if they insist on coming on with him and taking their chances, so be it. IV. PREPARIW; TO FARM. I WRITE mainly for beginners — for young persons, and some not so young, who are looking to farming as the vocation to which their future years are to be given, by which their living is to be gained. In this chap- ter,! would counsel young men, who, not having been reared in person- al contact with the daily and ye^..y round of a farmer's cares and duties purpose henceforth to live by farming. To these I would earnestly say " No haste ! " our boys are in a great a hurry to be men. They want to be bosses before they have qualified themselves to be efficient journeymen. 1 have personally known several instances of young men fresh from school or from some city vocation, buying or hiring a farm, and undertaking to work it; and I cannot now recall a single instance in which the attempt has succeeded ; while speedy failure has been the usual result. 'I'he assumption that farming is a rude simple matter, requiring little intellect and less experience, has buried many a well-meaning youth under debts which the best efforts of many subsequent years will barely enable him to pay oft". In my opinion half our farmers now living would say, if (juestioned, that they might better have waited longer before buying or hiring a farm. When I was ten years old my father took a job of clearing off the mainly fallen and partially rotten timber — largely White Pine and Black Ash — from fifty acres of level and then swampy land ; and he and his two boys gave most of the two ensuing years (1821-22) to the rugged task. When it was finished, I — a boy of twelve years- — could have taken just such a tract of balf-burned primitive forest as that was when we took hold of it, Bnd cleared it by an'expenditure of seventy to eighty per cent, of the labour actually bestowed upon that. I had learned in clearing this, how to economize labor in any future undertaking of the kind ; and so every one learns by experience who steadily observes and reflects. He must have been a very good farmer at the start, or a very poor one afterward, who cannot grow a thou.sand bushels of grain much cheaper at thirty years of age than he could at twenty. To every young man who has had no farming experience, or very littk, yet who means to make farming his vocation, I say, Hire out, for the I'KKI'ARINC; TO fARW. n / ■>k)\\v. />onr /and. 'I'he smallest farm should have its strip or belt of tbrest ; the larger should have an abundame and variety of trees ; and sterile, stony land grows many if not most trees thriftily. ICven at the risk of arousing ^\'estern ])rejudi(:e, I maintain that New I'.ngland, and all broken, hilly, rocky countries, have a derided advan- tage (abundantly ( (>unterbalanced, no doubt) over regions of great ferti- lity and nearly uniform facility, in that human stupidity and mole-eyed greed can never wholly divest them of forests that their sterile crags and steep acclivities must mainly be left to wood forever. Avarice may strip them of their covering of today ; but, defying the plow and the spade, lhe\ cannot be so denuded that they will not be speedily reclothed with trees and foliage. I am not a believer that " Five Acres " or " 'I'en Acres" suffice for a farm. I know where money is made on even fewer than five acres ; but they who do it are few, and men of exceptional capacity and dili- gence. Their achievements are necessarily confined to the vicinage of cities or manufacturing villages. The great majority of all who live by Agriculture want room to turn upon -want to grow grass and to keep stock- -and, for such, no mere garden or potato-patch will answer. They want genuine farms. \'et, go where you may in this country, you will hear a fr.mer saying of his neighbor, " He has too much land," even where the criticism might justly be reciprocated. We cannot all be mistaken on this head. There are men who can each manage thousands of acres of tillage, just as there are those who can skillfully wield an army of a hundred thousand men. Napoleon said there were two of this class in the F.uropc of his day. There are others who cannot handle a hundred ^ii^ WHAI' I KNOW Ol' KAKMINi;. acres so that nothing is lost through neglect or oversight. Rules must be adapted to average capacities and circumstances. He who expects to live by cattle-rearing needs many more acres than he who is intent on grain-growing ; while he who contemplates \'egetable, root, and fruit culture, needs fewer acres still. As to the direction of his efforts, each one will be a law unto himself. [f 1 were asked, by a young man intent on farming, to indicate the proper area ^or him, 1 would say. Buy just so large a farm an half your means will pay for. In other words, " If you are worth $20,000, invest half of it in land, the residue in stock, tools, etc. ; and observe the same rule of proportion, whether you be worth $1,000,000 or only $r,ooo. If you are worth just nothing at all, I would invest in land the alf of that, and no more. In other words, I would either wait to earn $500 o» over, or push Westward till I found land that f:osts practicall) nothing. This, then, I take to be the gist of the popular criticism on our fanners as having unduly enlarged their borders: They have more land than they have capital to stock and till to the best advantage. He who has but fifty acres has too much if he lets part of his land lie idle and unpro- ductive for lack of team or hands to till it efficiently ; while he who has a thousand acres has none too much if he has the means and talents wherewith to make the best of it all. I have said that I consider the soil of New England as cheap, all things considered, for him who is able to buy and work it, as that of Minnesota or Arkansas — that I urge migration to the West only upon those who cannot pay for farms in the old States. I doubt whether the farmers of any other section have, in the average, done better, through- Out the last ten years, than the butter-makers of Vermont, the cheese- dairymen of this State. And yet there is, in the ridgy, rock)', patchy character of most of our Eastern fimns, an insuj)erable barrier to the most economic, effective cultivation. If the ridges were further ai)art — if each rocky or gravelly knoll were not in close proximity to a strip of bog or morass — it would be different, liut the genius of our age points unmistakably to cultivation l)y steam or some other mechanical applica- tion of power ; and this re(]uires spacious fields, witli few or no obsta- . BUVINO A FARM. 27 let him place a higher value on those capacities which will be more required and drawn upon. In the West, the case is different ; for, though Wheat-culture still recedes before the footsteps of advancing population, and Minnesota may soon cease to grow for others, as Western New- York, Ohio, Indi- ana, and Northern Illinois have already done, yet Indian Corn, being the basis of both Beef and Pork, will long hold its own in the Valley of the Ohio and in that of the Upper Mississippi. As it recedes slowly Westward, Clover and 'i'imothy, Butter and Cheese, will press closely on its footsteps. Good neighbors, good roads, gooil schools, good mechanics at hand, and a good church within reach, will always be valued and sought ; few farmers are likely to disregard them. Let whoever buys a farm whereon to live resolve to buy once for all, and let him not forget that health is not only wealth but happiness— that an eligible location and a beautiful prospect are elements of enjoyment not only for ourselves but our friends ; let him not fancy that all the land will soon be gobbled up and held at exorbitant prices, but believe that money will almost always command money's worth of whatever may be needed, so that he need not embarrass himself to-dr y through fear that he may not be able to find sellers to-morrow, and he can hardly fail to buy judiciously and thus escape that worst species of home-sickness— sickness of home. ii}.> VI. LAYING OFF A FARM^ — PASTURING. Whoever finds himself the newly installed owner and occupant of a farm, should, before doing much beyond growing a crop in the ordinary way, study well its characters, determine its capacities, make himself well accjuainted with its peculiarities of soil and surface, with intent to make the most of it in his future operations. I would devote at least a year to this thoughtful observation und study. To one reared amid the rugged scenery of New-B^ngland, or oii/'ither slope of the Allegheny ridge, all prairie farms look alike, just as n. European supposes this to be the case with all negroes. A better acquaintance will show the average prairie quarter-section by no means an unbroken meadow, " level as a house-floor," but diversified by water- courses, " sloughs," and gentle acclivities — sometimes by considerable ravines and "barrens,'' or elevated " swales,'' thinly covered with tim- ber, or brush, or both. But I will contemplate more especially a Northern farm, made up of hill and \ale or glade, rocky ridge and skirting bog or other low land, with a wood-lot on the rear or not far distant, and clumps or belts of timber irregularly lining brook and ravint, or lurking in the angles and sinuosities of walls and wooden fences, and a ragged, mossy orchard sheltered in some quiet nook, or sprawling over some gravelly hill-side. A brook, nearly dry in August, gurgles down the hill-side or winds through the swamp ; while fields, moderately sloping here and nearly level there, interposed as they can be, have severally been devoted, for a generation or more, alternately to Grain and Grass — the latter largely preponderating. We will suppose this farm to measure from 50 to 150 acres. Now, the young man who has bought or mherited this farm may be wholly and consciously unable to enter upon any expensive system of improvement for the next ten years — may fully realize that four or five days of each week must meantime be given to the growing or earning of present bread — yet he should none the less study well the capacities and adr^ptations of each acre, and mature a comprehensive plan for the ultimate bringing of each field into the best and most useful condition whereof it is susceptible, before he cuts a living tree or digs a solitar)' LAYING OFF A FARM — PASl'URING. 29 drain. He is morally certain of doing something — perhaps many things — that he will sadly wish undone, if he fails to study peculiarities and mature a plan before he begins to improve or to fit his several fields for profitable cultivation. And the first selection to be made is that of a pasture, since 1 au compelled to use an old, familiar name for what should be essentially a new thing, 'i'he pasture should be as near the cejiter of the farm as niay be, and convenient to the barns and barn-yard that are to be. It should have some shade, but no very young trees ; should be dry and rolling, with an abundance of the purest living water. The smr.Uer this pasture-lot may be, the better I shall like it, provided you fence it very stoutly, connect it with the barn-yard by a lane if they are not in close proximity, and firmly resolve that, outside of this lot, this lane, this yard and the adjacent stables, your cattle shall never be seen, unless on the load to market. Very possibly, the day may come wherein you will decide to dispense with pasti;ring altogether ; but that is for the present improbable. One pasture you will have ; if you live in the broad West, and purpose to graze extensively, it will doubtless be a large one ; but permitting your stock to ramble in Spring and Fall all over your own fields — (and perhaps your neighbors' also) — in quest ( f their needful food, biting ofl^" the tops of the finer young trees, trampling down or breaking off some that are older, rubbing the bark off of your growing fruit-trees, and doing damage that years will be required to repair, I most vehemently protest against. The one great error that misleads and corrupts mankind is the pre- sumption that som^thifig may be had for nothing. The average farmer imagines that whatever of flesh or of milk may accrue to him from the food his cattle obtain by browsing over his fields or through his woods, is so much clear gain — that they do the needful work, while he pockets the proceeds. But the universe was framed on a plan which requires so much for so much ; and this law will not submit to defiance or evasion. Under the unnatural, exceptional conditions which environ the lone squatter on a vast prairie, something may be made by turning cattle loose and letting them shift for themselves ; but this is at best transitory, and at war with the exigencies of civilization. Whoever lives within sight of a school-house, or within hearing of a church bell, is under the dominion of a law alike inexorable and l)eneficent — the law that requires each to pay for all he gets, and reap only where he has sown. You can hardly have a pasture so small that it will not afford hospi- tiility to weeds and prove a source of multiform infestations. The plants that should mature and be diffused will be kept down to the earth; those which should be warred upon and eradicated will flourish untouch- ed, ripen their seed, and diffuse it far and wide. Thistles, White Daisy, and every plant that impedes tillage and diminishes crops, are nourish- td and dift'used by means of pastures. I hold, therefore, tJiat the good farmer will run a raowing-ma<-hine 3° WHAT I KNOW OF I'AR.MINO. over his pasture twice each Summer — say early in June, and then late in July — or, if his lot be too rough for this,' will have it clipped at least once with a scythe. Cutting all manner of worthless if not noxious plants ill the blossom, will benefit the : lil which their seeding would tax; it would render the eradication of weeds from your tillage a far easier task ; and it will prevent your being a nuisance to your neighbours. I am confiilent that, no one who has formed the habit of keeping down the weeds in his pasture will ever abandon it. I think each i)asture snould have (though mine, as yet, has not) a rude shed or other shelter whereto the cattle may resort in case of storm or other inclemency. How much they shrink as well as suffer from one cold, pelting rain, few fully realize; but I am sure that "the merci- ful man ' who (as the Scripture says) "is merciful to his beast," finds his humanity a gooo paying investment. I doubt that the rule would fail, even in Texas; but I am contemplating civilized husbandry, not the rude conditions of tropical semi-barbarism. If only by means of stakes and straw, give cattle a chance to keep dry and warm when they must other- wise shiver through a rainy, windy day and night on the cold, wet ground, and I am sure they will pay for it. In confining a herd of cattle to such narrow limits, I do not intend that they shall be stinlccl to what grows there. On the contrary, 1 expect them to be fed on Winter Rye, on Cut Grass, on Sowed Com, Sorghum, Stalks, Roots, etc., etc., as each shall be in season. With a good mower, it is a light hour's work before breakfast to cut and cart to a dozen or twenty head as much grass or corn as they will eat during the day. But let that point stand over for the present. VII. TREES — WOODLAND — FORESTS. I AM not at all sentimental — much less mawkish — regarding the des- truction of trees. Descended from several generations of timber-cutters (for my paternal ancestors came to America in 1640), and myself engag- ed for three years in land-clearing, I realize that trees exist for use rather than ornament, and have no more scruple as to cutting timber in a ^orest than as to cutting grass in a meadow. Utility is the reason and end of all vegetable growth^— of a hickory's no less than a cornstalk's. I have always considered "Woodman spare the tree," just about the most mawk- ish bit of badly versified prose in our language, and never could guess how it should touch the sensibilities of any one. Understand, then, that I urge the planting of trees mainly because I believe it will /ay, and the preservation, improvement, and extension, of forests, for precisely that reason. Yet I am' not insensible to the beauty and grace lent by woods, and groves, and clumps and rows of trees, to the landscape they diversify. I feel the forces of Emerson's averment, that " Beauty is its own excuse for being," and know that a homestead embowered in, belted by, stately; graceful elms, maples, and evergreens, is really worth more, and will sell for more, than if it were naked field and meadow. I consider it one positive advantage (to balance many advantages) of rocky, hilly, rugged Eastern country, that it will never, in all probability, be so denuded of forests as the rich, facile prairies and swales of the Great Valley may be. Our winds are less piercing, our tornadoes less destructive, than those of the Great West. I doubt whether there is another equal area of the edrth's surface, whereon so many kinds of valuable trees grow spontane- ously and rapidly, defying eradication, as throughout New-England and on either slope of the the Alleghenies ; and this^profusion of timber and foliage may well atone for, or may be fairly weighed against, many de- ficiencies and drawbacks. The Yankee, who has been accustomed to see trees spring up spontaneously wherever they were not kept down by ax, or plow, or scythe, and to cross running water every half mile of a Summer day's journey, may well be made homesick, by two thousand miles of naked, dusty, wind swept Plains, whereon he finds no water 3« WHAT 1 KNOW OK FARMING. I i for fifty to a hundred miles, and knows it impossible to cut an ax-helve, much more an axle-tree, in the course of a wearying journey. No Eastern farmer ever lealized the blessedness of abundant and excellent wood and water until he had wandered far from his boyhood's home. No one may yet be able fully to explain the interdependence of these two blessings ; but the fact remains. All over " the Plains," there is evidence that trees grew and flourished where none are now to be found, and that s})rings and streams were then frec][uent and abiding where none now exist. A prominent citizen of Nevada, who explored southward from Austin to Colorado, assured me that his party travelled for days in the bed of what had once been a considerable river, but in which it wa.s evident that no water had flowed for years. And I ha/e heard that, since the Mormons have planted trees over considerable sections of Utah, rains in Summer are no longer rare, and Salt Lake evinces, by a constant though moderate increase of her volume of waters, that the ecjuilibrium of rain-fall with evaporation in the Great Basin has been fully restored — or rather, that the rain-fall is now taking the lead. I have a firm faith that all the great deserts of the Temperate and Torrid Zones will yet be reclaimed by irrigation and tree-planting. The bill which congress did not pass, nor really consider, whereby it was proposed, some years since, to give a section of the woodless Public frauds remote from settlement to every one who in a separate township, would plant and cherish a quarter-section of choice forest-trees, ought to have been passed — with modifications, perhaps, but preserving the central idea. Had ten thousand quarter-sections, in so many different town ships of the Plains, been thus planted to timber ten to twenty years ago, and protected from fire and devastation till now, the valiie of those Plains for settlement would have been nearly or quite doubled. A capital mistake, it seems to me, is being made by some of the dairy farmers of our own State. One who has a hundred acres of good soil, whereof twenty or thirty are wooded, cuts off his timber entirely, calcu- lating that the additional grass that he may grow in its stead will pay for all the coal he needs for fuel, so that he will make a net gain of the time he has hitherto devoted each Winter to cutting and hauling wood. He does not consider how much his soil will lose in summer moisture, how his springs and runnels will be dried up, nor how the sweep of harsh winds will be intensified, by baring his hill-tops and ravines to sun and breeze so utterly. In my deliberate judgement, a farm of one hundred acres will yield more feed, with far greater uniformity of product from year to year, if twenty acres of its ridge-crests, ravine sides, and rocky places, are thickly covered with timber, than if it be swept clean af trees and all devoted to grass. Hence, I insist that the farmer who sweeps off his wood and resolves to depend on coal for fuel, hoping to increase per- manently the product of his dairy, makes a sad miscalculation. Spain, Italy, and portions of France, are now suffering from the impro- vidence that devoured their forests, leaving the future to take care of it- TREES — WOODLAND — FORESTS. H self. 1 presume the great empires of antiquity suffered from the same folly, though to a much greater extent. The remains of now extinc^ races who formerly peopled and tilled the central valleys of this continent, and especially the Territory of Arizona, probably bear witness to a simi- lar recklessness, which is paralleled by our fathers' and our own extermi- nation, of the magnificent forests of White Pine which, barely a century ago covered so large portion of the soil of our Northern States. Ver- mont sold Whi'te Pine abundantly to England through Canada within my day; she is now supplying her own wants from Can? da at a cost of not less than five times the price she sold for ; and she will be paying still higher rates before the close of this century. I entreat our farmers not to preserve every tree, good, bad, or indifferent, that they may happen to be growing on their lands - -but, outside of the limited districts wherein the primitive forest must still be cut away in order that land may be ob- tained for cultivation, to pUzni and rear at least tiioo better trees for every one they may be impelled to cut down. How this may, in the average, be most judiciously done, I will try to indicate in the succeeding chap- ter. "k VIII. GROWING TIMBER — TREE PLANTING. In my judgment, the proportion of a small farm that should be con- stantly devoted to trees (other than fruit) is not less than one fourth ; while, of farms exceeding one hundred acres in area, that proportion should be not less than one third, and may often be profitably increased to one-haif. I am thinking of such as are in good part superficially rug- ged and rocky, or sandy and sterile, such as New-England, eastern New- York, northern New-Jersey, with both slopes of the AUeghenies, as well as the western third of our continent, abound in. It may be that it is ad- visable to be content with a smaller proportion of timber in the Prairie States and the broad, fertile intervales which embosom most of our great rivers for at least a part of their course ; but I doubt it. And there is scarcely a farm in the whole country, outside of the great primitive forests in which openings have but recenty been made, in which some tree planting is not urgently required. " Too much land, " you will hear assigned on every side as a reason for poor farming and meager crops. Ask an average farmer in New- England, in Virginia, in Kentucky, or in Alabama, why the crops of his section are in the average no better, and the answer three times in four, will be, ''Our farmers have too much land'' — that is not too much abso- lutely, but too much relatively to their capital, stock, and general ability to till effectively. The habitual grower of poor crops will proffer this ex- planation quite as fieely and frecjuently as his more thrifty neighbor. And what every one asserts must have a basis of truth. Now, 1 do not mean to quarrel with the instinct which prompts my countrymen to buy and hold too mucli land. They feel, as I do tliat land is still cheap anywhere in this country — cheap, if not in view of the income now derived from it, certainly in contemplation of the price it must soon command and the income it might, under better management be made to yield. Under this convict ion~or, if you please, impression — every one is intent on holding on to more land than he can profitably till, if not more than he can promptly pay for. What I do object to is simply this — that thousands, who have more land than they have capital to work profitably, will persist in half-tilling many acres, instead of thoroughly farming one-half or one third so many, i\ OKUWING TIMRKR — TKK.i; I'LANTlNc;. 35 and getting the rest into wood so fast us may be. I am confident that iwo-thirds of all our farmers would improve their circumstances and in- crease their incomes by concentraiing their efforts, their means, their fer- tilizers, upon half to two third'; of tlie area they now skim and skin, and giving the residue back to timber-growing. In my own hilly, rocky, often boggy, Westchester — probably within six of being the oldest Agricultural County in the Union — I am confi- dent that ten thousand acres might to-morrow be given back to forest with profit to the owners and advantage to all its inhabitants. It is a fhiit-growing, milk-producing, truck-farming county, closely adjoining the greatest city of the New VVorld ; hence, one wherein land can be cultivated as profitably as almost anywhere else — yet I am satisfied that half its surface may be more advantageously devoted to tim])er than to grass or tillage. Nay ; I doubtthat one acre in a hundred of rockyland — that is, land ribbed or dotted with rocks that the bar or the rock-hook cannot lift from their beds, and which will not as yet pay to blast — is now tilled to profit, or ever will be until it shall be found advisable to clear them utterly of stone breaking through or rising within two feet of the surfiice. The time will doubtless arrive in which many fields will pay for clearing of stone that would not to-day ; these, I urge, should be given up to wood now, and kept wooded until the hour shall have struck for ridding them of every impediment to the steady progress of Ijoth the surface and the subsoil plow. Were all the rocky crests and rugged acclivities of this County boun- teously wooded once more, and kept so for a generation, our floods would be less injurious, our springs unfailing, and our streams more con- stant and ecjuable ; our blasts would be less bitter, and our gales less destructive to fruit ; we should have vastly more birds to delight us by their melody and aid us in our not very successful war with devouring insects ; we should grow peaches cherries and other delicate fruits, which the violent caprices of our seasons, the remorseless devastation of our visible and invisible insect enemies, have all but annihilated ; and we should keep more cows and make more milk on two-thirds of the land now devoted to grass than vve act"ally do from the whole of ii. And what is true of Westchester is measurably true of every rural county in the 'Jnion. 1 iiave said that 1 believe in cutting trees as well as ' believe in growing them ; I have not said and do not mean to say, that I believe in cutting everything clean as you go. That was once proper in West- chester; it is still advisable in forest-covered regions, where the sun must be let in before crops can be grown ; but, in nine cases out often, timber should be thinned or culled out rather than cut off; and, for every tree taken away, at least two should be planted or set out. We have outgrown the folly of letting every apple-tree bear such fruit as it will ; though in the orchard of my father's little farm in Amherst, N,H., no tree had ever been grafted when I bade adieu to it in 1820 ; £6 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMINfJ. and 1 presume none has been to this day. Uy this time, almost every farmer realizes that ne<-rt«Ven though nothing were done with them, but keep out fire and cattle, and let the young trees grow as they will, money can be more profitably and safely invested in lands covered by young timber than in anything else. 'I'he parent, who would invest a few thousands for the benefit of children or grandchildren still you' g, may buy woodlands which may be worth twenty times their present cost within the next twenty years. But better even than this would it be to buy up rocky, craggy, naked hill-sides and eminences which have been pastured to death, and, shutting out cattle inflexibly, scratch these over with plow, mattock, hoe, or pick, as circumstances shall indicate, plant them thinly with Chestnut, Walnut, Hickory, White Oak, and the seeds of Locust and White Pine. I say Locust, though not yet certain that this trtc must not be started in garden or nursery-beds and transplanted when two or three years old, so puny and feeble is it at the outset, and so likely to be smothered under leaves or killed out by its more favored neighbors. I have experiments in progress not yet matured, which may shed light on this point before I finish these essays. P/afU thickly, and of diverse kinds, so as to cover the ground promptly, and choke out weeds and shrubs, with full purpose to thin and prune as circumstances shall dictate. Many farmers are averse to planting timber, because (they think) no- thing can be realized therefrom for the next twenty or thirty years, which is as long as they expect to live. But this is a grave miscalculation. Let us suppose a rocky, hilly pasture-lot of ten or twenty acres rudely scratched over as I have suggested, and thickly seeded with hickory nuts and white acorns only: within five years, it will yielu abundantly of hoop-poles, though tiie better, more promising half be let to mature, a* they should be ; two years later, a.?other and larger crop of hoop-poles CROWING TIMF.KR — TRKF. PLANTING. 37 may be cut, still sparing the best ; and thenceforth a valuable crop of timber may be taken from that land ; for, if cut at the proper season, at least two thrifty sprouts will start from every stump; and so that wood will yield a clear income each year while its best trees are steadily grow- ing and maturing. I do not advise restriction to those two species of timber; but I insist that a young plantation of forest-trees may and should yield a clear income, every year after its fourth. As to the Far West — the Plains, the Parks, and the ( Ireat Basin- there is more money to be made by dotting them with groves of choice timber than by working the richest veins of the adjacent mountains. Whoever will promptly start, near a present or prospective railroad, forty acres of choice trees — Hickory, White Oak, Locust, Chestnut, and White Pine — within a circuit of three hundred miles from Denver, on land which he has made or is making provision to irrigate — may begin to sell trees therefrom two years hence, and persist in selling annually henceforth for a century — at first, for transplantihg; very soon, for a variety of uses in addition to that. — But this paper grows too long, and 1 must postpone to the next mj more especial suggestions to young farmers with regard to tree-planting. IX. PI.ANTINO AND GROWINc; TRKKJJ. Whokvkr has recently bought, inherited, or otherwise become the owner of a farm, has usually found some part or ])arts of it devoted to wood ; and this, if not in excess, he will mainly pnserve, while he studies and plans with a view to the ultimate devotion to timber of just those portions of his land that are best adapted to that use. In locatinj^ that timber, I would have him consider these suggestions : I. Land wisely planteil vv'ith trees, and fenced so far as need be to keep out cattle, costs nothing. Whatever else you gjow in\ ' -'s labor and expenditure ; trees grow of their own accord. You 'nay neglect them utterly -may wander over the eartli and be absent for ten or twenty years, while your fences decay and your fields are overcropped to exhaustion ; even your meadows may run out by late mowing and clo.se feeding at both ends of the season, till a dozen acres will hardly subsist a .span of horses and a cow; but your woods need only to be let alone to insure that their value shall have decidedly increased dunng your ab.sence. They will richly reward labor and care in thinning, trim- ming, and transplanting — you may profitably employ in them any time that you can spare them- -but they will do very well if simply let alone. And, unlike any other jinxluct with which I am accjuainted. you may take crop after cro]j of wood from the .same lot, and the soil will be rich- er and more jjroductive after the last than i was before the first. Whether wholly because their roots permeate and break up the soil during their life and enricii it in their decay, or for diverse reasons, it is certainly true that land — and especially /?w land — is enriched l)y grow- ing upon it a crop of almost any limber, the evergreens possibly except- ed. So, should you ever have land that you cannot till lo profit, whether because it ii too poor or because you have a sufficiency that is better, you should at once devote it to wood. II. Your springs and streams will be rendered more equable and enduring by increasing the area and the luxuriance of your timber. They may have become scanty and capricious under a jjolicy of reckless, wholesale destruction of trees ; they will be reenforced and reinvigorated ITANTING AND CROWINt; IRKKS. 39 by doubling the aroa of your woods, wliilc (luadrupling the* number, and increasing the average size, of your trees. III. All ravines and steep hill-sides should be devoted to trees. Kvery acre too rocky to be thoroughly cleared of stone and plowed should be set apart for tree-growing. VVHierever the soil will be gullied or washed away by violent rains if under tillage, it should be excluded from cultivation and given up to the trees. Men often doubt the profit of heavy manuring; and well they may, if three-forths of the fertilizers applied arc soaked out and swept away by flooding rains or sudden thaws and floated off to some distant sea or bay; Init let all that is appli- ed to the soil only remain there till it is carted away in crops, and it will hardly be possible to manure too highly for profit. IV. Trees, especially evergreens, may be so disposed as to modify agreeably the average temperature of your farm, or at least of the most important parts of it. When I bought my place — or rather the first install- ment of it —the best spot I could select for a garden lay at the foot of a hill which half surroimded it on the south and east, leaving it exposed to the fiill sweep of north and north-west winds; so that, though the soil was gravelly and warm, my garden was likely to be cold and backward. To remedy this, I planted four rows of evergreens (Halsam Fir, Pine, Red C'edar, and Hemlock), alf)ng a low ridge bounding it on the north, following an inward curve of the ridge at the west end; and those ever- greens have in sixteen years grown into very considerable trees, forming a shady, cleanly, inviting bower, or sylvan retreat, daintily carpeted with the fallen leaves of the overhanging firs. I judge that the average temperature of the soil for some yards southward of this wind-break is at least five degrees higher, throughout the growing season, than it fonnerly was or would now be if these evergreens were swept away ; while the aspect of the place is agreeably diversified, and even beautified, by their appearance. I believe it would sell for some hundreds of dollars more with than without that thrifty, growing clump of evergreens. V. I have already urged, though not strongly enough, that crops, as well as springs, will be improved l)y keeping the crests of ridges thickly wooded, thus depositing moisture in Winter and spring, to be slowly yielded to the adjacent slopes during the heat and drouth of Summer. I firmly believe that the slopes of a hill whose crest is heavily wooded will yield larger average crops than slo[)e and crest together would do if both were bare of trees. VI. The banks of considerable streams, ponds, etc., may often be so planted with trees that these will shade more water than land, to the comfort and .satisfaction of the fish, and the protection of those banks from abi..sion l)y floods and rapid currents. Sycamore, VAm, and Willow, do well here; if choice (Irape-Vines are set beside and allowed to run over some of them, the efTect is good, and the grapes acceptable to man and bird. VII. Never forget that a good tree grows as thriftily and surely as a 4° WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 11 poor one. Many a fanner has to-day ten to forty acres of indifferent cord-wood where he might, at a very slight cost, have had instead an equal quantity of choice timber, worth ten times as much. Hickory, Chestnut, and Walnut, while they yield nuts that can be eaten or sold, ax e worth far more as timber that an equal bulk of Beech, Birch, Hemlock, or Red Oak. Chestnut has more than doubled in value within the last few years, mainly because it has been found excellent for the inside wood-work of dwellings. Locust also seems to be increasing in value. Ten acres of large, thrifty Locust near this City would now buy a pretty good farm; as I presume it would, if located near any of our great cities. VHL Where several good varieties of Timber are grown together, some insect or atmospheric trouble may blast one of them, yet leave the re- sidue alive and hearty. And, if all continue thrifty, some may be cut out and sold, leaving others more room to grow and rapidly attain a vigor- ous maturity. IX. Wherever timber has become scarce and valuable, a wood-lot should be thinned out, nevermore cleared off, unless it is to be devoted to a different use. It seems to me that destroying a forest because we want timber is like smothering a hive of bees because we want honey. X. Timber should be cut with intelligent reference to the future. Locust and other valuable trees that it is desirable should throw up shoots from the stump, and rapidly produce their kind, should be cut in March or April ; while trees that you want to e.xterminate should be cut in August, so that they may not sprout, There may be exceptions to this rule ; but I do not happen to recollect any. Evergreens do not sprout; and I think these should be cut in Winter — at all events, not in Spring, when full of sap and thus prone to rapid decay. XI. Your plantation will furnish pleasant and profitable employment at almost any season. I doubt that any one in this country has ever yet bestowed so mach labor and care on a young forest as it will amply reward. Sow your seeds thickly ; begin to thin the young trees when they are a foot high, and so trim them so soon as they are three feet, and you may have thousands thriving on a fertile acre, altitude out- and pushing their growth upward with a rapidity and to an running all preconception. XII. Springs and streams will soon appear where none have appeared and endured for generations, when we shall have reclothed the naked- ness 01 the Plains with adequate forests. Rains will become moderately frecjuent where they are now rare, and confined to the season when they are of least use to the husbandman. I may mave more to say of trees by-and-by, but rest here for the pre- sent. The importance of the topic can hardly be overrated. X. DRAINING — MY OWN. My fann is in the township of Newcastle, Westchester County, N. Y., 35 miles from our City Hall, and a little eastward of the hamlet known as Chappaqua, called into existence by a station on the Harlem Railroad, It embraces the south-easterly half of the marsh which the railroad here traverses from south to north — my part measuring some fifteen acres, with five acres more of slightly elevated dry land between it and the foot of the rather rugged hill which thence on the east and on the south, and of which I now own some fifty acres, lying wholly eastward of my low land, and in good part covered with forest. Of this, I bought more than half in 1854, and the residue in bits from time to time as I could afford it. The average cost was between $130 and $140 per acre : one small and poor old cottage being the only building I found on the track, which consisted of the ragged edges of two adjacent tarms, between the western portions of which mine is now interposed, while they still adjoin each other beyond the north and south road, half a mile from the rail- road, on which their buildings are located and which forms my eastern boundary. My stony, gravelly upland mainly slopes to the west; but two acres on my east line inclined toward the road which bounds me in that direction, while two more on my south-east corner descend to the little brook which, entering at that corner, keeps irregularly near my ."!0uthline, until it emerges, swelled by a smaller nmnel that enters my lowlands from the north and traverses it to meet a.i^ pass off with the large brooklet afoie.said. I have done some draining, to no great pur- pose, on the more level portions of my upland ; but my lowland has challenged my best efforts in this line, and I shall here explain them, for the encouragement and possible guidance of novices in draining. Let me speak first of Afy Difficulties. — ^This marsh or bog consisted, when I first grappled with it, of some thirty acres, whereof \ then owned less than a third. To drain it to advantage, one person should own it all, or the different owners should co-operate ; but I had to go it alone, with no other aid than a freely accorded privilege of straightening as well as deepening Ihe brook which wound its way through the dryer meadow just below 42 WHAT I KNOW or I ARMINC. me, forming here the boundary of two adjacent farms, i spent $ioo on this job, which is still imperfect ; but tiie first decided fall in the stream occurs nearly a mile below me ; and you tire easily of doing work at your own cost which benefits several others as much iis yourself My drainage will never be perfect till this brook, with that far larger one in which it is merged sixty rods below me, shall have been sunk diree or four feet, at a further expense of at least $500. This bog or swamp, when I first bought into it, was mainly dedicated to the use of frogs, muskrats and snapping-turtles. A few water-elms and soft maples grew upon it, with svTamp alder i)artly fringing the western basis of the hill east of it, where the rocks which had, through thousands of years, rolled from the hill, thickly covered the surface, with springs bubbling up around and among them. Decaying stumps and imbedded fragments of trees argued that timber formerly covered this marsh as well as the encircling hills. A tall, dense growth of black- berry briers, thoroughwort, and all manner of nuirsh-weeds and grasses, covered the center of the swamp each Summer ; but my original portion of it, being too wet for these, was mainly addicted to hassocks or tus- socks of wiry, worthless grass ; their matted roots rising in hard bunches a few inches above the soft, bare, encircling mud. The bog ranged in depth from a few inches to five or six feet, and was composed of black, peaty, vegetable mold, diversified by occasional streaks of clay or sand, all resting on a substratum of hard, coarse gravel, out of which two or three springs bubbled up, in addition to the half a dozen which poured in from the east, and a tiny rivulet which (except in a very hot, dr)^ time) added the tribute of three or four more, which sprang from the base of a higher shelf of the hill near the middle of what is now my farm. Add to these that the brook which brawled and foamed down my hill-side near my south line, as aforesaid, had brought along an immensity of pebbles and gravel of which it had mainly formed my five acres of dryer lowland, had thus built up a pretty swale, whereon it had the bad habit of filling up one channel, and then cutting another, more devious and eccentric, if possible, than any of its predecessors — and you have some idea of the obstacles I encountered and resolved to over- come. One of my first substantial improvements was the cutting of a straight channel for this ciltrent and, by walling it with large stones, compelling the brook to respect necessary limitations. It was not my fault that some of those stones were placed nearly upright, so as to veneer the brook rather than thoroughly constrain it : hence .some of the stones, undermined by strong currents, were pitched forward into the brook by high Spring freshets, so as to require re-setting more care- fully. This was a mistake, but not one of My Blunders. — These, the natural results of inexperience and haste, were very grave. Not only had I no real experience in draining when I began, but I could hire no foreman who knew much more of it than 1 did. I ought to have begun by securing an ample and sure fall where the water left my land, and next cut cfown the brooklet or open DRAININC; MY OWN. 43 ditch into wliich I intended to drain to the lowest practicable point— so low, at least, that no drain nnining into it should ever be troubled with back-water. Nothing can be more useless than a drain in which '.vater stagnates, choking it with mud. Then 1 should have bought hundreds of Hemlock and other cheap boards, slit them to a width of four or five inches, and, having o])ened the needed drains, laid these in the bottom and the tile thereupon, taking care to break joints by covering the meet- ing ends of two boards with the middle jf a tile. Laying tile in the soft mud of a bog, with nothing beneath to prevent their sinking, is simply throwing away lal)or and money. I cannot wonder that tile- draining seems to many a humbug, seeing that so many tile are laid so that they can never do any good. Having, by successive purchases, become owner of fully half of this swamp, and by repeated blunders discovered that making stone drains in a bog, while it is a capital mode of getting rid of the stone, is no way at all to dry the soil, I closed my series of experiments two years since by carefully relaying my generally useless tile on good strips of board, sinking them just as deep as I could persu.de the water to run off freely, and, instead of allowing them to discharge into a brooklet or open ditch, connecting each with a covered main of four to six-inch tile ; these mains discharging into the running brook which drains all my farm nd three or four of those above it just where it nms swiftly off from my land. If a thaw or heavy rain swells the brook (as it some- times will) so that it rises above my outlet aforesaid, the strong current formed by the concentration of the clear contents of so many drains will not allow the muddy water of the brook to back into it so many as three feet at most ; and any mud or sediment that may be deposited there will be swept out clean whenever the brook shall have fallen to the diamage level. For this and similar excellent devices, I am indebted to the capital engineering and thorough execution of Messrs. Chickering & CJall, whose work on my place has seldom required mending, and never called for reconstruction. My Success. — I judge that there are not many tracts more difficult te drain than mine was, considering all the circumstances, except those which are frequently flowed by tides or the waters of some lake or river. Had I owned the entire swamp, or had there been a fall in the brook just below me, had I had any prior experience in draining, or had others equally interested cooperated in the good work, my task would have been comparatively light. As it was, I made mistakes which increased the cost and postponed the success of my efforts ; but this is at length complete. I had seven acres of Indian Corn, one of Corn Fodder, two of Oats, and seven or eight acres of Grass, on my lowland in 1869 ; and, though the Spring months were quite rainy, and the latter part of Summer rather dry, my crops were all good. I did not see better in Westchester County ; and I shall be quite content with as good hereafter. Of my seven hundred bushels of Corn (ears,) I judge 44 WHAT J KNOW OK .FARMINC;. that two-thirds would be accounted fit for seed anywhere ; my grass was cut twice, and yielded one large crop and another heavier than the aver- age first crop throughout our State. My drainage will require some care henceforth ; but the fifteen acres I have .odaimed frcm utter uselessness and obstructions are decidedly the best i)art of my fann. Uplands may be exhausted ; these never can be. The experience of another season (1870) of protracted drouth has fully justified my most sanguine expectations. I had this year four acres of Corn, and as many of Oats, on my swamp, with the residue in Grass ; and they were all good. I estimate my first Hay-crop at over two and a half tuns per acre, while the rowen or aftermath barely exceeded half a tun per acre, because of the severity of the drouth, which began in July and lasted till October. My Oats were good, but not remarkably so; and 1 had 810 bushels of ears of sound, ripe Cora from four acres of drained swamp and two and a half of upland. 1 esti- mate my upland Com at seventy (shelled) bushels, and my lowland at fifty-five (shelled) bushels per acre. Others, doubtless, had more, despite the unpropitious season ; but my crop was a fair one, and I am content with it. My upland Corn was heavily manured ; my lowland but moderately. There are many to tell you how much I lose by my fanning. I only say that, as yet, no one else has lost a farthing by it, and I do not complain. > XI. DRAINING GENERALLY. Having narrated my own experience in draining with entire unreserve, I here submit the general conchisions to whch it has led me : I. While I doul)t that there is any land above water that would not be improved by a good system of underdrains, I am sure that there is a great deal that could not at present be drained to profit. P'orests, hill- side pastures, and most dry gravelly or sandy tracts, I have in this cate- gory. Perhaps one-third of new-England, half of the Middle States, and three-fourths of the Mississippi Valley, may ultimately be drained with profit. II. AH swamp lands without exception, nearly all clay soils, and a majority of the flat or gently rolling lands of this country, must eventual- ly be drained if they are to be tilled with the best results. I doubt that there is a garden on earth that would not be (unless it already had been) improved by thorough underdraining. III. The uses of underdrains are many and diverse. To carry off sur- plus water, though the most obvious stands by no means alone, i. Underdrained land may be plowed and sowed considerably earlier in Spring than undrained soil of like quality. 2. I>ained fields lose far less than others of their fertility by washing. 3. They are not so liable to be gullied by sudden thaws or flooding rains. 4. Where a field has been deeply subsoiled, I am confident that it will remain mellow and permeable by roots longer than if undrained. 5. Less water being evap- orated from drained than from undrained land, the soil will be the warmer throughout the growing season ; hence, the crop will be heavier, and will mature earlier. 6. Being more porous and less compact, I think the soil of a drained field retains more moisture in a season of drouth, and its growing plants suffer less therefrom, than if it were undrained. In short, I thoroughly believe in underdrainmg. IV. Yet I advise no man to run into debt for draining, as I can im- agine a mortgage on a form so heavy and pressing as to be even a greater nuisance than stagnant water in its soil. Labor and toil are dear with us ; 1 do not expect that either will be ever so cheap here as in England or 46 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMI> G. Belgium. What I «vw/^/havt' eacli farmer in moderate circumstances do is io\drain /lis ivcttcst field next Fall — that is, after finishing his haying and and before cutting up his corn — taking care to secure abundant fall to carry off the water in time of flood, and doing his work thoroughly. Having done this, let him subsoil deeply, fertilize amply, till carefully, and watch the result. 1 think it will soon satisfy him that such draining V. I do not insiot on tile as making the only good drain ; but 1 have had no success with a;i}/ other. The use of stone, in my opinion, is only justified where the field to be drained, abounds in them and no other use can be made of them. To make a good drain with ordinary boulders or cobble-stones recjuires twice the excavation and involves twice the labor necessary on tile draining ; and it is neither so effective nor so durable. I .arth will be carried by water into a stone drain ; rats and other vennin will burrow in it and dig (or enlarge) holes thence in the surface ; in short, it is not the thing. Better drain with stone where they are a nuisanct than not at all ; but I predict that you will dig them up after giving them a fair trial and replace then", with tile. In a wood- ed country, where the tile are scarce and dear, I should try draining with slabs or cheap boards dressed to a uniform width of six o** eight inches, and laid in a ditch with banks inclined or sloped to the bottom, so as to form a sort of V ; the lower edge of the two side slabs coming together at the bottom, and a third being laid widely across their ujjper edges, so as to form a perfect cap ro cover. In firm, hard soil, this would prove an efficent drain, and, if well made, would last twenty years. Uni- formity of temperature and of moisture would keep the slabs tolerably sound for at least so long ; and, if the top of this drain were two feet below the surface, no plowing or trampling over it would harm it. VI. As todraining by what is called a Mole Plow, which simply makes a waterway through the subsoil at a de])th of three feet or thereabout, I have no acquaintance with it but by hearsay. Il seems to me morally impossible that drains so made should not be lower at some points than at others, so as to retain their fill of water instead of carrying it rapidly oft ; and I am sure that plowing, or even carting heavy loads over them, must gradually choke and destroy them. Yet this kind of grain is com- paratively so cheap and may, with a strong team, be effected so rapidly, that I can account for its popularity, especially in prairie regions. Where the subsoil is rocky it is impracticable, where it is hard-pan, it must be ve'v difficult ; where it is loose sand, it cannot endure ; but in clays or heavy loams, it may, for a few years, render excellent service. I wish the hjavy clays of Vermont, more especially of the Champlain basin, were well fiirrowed or pieced by even such drains ; for I am con- fident that they would temporarily improve both soil and crop; and if they soon gave out, they would probably be replaced by otheis more durable. —I shall not attempt to give instructions in drainmaking; but I urge every novice in the art to jDrc^cure ^Varing's or some other work on the i DRAINING GENKRALl.Y. 47 subject and study it carefully : then, if he can obtain at a fair price the services of an experienced drainer, hire him to supervise the work. One point only do 1 insist on — that is, draining into a main rather than an open ditch or brook ; for it is difficult in this or any harsher climate to prevent the crumbling of your outlet tile by frost. Below the Potomac or the Arkansas, this may not be apprehended ; and there it may be best to have your drains separately discharge from a roadside bank or into an open ditch, as they will thus inhale more air, and so holp (in Summer) to warm and moisten the soil above them ; but in our climate I believe it better to let your drains discharge into a covered main or mains as afore- said, than into an open ditch or brook. Tile and labor are dear to us ; I presume labor will remain so. But, in our old States, there are often laborers lacking employment in No- vember and the Winter months ; and it is the wisest and truest charity to proffer them pay for work. Some will reject it unless the price be exor- bitant ; but there are scores of the deserving poor in almost every rural county, who would rather earn a dollar per day than hang around the grog-shops waiting for spring. Get your tiles when you can, or do not get them at all, but let it be widely known that you have work for those who will do it for the wages you can affortl, and you will soon h.ue somebody to earn your money. Having staked out your drains, •■ .t these to work at digging them, even though you should not be able lo toil them for a year. Cut ycur outlet deep, and your land will profit by a year of open drains. XII. IRRIGATION — MEANS AND ENDS. Whim: few can have failed to realize the important part played by Water in the economy of vegetation I judge that the question — "How can I secure to my growing plants a sufficiencyof moisture at all times ?" — has not alwa\s presented itself to the farmer's mind as demanding of him a practical solution. To rid his soil and keep it free of superfluous, but es- peciall)' of stagnant water, he may or may not accept as a necessity ; but that, having provided for draining away whatever is excessive, he should turn a short corner and begin at once to ])rovide that water shall be supplied to his fields and plants whenever they may need it, he is often slow to apprehend. Yet this provision is but the counterpart and com- plement of the other. I had sped across Euroj^e to Venice, and noted with interest the ad- mirable, effective irrigation of the great plain of Lombardy, before I could call any land my own. I saw there a region perhaps thirty miles wide, by one hundred and fifty along the east bank of the Po, rising very gently thence to the foot of the Austrian Alps, which Providence seems to have specially adapted to be improved by irrigation. The torrents of melted snow which in spring leap and foam adown the south- ern face of the Alps, bringing with them the finer i)arti( les of soil, are suddenly arrested and form lakes (Garda, Maggiore, Cv")mo, etc.), just as they emerge upon the plain. These lakes, slowly rising, often overflow their banks, with those of the sv>a\\ rivers that bear their waters west- .vard to the Po ; and this overflow was a natural source of abiding ferti- lity. To dam these outlets, and thus control their currents, was a very simj)le and obvious device of long ago, and was probably begun by a very i'cw individuals (if by more than one), whose success incited emula- tion, until the present e.xtensive and costly system of irrigating dams and canals was greatl)' developed. AVhen I traversed Lombardy in July 185 1, the beds of streams naturally as large as the Pemigewasset, Bat- tenkill, Canada Creek, or Humboldt, were utterly dry ; the water which would naturally have flowed therein being wholly transferred to an irri- gating canal (or to canals) often two or three miles distant. The reser- IRRIGATION — MP:ANS AND ENDS. 49 voirs thus created were filled in Spring, when their streiims were fullest and their water richest, and gradually drawn upon throughout the later growing season to cover the carefully leveled and gradeil fields on either side, to the depth of an inch or two at a time. If any failed to be soon absorbed by the soil, it was drawn oft" as here superfluous, and added to the current employed to moisten and fertilize the field next below it; and so field after fiold was refreshed and enriched, to the husbandman's satis- faction and profit. It may be that the rich glades of English Lancashire bear heavier average crops ; but those of Lomi)ardy are rarely excelled on the globe. Why should not our Atlantic shjpe have its T.ombardy ? Utah, Ne- vada, and California, exhibit raw, crude suggestions (jf such a system ; but why should the irrigation of the New World be confined to regions where it is indispensable, when that of the Old is not ? I know no good reason whatever for leaving an American field unirrigated v liere water to flow it at will can be had at a moderate (H)st. When 1 first bought land (in 1853), I fiilly )3urposed to provide for irrigating my nearly level acres at will, and 1 constructed two dams across my upland stream with that view ; but they were so badly ])lar>ned that they went off" in a flood caused by a tremendous rain next Sprir g ; and, though I rebuilt one of them, I submitted to a miscalculation which provided for taking the water, by means pfa syphon, out of the pond at the top and over the bank that rose fifteen or twenty feet above the sur- face of the water. Of course, air would work into the pipe after it had carried a stream unexceptionably for two or three days, and then the water would run no longer. Had I taken it from the bottom of the pond through my dam, it would have run forever, (or so long as there was water covering its inlet in the j)ond ;) but bad engineering flung me : and I never since had the heart (or the means) to revise or correct its errors. My next attempt was on a much humbler scale, and I engineered it myself. Toward the north end of my farm, the hillside v^^hich rises east of my low land is broken by a swale or terrace, which gives me three or four aiTs-'s of tolerably level upland, along the upper edge of which five or six sjirings, which never wholly fail, burst from the rocks above and unite to form a pretty runnel, which dries up in very hot or dry weather, but which usually preserved a tiny stream to be lost in the swamp below. North of the gully cut down the lower hillside by this streamlet, the hill- side of some three acres is (piite steep, still partially wooded, and wholly devoted to ])asturage. Making a petty dam across this runnel at the top of the lower acclivity, I turned the stream aside, so that it should henceforth run along the crest of the lower hill, falling off" gradually so as to secure a free current, and losing its contents at intervals through variable depressions in its lower bank. Dam and artificial water-course together cost me $90, which was about twice which it should have been. That rude and petty contrivance has now been ten years in operation, so WHAT I KN'OW OF FARMING. I i and may have cost $5 per annum for oversight and repairs. Its ertect has been to double the grass grown on the two acres it constantly irri- gates, for which I paid $280, or more than thrice the cost of my irriga- tion. But more ; my hill-side, while it was well grassed in Spring, always gave out directly after the first dry or hot week : so that, when I most needed food, it afforded none ; its herbage being i)arched uj) and dead, and thus remaining till refreshed by generous rains. I judge, therefore, that my irrigation ha., more than doubled the product of those two acres, and that these are likely to lose nothing in yield or value so long as that petty irrigating ditch shall be maintained. I know this is small business. V>\\\. sujjpose each of the hundred thousand New England farms, whereof five or ten acres might be thus irrigated at a cost not exceeding $100 per flirm, had been similarly pre- pared to flow those acres last Spring and early Summer, with an average increase therefrom of barely one tun of Hay (or its ecjuivalent in pas- turage) per acres. 'I'he 500,000 tuns of Hay thus realized would have saved 200,000 head of cattle from being sent to the butcher while too thin for good beef, while every one of them was recjuired for further use, and will have t be replaced at a heavy cost. Shall not these things be considered ? Shall not all who can do so at moderate cost resolve to test on their own farms the advantages and benefits that may be secured by Irrigation? I XIII. THK pos.sMin.rriKs ok irrigation. I HAVE given an account of my poor, little experiment in Irrigation, because it is one which ahnost every farmer can imitate and improve upon, however narrow his domain and slender his fortune. I presume there are Half a Million homesteads in the United States which have natural facilities for Irrigation at least c(iual to mine ; many of them far greater. Along either slope of the Alleghenies, throughout a district at least a thousand miles long by three hundred wide, nearly every farm might be at least partially irrigated by means of a dam costing from twenty-five to one hundred dollars; so might at least half the farms in New-Kngland and our own State. On the prairies, the plans must be different, and the expense probably greater, but the re.sults obtained would bounteously reward the outlay. I shall not see the day, but there are those now living who will see it, when Artesian wells will be dug at points where many acres may be flowea from a gentle swell in the midst of a vast plain, or at the head of a fertile valley, expressly, or at least mainly, that its. waters may be led across that plain, adown that valley, in irrigating streams and ditches, unt'" they have been wholly drank up by the soil. I have seen single well., in California that might be made to irrigate sufficiently hundreds of acres, by the aid of a reser- voir into which their waters could be discharged when the soil did not require them, and there retained until the thirsty earth demanded them. An old and successful farmer in my neighborhood affirms that Water is the cheapest and best fertilizer ever applied to the soil. If this were understood to m?an that no other is needed or can be profitably applied it would be erroneous. Still, I think it clearly true that the annual pro- duct of most farms can be increased, and the danger of failure averted, more cheaply by the skillful application of water than by that of any other fertilizer whatever. Plaster (Gypsum) possibly excepted. I took a run through Virginia last Summer, not far from the ist of August. That State was then suffering intensely from drouth, as she continued to do for some weeks thereafter. I am c[uite sure that I saw on her thirsty plains and hillsides not less than three hundred thousand acres planted with Indian Corn, whereof the average product could not 5« WHAT 1 kNdW (IF FARMING. exceed ten bushels per acre, while most of ii would fall far below that yield, and there were thousands of acres that would not produce one sound ear ! Kvery one deplored llu- failure, correctly attributing it to the prevailing drouth. .\nd yel. 1 |)asse(l hundreds if not thousands of places where a very moderate outlay would have sufficed to dam a stream or brooklet issuing from between two spurs of the Blue Ridge, or the .Mleghenies, so that a refreshing current of the copious .md fertiliz- ing floods of Winter and S[)ring, warmed by the fervid suns of June and July, could have been led over broad fields lying below, so as to van- (|uish drouth and insure generous harvests. Nay; I feel confident that I could in many places have ( onstructed rude works in a week, after the drouth began to be felt, that would have saved and made the Corn on at least a portion of the planted acres through which now shrunken brooks danced and laughed idly down to the l;irger streams in the wider and equally thirsty valleys. Of course. I know that this would have been imperfect irrigation a mere stop-gap -that the cold s|)ring-water of a parched Summer c;annot fertilize as the hill-wash of \Vinter and Spring, if thrifty garnered and warmed through and through for sultry week.s, would do ; yet I believe that very many farmers might, even then, have secured partial cro])s by such irrigation as was still possible, had they, even at the eleventh hour, done their best to retrieve the errors of the past. For the present, I would only coi\nsel every farmer to give his land a careful scrutiny with a view to irrigation in the future. No one is ol)lig- ed to do so any faster than his means will justify; and yet it may be well to have a clear comprehension of all that may ultimately l)e done to profit, even though much of it must long remain unattempted. In many cases, a stream may be dammed for the power which it will afford for two or three months of each year, if it shall appear that this use is (luite consistent with its employment to irrigation, when the former alone would not justify the recpiisite outlay. It is by thus making one expense subserve two (juite independent but not inconsistent purposes that .suc- cess is attained in other pursuits; and so it may be in farming. As yet, each farmer must study his own resources with intent to make the most of them. If a manageable stream crosses or issues from his land, he must measure its fall thereon, study the lay of the land, and determine whether he can or cannot, at a tolerable cost, make that stream available in the irrigation of at least a portion of his growing crops when they shall need water and the skies decline to supply it. On many, I think on most, farms situated among hills, or upon the slopes of mountains, something may be done in this way — done at once, and with immediate profit, l^ut this is rudimentary, partial, fragmentary, when compared with the irrigation which yet shall l)e. 1 am confident that there are points on the Carson, the Humboldt, the Weber, the South Platte, the Cache-le-Poudre, and many less noted streams which thread the central plateau of our continent, where an expenditure of $io. \ THK rossinii.iTiKs ok ikri(;aiu)N. 53 ^ 000 to $50,000 may he jiulicionslv in;ule iii a Ham, locks and canals, for the purposes of irrij^Mtion and milliiiL^ roniljined, with a moral certainty of realizing' fifty per (ciit. aniiiuilU 011 tlu- outlay, wilii a sleady increase in the value of the i)roperty. It my e\e did not deceive me, there is one point on the Carson ulicre a dam lluil need not cost $50,000 would irrigate one hundred scpiarc nuks ol vie h plai.' which, wiien I saw it eleven years ago, grew iiou;;ht l absence. Yet there is no farm in our country that would not yield considerably more grain and more grass, more fnn't and more vegetables, if its owner had water at com- mand which he could apply at pleasure and to any extent he should deem recpiisite. Most men, thus empowered, would at first irrigate too often anci too copiously ; but experience would soon temper their zeal, and teach them " The precious art of Not too much ;' and they would thenceforth be careful to give their soil drink, yet not drown it. Whoever lives beyond the clo.se of this century, and shall ther. traverse our prairie States, will see them whitened at intervals by the broad .sails of windmills erected over wells, whence every gale or breeze will be employed in pumping water into the ponds or reservoirs so located that water may be drawn therefrom at will and diffused in gentle streamlets over the surrounding fields to .invigorate and impel their growing crops. And, when all has been done that this paper faintly foreshadows, our people will have barely indicated, not by any means exhausted, the l)eneficent possibilities of irrigation. The difficulty is in making a beginning. Too many farmers would fain conceal a j)overty of thought behind an affectation of dislike or contempt for novelties. " Humbug 1' is their stereotyped comment on every suggestion that they might wisely and profitably do something otherwise than as their grandfathers did. They assume that those respected ancestors did very well without Irrigation ; wherefore, it can- not now be essential. Hut the circumstances have materially changed. The disap])earance of the dense, high woods that formerly almost or (juitc surrounded each farm has given a sweep to the heated, parching winds of Summer, to which our ancestors were strangers. Our springs, our streams, do not hold out as they once did. Our Summer drouths are longer and fiercer. Even though our grandfathers did not, we do need ann may profit by Irrigation. . x.iv. PLOWING -DKEP OR SHALLOW. Rules absolutely without exception are rare ; and they who imagine the t I insist on plowing all lands deeply are wrong, for I hold that much larl should never be plowed at all. In fact, 1 have seen in my life ne irly as large an area that ought not as I have that ought to be plowed, by which I mean that half the land I have seen may serve mankind better if devoted to timber than if subjected to tillage. I personally know farmers who would thrive far better if they tilled but half the area they do, bestowing on this all the labor and fertilizers they spread over the whole, even though they threw the residue into com- mon and left it there. I judge that a majority of our farmers could increase the recompense of their toil by cultivating fewer acres than they now do. Nor do I deny that there are soils which it is not advisable to plow de ply. Prof Mapes told me he had seen a tract in West Jersey whereof the soil was but eight inches deep, resting on a stratum of coperas (sulphate of iron), which, being upturned by the plow and mingled with the soil, poisoned the crops planter' thereon. And I saw, last Summer, on the intervale of New River, in the western part of Old Virginia, many acres of Corn which were thrifty and luxuriant in spite of shallow plowing and intense drouth, because the rich, black loam which had there been leposited by semi-annual inundations, until its depth ranged from two to twenty feet, was so inviting and jjermeable that the corn-roots ran beloiv the bottom of the furrow about as readily as above that 1. lO. 1 doubt not that there are many millions of acres of such land that would produce tolerably, and sometimes bounteously, though simply scratched over by a brush harrow and never plowed at all. In the infancy of our race, when there were few mouths to fill and when farming implements were very rude and ineffective, cultivation was all but confined to these facile strips and patches, so that utility, the need, of deep tillage was not apparent. And yet, we know the U PLOWING — DEEP OR SHALLOW. 55 V .' crops often failed utterly in those days, plunging whole nations into the miseries of famine. The primitive plow was a forked stick or tree-top, whereof one prong formed the coulter, the other and longer the beam ; and he who first sharpened the coulter-prong with a stone hatchet was the Whitney or McCormick of his day. The plow in common use to-day in Spain or Turkey is an improvement on this, for it has an iron point ; still, it is a miserable tool. When, at five years old, I first rode the horse which drew my father's plow in furrowing for or cultivating his corn, it had an iron coulter and an iron share ; but it was mainly composed of wood. In the hard, rocky soil of New-Hampshire, as full of bowlders and pebbles as a C'hristmas pudding is of piums, plowing with such an implement was a sorry business at best. My father hitched eight oxen and a horse to his plow when he broke up pebbly green-sward, and found an acre of it a very long day's work. I hardly need add that subsoiling was out of the question, and that six inches was the average of his furrow. I judge that the best Steel Plows now in use do twice the execution that his did with a like expenditure of power — that we can, with eqnal power, plow twelve inches as easily and rapidly as he plowed six. Ought we to do it ? Will it pay ? I first fixrmed for myself in 1854 on a plat of eight acres, in what was then the open country, skirting the East River nearly abreast the lower point of Blackwell's Island, near Fiftieth-st., on a little indentation of the shore known as Turtle Bay. None of the Avenues east of Third was then opened above Thirtieth-st. ; and the neighbourhood, though now perforated by streets and covered with houses, was as rural and secluded as heart could wish One fine Spring morning, a neighbor called and offered to plow for 4)5 my acre of tillage not cut up by rows ot box and other shrubs ; and I told him to go ahead. I came home next evening, just as he was finishing the job, which I contemplated most ruefully. His plow was a pocket edition ; his team a single horse ; his furrows at most five inches deep. I paid him, but told him plainly that I would have preferred to have given the money for nothing. He insisted that he had plowed for me as he had plowed for others all around me. " I will tell you," I rejoined, " exactly how this will work. Throughout the Spring and early Summer, we shall have frequent rains and moderate heat : thus far, my crops will do well. But then will come hot weeks, with little or no rain ; and they will dry up this shallow soil and every thing planted thereon," The result sif nally justified my prediction. We had frequent rains and cloudy, mild weather, till the ist of July, when the clouds vanished, the sun came out intensely hot, and we had scarcely a sprinkle till the ist of September, by which time my (Jorn and Potatoes had about given up the ghost. Like the seed which fell on stony ground in the Parable of the Sower, that which I had planted had withered away " because 56 WHAT I KNOW OK FARMING. there was no root ;" and my prospect for a harvest was utterly blighted, where, with twelve inches of loose, fertile, well pulverized each at their roots, my crops would have been at least respectable. When I became once more a farmer in a small way on my present place, I had not for- gotten the lesson, and I tried to have plowed deeply and thoroughly so much land as I have plowed at all. My first summer here (1853) was a very dry one, and crops failed in consequence around me and all over the country ; yet mine were at least fair ; and I was largely indebted for them to relatively deep plowing. I have since sufifered from frost (on my lowland), from the rotting of seed in the ground, from the ravages of insects, etc. ; but never by drouth ; and I am entirely confident thai Deep Plowing has done me excellent service. My only trouble has been to get it done ; for there are apt to be reasons— (haste, lateness in the season, etc.) — for plowingly shallowly for "just this time," with full intent to do henceforth better. I close this i)aper with a statement made to me by an intelligent British farmer living at Maidstone, south of England. He said : " A few years ago there came into my hands a field of twelve acres, which had been an orchard; but the trees were hopelessly in their do- tage. They must be cut down ; then their roots must be grubbed out ; so I resolved to make a clean job of it, and give the field a thorough trenching. Choosing a time in Autumn or early Winter when labor was abundant and cheap, I had it turned over three spits (27 inches) deep ; the lowest being merely reversed ; the next reversed and placed at the top ; the surface being reversed and placed below the second. The soil was strong and deep, as that of an orchard should be ; 1 planted the field in Garden Peas, and my first picking was very abundant. Abut the time that peas usually begin to wither and die, the roots of mine struck the rich soil which had been the rough stratum, but was now the second, and at once the stalks evinced a new life- -threw out new l)lossoms, which were followed by pods ; and so kept on blossoming and forming peas ior weeks, until this first crop far more than paid the cost of trench- ing and cultivation." 'i'hus far my English friend. Who will this year try a patch of Peas on a plac madt rich and mellow for a depth of at least two feet, and frequently moistened in Summer by some rude kind of irrigation. The fierceness of our Summer suns, when not counteracted l)y fre- (juent showers, shortens deplorably the ])i'oductiveness of many Vegeta- bles and Berries. ( )ur Strawberries bear well, but too briefly ; our peas wither up and cease to blossom after they have been two or three weeks plump enough to ])ick. (Jur Raspberries, Blackberries, etc., fruit well, but are out of bearing two soon after they begin to yield their treasures. PLOWING — DEFP OR SHAIJ.OW. 57 I am confident that this need not be. With a deep, rich soil, kept moistened by a periodical flow of water, there need not and should not be any such haste to give over blooming and bearing. The fiiiit is Nature's attestation of geniality of the seasons, the richness and abun- dance of the elements inhering in the soil or supplied to it by the water. Double the supply of these, and sterility should be posti)oned to a far later day than that in which it is now inaugurated. M XV. PLOWING — OOOD AND HAD. Thfre are so many wrong ways to do a thing to but one right one, that there is no reason in the impatience too often evinced with those who contrive to swallow the truth wrong end foremost, and thereupon insist that it won't do. For instance : A farmer hears something said of deep plowing, and, without any clear understanding of, or firm faith in it, resolves to give it a trial. So he buys a great plow, makes up a strong team, and proceeds, to turn up a field hitherto plowed but six inches to a depth of a foot : in other words, to bury its soil under six inches of cold, sterile clay, sand, or gravel. On this, he plants or sows grain, and is lucky indeeed if he realizes half a crop. Hereupon, he reports to his neighbors that Deep Plowing is a humbug, as he suspected all along : but now he knows, for he has tried it. There are several other ways, which I will hurry over, in order to set forth that which I regard as the right one. Here is a middling farmer of the old school, who walks carefully in the footsteps of his respected grandfather, l)ut with inferior success, be- cause sixty annual harvests, though not i)articularly luxuriant, have par- tially exhausted the productive capacity of the acres he i*^herited. He now garners from fifteen to thirty bushels per acre of Corn, from ten to twenty of Wheat, from fifteen to twenty of Rye, from twenty to thirty of Oats, and from a tun to a tun ami a. half of Hay, as the season proves more or less propitious, and just contrives to draw from his sixty to one hundred acres a decent subsistence for his family ; plowing as his fiither and grandfather did, to a depth of five to seven inches : What can Deep Plowing do for him ? \ answer— By itself, nothing whatever. If in every other respect he is to persist in doing just as his father and his grandfather did, I doubt the expediency of doubling the depth of his fiirrows. True, the worst effects of the change would l)e realized at the outset, and I feel confi- dent that his six inches of subsoil, having been made to change places with that which formerly rested upon it, must gradually be wrought upon by air, and rain, and frost, until converted into a tolerably jnoductive soil, through which the roots of most plants would easily and speedily PI.(3WING — GOOD AND BAD. 59 make their way down to the richer stratum which, originally surface, has been transposed into subsoil. But this exchange of positions between the original surface and subsoil is not what I mean by Deep Plowing, nor any thinF ''ke it. What I do mean is this : Having ti. ^roughly underdrained a field, so that water will not stand upon any part of its surface, no matter how much there may be deposit- ed, the next step in order is to increase the depth of the soil. To this end, procure a regular sub-soil plow of the most approved pattern, at- tach to it a strong team, and let it follow the breaking-plow in its furrow, lifting and pulverizing the sub-soil to a depth of not less than six inches, but leaving it in position exactly where it was. The surface- plow turns the next furrow upon this loosened sub-soil, and so on till the whole field is thus pulverized to a depth of not less than twelve inches, or, better still, fifteen. Now, please remember, you have twice as much soil per acre to fertilize, as there was before ; hence, that it consecjuently requires twice as much manure, and you will have laid a good foundation for increased crops. I do not say that all the addi- tional outlay will be returned to you in the increase of your next crop, for I do not believe anything of the sort ; but I do believe that this crop will be considerably larger for this generous treatment, especially if tiie season prove remarkably dry or uncommonly wet ; and that you will have insured better crops in the years to come, including heavier grass, after that field shall once more be laid down ; and that, in case of the planting of that field to fruit or other trees, they will grow faster, resist disease better, and thrive longer, than if the soil were still plowed a.s of old. (I shall insist hereafter on the advantage and importance of subsoiling orchards.) Take another aspect— that of subsoiling liill-sides to prevent their abrasion by water. I have two bits of warm, gravelly hill-side, which bountifully yield Corn. Wheat and Oats, but which are addicted to washing. I presume one of these bits, at the south-east corner of my form, has been plowed and ])lanted not less than one hundred times, and that at least half the fertilizers applied to it have been washed into the brook, and thence into the Hudson. To say that $i,ooo have thus been squandered on that pate h of ground, would be to keep far within the truth. And, along with the fertilizers, a large portion of the finer and better elements of the original soil have thus been swept into the brook, and so lavished upon the waters of our bay. But since I had those lots thoroughly .subsoiled, all the water that falls upon them when in tillage sinks into the soil, and remains there until drained away by filtration or evapora- tion ; and I never saw a particle of soil washed from either save once, when a thaw of one or two inches on the surfoce, leaving the ground solidly frozen beneath, being cpiickly followed by a pouring rain, washed away a few bushels of the loosened and soddened surface, jjroving that the law by virtue of which these fields were formerly denuded while in 6o WHAT I KNOW OF FARMINO. cultivation is still active, and that Deep Plowing is an effective and all but unfiiiling antidote for the evil it tends to incite. We plow too many acres annually, and do not jjlow them so tho- roughly as we ought. In the good time coming, when Steam shall have been so harnessed to a gang of six to twelve plows that, with one man guiding and firing, it will move as fast as a man ought to walk, steaming on and thoroughly pulverizing from twelve to twenty-five acres per day, I belie\e we shall i)low at least two feet deep, and plow not less than twice before putting in any crop whatever. Then we may lay down a field in the confident trust tliat it will yield from two and a half to three tuns of good hay per annum for the next ten or twelve years ; while, by the helj) of irrigation and occasional top-dressing, it may be made to average at least three tuns for a lifetime, if not forever. When my (irass-land requires breaking up — as it sometimes does — 1 understand that it was not properly laid down, or has not been well- treated since. A good grazing farmer once insisted in my hearing that grass-land should nei'er be plowed —that the vegetable mold form.ing the surface, when the timber was first cut off, should remain on the imrfiice forever. Considering how uneven the stumps and roots and cradle- knolls of a primitive torest are apt to leave the ground, I judge that this is an extreme statement. But land once thoroughly plowed and sub- soiled ought thereafter to be kept in grass by liberal applications of Gypsum, well-cured Muck, and barn-yard Manure to its surface, without needing to be plowed again and reseeded. Put back in Manure what is taken off in Hay, and the Grass should hold its own. XVI. THOKOUGH Til. LACK. My little, hill)', rocky f.irm teaches lessons of thoroughness «'hich I would gladly imjjart to the boys of to-day who are destined to be the farmers of the last (juarter of this century. 1 am sure ihey will find profit in farming better than their grandfathers did, and especially in putting their land into the best jjossihle condition for effective tillage. There were stones in my fields varying in size from that of a brass ketUe up to that of a hay-cock - some ot them raising their heads above the surface, others burrowing just below it — which had l)een plowed around and over perhaps a hundred times, till I went at them with team and bar, or (where necessary) with drill and blast, turned or blew them out, and hauled them away, so that they will interfere with cultivation nevermore. I insist that this is a jjrofitable operation -that a field which will not pay for such clearing should be planted with trees and thrown out of cultiva- tion conclusively. Dodging and skulking from rock to rock is hard upon team, ])low, and i)lowman; and it can rarely pay. Land ribbed and spotted with fast rocks will pay if judiciously planted with timber — possibly if well set in fruit — but tilling it from year to year is a thankless task ; and its owner may better work by the day for his neighbours than try to make his bread by such tillage. So with fields soaked by springs or sodden by stagnant water. If you say you cannot afford to drain your wet land, I respond that you can still less afford to till it without draining. If you really cannot aftbrd to fit it for cultivation, your next best step is to let it severely alone. A poor man who has a rough, rugged, sterile farm, which he is unable to bring to its best possible condition at once, yet which he clings to and must live from, should resolve that, if life and health be spared him, he will reclaim one field each year until all that is not devoted to timber shall have been brought into high condition. When his Summer harvest is over, and his Fall crops have received their last cultivation, there will genei .lly be from one to two Autumn months which he can devote mainly to this work. Let him take hold of it with resolute purpose to improve every available hour, not by running over the largest possible area, but by dealing with one field so thoroughly that it will need no 4 62 WHAT I KNOW OK KAR.MIN(;. more (lining a long lifc-tinif. If it h;is stone that the plow will reach, dig them out ; if it needs draining, drain it so thcjroughly that it may l)c hereafter ])l()\ve(l in S])ring so soon as the frost loaves it ; and now let soil and subsoil be so loosened and pulverized that roots may freely penetrate them to a depth of fifteen to twenty inches, finding nnurish- mcnl all the way, with incitement to go further if ever failing moisture should rencler this necessary. Drouth habituall)- shortens our Kail crops from ten to fifty per cent. ; it is sure to injure us more gravely as our forests are .swept away by ax and fire ; aiwl. while much may be done to mitigate its ravages by enriching the soil so as to give ywur crops an early start and a rank, luxuriant growth, the farmer's chief reliance must still be a depth of soil adecjuate to withstand weeks of the fiercest sun- .shine. I have ( (tnsidercd what is urged as to the choice of rt)ots to run just i)eneath the surface, and it does not signify. Roots seek at oncL' heat and moisture ; if the moisture awaits them close to the surface, of course they mainly run there, because the heat is there greatest. If moisture fails there, they must descend to seek it, even at the cost of finding the heat inadetjuate though heat increases and descends under the fervid suns which rob the surface of moisture. Make the soil rich and mellow ever so far down, and you need not fear th'' ,e roots will descend an inch lower than they should. 'I'licy understand their business ; il is your sagacity that may possibly jjrove deficient. I susi)ect that the average farmer does far too little [jlowing- by which I mean, not that he plows too few acres, for he often ])lows too man\, but that he should ])low oftener as well as deeper and more thoroughly. I spent three or four of my boyish .Summers planting and tilling (^orn and Potatoes on fields broken up just befi)re they were planted, never cross-plowed, and of couse tough and intractable throughout the season. The yield of corn was middling, considering the season ; that of Potatoes more than middling; yet, if those fields had been well ])lowed in the |)revious .Autumn, cross-plowed early in the .Spring, and thoroughly harrowed just before planting time, I am confident that the yield would have been far greater, and the labor (save in harvesting) rather less the ( ost of the Kail plowing being over-balanced by the .saving of half the t'lne necessarily given to the jjlanting and hoeing. I*"all Plowing has this recommendation- it lightens labor at the busier season, by transfering it to one of comparative dullness. I may have said that 1 consider him a gocul farmer who knows how to make a rainy day e(|ually effective with one that is dry and fair ; and, in the .same spirit, I count him my master in this art who can make a day's work in Autumn or Winter save a day's work in Spring or Summer. Show me a farmer who has no land plowed when May opens, and is just waking up to a consciousness that his fences need mending and his trees want trimming, and I will guess that the sheriff" will be after iiim befijre May romes round again. \ rti(mob(;ii iii.i.a(;k. 63 'I hcri' is no suptTslitioi) in llu- hulict ihal land is (or may l)i') onrii hed [t\ J'all J'lovving. I'lif Aiitunin j^ak's arc rreightt'd with the more vola- tile elements of decaying vegetation. These, takefi up where v er they are given ort" in excess, are wafted to and dejjositcd in the soils best tilted for their recejilion. Kegarded sim|)ly as a iiKthixl off rtilizing, I iU) not say that Fall {'lowing is the < iieapesl ; I t/o say that any poor" field, if well plowed in the Kail, vvill he in better heart the next Spring, for what wind and rain will meantime have tlepo.>iited thereon. Krost, loo, in any region where the groimd t'reezes, and espe. Dickinson, late of Steuben C'ounty, and one uf the best imscuentific, unlearned farmers ever produced by our State, maintain that he cannot only enri( h his own farm, but impoverish his iieigiiijouis' by the free use of (iyp.sum on liis woodless hills. The chemist's explanation of this effect is above indicated. The plastered land .utracts and absorbs not only its own fair proportion of the breeze- b(trne ,\uunonia, but mu( h that, if the eipiilibrium had not been disturb- ed !>y MUch application, would have been (le|)osited on the adjacent hiU.s. As Mr. 1). makes not the smallest pretensions to science, the cianci- uence between his dictum and the chemist's theor is noteworthy. Now that our country is completely gridironed with (.'anal and Rail- roads, bringing whatever has a mercantile value very near every one's door, I suggest that no township should go without (Jypsum. Five dollars will ,at least buy two barrels of it almost anywhere ; and tw'o barrels nia> be sown over five or six acres. Let it be sown so that its effect (or non-eft'et.t) may be palpable ; give it a fair, careful trial, and await the reKuIt. Jfit seem io subserve no good purpose, be not too swift to enter 06 WMAI I KNOW f»r t-ARMr.Nf.. \\[) judgment ; hut buy two liarri-ls more, vary your titni' aiiM mi-thod of .i|>|)li(alion, and try a},Min. if the result l)e still null, let it he j,Mven up that (lypsiiin is not the fertilizer needed just there that some ill-undcr stood peculiarity of soil or ( limate renders it there ineffective. Then let its use he there .ihandoned : hut it will still remain true that in many localities and in ( omuless instances, (lypsiun has heen hilly |)roved one of the best and cheaijest ( oinmercial fertilizers known to mankind. I never tried, hiu on the strength of others' testimony helieve in thf improvement of soils hy mean>^ of eah ined (lay or earth. Mr. .An- drew H. Dickinson showed me where he had, during a dry Autiunn |)lowed up the road-sides through his farm, started fires with a lew roots or sticks, and then piled on sods of the upturned lay and gias> roots till the fire was nearly stnothered, when ea( h heap smoked and smouldered like a little coal pit, till all of it that was 'omhustihle wa.s reduced to ashes, when ashes and hurned clay were shoveled into a cart and strewn over his fields, to the decided improvement of their crops. Whoever has a clay sod to plow up, and is deficient in manure, may re- peat this experiment with a moral certainty of liberal returns. X\ 111. Al kAI.I.s SAI.r ASHKS I.IMK. r DO not know .1 rood of our (onntry's snrfact' so ii< h in i''"ward a similiar apjilication. I'.ut .Ashes in (|uantity are unattainable, since no good farmer sells them, and (!oal is the chief fuel of 'ilies and villages. The Mads of Xew-|ersey I judge fully e.iual in average value to .Vshes which have been nearly deprived of their jjotash by leaching, but not ,<)nic farmer who gives constant i)crsonal attention to his work- as I cannot would make some careful tcjsts of the practical value of alkalis. Kor instance; the abundance and tenacity of our com- mon sorrel is supposed to indicate an acid condition of the soil ; and all who have tried it knows that sorrel is hard to kill by cultivation. 1 suggest that whoever is tro\ibled with it should cover two sijuare rods with one bushel of cjuic k-lime just after jjlowing and harrowing this ."spring ; then apply another bushel to Jour sijuare rods adjacent ; then make similar apj)lications of ashes to two and four s(|uare rods respectively, taking careful note of the boundaries of each patch, and leaving the rest of the field destitute of either ajjplication. I will not anticipate the result : more than one year may be required to evolve it ; but 1 am confident that a few such exjjeriments would supply data whereof I am in need; and there are doubtless others whose ignorance is nearly ecjual to mine. Many have applied l-ime to their fields withoiit reali/mg any advan- tage therefrom. In some cases, there was already a sufficiency of this ingredient in the .soil, and the api)lication of more was one of those many wastefiil blunders induced by our ignorance of Chemistry. Hut much !,ime is naturally adulterated with other minerals, especially with .Manganese, so that its application to most if not to all soils sul.'serves no good end. In the absence of exact, scientific knowledge. 1 would buy fifty bushels of (luick-lime, api)ly them to one acre running through a field, and watch the etTect. If it doesn't i)ay, you have a bad article, or vour .soil is not defi< ient in Lime. \IX. Soils AM) KKKIII.I/KkS. !l A FARMKR is ;i manufiu turer of ;irti( Ics whcrcfrum mrmkind arc led and clad ; his raw materials are the soil and the various siihstantx's he mingles therewith or adds thereto in order to increase its productive capacity. His art consists in transforming l»y «iiltivation crude, «:ompar- atively worthless, and 'jven noxious, ottl-nsive materials into substances grateful to the senses, nourishing to the hody. and sometimes invigora- ting, even strengthening, to the mind. 1 have heart! of lands that were naturally rich enough ; 1 never was so lucky or perchance so discerning as to fmd them. Yet 1 have seen Illinois bottoms whereof 1 was assured that the soil was fully sixteen feet tleep, and a rich, black alluvium tVom toj) to bottom; and I do not ^|uestion the statements made to me from personal observation that portions of the strongly alkaline plain or swule on which Salt Lake City is built, being for the first time plowed, irrigated, anti sown to Wheat, yielded ninety bushels of good grain per acre. I never saw, yet on evidence believe, that pioneer settlers of the Mianji Valley, wishing, some years after settling there, to sell their farms, advertised them as perculiarly desirable in that the barns stood over a » reek or " bran- sons ^\r> f r;KTi{ r/.ru^ yi mg ntVLT yet siu'cceflecl in manuring a <:()rn-f"ield so high that a few loads more would not ( I judge) have increased the crop, I doubt whether even the richest Illinois bottoms would not yield more C.'orn, year by year, if recnlorced with the ((jntents of a good barn-yard. And, when the first heavy ( rop of (!orn has been taken from the field, that field no matter how deep and fertile its soil —is less rich in corn-forming <'Iements than-it was before, fust so sure as there is no depletion or shrinkage when nothing is taken from nothing, so sure that something cannot betaken frotn somethi»ig without diminishing its capacity to yield something at the next call. Rotation of crops is an excellent |)lan ; for one may llourish on that which another has rejecteil ; but this does not overbear Natures inflexible exaction of so much for so much. Henc e, if there ever was a field so rich that nothing could be added that would iiK rease its productive tai)acity, the first exacting ciop there- after taken from it diminished that capaiivifix commercial fertili/^ers ; but these i will discuss in my next chapter. ) XX. nONF.S - I'HOSPMATKS fiUANO. I I HATK to check improvement or chill the glow of Faith ; yet I do so » learly apprehend that many of our people, especially among the South- ern cotton-growers, are Sfpiandering money on Commercial Fertilizers, that I am bound to utter my note of warning, even though it should pass unheeded. Let me make my position as clear as I can. I live in a sec tion which has been cultivated for more than two cen- turies, while its proximity to a great city has tempted to crop it ince.s- santly, exhaustively. Wheat while its original surface soil of S; to twelve inches of vegetable mold (mainly comp(jsed of decayed fores' leaves) re- 'mained ; then Corn and Oats; at length, Milk, Heef, and Apples — have exhausted the hill-sides and gentler slopes of Westchester County, except where they have l)een kept in heart by judicious culture aud lib- eral fertilizing ; and, even here, that subtle element, Phosphorus, which enters minutely but necessarily into the composition of every animal and nearly every vegetable structure, has been gradually drawn away in (irain, in Milk, in Hones, and not restored to the soil by the application of ordinary manures. I am convinced that a field may be so manured as to give three tuns of Hay per acre, yet so destitute of Phosphorus that a s.';, nd, healthy animal cannot be grown therefrom. For two cen- turies the tillers of Westchester County knew nothing of Chemistry or Phosphorus, and allowed the imvalued bones of their animals to be ex- ported to fatten British meadows, without an eftbrt to retain them. Hence, it has betDUie absolutely essential that we buy and ajiply Phos- phates, even though the price be high ; for our land can no longer do without them. Wherever a steer or heifer can occasionally be caught gnawing or mumbling over an old bone, there Phosphates are indisjien- sable, no matter at wlial cost. Better pay.$ioo per tun for a dressing of one hundretl pounds of Bone per acre than try to do without. But no lands recently brought into ( ultivation- no lands where the bones of the animals feil thereon have been allowed, for unnumbered years past, to mingle with the soil can be e<|ually hungry for Phos- phates : and 1 doubt that any cotton field in the South will ever return an outlay of even $50 per tun for any Phosphatic fertilizer whatever. 74 WHAl I KNONS <)!• KARMlNCi. I h;il iitiy prupaialioii of Hone, or wlicroof IJonc is ;i print iitlc ck'iiicril, will increase will; succ'jL'din}^ crops, is (in(l(jul)le( I ; i>iit thai il will e\t'r rclurn ils (ostand a dt'ccnt margin of ))rotil, is yd to he demonslrated to iny salisfailion. NO doul)l, there are special cases in which the appli( alion t\en of Peruvian (liiano al $90 per inn is advisable. A comjxjsi of Miu.k. Lime, \'c., eipially efficient, nii^ht he far cheaper; hut months would he reipiired to ]irepare and jjert'ect it, and meantime the farmer would lose his crop, or fail lo make one. It a itm ofliuano, or of some expensive I'hosphate, will give him six or eight acres of Chner where he would (jth'.Twise have little or none, and he needs that C'lover to feed the team wherewith he is hreaking up and fitting his farm to grow a good croji next )ear, lie may wisely make the purchase and a]>plicalion, even though he may he ahlc to compost lor next year's use twice llu- value of fertilizers for the precise cost of this. lUil I am s(; thorough in my de- votion to "home in(luslry," that I hold him an unskillful farmer who cannot, nine times in ten, make, mainly from materials to he found on or near his farm, a pile of compost for $100 that will add more to the enduring fertility of his farm than anything lie can hring from a distance at a cost of $150. Understand thai this is a general rule, and suhject, like all general rules, lo exceptions. (ly|»sum, I think every farmer should Imy; !,ime, .nlso, if his soil needs il; Phosphates in some shape, if past ignorance or" folly h;is allowed that soil lo In,' despoiled of them; Wood Ashes, if any one can he found so hrainless as to sell then) ; Marl, of course, where it is found within ten miles; (iuano very rarely, and mainly when some- thing is needed to make a ( rop hefore coarser and (older fertilizers can l)e hrought into a condition ol" lUness for use ; hut the general rule 1 insist on is this : A good farmer will, in the course of twenty or thirty vears, make at least $10 worth of fertilizers (or every dollar's worth he huys from any dealer, unless it he ihe sweepings or other excretions of some not distant city. 1 have used (iuano fretjuentl), and, llKjugh it has generally made ils mark, I never felt sure that it returned me a profit over its cost. Phosphates have done heller, especially where applied to ( "orn in the hill, either at the time of ]>lanting (jr later ; yet my strong im])ression is that Klour of IJone, apjtlicd hroadcasl and freely, especially when Wheal or (.>ats are sown on a field that is lo he laid down to (irass. pays heller and more surely than anything else i order from the City, (iypsum, ;ind possihly Oyster-Shell I.ime, exct;pled. My experience can he no safe guide for others, since il is nol proved thai the anterior condition and needs of their soils are precisely like those of mine. 1 apfirehend that (Iuano has not had a fair trial on my place that carelessness in pulverizing or in apjjlication has caused it to " waste its sweetness on the de.sert air,' or that a drouth following \\s ap])lication has prevented the tliie development of its virtues. And BONKS l-HOSl'lIAIKS- <;i,'ANO. 75 11, (] >r V , still my impression that (Wiano is tin- braiulv of vcirrtatioii, su|)|)lyiii}; to plants stimulus rather than nutrition, is so dear and strcjiig that it may not easily l)e efiaced. It seems to me pl.iinly al)sur(l to send ten thous- and miles f(»r this stimulant, when this or any other great city annually poisons its own atmosphere and the adjacent waters with excretions whicli are of a very similar < haracter and vahie, .ind which Science and Capital might comhini- to utili/.e at less than hah' the cost of like elements in the form of (iiiano. Vfy object in this paper is t(» incite experiment and < aretui observa- tion. Nc» farmer siiouhi absolutely trust aught but his own senses. A Rhode Islander once assured me that he applied to four aA WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. l^ut, if you luivo not and cannot get the Ashes, and ry the road ; while nearly every berry on either side of it was deslroyetl by the weevil (jr midge.' Now 1 do not infer from this fact, that insect ravages are ic/iolly due to our abuse and exhaustion of the soil. I presume that Wheat and other crops would be devastated by insects, if there were no slovenly, nig- gard, exhausting tillage. i>ut 1 do firmly hold, that at least half our losses by insects would be precluded if our fields were habitually ke[)l in ])etter heart by deep culture, liberal fertilizing, and a jutlic ious rotation of crops. I heard little of insect-ravages in the Wheat-field'^ of Western New York, throughout the first thirty years of thisceiitur)'; but, when crop after crop of Wheat had been taken from the same fields until they had been well nigh exhausted of their Wheat-forming elements, we began to hear of the desolation wrought by insects ; and those ravages increased in magnitude until Wheat culture had to be abandoned for years. I believe that we should have heard little of insects had Wheat been grown on those fields but one year in three since their redemption from the primal forest. But whatever might once have been, the Philistines are upon us. We are doomed, for at least a generation, to wage a relentless war against insects multiplied beyond reason, by the neglect and short-comings of our predecessors. ^\ e are in like condition with the inhabitants of the British isles a thousand years ago, whose forefathers had so long endured and so unskillfully resisted invasion and spoliation by the Northmen, that they had come to be regarded as the sea-king's natural prey. For generations it has been customary hereabout to slaughter without re- morse the birds, and let cater|)illars, worms, grasshoppers, etc., multi[)Iy and ravage unresisted. We must pay for past errors by present loss and years of e.xtra effort. And precisely because the task is so arduous, we ought to lo;;e no time in addressing ourselves to its execution. The first step to be taken is very sim|jle. I.et every farmer who re- alizes the importance and benefu ence of liirds teach his own children and hirelings that, except the Hawk, they are to be spared, protected, kindly treated, and (when necessary) fed. They are to be valued and ranches, and premature general deciy, are the natural and rightet)u ■ ■ ei|uen(es of such crying abuse. 'I'here are many reas-Mis for ci'uosm;, sloping or broken ground for an apple-orchard, whereof comj' ■;,.(ive e.\emi)tiiin from frost and natural facility of drainage are the most obvious. A level field, thort)ughly undrained to-day, may. through neglect and the mischiefs wrought by burrowing animals, have become little better tlian a morass thirty years hence ; but an orchard set on a tolerably steep hill side is reasonably secure against wet feet to the close of its natural life. A gravelly or sandy loam is generally ])referred for orchards ; yet I have known them to flourish and bear generously on heavy < la\-. W'iio- ever has a gravelly field will wisely prefer this for Ajjples, not merely to clay buttf sand;;s well. And v;'i ^e many young orchards have doubtless been injured by im- moderate ;r!iiiic;;tii ns o^-ank green manures, 1 doubt that any man has ever yet bestov :'d too much care and expense on the preparation of his ground for fruit-'-rees. Where ridges or j'ateaus of llal stone do not tbr- bid, i v.O'i'd-.y. luru over the soil to m depth of at least fit'teen inches with a larg' p ••'> awl a stroiM', team ; then lilt and pulverize the sub.soil to a depth ot not Ies> than nine inclii's; apply all the Wood-ashes you can gel, Wi'i. -i-e thousand bushels of Marl if you are in a Marl region ; if not, u.se instead f'OTrjti'i/ty to fifty bushels of cjuick I.ime (oyster-r,hell if that is to b • 'i;^'> ' "in one hundred loads per acre of Swamp Muck which has lain u year -n dry upland, baking in the sun and wind ; and FRUIT-TREES — THE APPLE, 87 now you may think of setting your trees. If your soil was rich Western prairie or Middle-State garden to begin with, you can dispense with all these fertilizers ; yet I doubt that there is an acre of Western prairie that would not be imjjroved by the Lime (perhaps better still) a smaller (|uantity of refuse salt from a packing-house or meat retailing grocery. There are not many farms that would notrepay the application of five bushels per acre of refuse Salt at 25 cents per bushel. \ our trees once set — (and he who sets twenty trees per day as they should be set, with each root in its natural position, and the av.'u press- ed firmly around its trunk, but no higher than it originally grew, is a laithful, elhcient wcjrker,) 1 woukl cultivatethe land, (for the trees' sake,) growing crops successively of Ruta Hagas, Carrots, IJeets, and early Po- tatoes, but no grain whatever, for six or seven years, disturbing the roots of the trees as little as may be, and guarding their trunks from, tug or trace, or whiffletree. by three stakes set firmly in the ground about each tree, not so near it as to preclude constant cultivation with the hoe in- side as well as outside of the stakes, so as to let no weed mature in the field. Apply from year to year well-rotted compost to the field in c[uan- tity suficient fully to counterbalance the annual abstraction by yourcrops. Make it a law inflexible and relentless that no animal shall be let into this orciiard to forage, or for any purjjose whatever but to draw on manures, to till the soil, and to draw away the crops. Thus until the first blos.soms begin toapi)ear on the trees ; then lay down to grass rivV//- (y/zf grain, unless it be a (Top of Rye or Oats to be cut and carried off for feed when not more tiian half grown, leaving the ground to the young grass. 1-el the grass be mowed for the next two or three year^ id thenceforwaril devote it to the pasturage of Swine, running over .ith a scythe once or twice each Summer to clear it of weeds, and takii.^, out the Swine a few days before beginning to gather the ai)ples, bui i)u'ting them back again the tlay after the harvest is completed. Let th Swine be sufficiently numerous and hungry to eat every apple that falls within a few hours alter it is dropped, and to ensure their rooting < ut every grub or worm that burrows in the earth bent;ath the trees ready to spring ujj and apply himself to iniscliief atllie very season when you could bestexcuse his absence. I do not commend this as all, or nearly all. that should be done in resistance to the pest of insect ravage ; but 1 begin with the Hog as the orchardist's readiest, cheapest, most efi'cctive ally or .servitor in the war he is doomed unceasingly to wage .igainsLthe spoiler^ of hi-; heritage. I will ir.dicate some further defensive enginery in my next chapter. t XXV MORK AlIOl T An'M.-TKEKS. In my opinion, Apple-trees, in most orchards, are planted too far ai)art, and allowed to grow taller and spread their limbs more widely than is profitable. I judge that a pnmer or picker should be able to reach the topmost tw'^ ot an\ tree with a ton-foot poic, and that no limb shoi'ld be allowed to extend more fhan '_'ight teel from the trunk whence it springs. Our Autumnal I'".(|uinc.\ occurs before our .Xpples are :,jn- erally ri|)e for harvest, and, finding o<\r b.est trees bending under a heavy burden of fruit, its fierce gales are apt to make bad work with trees as well as apples. The best tree I had, with several others, was thus ruined by an equirfcoctial temjjesta few years since. Barren treei escape unharmed, while those heavi!/ laden with large fruit are wrenched and twisted into fragments. And, even apart from this peril, a hundred v/eight of fruit at or near the extremity of limbs which extend ten or tw :lve feet horizontally from the tnuik, tax and strain a tree more than four times that weight growing within four or five teet of the trunk, and on limbs that maintain a semi-erect position. I diffidently suggest, therefore, that no ai^pl.: tree be allowed to exceeil fifteen feet in height, nor to send a liml mtxe ilun .ighl feet from its trunk, and that trees be set (diamond-fashicii) twer.tj- "'.iir feet apart each way, instead of thirty-two, as some illars to nest and l)reed in his fruit-trees should pay a heavy fine for each nest, fo WHAI I KNOW or KAUMINO. wc should soon l)e toinparativcly clear .♦'the scourges. In the absence of such salutary regulation, one man tights them with ])ersistent resolu- tion, only to see his orchard again and again invaded and ravaged by the pests hatched and harbored by his careless neighbours. He thus l)ays and jpays the penalty ot others' negligence and misdoing until, discouraged and demorali/ed, he abandons the hopeless struggle, and thenceforth rejiels the enemy from a few tavorite trees around his dwell- ing, and surrenders his orchard to its fate. Thus bad laws (or no laws) are constantly making bad farmers. The birds tliat would help us to make head against our inse( t foes are slaughtered l)y reckless boys- - many of them big enough to know better- and our perils and losses from enenues who would be contemptible if their numbers did not ren- der them formidable increase from year to year. We must change all this ; and the tirst recpiisite of our situation is a firm alliance of the entire farming and fruit-growing interest defensive as to birds, offensive towanls their destroyers, and toward the vermin multiplied and shielded by the ruthless massacre of our feathered friends. Since the foregoing was written, we have had (in 1S70) the greatest Apple-crop throughout our se( tion that mine eyes did ever yet behold. It was so abundant that I could not sell all my cider a])ples to the vine- gar makers, even at *ifty cents per barrel. This establishes the con- tinued capacity of ou. region to bear .\pi)les, and should invite to the planting of new orchards, and the fertilization and renovation of old ones. Ber" XXVI. HAV AM) IIAV-MAKING. 'riiK {"ir,is.s-(T(»|) of this, as of many, it" not most, other countries, is undoubtedly the most imiH)rtanl (jt' its anmial products ; re(iuiring by far the largest area of its soil, and furnishing the principal food of its Cattle, and thus < (jntributing essentially to the subsistence of its working ani- mals and to the [)roducti()n of those Meats which form a large and constantly increasing jiroportion of the food of every civilized people. Hut I propose to speak, in this essay of that portion of the (irass-crop — say 25 to ,55 per cent, of the whole — whi( h is cut, cured and housed (or stacked) for Hay, and which is mainly fed out to animals in Winter and Spring, when frosi and snow have diverted the earth of herbage or ren- dered it inaccessible. The Seventh Census (1850) returned the Hay-crop of the precceding year, at 13,838,642 tuns, which the Eighth Census increased to 19,129,- 128 tuns as the pro luct of 1859. Confident that most farmers under- estimate theii Hay-{ rops, and that hundredsofthousands who do not consi- der themselves farmers, Init who own or rent little homesteads of two to ten acres each, kee|)ing thereon a cow or two, and often a horse, fail to make returns of the two to five tuns of Hay they annually produce, con- sidering them too trivial, I estimate the actual Hay-crop of all our States and Territories for the currrent year at 40,000,000 tuns, or about a tun to eat h inhabitant, although I do not expect the new Census to place it much, if any, above 25,000,000 tuns. The estimated average value of this crop is $10 (gold) per tun, making its aggregate value, at my esti- mate of its amount, $400,000,000 —and the (juantity is constantly and ra|)idly inc reasing. 'I'hat (|uantity should be larger than the area devoted to meadows, and the/iualily a great deal better. 1 estimate that 30,000,000 acres arc annually mowed to obtain these 40,000,000 tuns of Hay, giving an aver- age yield of i j.? tuns per acre, while the average should certainly not fall below two tuns per acre. My upland has a gravelly, rocky soil, not 9» WIIAI I KNOW 1>F KARMINC. natui:il to grass, and had l)L'cn pastured to death, for at least a century before I bought it; yet it lias yielded to ine an average of not less than 2|^ tuns to the acre for the last sixteen ye.irs, and will not \iel(l less while I am allowed to farm it. My lowland (bog when ! bought it) is bound henceforth to yield more: but while im|teilectly or not all drained, it was of course a poor reliance yielding bounteously in spots, in others, little or nothing. In tiothing else is shiftless, slovenly fanning so a]»l to betray itself as in the culture of (Irass and the management of grass lands. Pastures overgrown with bushesand chequered by (iuaking,miry bogs; meadows foul with every weed, from white daisy up to the rankest brakes, with hill-sides that once may have been productive, but iVom whi( h crop after < ro|) has bei'ii taken ami nothing returned to them, until their yield has shrunk to half or three-fourths of a tun of poor Hay, these are the average in- dications of a farm nearl\ run out by the ])oorcst sort of firming. .Su( h farms were conmion in the New l-aigland of my Imshood; 1 trust they are les.s so to-day ; yet 1 seldom travel ten miles in any region north or east of the Daleware, without seeing one or moi<; of them. Fifty years ago, I judge that the greater part of iiay made in New- England was tut from sour, boggy land, that was devoted to grass simply because nothing else could be done with it. I have helped to carry the crop off on poles from consider;U)le tracts cm whic h oxen tould not ven- ture without miring. It were supeitluous to add that no well-bred animal would eat such stuft', unless the choice were between it anil absolute starvation. In many cases, a very little work done in opening the rudest surface-drains would have transtornied these bogs into decent meadows, and the product by ihehelj) of plowing or seeding, into unexceptionable hay. There are not many farmers, apart from our wise and skillful dairy- men, who use half enough grass-seed ; men otherwise thrifty often fail in this respect. If half our (ordinary farmeis would thoroughly seed down a full third of the area they usually cultiv;ite, ;in(l devote to the residue the time and efforts they now give to the whole, they would grow more grain and vegetables, while the additional grass would be so much clear gain. We sow almost exclusively Timothy and Clover, when there are at least 20 difterent grasses re(|uired by our diversity of soils, and of these tliree or four might often be sown together witi; jirotit ; especially in .seeding down fields intended for pasture, we might advantageously use a greater variety and abund;ince of seed. I believe that there are grasses not yet adojUed and hardly recogni/.eil by the great body of tanners — the buffalo-grass of the prairies tor one — that will yet be grown and prized over a great part of our country. As for Hay-Making, my conviction is strong that our grass is cut in the average fr(jm two to three weeks too late, and that not only is our hay greatly damaged thereby, but our meadows needlessly impoverished IIAV ANI- il U-.MAKINC;. 93 and rxliaiisii-d, 'llu' iDrmatiftn and piTft-ction of st-ed always dra> lifiivily upon tlif soil. A ( rop of j;iass < ut wln-n the earliest l)i(»ssoin.; l)tj,'in to drop which, in niy jiid^nicnt, is the only li^ht linif will not iinpovt-ri^h ilii- soil half so n)iu h as will llu- saiiu- t top (lit thrci' weeks later ; while the roots ot the earlier » ill j^rass will retain their vitality at least thrice as lon^ as thoii^'li half the seed had ri|)'.'iu'd hefore the crop was harvested. (Irass that was liilly ripe when (lit has lost at least half its milriineiit, which MO ( hemistry <'in e\er restore. Hay alone is dry lodder for a lon)^ Wintir. ispe( ially lor yoimj^ slock; hut hay cut after it was dead ripe, is proper nutriment for no aniin.d whatever not even for < i horses, who are popularly supposed to liki and thri\c upon it. The f.K I that our fanners are loo generally short h.indnl throughoui the season t)f the Siiinnier harvest, while it seems lo e. IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 11.25 1^ IM i£ 112.0 1.8 U IIIIII.6 us Photographic Sciences Corporation SJ \ iV v\ [v O^ r^v '<^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 <. ^J:? y^^ ^^> o^ 94 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. me, IS ruder in its processes and more uncertain in its results than it should or need be. AVe cut our grass mpidly and well ; we gather and ho'ise It with tolerable efficiency ; but we cure mucli of it imiDerfectly antl wastefully. The fact that most of it is over-ripe when rut aggra- vates the pernicious effects of its subsecjuent exposure to dew and rain • and the net result is damaged fodder which is at once unpalatable and innutritions. a It md ctly in ; ind XXVII. PKACHES — PEARS — CHERRIES — GRAPES. Our harsh, capricious cHmate north of the latitudes of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis — ^so much severer than that of corresponding latitudes in Europe — is unfavorable, o. at least very trying, to all the more delicate and luscious Fruits, berries excepted. Except on our Pacific coast, of which the Winter temperture is at least ten degrees milder than that of the Atlantic, the finer Peaches and Grapes are grown with difficulty north of the fortieth degree of latitude, save in a few speci- ally favored localities, whereof the southern shore of Lake Erie is most noted, though part of that of Lake Ontario and of the west coast of Lake Michigan are likewise well adapted to the Peach. It is not the mere fact that the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer sometimes ranges below zero, and the earth is deeply frozen, but the suddenness wherewith such rigor succeeds and is succeeded by a tem- l)erature above the freezing point, that proves so inhospitable to the most valued Tree-Fruits. And, as the dense forests which formerly clothed the Alleghenies and the Atlantic slope, are year by year swept away, the severity of our " cold snaps," and the celerity with which they appear and disappear, are constantly aggravated. A change of 60'', or from 50'^ above to 10° below zero, between morning and the following midnight, soon followed by an equally ra^/.d return to an average No- vember temperature, often proves fiital even to hardy forest-trees. I have had the Red Cedar in my woods killed by scores during an open, capricious Winter ; and my observation indicates the warmest spots in a forest as those where trees are Jiiost likely to be thus destroyed. After an Arcti" night, in which they are frozen solid, a bright sun sends its rays into the warmest nooks, whence the wind is excluded, and wholly or partially tiiaws out the smaller trees ; which are suddenly frozen solid again as soon as the sunshine is withdrawn ; and this partially explains to my mind the fact that peach-buds are often killed in iower and level portions of an orchard, while they retain their vitality on the hill-side and at its crest, not 80 rods distant from those destroyed. The fact that the colder air descends into and remains in the valleys of a rolling 96 WHAT r KNOW OF FARMING. district contributes also to the correct explanation of a phenomenon which has puzzled some observers. Unless in a favoured locality, it seems to me unadvisable for a farmer who expects to thrive mainly by the production of (irain and Cattle, to attempt the growing of the finer Fruits, except for the use of his own family. In a majority of cases, a multiplicity of cares and labors pre- cludes his giving to his Peaches and Clrapes, his Plums amd Quinces, the seasonalile and persistent attention which they absolutely retjuire. Quite commonly, a farmer visits a grand nursery, sees with admiration its trees and vines loaded with the most luscious Fruits, and rashly infers that he has only to buy a good stock of like Trees and Vines to insure himself an abundance of delicious fruit. So he buys and sets ; but with no such preparation of the soil, and no such care to keep it mellow and free from weeds, or to baffle and destroy ])redatory insects, as the nurseryman employs. Hence the utter disappointment of his hopes ; borers, slugs, caterpillars, and every known or unkown species of insect enemies, prey upon his neglected favourites. At intervals some domestic animal or animals get among them, and break a dozen in an hour. So, the far greater number come to grief, without having had one fair chance to show what they could do, and the farmers jump to the conclusion that the nurseryman was a swindler, and the trees he sells scarcely re- lated to those whose abundant and excellent fruits tempted him to buy. I counsel every farmer to consider thoughtfully the treatment absolutely required for the production of the finer Fruits before he allows a nursery- man to make a bill against him, and not expect to grow Duchesse Pears as easily as Blackberries, or lonas and Catawbas as readily as he does Fox-grapes on the willows which over-hang his brook ^ for if he does he will surely be disappointed. i do not mea.i to discourage grape growing; on the contrary, I would have every farmer, even so far north as Vermont and AVisconsin, experi- ment cautiously with a dozen of the most promising varieties, including always the more hardy, in the hope of finding some one or more adapt- ed to his soil, and capable of enduring the climate, Even in France, the land of die vine, one farm will produce a grape which the very next will not : no man can satisfactorily say why. The farmer, who has tried half a do.'XMi gra[)es, and failed with all, should not be deterred from further experiments, for the very next may prove a success. I would only say, Be moderate in your expectations and careful in your exj^eri- mentsjand never risk even $roo on a vineyard, till you have ascertained, at a cost of $5 or under, whether the species you are testing will thrive and bear on your soil. In my own case, my upland mainly sloping to the west, with a hill rising direcdy south of it, I have had no luck with (irapes, and I have wasted little time or means upon them. I have done enough to show that they can be grown, even in such a locality, but not to profit or satisfaction. PKACHKS — PEARS — CHERRIKS — (IRAPKS, 97 I would advise the farmer who proposes to grow Pears, Peaches, and Quinces, for home use only or mainly, to select a ])iece of dry, gravelly or or sandy loam, underdrain it thoroughly, plow or trench it very deeply, and fertilize it generously, in good part with ashes and with leaf mould from his woods. Locate the pig-pen on one side of it, fence it strongly, and let the pigs have the run of it for a good portion of each year. In this i)lat or yard, plant half a dozen Cherry and as many Pear trees of choice varieties, the Bartlett foremost among them ; keep clear of all dwarfs, and let your choicest trees have a chance to run under the pig- pen if they will. Plant here also, if your climate does not forbid, a dozen well chosen Peach-trees, and two each year thereafter to replace those that will soon be dying out ; and give half a dozen Quinces moist and rich locations by the side of your fences ; surrounding each tree with stakes or pickets that will preclude too great familiarity on the part of the swine, and will not prevent a sharp scrutiny for borers in their season. Do not forget that a fruit tree is like a cow tied to an immov- able stake, from which you cannot continue to draw a pail of milk per day unless you carry her a liberal supply of food ; and every Fall cart in half a dozen loads of muck trom some convenient swamp or pond for your pigs to turn over. Should they have any weeds, cut them with a scythe as often as they seem to need it never allowing one to ripen seed. There may be easier and surer ways to obtain choice fruits ; but this one commends itself to my judgement as not surpassed by any other. I think few have grown fruits to profit but those who make this a speciality; and I think that dissappointment in fruit-culture is by no means near the end. You can grow Plums, or Grapes, or Peaches, out- side of the climate most congenial to them, but this is a work wherein succtrjs is likely to cost more than its worth. Try it first on a small scale, if you will try it : and be sure you do it thoroughly. XXVIII. GRAIN-GROWING EAST AND WEST, m I'll ;l! I DISCLAIM all pretensions to ability to teach Western flirmers how to grow Indian corn abundantly and profitably, while I cheerfully admit that they have taught me somewhat thoroughly, and it's worth knowing. In my boyhood, I hoed Corn diligently for weeks at a time, drawing the earth from between the rows up about the stalks to a depth of three or four inches : thus forming hills which the West has since taught me to be of no use, but rather a detriment, embarrassing the efforts of the growing, hungry plants to throw out their roots extensively in every direction, and subjecting them to needless injury from drouth. I am thoroughly con- vinced that Corn, properly planted, will, like Wheat and all other grains, root itself just deep enough in the ground, and that to keep down all weeds and leave the surface of the cornfield open, mellow and perfectly flat, is the best as well as the cheapest way to cultivate Corn. And I do not believe that so much human food, with so little labor, is produced elsewhere on earth as in the spacious fields of Wheat and Corn in our grand Mississippi valley. And yet I have seen in that valley many ample stretches covered with Corn, whereof the tillage seemed susceptible of improvement. Riding between these great corn-fields in October, after everything standing thereon had been killed by frost, it seemed to my observation that, while the corn-crop was fair, the weed-crop was far more luxuriant ; so that, if everything had been cut clean from the ground, and the corn and the weeds placed in opposite scales, the latter would have weighed down the former. I cannot doubt that the cultivation, or lack of culti- vation, which produces or permits such results, is not merely slovenly, but unthrifty. The West is for the present, as for a generation she has been, the granary of the East. In my judgment, she will not long be content to remain so. Fifty years ago, the Genesee valley supplied most of the wheat and flour imported into New- England ; ten years later. Northern Ohio was our princijjal resource ; ten years later still, Michigan, In- diana, northern Illinois, and eastern Wisconsin, had been added to our fiRAiN (;rowin(; KAsr and wkst. 99 grain-growing territory. Another decade, and our flour manufacturers had crossed the Mississippi, laying Iowa and Minnesota under liberal contributions, while western New-York had ceased to grow even her own breadstufts, and Ohio to produce one bushel more than she needed for home consumption. Can we doubt that this steady recession of our Egypt, our Hungary, is destined to continue ? Twenty-three years ago, when I first rode out from the then rising village of Chicago to see the Illinois i>rairies, nearly every waggon I met was loaded with wheat, going to Chicago, to be sold for about fifty cents per bushel, and the l)roceeds loaded back in the form of lumber, groceries, and almost everything else, grain excepted, needed by the pioneers, then dotting, thinly and irregularly, that whole region with their cabins. Now, I pre- sume the district I then traversed produces hardly more grain than it consumes ; taking Illinois altogether, I doubt tiiat she will grow her own breadstuff's after 1880 ; not that she will be unable to produce a large surplus, but that her farmers will have decided that they can use their lands otherwise to greater advantage. Iowa and Minnesota will con- tinue to export grain for perhaps twenty years longer ; but even their time will come for saying, " New-York and New-England (not to speak of Old England) are too far away to furnish profitable markets for such bulky products ; the cost of transportation absorbs the larger part of the cargo. We must export instead Wool, Meat, Lard, Butter, Cheese, Hops, and various Manufactures whereof ttie freight will range from 2 up to not more than 25 per cent, of the value." They will thus save their soil from the tremendous exaction made by taking grain-crop after grain-crop persistently, which long ago exhausted most of New-England and eastern New-York ot wheat-forming material, and has since wrought the same deplorable result in our rich (ienesee valley ; while eastern Pennsylvania, though settled nearly two centuries ago, having pursued a more rational and provident system of husbandry, grows excellent wheat-crops to this day. I insist that the vStates this side of the Delaware, though they will draw much grain from the Canadas after the political change that can- not be far distant, will be compelled to grow a very considerable share of their own breadstuffs ; that the West will cease to supply them unless at prices which they will deem exorbitant : and that grain-growing east- wdid ot a line drawn from Baltimore due north to the Lakes will have to be very consideral^ly extended. I-et us see, then, whether this might not be done with profit even now, and whether the East is not unwise in having so generally abandoned grain-growing. I leave out of the account most of New-England, as well as of Eastern New-York, and the more rugged portions of New-Jersey and Pennsyl- vania, where the rocky, hilly, swampy face of the country seems to forbid any but that patchy cultivation, wherein machinery and mechanical power can scarcely be made available, and which seem, therefore, per- manently fated to persevere in a system of agriculture and horticulture 100 WHAT I KNOW OK FARMING. nol essentially unlike that they now e.\hi[)it. In the valleys of the Fen obscot, the Kenebec, the Hudson, and of our smaller rivers, there are considerable tracts absolutely free from these natural impediments, whereon a larger and more efficient husbandry is perfectly practicable, even now ; but these intervales are generally the property of many owners ; are cut up by roads and fences ; and are held at high prices : so that I will simply pass them by, and take for illustration the " Pine Barrens" of Southern New-Jersey, merely observing that what I say of them is ecjually applicable, with slight modifications, to large portions of I.C)ng Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas. 'J'he '• Pine Barrens" of New-Jersey are a marine deposit of several hundred feet in depth, mainly sand, with which more or less clay is generally intermingled, while there are beds and even broader stretches of this material nearly or (|uite pure ; the clay sometimes underlying the sand at a depth of lo to 30 or 40 inches. Vast deposits of muck or leaf-mold, often of many acres in extent and from two to twenty feet in depth, are very common ; so that hardly any portion of the dry or sandy land is two miles distant from one or more of them, while some is usually much nearer; and half the entire region is underlaid by at least one stratum of the famous marl (formed of the decomposed bones of gigantic marine monsters long ago extinct) which has already played so important and beneficent a part in the renovation and fertilization of large districts in Monmouth, Burlington, Salem, and other counties. l,et us su[)pose now that a farmer of ample means and generous capa- city should purchase four hundred acres of these "barrens,' with intent to produce therefrom, not sweet potatoes, melons, and the " truck " to which Southern Jersey is so largely devoted, but substantial Clrain and Meat ; and let us see whether the enterprise would probably pay. I,et us not stint the outlay, but presuming the tract to be eligibly lo- cated (;n a railroad not too distant from some good marl bed, estimate as follo\\s : — Purch:iic money of $400 at $25 per acre $10,000 Cle.iiin}^, grubbing, fencing and breaking up ditto at .$20 per acre, over and above the proceeds of the wood 8,000 One tliousand bushels of best Marl per acre, at 6 cents per bushel delivered 24,000 One hundred loads of Swamp Muck, per acre, at 50 cents per load 20,000 Fifty bushels (unslaked) of Oyster shell Lime (to compost with the Muck), per acre, at 25 cents per bushel, delivered 5,000 One hundred tuns of Bone Flour, at $50 per tun 5,000 [Net cost $180 per acre.] Total .$72,000 I believe that this track, divided by light fences into four fields of 100 acres each, and seeded in rotation to Corn, Wheat, Clover and other grasses, would produce fully 60 bushels of Corn and 30 of Wheat per acre, with not less than 3 tuns of good Hay ; and that by cutting, steam- C.RAIN-OROWINC; KAST AM) H'KST. 101 ing and feeding the stalks and straw on the place, not [)asturing hut keei)ing up the stock, and feeding them as indicated in a former chapter of these essays, and selling their product in the form of Milk, Butter. Cheese and Meat, a greater profit would be realized than could be got from a like investment in Iowa or Kansas. The soil is warm, readily frees itself, or is freed, from sur})lus water ; is not addicted to weeds ; may be plowed at least 200 days in a year ; may be sowed or planted in the Spring, when Minnesota is yet solidly frozen ; while the crop, early ma- tured, is on hand to take advantage of any sudden advances in the European or ourowi seaboard markets. I.abor, also, is cheaper and more rapidly procured in the neighbourhood of this great focus of immi- gration than it is or can be in the West ; and our capable farmers may take their pick of the workers thronging hither from Europe, at the moment of their landing on our shores. Of course the owner of such an estate as I have roughly outlined; would be likely to keep a part of his purchase in timbc "^.iproving the (juality thereof by cutting out the less desirable trees, trunming up the rest, and planting new ones among them ; and he would be almost certain to devote some part of his farm annually to the growth of Roots, Vegetables, and Fruits, But I have aimed to show only that he would grow grain here at a profit, and I think I have succeeded. His 60 bushels of corn (shelled) per acre could be sold at his crib, one year with another, for 60 silver dollars ; and he need seldom wait a month after husking it for customers who would gladly take his grain and pay the money for it. This would be just about double what the Iowa or Missouri farmer can expect to average for his Corn. The abundant fodder would also be worth in New Jersey -It least double its value in Iowa ; and I judge that the farmer able to buy, prepare, fertilize, and cultivate 1,200 acres of the Jersey "barrens," could make more than thrice the profit to be realized by the owner of 400 acres. He would plow and seed as well as thrash, shell, cut stalks and straw, and prepare the food of his animals, wholly by steam-power, and would soon learn to cultivate a square mile at no greater e.xpense than is now involved in the as perfect tillage of 200 acres. This essay is not intended to prove that drain is not or may not be profitably cultivated at the West, nor that it is unadvisable for Eastern farmers to migrate thither in order so to cultivate it. What I maintain is, that Wheat, Indian Corn, and nearly all our great food staples, may also be i)rofitably produced on the seaboard, and that thousands of scjuare n iles, now nearly or quite unproductive, may be wisely and pro- fitably devoted to such production. Let us regard, therefore, without alarm, the i)rospect of such a devlopement and diversification of West- ern industry as will render necessary a large and permanent extension (or rather revival) of Eastern grain-growing. XXIX. ESCUI.KNT ROOTS — Pc/IATOKS. In no other form can so large an amount and value of human food be ol)tained from an acre of ground as in that of edible roots or tubers ; and of these the Potato is by far the most acceptable, and in most gene- ral use. Our ancestors, it is settled, were destitute and ignorant of the Potato, prior to the discovery of America, though luirope would now find it difficult to subsist her teeming millions without it. In travelling jjretty widely over that continent, I cannot remember I found any con- siderable district in which the Potato was not cultixated, though Ireland, western England, and northern Switzerland, with a small portion of northern Italy, are impressed on my mind as the most addicted to the growth of this esculent. Other roots are eaten occasionally, by way of variety, or as giving a relish to ordinary food ; but the Potato alone forms a part of the every day diet alike of prince and peasant. It is an almost indispensable ingredient of the feasts of Dives, while it is the cheapest and commonest resort for satiating or moderating the hunger o/ Lazarus. I recollect hearing my parents, fifty years ago, relate how, ill their childhood and youth, the poor of New England, when the grain crop of that region was cut short, as i" often was, were ol)liged to sul)sist through the following Winter mainly on Potatoes and Milk; and 1 then accorded to those unfortunates of the preceding generation a sympathy which I should now considerably abate, provided the Potatoes were of good quality. Roasted Potatoes, seasoned with salt and butter and washed down with bounteous draughts of fresh buttermilk, used in those days to be the regular supper served up in farmers' houses after a churn- ing of cream into butter; and I have since eaten costly suppers that were not half so good. The Potato, say some accredited accounts, was first brought to Europe from Virginia, by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1568 or 1587 ; but I do not believe the story. Authentic tradition affirms that the Potato was utterly unknown in new-England, or at all events east of the Connecticut, when the Scotch-Irish who first settled Londonderry, N. H., came over from old Londonderry, Ireland bringing the Potato with them. They spent the Winter of 1819 in different parts of Massachusetts and Maine KSCULKNT ROOTS — POTAPOKS, 105 . — (|uite a miml)er of them at Haverhill, Mass., whcto they gave away a few Potatoes for seed, on leaving for their own <:hosen location in the Spring; and they afterward learned that the English colonists, who re- ceived them, tried hard to find or make the seed-balls edible the next Pall, but were obliged to give it up as a bad job, leaving the tubers un- touched and unsuspected in the ground. I doubt that the Potato was found growing by Europeans in any part of this country, unless it be in that we have ac([uired from Mexico. It is essentially a child of the mountains, and 1 presume it grew wild nowhere else than on the side of the great chain which traversed Spanish America, at a height of from 5,000 to 8,000 feet above the surface of the ocean. Here it found a climate cooled by the elevation and moistened by melting snows from above and by frecjuent showers, yet one which seldom allowed the ground to be frozen to any considerable depth, while the pure and bracing atmosphere was congenial to its nature and recpiirements. In this country, the Potato is hardiest and thriftiest among the White Mountains of New-Hampshire, the Clreen Mounta' .^ of Vermont, on the Catskills and kindred elevations in our own State, and in similar regions of Pennsylvania and the States further South and West. My own place is at least 15 miles from, and 500 feet above, Long Island Sound ; yet I cannot make the Potato, by the most generous treatment, so prolific as it was in New-Hampshire in my boyhood, where I dug a bushel from 14 hills, grown on rough, hard ground, but which having just l)een cleared of a thick growth of bushes and briars; was probably better adapted to this crop than though it had been covered an inch deep with barn-yard manure. He who has a tolerable dry, warm, sandy soil, covered two or three inches deep with decayed or decaying leaves and brush, may count with confidence on raising from it a good crop of Potatoes, provided his seed be sound and healthy. On the other hand, all authorities agree that animal manures, unless very thoroughly rotted and intimately mixed with the soil, are injurious to the (juality of Potatoes grown thereon, stimulating any tendency to disease, if they do not originally jiroduce such disease. I believe that Swamp Muck, dug in Summer or Autumn, deposited on a dry bank or glade, and cured by its acidity by an admix- ture of Wood-Ashes, of Lime, or of Salt (better still, of Lime and Salt chemically compounded by dissolving the Salt in the lenst possible (jan- tity of Water, and slading the lime with that Water), forms an excellent fertilizer for Potatoes, if administered with a lilieral hand. A bushel of either of these alkalies to a cord oi muck is too little ; the dose should be doubled if possible ; but, if the quantity be small, mix it more care- fully, and give it all the tune you can wherein to operate upon the muck before applying the mixture to your fields. Where the muck is not easily to be had, yet the soil is thin and poor, I would place considerable reliance on deep plowing and subsoiling in I04 WHAT I KNOW OK KARMINU. the Kali, ;iiul cross-plowing just pcforc planting; in Spring. Oivc a good dressing of i'lastcr, not less than 200 lbs. to the acre, direi tly after the l''all plowing ; if yon have Ashes, scatter them liberally in the drill or hill as you plant ; and, if you have them not, supply their place with Super-plidsphatc or Hone-dust. I think many farmers will he agreeably surprised by the additional yield which will accrue from this treatment of their soil. 'I'hose who have no swamp muck, and fee! that they can aftord the outlay, may, by plowing or subsoiling early in the I'all, seeding heavily with rye, and turning this imder when the time comes for planting in the Spring, improve both crop and soil materially. Hut even to these I would say: Apply the (lypsiun in the I'all, and the Ashes of Lime and Salt mixture in the Spring ; anil now, with good seed anil good luck, you will be reasonably sure of a bounteous harvest. If a farmer, having a poor worn-out field of sandy loam, wants to do his very best by it, let him i)low, subsoil, sow rye and plaster in the Fall, as above indicated, turn this under, and sow buckwheat late in the next Spring ; plow this under in turn when it has attained its growth, and sow to clover ; turn this down the following Spring, and plant to late potatoes, and he will not merely obtain a large crop, but have his land in admirable condition for whatever may follow. I am (|uite well aware that such an outlay of labor anil seed, with an entire loss of crop for one season, will seem to many too costly. 1 do not advise it except under i)articular circumstances ; and yet I am confident that there are many fields that would be doubled in value by such treatment, which would richly repay all its I'ost. That most farmers could not afford thus to treat their entire farms at once, is very true ; yet it does not follow that they might not deal with field after field thus thoroughly, living on the products of 40 or 50 acres, while they devoted five or six annually to the work of thorough renovation. A quarter of a century ago, we were threatened with a complete extinc- tion of the Potato, as an article of food ; the stalks, when approaching or just attaining maturity, were suddenly smitten with fatal disease — usually, after a warm rain followed by scalding sunshine — the growing tubers were speedily affected ; they rotted in the ground, and they rotted nearly as badly if dug; and whole townships could hardly show a bushel of sound Potatoes. A desolating famine in Ireland, which swept away or drove into exile nearly two millions of her people, was the most striking and memorable result of this wide-spread disaster. For several succeeding seasons, the Potato was similarly, though not so extensively, affected ; and the fears widely expressed that the day of its usefulness was over, seemed to have ample justification. Speaking generally, the Potato has never since been so hardy or prolific as it was half a century ago ; it has gradually recovered, however, from its low estate, and, though the malady still KSflM.KN'l' ROtVr? — IWIATOKS. 105 lingers, and from tinn.- to time renews its ravages in difterent localities, the farmer now plants judiciously and on fit ground, with a reasonable hope that his labor will be duly rewarded. to be generally agreed that clayey soils are not adapted to It seems 10 oe generauy agreed inai ciayey sows are noi anapt its growth ; that, if the (|uantity of the crop be not stinted, its tjuality is |)retty sure to be inferior ; and 1 can personally testify that the planting of Potatoes on wet soil that is, on swampy or spongy land which has not been thoroughly drained and sweetened— is a hojjeless, thriftless labor that the croj) will seldom be worth the seed. As to the ten or a dozen dilferent insects to which the Pocato-rot has been attributed, I regard ihem all as conse<|uences, not causes ; attracted to prey on the plant by its sickly, weakly condition, and not really resjion'iM. for that condition. If any care for my reasons, let him refer to what 1 have said of the Wheat-plant and its insect enemies.* 'I'here has been much discussion as to the kind of seed to be planted and I think the result has been a pretty general conviction that it is better to cut the tuber into pieces having two or three eyes each, than to plant it whole , since the whole Potato sends up a superfluity of stalks, with a like effect on the crop to that of putting six or eight kernels of corn in each hill. Small Potatoes are immature, unripe, and of course should never be l)lanted, since their progeny will be feeble and sickly. Select for seed none but thoroughly ripe Potatoes, and the larger the better. My own judgment favors planting in drills rather than hills, with ample space for working between them ; not less than 30 incher : the seed being dropped about 6 inches apart in the drill. The soil must be deej) and mellow, for the Potato suffers from drouth much sooner than Indian Corn or almost any other crop usually grown among us. I believe in covering the .seed trom 2 to 2)4 inches; and I bold to flat or level culture for this as for everything else. Planting on a ridge made by turning two furrows together may be advisable where the land is wet ; but then wet land never can be made fit forcultiv^^ti' n, except by under- draining. And 1 insist upon setting the rows or urili ■ well apart, because I hold that the soil should often be loosened and st.T.ed to a good depth with the subsoil plow ; and that this process should be persevered in till the plant is in blossom. Hardly any plant will pay better for persistent cultivation than the Potato. As to varieties, I will only say that planting the tubers for seed is an unnatural process, which tends and must tend to degeneracy. The new varieties now most j^rized will certainly run out in the course of twenty or thirty years at furthest, and must be replaced from time to time by still newer, grown from the seed. This creation of new species is, and r. .,t be, a slow, exj)ensive process ; since not one in a hundred of these See Chapter XXII. I' I ' io6 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMiyo. varieties possess any value. 1 don't quite believe in sellinL--! mean in buying-Potatoes^at $i per pound; but he who originates^ reaul valL able new Potato deserves a recompense for his industry patfence and good fortune ; and I shall be glad to learn that h^ receiVes^ft ' If 1 i. Maifn lean in y valu- :e, and XXX. ROOTS — TURNIPS— HEKTS — CARROTS. Ik there be any who still hold that this country must ultimately rival that magnificent 'rurnip-cullure which has so largely '■.ransformed the agricultural industry of England and Scotland, while signally and be- neficently increasing its annual product, 1 judge that time will prove them mistaken. The striking diversity of climate between the opposite coasts of the Adantic forbids the realization of their hopes. The British Isles, with a considerable portion of the adjacent coast of Continental Europe have a climate so modified by the (ji.l*" Stream and the ocean that their Summers are usually moist and cool, their Autumns itill more so, and their Winters rarely so cold as to freeze the earth considerably ; while our Summers and Aulimms are comparatively hot and dry ; our Winters in part intensely cold, so as to freeze the earth solid for a foot or more. Hence, every variety of turnip is exposed here in its tenderer stages to the ravages of every devouring insect ; while the ist of December often fnids the soil of all but our Southern and Pacific States so frozen that cannon-wheels 'would hardly track it, a^'d roots not previously dug up must remain fast in the earth for weeks and often for months. Hence, the turnip can never grow so luxuriantly, nor be counted on with such certainty, here as in ( Ireat Britain ; nor can animals be fed on it in \A'inter, excej)! at the heavy cost of pulling or digging, cutting off the to])s and carefully housing in Autumn, and then slicing and feeding out in Winter. It is manifest that turnips thus handled, however economically, cannot compete with hay and corn-fodder in our Eastern and Middle States : nor with these and the cheaper sjjecies of grain in the West, as the daily Winter food of cattle. Still, I liold that our stock-growing formers profitably may, and ulti- mately will, grow some turnips to b ■ fed out to their growing and wurking animals. A good meal of turnips given twice a week, if not oftener, to these, will agreeably and usefully break the monotory of living exclusive- ly on diy fodder, and give a relish to their hay and cut stalks and straw, which cannot fail to tell upon their a})petite, growth and thrift. Let cur cattle l)reeders begin with growing an acre or two each of swedes per annum, so as to give their stock a good feed of them, sliced thin in an ! io8 WHA'I' I KNOW OK FARMING. effective machine, at least once in each week, and I feel confident that they will continue to grow turnips, and will grow more and more of them throughout future years. The Beet seems to be I)etter adapted to our climate, especially south of the fortieth degree of north latitude, than any variety of the Turnip with which I am acquainted, and destined, in the good time coming when we shall have at least doubled the average depth of our soil, to very extensive cuUivation among us. I am regarding neither of these roots with reference to its use as human food, since our farmers general- ly understand that use as well as 1 do ; nor will I here consider at length the use of the Beet in the production of sugar. I value that use highly believing that millions of the poorer class throughout Europe have been enabled to enjoy Sugar through its manufacture from the Beet who would rarely or never have tasted that luxury in die absence of this manufacture. The people of Europe thus made familar with Sugar can hardly be fewer than 100,000,000 ; and the number is annually increas- ing. The cost of Sugar to these is considerably less in money, while im- measuarbly less in labor, than it would or could have been had the tropi- cal Cane been still regarded as the only plant available for the produc- tion of Sugar. But the West Indies, wherein the Cane flourishes luxuriantly and re- nevrs itself perennailly, lie at our doors. They look to us for most of their daily bread, and for many other necessaries of life ; while several, if not a'l of them, are manifestly destined, in the natural progress ofevents, to invoke the protection of our flag. I do not, therefore, feel confident that Beet Sugar now promises to become an important staple destined to take a high rank among the products of our national industry. With cheap labor, I believe it might to-day be manufactured with profit in the rich, deep valeys of (California, and perhaps in those of Utah and Colo- rado ai^. well. On the whole, however, 1 cannot deem the jjrospect en- couraging for the American promoters of the manufacture of Beet Sugar. B",t when we shall have deepened essentially the soil of our arable acrf s, fertilized it abundantly, and cured it by faithful cultivation of its vie ous addiction to weed-growing, I believe we shall devote millions of those acres to the growth of Beets for cattle-food, and, having learned how to harvest as well as till them mainly by machinery, with little help from hand labor, we shall produce them with eminent profit and satis- faction to the grower. On soil fully two feet deep, thoroughly under- drained and amply fertilized, I believe we shall often jiroduce one thou- sand bushels ofiJeets to the acre ; and so much acceptable and valuable food for cattle can hardly be obtained from an acre in any other form. So with regard to Carrots. I have never achieved eminent success in growing these, nor lieets ; mainly because the soil on which 1 attempted to growth cm was not adapted to, or rather not yet in condition for, such culture. But, should I live a few years longer, until my reclaimed swamp •MSSEfflPttaBW ROOTS — TURN .1 PS- -BEETS — CARROTS. 109 shall have l)e<;ome tliioroughly sweetened and civilked, I mean to grow on some part therecsf 1,000 bushels of Carrots per acre, and a still larger product of JJeets ; a;iid the Carrot, in my judgment, ought now to be ex- tensively grown in the South and Wests as well as in this section, for feeding to horses. I hold that sixty bushels of (Jarrots and fifty of Oats, fed in alternated meals, are of at least equal value as horse-feed with 100 bushels of Oats alone, while more easily grown in this climate. Oat-crop makes heavy drafts upon the soil, while our hot Summers i'.re not con- genial to its thrift or perfection. Since we must grow Oats, we must be content to import new seed every lo or 15 years from Scotland, Norway, and other countries which have cooler, moister s immers than our own; for the Oat will inevitably degenerate under such suns as blazed through the latter half of our recent June. Believing that the Carrot may pro- fitably replace at least half the Oats now grown in this country, I look forward with confidence to its more and more extensive cultivation. The advantage of feeding roots to stock is not to be measured and bounded by their essential vnlue. Beasts, like men, require a variety of food, and dirive best upon a regimen which involves a change of diet. Admit that Hay is their cheapest Winter food ; still an occasional meal of something more succulent will prove beneficial, and this is best affbrd- td l)v Boot,^ t 4 XXXI. THE FARMERS CALLING. If any one fancies that he ever heard me flattering farmers as a class, or saying anything which im])Hed that they were more virtuous, upright, unselfish, or deservin , than other people, I am sure he must have mis- understood or that he now misrecollects me. I do not even join in the cant which speaks of farmers as supporting e\ crybody else — of farming as the only indispensable vocation. You may say if you will that man- kind could not subsist if there were no tillers of the soil \ but the same is true of house-builders, and of some other classes. A thoroughly good farmer is a useful, valuable citizen : so is a good merchant, doctor, or lawyer. It is not essential to the true nobility and genuine worth of the farmers calling that any other should be assailed or disparaged. Still, if one of my three sons had been spared to attain manhood, I should have advised him to try to make himself a good farmer ; and this without any romantic or poetic notions of Agriculture as a pursuit. 1 know well, from personal though youthful experience, that the farmer's life is one of labor, anxiety, and care ; that hail, and flood, and hurri- cane, and untimely frosts, over which he can exert no control, will often destroy in an hour the net results of months of his persistent, well- directed toil; that disease will sometimes sweep away his animals, in spite of the most judicious treatme.it, the most thoughtful providence, on his part , and that insects, blight, and rust, will often blast his well- grounded hopes of a generous harvest, when they seem on the very point of realization. I know that he is necessarily exposed, more than most other mtn, to the caprices and inclemencies of weather a'ld climate \ and that, if he begins responsible life without other means than those he finds in his own clear head and strong amis, with thos'j of his helpmeet, he must expect to struggle through years of povertv, frugality, and resolute, persistent industry, before he can reasonably hope to attain a position of independence, comfort, and comparative leisure. I know that much of his work is rugged, and some of it absolutely repulsive ; I know Lhat he will seem, even with unbroken good fortune, to be making m. ney much more slowly than his neighbour, the merchant, the broker, or eloquent lawyer, who fills the general eye while he prospers, and. tm/m 1 THE farmer's calling. Ill ' when he fails, £;inks out of sight and is soon forgotten ; and yet, I should have advised my sons to choose farming as their vocation, for these aniong other reasons : I. There is no other business in which success is so nearly certain as in this. Of one hundred men who embark in trade, a careful observer reports that ninety-five fail; and, while I think this proportion too large, I am sure that a large majority do, and must fail, because competition is so eager, and traffic so enormously overdone. If ten men endeavor to support their families by merchandise in a township which affords ade- quate business for but three, it is certain that a majority must fail, no matter how judicious their management or how frugal their living. But you may double the number of farmers in any agricultural county I ever traversed, without necessarily dooming one to failure, or even abridging his gains. If half the traders and professional men in this country were to betake themselves to farming to-morrow, they would not render that pursuit one v/hit less profitable, while they would largely increase the comfort and wealth of the entire community ; and, while a good merchant lawyer, or doctor, may be starved out of any township, simply because the work he could do well is already confided to others, 1 never yet heard of a temperate, industrious, intelligent, frugal, and energetic far- mer who failed to make a li' ng, or who, unless prostrated by disease or disabled by casualty, was precluded from securing a modest indepen- dence before age and decrepitude divested him of the ability to labor. II. I regard farming as that vocation which conduces most directly and jjalpably to a reverence for Honesty and Truth. The young lawyer is often constrained, or at least temptc ' by his necessities, to do the dirty professional work of a rascal intent on cheating his neighbor out of his righteous dues. The young doctor may be likewise incited to re- sort to a quackery he despises in order to secure instant bread ; the un- known author is often impelled to write what will sell rather than v/hat the public ought to buy ; but the young farmer acting, as a farmer, must realize that his success* depends upon his absolute verity and integrity. He deals directly with Nature, which never was nor never will be cheated. He has no temptation to sow beech sand for plaster, dock-seed for clover, or stoop to any trick or juggle whatever. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," while true, in the long run, of all men, is in- stantly and palpably true as to him. When he, having grown his crop, shall attempt to sell it— in other words, when he ceases to be a farmer and becomes a trader — -he may possibly be attempted into one of the many devious ways of rascality ; but, so long as he is acting simply as a fanner, he can hardly be lured from the broad, straight highway of in- tegrity and righteousness. III. The fanner's calling seems to me that most conducive to thorough manliness of character. Nobody expects him to cringe, or smirk, or curry favor, in order to sell his produce. No merchant refuses to buy it because his politics are detested or his religious opinions heterodox. '\ 1 113 WHAT I KNOW OK FARMING. 1, He may be a Mormon, a Rebel, a Millerite, or a Communist, yet his. Orain or his Pork will sell for exactly what it is wort'i — not a fraction less or more than the price commanded by the kindred product of like quality and intrinsic value of his neighbor, whose opinions on all points are faultlessly orthodox and popular. On the other hand, the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, especially if young and still struggling dubiously for a position, are continually tempted to sacrifice or suppress their pro- foundest convictions in deference to the vehement and often irrational prepossessions of the community, whose favor is 'to them the breath of life. " She will find f/iat won't go down here," was the comment of an old woman on a Mississippi steamboat, when told that the plain, deaf stranger, who seemed the focus of general interest, was Miss Martineau, the celebrated Unitarian ; and in so saying she gave expression to a feeling Avhich pervades and governs many if not most communities. I doubt whether the social intolerance of adverse opinions is more vehe- ment anywhere else than throughout the larger portion of our own country. I have repeatedly been stung by the receipt of letters gravely informing me that my course and views on a current topic were adverse to public opinion ; the writers evidently assuming, as a matter of course, that I was a mere jumping-jack, who only needed to know what other people thought to insure my instant and abject confirmity to their pre- judices. Very often, in other days, 1 was favored with letters from in- dignant subscribers, who, dissenting from my views on some question, took this method of informing me that they should no longer take my journal— a superfluous trouble, which could only have meant dictation or insult, since they had only to refrain from renewing their subscriptions, and their Tribntie would stop coming, whenever they should have re- ceived what we owed them ; and it would in no case stop till then. That a journalist was in any sense a public teacher— that he necessarily had convictions, and was not likely to suppress them because they were not shared by others — in short, that his calling was other and higher than that of a waiter at a restaurant, expected to -furnish whatever was called ^or, so long as the pay was forthcoming — these ex-subscribers had evidently not for one moment suspected. I'hat such persons have little or no capacity to insult, is very true ; and yet, a man is somewhat degraded in his own regard by learning that his vocation is held in such low esteem by others. 'I'he true farmer is proudly aware that it is quite otherwise with his pursuit — that no one expects him to swallow any creed, support any ])arty, or defer to any prejudice, as a condition pre- cedent to the sale of his products. Hence, 1 feel that it is easier and more natural in his pursuit than in any other for a man to work for a living, and aspire to .success and consideration, without sacrificing self- respect, compromising integrity, or ceasing to be essentinlly and thorough- ly a gentleman. ||||^g!iBae»Ma51gB!^ft aj^*JJ.-i.w*!' l'i ' i' 1 i J^. «i » 'i»! JWW!U I< -' XXXII. A LESSON OF TO-DAY. M The current season is quite commonly characterized as the coldest, the hottest, the wettest, or the dryest, that ever was known. Men iin doublingly assert that they never knew a Summer so hot, or a Winter so cold, when in fact several such have occurred within the cycle of their experience. Hardly anything else is so easily or so speedily forgotten as extremes of temperature or inclemencies of weather, after they have passed away. I presume there have been six to ten Summers, since the beginning of this century, as hot and as dry as that of I870 ; yet the fact remains that, throughout the Eastern section of our country, to say nothing of the rest, the heat and drouth of the current Summer have been quite remarkable. For two months past, counting from the loth of June, nearly every day has been a hot one, with blazing sunshine throughout, rarely interrupted and slightly modified by infrequent and inadequate showers ; and, as a general result of this tropical fervor, the earth is parched and baked from ten to forty inches from the surface ; streams and ponds are dried up or shrunk to their lowest dimensions ; forests are often ravaged and desolated by fires ; or ^pastures are dry and brown ; while crops of Hay, Oats, Potatoes, Buckwheat, etc., either have proved, or certainly must prove, a disappointment to the hopes of the growers. I estimate the average product for 1870 of the farms of New-England, eastern New- York, and New-Jersey, as not more than two-thirds of a full harvest ; while the earth remains at this mom ^nt so baked and incrusted that several days' rain is needed to fit it foi Fall plowing and the sowing of Winter grain. Such seasons must not be regarded as extraordinary. The Summer of 1854 was nearly or (juite as dry as this ; and I expect one or two such have intervened since that time. The heat of 1870 is remarkable for its })ersistence rather than its intensity. Every Summer has its heated term; that of 1870 has been longer in this region than any before it that I can remember, though doubtless the recollection of others might supply its perfect counterpart. Nearly every Summer has its drouth ; the present is peculiar rather for its early commencement than its extreme duration. As our country is more and more denuded TI4 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. of its primitive forests, drouths longer and severer even than this may naturally be expected. What our Hirmers have to do is, to prepare for and provide against them. Such seasons are disastrous to those only who farm as if none such were to be expected. Those who plow deeply, fertilize bountifully, a^ 1 cultivate thoroughly, need not fear them, as fields of Hay and Oats already harvested, and of Corn and Potatoes now hastening to maturity in almost every township of the surtoring region, abundantly attest. I doubt that more luxuriant crops of Corn, Tobacco, or Onions, were ever grown on the bottom-lands of the Connecticut Valley than may be seen there to-day, with failures all about tliem, and under drouth so fierce that Blackberries and Whortleberries are withered when half- grown ; even the bushes in some cases ])erishing for lack of moisture. My last trip took me along the banks of the u|)per Hudson, through the rugged county of Warren, N.Y. 'I'he narrow, irregular intervale of this mountain stream appear to have been cultivated for the last fifty or sixty years by a hardy race, who look mainly to the timber of the wild region north of them for a sutjsislence. In such a district, what- ever ministers to the sustenance of man or beast bears a high price ; and Corn, Rje, Oats, Buckwheat, Apples and (irass, are grown wherever the soil is not too rugged or too sterile for culture. I presume half a crop of Hay has been secured throughout this valley, with perhaps a full crop of Rye where Rye was sown ; but of Oats the yield will be considerably less than that, while of Corn and Buckwheat it will range from ten bushels per acre down to nothing. When 1, last Summer, passed through spacious field after field of Corn in Virginia that would not mature a single ear, I spoke of it as something unknown at the North : but there are fields planted to Corn, in the upper valley of the Hudson, that will not produce a single sound ear, nor one bushel even of the shortest and poorest " nubbins ;" and alongside of these are acres of Buckwheat, blossoming at an average height of four inches, and not likely to get two inches higher. Now, if this land were so poor or so rocky that good crops could not be extracted from it, far be it from me to disparage the agriculture whereof the results are so meagre ; l)ut 1 am s])eoking of a river inter- vale of considerable natural fertility, from which deep and thorough cultivation would insure ample harvests, subject only to the contingency of early frosts in Autumn. Were these lands fertilized and cultivated as they might be, and as mine are, they would )ield 30 bushels (jf Rye or 60 of Indian Corn per acre, and would richly repay the husband- man's outlay and efforts. Now, I venture to say tliat all the grain I saw growing in the valley of the Hudson tlirougli Warren County will not return the farmer 75 cents for each day's labor expended thereon, allowing nothing for the use of the land. " But how shall we obtain fertilizers ?'' I am often asked. "' We are poor ; we can afford to keep but few cattle ; Cuano, Phosphate, Bones, 1: mmm mm A l.KSSON OF TO-DAY. 1^5 Lime, etc., are beyond our means. Even if we could i)ay for them, the cost of transportation to our out-of-the-way nooks would be heavy. We cannot deal with our lands so bountifully as you do, but must be content to do as we can." To all which I make answer : No man ever lacked fertilizers who kept his eyes wide open and devotetl two months of each Fall and Winter to collecting and preparing them. Wherever swamp murk may be had, wherever bogs exist or flags or rushes grow, there are materials which, carted into the barn-yard in Autumn or Winter, may be drawn out fertilizers in season for Corn-planting next Spring. Wherever a pond or slough dries up in Summer or Autumn, there is material that may be profitably transformed into next year's grass or grain. In the absence of all these — and they are seldom very far from one who knows how to look for them — rank weeds of all sorts, if cut while green and tender, or forest leaves, gathered in the Fall, used for litter in the stable, and thence thrown into the yard, will serve an excellent purpose. Nay, more : 1 am confident that the fanner who lacks these, but has ac 'ss to a bed or bank of simple clay, may cart 200 loads of it in Novemo-T into an ordinary farm-yard, have it trampled into and mixed with his manure in the VMnter, and draw it out in the Spring, excellently fitted to enrich his sandy or gravelly land, and insure him, in connection with deep antl thorough culture, a generous yield of Corn, even in such a sea- son as the present. Dr. (ieorge B. Loring, the most successful farmer in Massachusetts, uses nakeci beach sand in abundance as litter for his 80 cows, mixes it with his manure throughout the Winter, and draws out the compound to fertilize his clay meadows in the Spring, with most satisfactory results. Dejjend on it, no man need lack fertilizers who begins in season and is willing to work for them. And yet once more: From the hills which inclose this valley of the upper Hudson (and from e\er so many other valleys as well), brooks and rivulets, copious in Spring, when their waters are surcharged and discolored by the richest juices of the uplands, pour down in frecpient cascades and dance across the intervale to be lost in the river. There is scarcely an acre of that interval which might not be irrigated from these streams at a very mode- rate outlay of work at the season when work is least pressini; : the water ihu.) held back by dams being allowed to (low thence gently and equably across the intervale, conveying not moisture only, but fertility also, to every plant growing thereon. T am confident that I passed many places on the upper Hudson, as well as on the Connecticut and Amnionoosuc, where too faithful days' work provitling for irrigation would have given roo bushels of grain, or 10 tuns of hay additional this year, and as much per annum henceforth, at a cost of not more than two days' work in each year hereafter. Farmers, but aVjove all farmers' sons, think of these things. li XXXIII. rNTKI.LECT IN AfJRICULTURE. If a man whose capital consists of the clothes on his back, $5 in his pocket, and an ax over his right shoulder, undertakes to hew for himself a farm out of the primitive forest, he must of course devote some years to rugged manual labor, or he will fail of success. 1 1 is indeed possible that he should find others, even on the rude outposts of civilization, who will hire them to teach school, or serve as county clerk, or survey lands, or do something else of like nature : thus enabling him to do his chop- ping trees, aiid rolling logs, and breaking up his stumpy acres, by proxy; but the fair presumption is that he will have to chop and log, and bum off and fence, and break up, by the use of his own proper muscle ; and he must be energetic and frugal, as well as fortunate, if he gets a com- fortable house over his head, with forty arable acres about him, at the end of fifteen years' hard work. If he has brains, and has been well educated, he may possibly shorten this ordeal to ten years ; but, should he begin by fancying hard work beneath him, or his abilities too great to be squandered in ])ushwhacking, he is very likely to come out at the little end of the horn, and, straggling back to some populous settlement, more n^edx- and seedy than when he set forth to wrest a farm from the wilderiuss, declare the pioneer's life one of such dreary, hopeless priva- tion thai no one who can read or cypher ought ever to attempt it. A poor man, who undertakes to live by his wits on a farm that he has bought on credit, is not likely to achieve a brilliant success ; but the farmer whose hand and brain work in concert, will never find nor fancy his intellect or his education too good for his calling. He may very often discover that he wasted months of his school-days on what was ill- adapted to his needs, and of little use in fighting the actual battle of life; but he will at the same time have amjile reason to lament the meager- ness and the deficiency of his knowledge. I hold our average Common Schools defective, in that they fail to teach Geology and Chemistry, which in my view are the natural bases of a sound, practical knowledge of things — knowledge of which the farmer, of all men, can least afford to miss. However it may be with others, he vitally needs to understand the character and constitution of the soil he 1,1 r. i « i .m«i > m> i I wumi i i ' mm INTKM.Kcr IN AORICUI.TURK. "7 must ciihiviite. the elements of which it is composed, and the laws which govern their relations to each other. Instruct him in the higher mathe- matics if you will, in logic, in meterology, in ever so many languages ; but not till he shall have been thoroughly grounded in the sciences which unlock for him the arena of Nature; for these are intimately related to all he must do, and devise, and direct, throughout the whole course of his active career. Whatever he may learn or dispense with, a knowledge of these sciences is among the most urgent of his life-long needs. Hence, I would suggest that a simple, lucid, lively, accurate digest of the leading principles and facts in (ieology and Chemistry, and their ap- plication to the j)ractical management of a farm, ought to constitute the Reader of the highest class in every Common School, especially in rural districts. Leave out details and recipes, with directions when to plant or sow, etc. : for these must vary with climates, circumstances, and the progress of knowledge ; but let the body and bones, so to speak, of a primary agricultural education be taught in every school, in such terms and with such clearness as to commend them to the understanding of every pui)il. 1 never yet visited a school in which something was not taught which might be omitted or postponed in favor of this. Out of school and after school, let the young farmer delight in the literature illustrative of his calling -1 mean the very best of it. Let him have few agricultural books ; but let these treat of ])rinciples and laws rather than of methods or applications. r,et him learn from these how to ascertain by experiment what are the actual and pressing needs of his soil, and he will readily determine by reflection and in(]uiry how those needs may be most readily and cheaply satisfied. All the books in the world never of themselves made one good far- mer, but on the other hand, no man in this age "i^an be a thoroughly good farmer without the knowledge which is more easily and rapidly ac- quired from books than otherwise. Hooks are no substitute for open- eyed observation and practical experience ; but they enable one familiar with their contents to observe with an accuracy, and experiment with an intelligence, that are unattainable without them. The very farmer who tells you that he never opened a book which treats of Agriculture, and never wants to see one, will ask his neighbour how to grow or cure to- bacco, or hops, or sorgho, or any crop with which he is yet unacquainted, when the chances are a hundred to one that his particular neighbour cannot advise him so well as the volume which embodies the experience of a thousand cultivators of this very i)lant instead of barely one. A good book treating i)ractically of Agriculture, or of some department therein, is simply a compendium of the experience of past ages combined with such knowledge as the present generation have been enabled to add thereto. It may be faulty or defective in some points ; it is not to be blindly confided in, nor slavishly followed — it is to be mastered, discuss- ed, criticised, and followed so far as its teachings coincide with the dic- tates of science, experience, and common sense. Its true office is sug- Ii8 WHAT 1 KNOW OK I'AKMINO. gc'stion ; the good tUrmcr will lean upon and trust it as an oracle only where his own |)ro|)L'r knowledge proves entirely deficient. Hy-:in(l-!)y, it will I c generally realized that few men live or have lived who cannot find scope and |)rofitable employment for all their intellect on a two-luindred-acre farm. .Vnd then the fanner will select the bright- est of his suns to follow him in the management and cultivation o( the paternal acres, leaving those of inferior ability to seek fortune in pur- suits for which a limited and special c:apacity will serve, if not sulJice. And then we shall have an Agriculture worthy of our country and the agu. Meantime, .et us make the most of what we have, by diffusing, study- ing, discussing, criticizing, lacbig's Agricultural C'hemistry, Dana's Muck Manual, W'aring's lOlcments, and the books that each treat more espe- cially, of some department of the farmer's art, and so making ourselves familiar, first, with the princiides, then with the methods of scientific, efficient, successful luisbaudry. Let us, who love it, treat Agriculture as the elevated, ennobling pursuit it might and should be, and thus exalt it in the estimation of the einire coumninity. We may, at all events, be sure of this: Just so fast and so far as farm- ing is rendered an intellectual pursuit, it will attract and retain the strongest minds, the best abilities, of the human race. it has been widely shunned and escaped from, mainly because it has seemed a call- ing in which only inferior capacities were required or would be rewarded. Let this error gi\e place to the truth, and Agriculture will win votaries from among the brightest intellects of the race. [ ' Jh L JJUWHiL WM!g«»»BlifP^*^^|gg XXXIV. SHF.KP AND WOOMIROWING. Ours i:; eminently an agiirultural country. We produce most of our Food, and export much more than we import of botli (irain and Meat. Of Cottt)n, we grow some 'I'hree MilHons of l)ales annually, whereof we export fully two-thirds, fhit of this we reimport a portion in the shape of I'abrics and of Thread ; and yet, while we are largely clothed in Woolens, and extensive sections of our country are admirably adapted to the rearing of .Sheep and the production of Wool, we not only import a considerable share of the Woolens in which we are clad, but we also import a considerable proportion of the \\'ool wherefrom we manufacture the Woolens fabricated on our own soil. in other words : while we are a nation of farmers and herdsmen, we fail to grow so much Wool as is needed to shield us against the caprices and inclemencies of our diverse but generally fitful climate. There is a seeming excuse for this in the fact that extensive regions in South America and Australia are devoted to Sheep-growing where ani- mals are neither housed nor herded, and where they are exclusively fed, at all seasons, on those native grasses which are the si)ontaneous pro- ducts of the soil. I presume Wool is in these regions i)voduced cheaper than it can permanently be on any considerable area of our own soil ; and yet I believi' that^the United States should, and profitably might, grow as mu<'h wool as is needed for their own large annual consump- tion. Here are ni)- reasons : 1. When the jjredominant interest of British Manufactures constrained the entire repeal of the duties on im])orted Wool, whereby Sheep-grow- ing had |>reviously been jirotected, the farmers apprehended that they must abandon that dep;utmeiU of their industry ; but the event proved '.his calculation a mistake. The)' grow more Sheep and at better profit to-day than they did when their AWiol brought a higher price under the influence of Trotective duties, because the largely increased price of their Mutton more than makes u]) to them their loss by the reduced prices of their Wool. So, while F do not exjiect that American Wool will ever again command such high prices as it has done at some peri- ods in the past,I am confident that the general appreciation in the prices I20 WHAT I KN.)\V Ol ARMINC. I'' r of Meat, which has occurred within the past ten or fifteen years, and which seems Hkely to be enduring, will render Sheep-growing more pro- fitable in the future than it has been in the past. At all events, our farmers are generally obliged to sell their (kain and Meat at prices some- what below the range of the British markets, it is hardly conceivable that they should not afford to grow Wool, for which they receive higher average prices than the British farmers do, who feed their Sheep on the produce of lands worth from $300 to $500 (gold) per acre. II. Interest being relatively high in this country, and Capital with most flirrners deficient, it is a serious objection to catde-growing that the farmer must wait three or four years before receiving a return for his outlay. If he begins poor, with but a few cows and a team, he natural- ly wants to rear and keep all his calves for several years in order to ade- quately stock his farm, so that little or no income is meantime realized from his herd ; whereas a Hock of Sheep yields a tlf;cce per head each year, though not even a lamb is sold, while its increase in numbers is far more rapid than that of a herd of cattle, III. Almost every farmer, at least in the old States, finds some part of his land infested with bushes and briers, which seem to flourish by cutting, if he finds time to cut them, and which the ruggedness of his soil precludes his exterminating by the plow. In every such jase, Sheep are his natural allies — his unpaid police — his viligant and thorough- going assistants. Give them an even start in Springwith the bushesand briers; let their number be sufficient : and they are very sure to come out ahead in the Fall. IV. Our farmers in the average are too much confined in Summerand Autumn to salt meats, and especially to Pork. How excellent in quality these may be, their exclusive use is neither healthful nor palatable. With a good flock of Sheep, the most secluded farmer may have fresh meat every week in haying and harvest-time if he chooses ; and he will find this better for his family, and more satisfactory to his workmen, than a diet wherefrom fresh meat is excluded. V. Now, I do not insist that every farmer should grow Sheep, for I know that many are so situated that they cannot. In stony regions, where ^valls are very gerierally relied on for fences, I am aware that Sheep are with difficulty kei)t within bounds ; and this is a serious ob- jection. In the neighbourhood of cities and large villages, where Fresh Meat may be l.)ought from day to da}', one valid reason for keeping them has no application ; yet 1 hold that twice as many of our farmers as now have flocks ought to have them, and would thereby increase their profits as well as the comfort of tlieir families. The most serious olistacle to Sheep husbandry in this country is the abundance and depredations of dogs. Farmers l)y tens of thousands have sold off, or killed off, their flocks, mainly because diey could not otherwise protect themselves against their frequent decimation by jirowl- ing curs, which were not worth the powder recjuired to shoot Uiem. It SHEE1> ANl WOOL-GROWING. 121 rs, and Dre pro- Its, our s some- :eivable higher on the seems to me that a farmer thus despoiled is perfectly justified in placing poisoned food where these cut-throats will be apt to find it while making their next raid on his Sheep. I should have no scruple in so doing, provided I could guard effectually against the poisoning of any other than the culprits. In a well settled, thrifty region, where cvm})le barns are provided I judge that the losses of Sheep by dogs may be reduced to a minimtan by proper precautions. Elsewhere than in wild, new frontier settlements, every flock of Sheep should have a place of refuge beneath the hay-floor of a good barn, and be trained to spend every night there, as well as to seek this shelter against every pelting storm. Even if sent some distance to pasture, an unbarred lane should connec:. such pasture with theii fold; and they .should be driven home for a l>w nights, if necessity, until they had acquired the habit of coming home at nightfall ; and I am as- sured that Sheep thus lodged will very rarely be attacked by dogs or wolves. As yet, our farmers have not generally realized that enhancement of the value of Mutton, whereby their British rivals have profited so largely. Their fathers began to breed Sheep when a fleece -sold for much more than a carcase, and when fineness and abundance of Wool were the main consideration. But such is no longer the fact, at least in the Eastern and Middle States. To-day, large and loncMvooled Sheep of the Cotsworld and similar breeds are grown with far gi eater profit in this section than the fine-wooled Merino and Saxony, except where choice specimens of the latter can be sold at high prices for removal to Texas and the Far West. The growing of these high-priced animals must necessarily be confined to few hands. The average farmer cannot ex- pect to sell bucks at $i,ooo, and even at $5,000, as some have been sold, or at least reported. He niust calculate tiiat his Sheep are to be :in\d, when sold at all, at prices ranging from $ic down to $5, if not lower, .so that mechanics and merchants may buy and eat them without absolute ruin ; and he must realize that 100 pounds 01 Mutton at 10 cents, with 6 pounds of Wool at 30 centr., amount to more than 60 pounds of Mut- ton at 8 cents, and i o pounds of Wool at 60 cents. Farmers who grow Sheep for Mutton in this vicinity, and manage to have lambs of good size for sale in June or July, assure me that their profit on these is greater than on almost anything else their farms will produce; and they say what they know. The satisfactory experience of this class may be repeated to-day in the neighi)orhood of any considerable city in the Union. Sheep-growing is no exijeriment , it is an assured and gratifying success with all who un- derstand and are fitly placed for its prosecution. Wool may neveragain be so high as we have known it, since the Far West and TexaS can grow it very cheaply, while its transportation costs less than five per cent, of its value, where that of (".rain would be 75 j)er cent. : but Mutton is a wholesome and generally accej)table meat, whereof the use and popular- 122 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. ity are daily increasing; so that its market value will doubtless be greater in the future than it has been in the past. I would gladly incite the farmers of our country to comprehend this fact, and act so as to profit by it. But the new region opened to Sheep-growing by the pioneers of Colo- rado, and other Territories, is destined to» play a great part in the satis- faction of our need of Wool. The elevated Plains and Valleys which enfold and ernbrace the Rocky Mountains are exceedingly favorable to the cheap production of Wool. Their pure, dry, bracing atmosphere; the rarity of their dfvinching storms ; the fact that their soil is seldom or never sodden with water; and the excellence of their short, thin grasses, even in Wint^T, render them admirably adapted to the wants of the shepherd and his flocks. I do not believe in the wisdom or humanity, while I admit the possibility, of keeping Sheep without cured fodder on the Plains or elsewhere ; on the contrary, I would have ample and effective shelter aga.nst cold and wet provided for every flock, with Hay, or Grain, or Roots, or somewhat of each of them, for at least two months of each year; but, even thus, I judge that fine Wool can be grown in Colorado or Wyoming far cheaper than in New England or even Minne- cota, and of better quality than in Texas or South America. And I am grevionsly mistaken if Sheep husbandry is not about to be developed on the Plains with a rapidity and success which have no American pre- cedent. X . XXXV. ACCOUNTS IN FARMING. Farmf.rs, it is urged, sometimes fail; and this is imfortunately true of them, as of all others. Some fail in integrity; others in sobriety ; many in capacity ; Some in diligence ; but not a few in method or system. Quite a number fiiil because they undertake too much at the outset ; that is, they run into debt for more land than they have capital to stock or means to fertilize, and are forced into bankruptcy by the in- terest ever-accuring upon land which they are imable to cultivate. If they should get ahead a little by active exertion throughout the day, the interest would overtake and pass them during the ensuing night. Few of the unsuccessful realize the extent to which their ill fortune is fairly attributable to their own waste of time. Men not naturally lazy scpiander hours weekly in the village, or a*^ the railroad station, without a suspicion that they are thus destroying their chances of success in life. To-day is given up to a monkey-show ; half of to-morrow is lost in at- tendance on an auction ; part of next day is spent at a caucus or a jury trial ; and so on till one-third of the year is virtually wasted. Now, the men who have achieved eminent success within ray observa- tion, have all been rigid economists of time. They managed to transact their busmess at the country-.seat while serving there as grand or petit jurors, or detained under subpcena as witnesses ; they never attended an auction unless they really needed something which was there to be sold, and then they began their day's work earlier and ended it later in order to redeem the time whicn they borrowed for the sale. I do not believe that any American farmer who could count up three hundred full days' work in every year between his twenty-first and his thirtieth ever yet failed, except as a result of speculation, or endorsing, or inor- dinate running into debt. I would, therefore, urge every farmer to keep a rigid account of the disposal of his time, so as to be able to see at the year's end exactly how many days thereof he had given to productive labor ; how many to such abiding aprovements as fencing and draining ; and how many to objcts which neither increased his crop nor improved his farm. I am sure many would be amazed at the extent of his last category. tl I I i I ! M 124 VVHAI' 1 KNOW OF FARMING. If every youth who expects to li\'e by tanning would buy a cheap pocket-book or wallet which contains a diary wherein a page is allotted to each day of the year, and would, at the close of that day. or at least while its incidents were stil! fresh in his mind, set down under its pro- per head whatever incidents were most noteworthy— as, for instance, a soaking rain ; a light or heavy shower ; a slight or killing frost ; a fall of snow; a hurrican ; a hail-storm ; a gale ; a decidedly hot or notably cold temperature ; the turning out of cattle to pasture or sheltering them against the severity of Winter ; also the pi mting or sowing of each crop or field, or whether harm was done to it by frost in its intanc\- or when it approached maturity —he would thus provide himself with annual vol- umes of fact which would prove instructive and valuable throughout his maturer years. The good farmer will of course keep accounts with such of his neigh- bors as he sees fit to deal with ; and he ought to charge a lent or credit a borrowed plow, harrow, reaper, log-chain, or other implements, precisely as though it were meal or meat of^an equal value. I judge that bor- rowed implements, if regularly charged at cost, and credited at their ac- tual value when returned, would generally come home sooner and in better condition. But the farmer, like every one else, should be most careful to keep debt and credit with himself and his farm. If a dollar is spent or lent, his books should show it ; and let items and sum total stare him in the face when he strikes a balance at the close of the year. If there has been no leakage either ot dimes or of hours, he will seldom be poorer on the 31st of December than he was on the ist of the preceeding January. Most farmers foil to keep accounts with their several fields and crops; yet what could be m^re instructive than these? Here are ten acres of Com, with a yield of 20 to 40 bushels per acre — a like area and like yield of Oats ; a smaller or larger of Rye, Buckwheat, or Beans, as the case maybe. If the piv^duce is sold, most fiirmers know how much it brings ; but liow many know how much it cost ? Say the Corn brings 75 cents: per bushel, and the Oats 50 cents : was either or both produced at a profit, ii .so, at what profit? Here is a farmer who has grown from 100 to 300 bushels of Corn per annum for the last 20 years ; ought he not to know by this tune what Corn costs him in the average, and whether it could or could not with profit give place to anything else ? Most farmers grow some crops at a profit, others at a loss ; ought they not to know, after an experience of five or ten years, what crops have put money into their packets, and what have made them poorer for the growing. Of course, there is complication and some degree of uncertainty in all such account-keeping ; for every one is aware that some crops take more from the soil than others, and so leave it in a worse condition for those that are to follow, and that some exact riienforcments of fertilizers, I ACCOUNTS IN KARMINO. 125 whereof a i)art only is fairly chargeable to the first ensuing product, where a large share inures to the subsequent harvests. Kach must judge for himself how much he is to be credited for such improvement, and how much changed a[;ainst other crops for deterioration. He, for ex- ample, whose meadows will cut from two to three tons per acre of good English Hay may generally sell that Hay for twice if not thrice the im- mediate cost of its production, and so seem to be realizing a large profit; but, if he gives nothing to the soil in return for the heavy draft thus made upon it, his crop will dwindle \ear by year, until it will hardly pay for cutting ; and the diminution in value of his meadows will nearly or quite balance the seeming profit accruing from his Hay. But account- keeping in every business in-.-'vCS essentially identical calculations; and the merchant who this yearu.akes no net profiton his goods, but doubles the number of his customers and the extent of his trade, has thriven precisely as has the farmer whose profit on his crops has all been invest- ed in drains permeating his bogs, and in Lime, Plaster, and other ferti- lizers, applied to and permanently enriching his dryer fields. " To make each day a critic on the last," was the aspiration of a wise man, if not a great poet. So the farmer who will keep careful and can- did accounts with himself, a'lnually correcting his estimates by the light ot experience, will soon learn what crops he may reasonably expect to grow at a profit, and to reject such as are likely to involve him in loss ; and he who, having done this, shall blond common sense with ir,dn.>-;try, will have no reason to complain thereafter that there is no ])rofit i:i form- ing, and no chance of achieving wealth by pursuing it. 8 I ,1 f. n ■i il XXXVl. STONF. ON A TARM. The earth, geologists say, was once an immense expanse of heated vajjor, which, gracliuilly coohng at its surface, as it whirled and sped through space, contracted and formed a crust, which we know as Rock or Stone. This crust has since been broken through, and tilted up into ranges of mountains and hills, by the action of internal fires, by the transmutation of solid bodies into more expansive gases ; and the frag- ments torn away from the sharper edges of upheaved masses of granite, quarts, or sandstone, having been fro/en into icebergs floating, or soon to be so, have been carried all over the surface of our planet, and drop- ped upon the greater part, as those it;ebergs were ultimately disolved, by a miUler temperature into flowing water. When the seas were after- wards reduced nearly, or quite to their present limits, and the icebergs restricted to the frigid /ones and their vicinity, streams had to make their way down the sides of the mountains and hiils to the subjacent valleys and plains, sweeping along not merely sandantl gravel but bowlders also, of every size and form, and sometimes great focks as well, by the force of their impetus currents. And, as a very large, if not the larger por- tion of our earth's surface bears testimony to the existt'ice and powerful action through ages, of larger and smaller water-courses, a wide and gene- ral diffusion of stones, not in place, but more oi less triturated, smoothed, and rounded by the action of water, was among the inevitable results. 'Iliese stones are sometimes a facility, but oftener an impediment, to effi- ciency in agriculture. When heated by fervid sunshine throughout the day, they retain a portion of that heat through a part of the succeeding night, thereby raising the temperature of the soil, and increasing the deposit of dew on the plants there growing. When generally broken so finely as to offer no impediment to cultivation, they not merely absorb heat by day, to be given off by night, but, by rendering the soil open and i)orous, se- cure a much more extensive diffusion of air through it than wpuld other- wise be possible. Thus do slaty soils achieve and maintain a warmth unicpie in their respective latitudes, so as to ripen grapes ftirther North ncl at higher elevations, than would otherwise be p*ossible- ' The great Prairies of die West, with a considerable portion of the val- STCNE ON A FARM. I27 if heated md sped as Rock i up into , by the the frag- f granite, ;, or soon md drop- olved, by re after- icebergs lake their It valleys ders also, the force vrger por- powerful md gene- moothed, i results, nt, to effi- t the day, ing night, eposit of nely as to t by day, orous, se- uld other- a warmth ler North )f the val- leys and plains of the Atlantic slope, expose no rock at their surfaces, and little beneath them, until the soil has been traversed, and the vici- nity of the mderlying rock in place fairly attained. To farmers inured to the perpetual stone-picking of New England, and other hilly regions, this is a most wholesome change; butwhen the pioneer comes to look about for stone to wall his cellar and iiis well, to underpin his barn, and form the foundations of his dwelling, he realizes that the boulders he had ex- ulted in leaving behind him were not wholly and absolutely a nuisance ; glad as he was to be rid of them forever, he would like now to call some of them back again. Yet, the Eastern farmer of to-day has fewer uses for stone than his grandfather had. He does not want his farm cut up into two or three- acre patches, by broad based, unsightly walls, which frost is apt to heave year after year into greater deformity, and less efficiency ; nor does he care longer to use them in draining, since he must excavate and re-place thrice as much earth in making a stone as in making a tile drain ; while the former affords shelter and impunity to rats, mice, and other mischiev- ous, predatory animals, whose burrowing therein tends constantly to stimulate its natural tendency to become choked with sand and earth. Of the stone drains, constructed through parts of my farm by foremen whose will proved stronger than my own, but two remain in partial operation, and I sliall rejoice when these shall have filled themselves up and been counted out evermore. Ha])pily, they were sank so low that the sub- soil plow will never disturb them. Still, my confiilence that nothing was made in vain, is scarcely shaken by the prevalence and abundance of stone on our Eastern farms. We may not have present use for them all ; but our grandsons will be wiser than we, and have uses for them which we hardly susoect. I reinsist that land which is very stony was mainly created with r. eye to timber- growing, and that millions of acres of such ought forthwith to be planted with Hickory, White Oak, Locust, Chestnut, White Pine, and other valu- able forest-trees. Every acre of thoroughly dry land, lying near a rail- road, in the Eastern or Middle States, may be made to pay a good interest on from $^0 up to $100, provided there be soil enough above its rocks to afford a decent foothold for trees ; and how little will answer this pur- pose none can imagine who have not seen the experiment tried. Sow thickly, that you may begin to cut out poles six to ten feet long within three or four years, and keep cutting out (but never cutting off ) thence- forward, until time shall be no more, and your rocky crests, steep hill- sides and ravines, will take rank with the most productive portions of your farm. In the edges of these woods, you may deposit the surplus stones of the adjacent cultivated fields, in full assurance that moth and rust will not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal, but that you and your sons and grandsons will find them there whenever they shall be needed, 'I i 128 WHAT I KNOW OV FARMING. as well as those you found there when you came into possession of the farm. I am further confident that we shall build more and more with rough, unshapen stone, as we grow older and wiser. In our harsh, capricious climate, walls of stone-concrete afford the cheapest and best protection alike against heat and frost, for our animals certainly, and, 1 think, also for ourselves. Let the farmer l>egin his barn by making of stone, laid in thin mortar, a substantial basement story, let into a hillside, for his manure and iiis root-cellar ; let him build upon this a second story of like materials for the stalls of his cattle ; and now he may add a third story and roof of wood for his hay and grain if he sees fit. His son or grandson will, probably, take this off, and replace it with concrete walls and a slate roof ; or this may be postponed until the original wooden structure has rotted off ; but I feel sure that, ultimately, the dwellings as well as barns of thrifty fiirmers, in stony districts, will mainly be built of rough stone, thrown into a box and firmly cemented by a thin mortar composed of much sand and little lime ; and that thus at least ten thou- sand tuns of stone to each flirm will be disposed of. It may be some- what later still before our barn-yards, fowl enclosures, gardens, pig-pens, etc., will be shut in by cemented walls ; but the other sort aftbrds such ample and perpetual lurking-places for rats, minks, weasels, and all man- ner of destructive vermin, that they are certain to go out of fashion be- fore the close of the next century. As to blasting out Stone, too large or too firmly fixed to be otherwi.se handled, I would solve the problem by asking, " Do you mean to keep this Ijt in cultivation?"' If you do, clear it of stone from the surface upward, and for at least two feet downward, though they be as large as haycocks, and as fixed as the everlasting hills. Clear your field of every stone bigger than a goose-egg, that the Plow or the Mower may strike in doing its work, or give it up to timber, plant it thoroughly, and leave its stones unmolested until you or your descendants shall have a paying use for them. A friend deeply engaged in lumbering gives me a hint, which I think some owners of stony farms will find useful. He is obliged to run his logs down shallow, stony creeks, from the bottom of which large re ks often protrude, arresting the downward progress of his lumber. When the beds of these creeks are nearly dry in Summer, he goes in, with two or three stout, strong assistants, armed with crowbars and levers, and rolls the stones to this side and that, so as to leave a clear passage for his logs. Occasionally he is confronted by a big fellow, which defies his utmost force ; when, instead of drilling and l)la::ting, he gathers dead tree-trops, and other dry wood of no value, I'.om the banks, and builds a hot fire on the top of each giant bowlder. When the fire has burned out, and the rock has cooled, he finds it softened, and, as it were, rotten, on the top, often split, and every way so demoralized that he can deal with it as though it were chalk or cheese. He estimates his saving by STONK ON A KARM. I 29 this process, as compared with drilling and blasting, as much mire than fifty per cent. I trust flvrniers with whom wood is abundant, and big stones superabundant, will give this simple device a trial. Powder and drilling cost money, part of which may be saved by this expe- dient. I have built some scone walls — at first, not very well ; but for the last ten years my rule has been : Very little fence on a farm, but that little of a kind that asks no forbearance of the wildest bull that ever wore a horn. The last wall 1 built cost me at least $5 per rod ; and it is worth the money. Beginning by plowing its bed and turning the two furrows together, so as to raise the ground a foot, and make a shallow ditch on either side, I bdilt a wall thereon which will outlast my younger child. An ordinary wall dividing a wood on the north from an open field of sunny, gravelly loam on the south, would have been partly thrown down and whoU)- twisted out of shape in a few years, by the thawing of the earth under its sunny side, while it remained firm as a rock on the north ; but the ground is always dry untler my entire wall ; so nothing fieezes there, and there is conse([uently nothing to thaw and let down my wall. 1 shall be sorely disappointed if that wall does not outlast my memory, anil be known as a thorough barrier to roving cattle long after tlie name of its original owner shall have been for- gotten. I XXXVIT. FENCES AND F-KNC'INf;. Though I have already indicatetl, incidentally, my decided objections to our prevalent system of Fencing, I deem the subject of such impor- tance that I choose to discuss it directly. Excessive Fencing is pecu- liarly an American abuse, which, urgently cries for reform. Solon Robinson says- the fence-tax is the heaviest of our fiirmers' taxes. I add, that it is the most needless and indefensible. Highways wc must have, and people must traverse them ; but this gives them no right to trample down or otherwise injure the crops grow- ing on either side. In France, and other i)arts of Europe, you see grass and grain growing luxuriantly up to the very edge of the beaten fracks, w'th nothing like a fence i)etween them. Yet those crojw are nowise ujjured or disturbed by wayfarers. Whoever chooses to impel animals along these roads must take care to have them completely under sub- jection, and must see that they do no harm to whatever grows by the way-side. In this country, cattle-driving, except on a small stale, and for short distances, has nearly been superseded by railroads. The great droves formerly reaching the Atlantic seaboard on foot, from Ohio or further West, are now huddled into cars and hurried through in far less time, and with less waste of flesh ; but they reach us fevered, bruised, and every waj' unwholesome. E\ery animal should lie turned out to grass, after a railroad journey of more than twelve hours, and left there a full month before he is taken to the slaughter-pen. We roust have many more deaths per annum in this city than if the animals on which we subsist were killed in a condition which rendered them fit for human food. Ultimately, our fresh Beef, Mutton and Pork will come to us from the Prairies in refrigerating cars : each animal having been killed while in perfect health, tinfevered and untortured by days of cramped, galled, and thirsty suffering, on the cars. This will leave their offal, including a large portion of their bones, to enrich the fields whence their .susten- ance was drawn, and from which they should never be taken. The cost of transporting the meats, hides, and tallow, in such cars, would be less FENCKS VND FKNCINO. 131 than that of bringing through the animals on their legs ; while the dan- ger of putrefaction might l)e utterly precluded. But to return to I'Vncing : Our growing plants must he preserved from animal ravage ; but it is most unjust "i impose the cost of this protection on growers. Whoever chooses to rear or buy animals must take care that they do not infest and despoil his neighbors. Whoever sees ..t to turn animals into the street, should send some one with them who will be sure to keep them out of mischief, which browsing young trees in a forest clearly is. If the inhabitants of a settlement or village surrounded by v. in prairie, see fit to |)asture their cattle thereon, they should send them out each morning in the charge of a well-mounted herdsman, whose duty should be summed up in kee|)ing them from evil-doing by day and bringing them safely back to their yard or yards at nightfall. Fencing bears with special severity on the pioneer class, who arc least able to afford the outlay. The " clearing " of the pioneer's first year in the wilderness, being enlarged by a.\ and fire, needs a new and far longer environment next year ; and so through subseijuent years until clearing is at an end. Many a pioneer is thus impelled to devote a large share of his time to Fencing ; and yet his crops often come to grief through the depredations of his own or his neighbor's breachy catde. Fences produce nothing but unwelcome bushes, briers and weeds. So far as they may be necessary, they are a deplorable necessity. When constructed where they are not reall\ needed, they evince costly folly. I think 1 could point out farms which would not sell to-day for the cost of rebuilding their jjresent fences. We cannot make open drains or ditches serve for fences in this country as they sometimes do in milder and more equable climates, because our severe frosts would heave and crumble their banks if nearly perpendicu- lar, sloping them at length in places so that animals might cross them at leisure. Nor have we, so far north as this city, had much success with hedges, for a like reason. There is scarcely a hedge-plant at once efficient in stopping animals and so hardy as to defy the severity, or rather the caprice, of our Winters. I scarcely know a hedge which is not either inefficient or too costly for the average farmer ; and then a hedge is a fi.xture ; wli^jreas we often need to move or demolish our fences. Wire F'ences are least obnoxious to this objection ; they are very easily renio\ ed ; but a careless teamster, a stupid animal, or a clumsy friend, easily makes a breach in one, which is not so easily repaired. Of the few Wire Fence;; within my knowledge, hardly one has remained entire and efficient after standing two or three years. Stone Walls, well built, on raised foundations of dry earth, are endur- ing and (juite effective, but very costly. My best have cost me at least $5 per rod, though the raw material was abundant and accessible. I I3a WHA'I' I KNOW <)1 lARMINf,. doiiht that any good wall is built, with labor at present prices, for less than $3 per rod. I'orhajjs I should account this costliness a merit, since it must iuipel tanners to study how to make k'w fiinces serve their turn. Rail [''cnces will be constructed only where timber is very al)un(lant, of little value, and easily split. Whenever the burning of timber to be rid of it has ceased, there the makin^M)f rail femes must be near its end. Where fences must still be maintained, I apprehend that posts and boards are the cheapest material. 'I'hough I'ine liunber grows dear, Hemlock still abounds ; and the rapid destruction of trees for their bark to be used in tanning nui-il give us cheap hemlock boards through- out many ensuing years. Spru< e, 'iamarack, and other evergreens from our Northern swamps, will come into play after Hemlock shall have been exhausted. vVs for posts, Red (!edar is a general favorite ; and this tree seems to be rapidly multiplying hereabout. I judge that farmers who have it not, might wisely onler it from a nursery and give it an experimental trial. It is hardy : it is clean ; it makes but little shade ; and it seems to fear no insect whatever. It flourishes on rocky, thin soils; and a grove of it is pleasant to the sight at least, to mine. Locust is more widely known and esleemetl; but the borer has proved destructive to it on very many farms, though not on mine. I like it well, and mean to multiply it extensively by drilling the seed in rich garden soil and transplanting to rocky woodland when two years old. Sowing the seed among rocks and bushes 1 have tried rather extensively, with jjoor success. If it germinates at all, the young tree is so tiny and feeble that bushes, weeds, and grass, overtoj) and smother it. That a post .set top-end down will last many years longer than if set as it grew. I do firmly believe, though I cannot attest it from personal observation. I understand the reason to be this: Trees absorb or suck up moisture from the earth ; and the particles which compose them are so com' )ined and adjusted as to facilitate this operation. Plant a post deeply .iii.l firmly in the ground, but-end downward, and it will continue to absiir'i mf)isture from the earth as it did when alive ; and the post, thus moistened to-day and dried by the wind and sun to-morrow, is thereby subjected to more rapid disintegration and decay than when reversed. > My general <;onclusion is, that the good farmer will have fewer and better Fences than his thriftless neighbor, and that he will study and plan to make fewer and tewer rods of fences serve his needs, taking care that all he retains shall be perfect and conclusive. Breechy cattle are a .sad affliction aUke to their owner and his neighbor ; and shaky, rotting, tumble-down fences, are justly responsible for their perverse education. Let us each resolve to take good care that his own cattle shall in no case afflict his neighbors, and we shall all need fewer fences henceforth and evermore. XXXVIIl. .\r.Ricui,'HkAi. kxhihitions. T MCSTliavc attended not less than fifty State or ("oiinty Fairs for the exhibition (mainly) of Agricukural Machines and l'ro(hic,ts, I'Yon. all these, I x/ioiih/ have learned something, and presume I did ; but I can- not now say what. Hence, I conclude that these Fairs are not what they might or should be. In (Jther words, they should I)e improved. Hut how? As the i)eop'.e compose nnich the largest and best part of these shows, the reform must begin with them. Two-thirds of them go tea Fair with no desire to learn therefrom - no belief that tiiey can there be taught anything. Of course, not seeking, they do not fmd. If they could but realize that a I'armer's I'air migh md should teach farmers somewhat that would serve them m their Vv tion, a great point would be gained. 15ut they go in quest of cnt«.rtair. ent, and find this liiaiiily in horse- racing. Of all human opportunities for instruction in humility and self-depre- ciation, the average public si)eaker's is the best. He hurries to a place where he has been told that his presence and utterance are earnestly and generally desired — perhaps to find that his invitation came from an in- significant and odious handfiil, who had some private a.\ to grind so re- pugnant to the great majority that they refiise to countenance the pro- cedure, no matter how great the temptation. Even where there is so much feud, many, having satiated their curiosity by a long stare at him, walk whistling oft", without waiting or wishing to hear him. But the speaker at a fair must meet with a thousand counter-attractions, the least of them far more popular and winning than he can hope to be. He is heard, so tar as he is heard at all, in presence of and in competition with all the bellowing bulls, braying jacks, and squealing stallions, in the county ; if he holds, nevertheless, a cpiarter of the crowd, he does well : but let two jockeys start a buggy-race around the convenient track, and the last auditor shuts his ears and runs off to enjoy the spectacle. De- cidedly, I insist that a Fair ground is poorly adapted to XWt diffusion of Agricultural knowledge — that the people present acquire very little in- formation there, even when they get all they want. V <*vt 134 WHAT 1 KNOW OK FARMING. li >'• i 1' 1 i ' What is needed to render our annual Fairs useful and instructive far beyond precedent, 1 sum up as follows : I. Each farmer in the county or township should hold himself bound to make s/wir contribution thereto. If only a good hill of Corn, a peck of Potatoes, a bunch of Clrapes, a Scpiash, a Melon , let him send that. If he can send all of these, so much the better. There is very rarely a thrifty farmer who could not add to the attractions and merits of a fair if he would try. If he could send a coop of superior Fowls, a likely Calf or a iirst-rate Cow, better yet ; but nine-tenths of our farmers regard a fair as something wherewitli they have nothiitg to do, except as specta- tors. When it is half over, they lounge into it with hands in their pock- ets, stare about for an hour, and go home protesting they could beat everything they saw there. Then why did they not try? How can we have good Fairs, if those who might make the best display of products save themselves the trouble l)y not making any? The average meager- ness of our Fairs, so generally and justly complained of, is not the fault of those who sent what they had, but of those who, having better, were too lazy to send anything. Until this is radically changed, and the blame fastened on those who might hiJve contributed, but did not, our Fairs cannot help being generally meager and poor. II. It seems to me that there is great need of an interesting and faithful running commentary on the various articles exhibited. A com- petent person should be employed to give an hour's off-hand talk on the cattle and horses on hand, explaining the diverse merits and faults of the several breeds there exhibited, and of the representatives of tiiose breeds then present. If any are peculiarly adopted to the locality, let that fact be duly set forth, with the simple object of enabling the farmers to breed more intelligently, and more profitably. Then let the implements and machinery on exhibition be likewise explained and discussed, and let their superiority in whatever resj:)ect to those they have superseded or are designed to supersede be clearly pointed out. So, if there be any new CJrain, Vegetable, or F'ruit, on the tables, let it be made the subject of capable and thoroughly impartial discussion, before such only as choose to listen, and without putting the mere sight-seers to grave incon- venience. A lecture-room should be always attached to a F'air-ground, yet so secluded as to shut out the noise inseparable from a crowded ex- hibition. Here, meetings should be held each evening, for general di.s- cussion, every one being encouraged to state concisely the impressions made on him, and the improvements suggested to him, by what he had seen. Do let us try to reflect and consider more at these gatherings, even though at cost of seeing le^s. III. The well supported Agricultural Society of a rich and populous county must be able, to give two or three liberal premiums for general proficiency in farming. If$ioo could be jjroflered to the owner or mana- ger of the best tilled farm in the county, $50 to the owner of the best orchard, and $50 to the boy under eighteen years of age who grew the AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS. 135 best acre of Corn or Roots that year, I am confident that an impulse would thereby be given to agric;ilt\iral progress. Our premiums are too numerous and too pretty, because so few are willing to contribute with no expectation of personal benefit or distinction. If we had but the right spirit aroused, we might dispense with most of our pretty premiums, or replace them by medals of no great cost, and devote the money thus saved to higher and nobler ends. IV. Much of the speaking at Fairs seems to me insulting to the intel- ligence of the Farmers present, who are grossly flattered and eulogized, when they need often to be admonished and incited to mend their ways. What use or sense can there be in a lawyer, doctor, broker or editor, talking to a crowd of farmers as if they were the most favored of mortals and their life the noblest and happiest known to mankind ? Whatever it might be, and may yet become, we all know that the average farmer's life is not what it is thus represented ; for, if it were, thousands would be rushing into it where barely hundreds left it; whereas we all see that the fact is quite otherwise. No good can result from such insincere and extravagant praises of a calling which so few freely choose, and so many gladly shun. Grant that the farmer's ought to be the most enviable and envied vocation, we know that in fact it is not ; and, agreeing that it should be, the business in hand is to make it so. There must be ob- stacles to surmount ; mistakes to set right, impediments to overcome before farming can be in all respects the idolized pursuit which poets are so ready to proclaim it and orators so delight to represent it. L t us struggle to make it all that fancy has ever painted it; but, so long as it is not, let us respect undeniable facts, and characterize it exactly as it is. V. If our counties were thoroughly canvassed by township commit- tees, and each tiller of the soil asked to pledge himself in writing to ex- hibit something at the next County Fair, we should soon witness a decided improvement. Many would be incited to attend, who now stay away ; while the very general complaint that there is nothing worth com- ing to see would be heard no more. As yet a majority of farmers re- gard the Fair much as they do a circus or traveling menagerie, taking no interest in it except as it may afford them entertainment for the pass- ing hour. We must change this essentially; and the first step is to in- duce, by concerted solicitation, at least half the farmers in the county to pledge themselves to exhibit something at the next anmial Fair, or pay $3 toward increasing its premiums. VI. In short, we must all realize that the County or Township Fair is our Fair — not got up by others to invite our patronage or crititism, but something whereto it is incumbent on us to contribute, and which must be better or worse as we choose to make it. Realizing this, let us stop carping and give a shoulder to the wheel. XXXIX. SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE. (I ■! I am not a scientific .firmer; it is not pn.bahlc that T ever shall be. I have no such knowledge of Chemistry an*' (leology as any man needs to make him a thoroughly good farmer. 1 am ijuite aware that men have raised good crops — a good many of them— -who knew nothing of science, and did not consider any acquaintance with it conducive to eflliciency or success in their vocation. I have no doubt that men will continue to grow such crops, and to make money by agriculture, who hardly know what is meant by Chemistry or Ceology; and yet I feel sure that, as the years roll by, Science will more and more be recognized and accepted as the true, substantial base of efficient and profitable cultivation. Let me here give briefly the grounds of this ci. viction: P2very plant is composed of elements wh«-reof a very small portion is drawn from the soil, while the ampler residue, so long as the plant con- tinues green and growing, is mainly water, tliough a variable and often considerable proportion is iinbil)ed or absorbed from the atmosphere, which is understood to yield freely nearly all the elements required of it, provided the plants are otherwise in healthful and tlirifty condition. Water is supplied from the sky, or fron^ springs and streams ; and little more than the most ordinary capacity for observation is required to de- termine when it is present in sufficient quantity, when in baleful excess. But who, unaided by science, can decide whether the soil does not con- tain the element recjuisite for the luxuriant growth and perfect develope- ment of AVheat, or Fruit, or Grass, or Beets, or Apples ? Who knows, save as he blindly infers from results, what mineral ingredients of this or that crop are deficient in a given field, and what are present in excess? And how shall any one be enlightened and assured on the point, unless by the aid of Science ? I have bought and applied to my farm some two thousand bushels of Lime, and ten or a dozen tuns of Plaster; and I infer, from what seemed to be results, that each of these minerals has been applied with profit; but I do not knou> it. The increased product which I have attributed to one or both of these elements may have had a very different origin and impulse. 1 only grope my way in darkness when I should clearly and surely see. SCIENCE IN AGRICULTURE. 137 An agricultural essayist in Maine has recently put forth a canon which, if well grounded, is of great value to farmers. Reasserts that the growth of acid plants like Sorrel, Dock, etc., in a field, results from sourness in that soil, and that, where this exists, Lime — that is, the ordinary Car- bonate Lime — is urgently retiuired ; whereas the application of Plaster or Gypsum (Sulphate of Lime) to that field must be useless and waste- ful. If such be the truth, a knowledge of it would be worth millions of dollars to our farmers. But I lack the scientific attainment needed to qualify me for parsing judgment thereon. There is great diversity of opinion among farmers with regard to the value of Swamp Muck. One has applied it to his land to good purpose; so he holds Muck, if convenient, the cheapest and best fertilizer a farmer can add to ordinary barn-yard manure ; another has applied cords upon cords of Muck, and says he has derived therefrom no benefit whatever. Now, this contrariety of conclusion may result from imperfect judgment on one side or the other, or from the condition precedent of the diverse soils; one of them re([uiring what Muck could supply, while the other re- quired something very different from that ; or it may be accounted for by the fact that the Muck applied in one case was of a suj crior quality, and in the other good for nothing. Where Muck is composed almost wholly of the leaves of forest trees which, through thousands of years, have been blown into a bog, or shallow pond, and there been gradually transformed into a fine, black dust or earth, I do not see how it can possibly be ap- plied to an upland, especially a sandy or gravelly soil, without conducing to the subsequent production of bounteous crops. True, it may be sour when first drawn from the stagnant pool or bog in which it has lain so long, and may need to be mixed with Lime, or Salt, or Ashes, and sub- jected to the action of sun and frost, to ripen and sweeten it. But it seems to me impossible that such Muck should be applied to almost any reasonable dry land, without improving its consistency and increasing its fertility. But all Muck is not the product of decayed forest-leaves ; and that which was formed of coarse, rank weeds and brakes, of rotten wood and flags, or skunk cal)bage, may be of very inferior quality, so as hardly to repay the cost of digging and applying it. Science will yet enable us to fix, at least approximately, the value of each deposit of Muck, and so give a preference to the best. The Analysis of Soils, whereof much was heard and whence much was hoped a few years since, seems to have fallen into utter discredit, so that every would-be popular writer gives it a passing fling or kick. That any analysis yet made was and is worthless, I can readily concede with- out shaking in the least my conviction that soils will yet be analyzed, under the guidance of a truer, profounder Science, to the signal enlight - enment and profit of their cultivators. Here is a retired merchant, bank- er, doctor, or lawyer, who has bought a spacious and naturally fertile, but worn-out run-down farm, on which he proposes to spend the remain- der of his days. Of course, he must improve and enrich it ; but with •38 WHAT I KNOW or lAR.MING. i ! I whit? and how? All the manure he fi;i(ls, or, for the ])resent, can make on it, will hardly put the first acre in high condition, while he grows old and is unwilling to wait forever. He is able and ready to l)uy fertilizers, and does buy right and left, without knowing whether his land needs Lime, or Phosphate, or Potash, or something very different froi t either. Say he purchases $2,000 worth of one or more of tliese fertilizer... : it is highly probable that $1,500 might have served him better if invested in due proportion in just what his land most urgently needs ; and I un- flinchingly believe that we shall yet have an analysis of soils that will tell him just what fertilizers he ought to apply, and what (|uantity of ea:h of them. vScience has already taught us that every load of May or (irain drawn from a field abstracts therefrom a considerable (juantity of certain min- erals — say Potash, T-ime, Soda, Magnesia, C'hlorine, Silica, Phosphorus — and that the soil is thereby impoverished until they be replaced, in some form or other. As no deposit in a bank was ever so large that con- tinual drafts would not ultimately exhaust it, so no soil was ever so rich that taking crop after crop from it annually, yet giving nothing back, would not render it sterile or worthless. Sun and rain and wind will do their part in the work of renovation ; but all of them together cannot restore to the soil the miner;' i elements whereof each crop takes a por- tion, and which, being once completely exhausted, can only be replaced at a heavy cost. Science teaches us to foresee and prevent such ex- haustion — in part, by a rotation of crops, and in part by a constant re- placement of the minerals annually borne away : the subtraction being greater in proportion as the crop is more exacting and luxuriant. What I know of Science as applicable to Farming is little indeed; but I know that there is such Science, and that each succeeding year en- larges, improves, and perfects it. I know that I should tlius far have farmed to a far better purpose, if T had been master even of so much Science as already exists. Understand that I am not a teacher of this Science — I stand very low in the class of learners. I began to learn too late in life, and have been too incessantly harassed by a multiplicity of cares, to make any satisfactory progress. Any tolerably educated l)oy of fifteen may know more of Agricultural Science by the time he has passed his eighteenth birth- day than I do. What 1 know in this respect can help him very little; my faith that there is much to be known, and that he may master it if he will, is all that is of much importance. If I can convince a considerable number -of our youth that they may surely ac(juire a competence by the lime they shall have passed their fortieth year, without excessive laborer penurious frugality, by means of that knowledge of principles and laws TiUbservent to Agriculture which their fathers could not, but which they may easily attain, I shall have rendered a substantial service alike to them and our country. XI,. KARM IMPT.EMENTS. A GOOD workman, it is said, does not c[uarrel with his tools — which if true, I judge is due to the fact that he generally manages to have good ones. To work hard throughout a long day under burning sun, is' sufficiently trying, without rendering the labor doubly repugnant by the use of ill-contrived, imperfect, inefficient implements. The half-century which nearly bounds my recollection has witnessed great improvements in this respect. The Plow, mainl) of wood, where- with my father broke up his stony, hide-bound acres of New-Hampshire pebbles and- gravel, in my early boyhood, would now be spurned if offer- ed as a gift to the poorest and most thriftless farmer among us ; and the Hoes which were allotted to us boys in those days, after the newer and better had been assigned to the men, would be rejected with disdain by the stupidest negro in Virginia. Though there is still room for improve- ment, we use far better implements than our grandfathers did with a corresponding increase in the efficiency of our labor ; but the cultivators of Spain, Portugal, and the greater part of Europe, still linger in the dark ages in thf^ respect. Their plows are little better than the forked sticks which served their barbarian ancestors, and their implements, gen- erally are beneath contempt. With such implements, deep and thorough culture is simply impossible, unless by the use of the spade; and he must be a hard worker who produces a peck of Wheat or half a bushel of Indian Corn ])er day by the exclusive use of this tool. The soil of France is so cut up and subdivided into little strips of two or three roods up to as many acres each — each strip forming the entire patri- mony of a famil)' — that agricultural advancement or efficiency is, with the great mass of French cultivators, out of the question. Hence, I judge that, outside of Great Britain and Australia, there is ncf country wherein an average year's work produces half so much grain as in our own, in spite of our slovenly tillage, our neglect and waste of fertilizers, and the frequent failures of our harvests. Belgium, Holland, and north- ern France, can teach us neatness and thoroughness of cultivation ; the British isles may fairly boast of larger and surer crops of Wheat, Oats, Potatoes, and (irass, than we are accustomed to secure ; but, in the se- ii 11 i 140 WHAI I KNOW OK I'AR.MING. lection of implements, and in the average efficiency of labor, our best farmers are ahead of them all. Bear with me, then, while I interpose a timid plea for our inventors and patentees of implements, whose solicitations that a trial, or at least an inspection, be accorded to their several contrivances, are too often repelled with churlish rudeness. 1 realize that our thriving larmers are generally absorbed in their own plans and efforts, and that the agent or salesman who insists on an examination of his new harrow, or i)itch-fork, or potato-digger, is often extravagant in his assumptions, and sometimes a bore. .Still, when I recollect how tedious and liow back-breaking were the methods of mowing Grass and reaping Grain witli the .Scythe and Sickle, which held unchallenged sway in my early boyhood, 1 en- treat the farmer who is petitioned, to accord ten or fifteen minutes to the setting forth, by some errant stranger, of the merits of his new horse- hoe or tedder, to give the time, if he (um ; and that without sour looks or a mien of stolid incredulity. The Biblical monition that, in evincing a generous hospitality, we may sometimes entertain angels unawares, seems to me in point. A new implement may be defective and worth- less, and yet contain the germ or suggest the form of a thoroughly good one. Give the inventor or his representative a courteous hearing if you can, even though this should constrain you to make up the time so lost after the day's work would otherwise have ended. I suspect that the average farmer of our completely rutal districts would be surprised, if not instructed, by a day's careful scrutiny of the contents of one of our great implement warehouses. So many and such various and ingenious devices for pulverizing the earth, applying ferti- lizers to the soil, planting or sowing rapidly, eradicating weeds, econom- izing labor in harvesting, etc., will probably transcend not merely his experience, but his imagination ; and every one of these myriad imple- ments is useful in its place, though no single farmer caji aftbrd to buy all or half of them. It will yet, I think, be found necessary by the farmers of a school-district, if not of a township, to meet a..d agree among themselves that one will buy this implement, another tliat, and so on, until twenty such devices a^ a Stump or Rock-Puller, a Clod- Crusher, Thrashing-Machine, Fanning Mill, etc., shall be owned in the neighbourhood — each by a separate farmer, willing to live and let live — with an understanding that each shall be used in ^vsn by him who need:, it ; and so every one shall be nearly as well accommodated as though he owned them all. For the number and variety of useful implements increase so rapidly, while their usefulness is so palpable, that, though it is difficult to farm efficiently without many i*" not most of them, it is impossible that the young farmer of moderate means should buy and keep them all. True, he might hire when he needed, if what he wanted were always at hand ; but this can only be assured by some such arrangement as I have sug- gested, wherein each undertakes to provide and keep that which he will KARM IMPLEMENTS. 141 most need ; agreeing to lend it whenever it can be spared to any other member of the combination, who undertakes to minister in Hke manner to his need in return. I think that few will doubt that the inventions in aid of Agriculture during the last forty years will be surpassed by those of the forty years just before us. The magnificent fortunes which, it is currently under- stood, have rewarded the inventors of the more popular Mowers, Reap- ers, etc., of our day, are sure to stimulate alike the ingenuity and the avarice of clever men throughout the coming years, and to call into ex- istence ten thousand patents, whereof one hundred will be valuable, and ten or twelve eminently useful. Plowing land free from stumps and stones cannot long be the tedious, patience-trying process we have known it. The machinery which will at once pulverize the soil to a depth of two feet, fertilize and seed it, not requiring it to be trampled by the hoofs of animals employed in subsoiling and harrowing, will soon be in general use, especially on the spacious, deep, inviting prairies of the Great West. — But I must defer what I have to say of Steam and its uses in Agriculture to another chapter. XI, 1. STEAM IN Ar.RICUI.TURK. I ■ J i' As yet the great body of our farmers have been slow in availing themselves of the natural forces in operation around them. Vainly for them does the wind blow across their fields and over their hill-tops. It neither thrashes nor grinds their grain : it has ceased even to separate it from the chaff 'I'he brook brawls and foams i.ily adown the precipice or hillside ; the farmer grinds his grain, churns his cream, and turns his grindstone, just as though falling water did not embody power. He draws his Logs to one mill, and his Wheat, Corn, or Kye to another, and returns in due season with his boards or his meal ; but the lesson which the mill so plainly teaches remains l)y him unread. Where running or leaping water is not, there brisk breezes and fiercer gales are apt to be. But the average farmer ignores the mechanical use of stream and breeze alike, taxing his own muscle to achie\e that which the blind forces of Na- ture stand ready to do at his command. It may not, and I think it will not, be always thus. Steam, as a clieap source of jjractically limitless jjower, is hardly a century old ; yet it has already revolutionized the mechanical and manu- facturing industry of Christendom. It weaves the far greater part of all the Textile Fabrics that clothe and shelter and beautify the human fami- ly. It fashions every bar and every rail of Iron or of Steel ; it impels the machinery of nearly every manufactory of wares or of implements ; and it is very rapidly supplanting wind in the propulsion of vessels on the high seas, as it has already done on rivers and most inland waters. Water is, however, still emi)loyed as a jjower in certain cases, but mainly because its adaptation to this end has cost many thousands of dollars which its disuse would render worthless. I am (juite within bounds in estimating that nine-tenths of all the ma- terial lorce employed by man in Manufactures, Mechanics, and Naviga- tion is supplied by Steam, and that this disproportion will be increased to ninety-nine hundredths before the close of this century. ForAgriculture, Steam has donevery much, in the transportation of crops, and of fertilizers, but very little in the preparation or cultivation of the soil. Of steam-waggons for roads or fields, steam-plows for pulverizing and deep- STKAM IN AGRICULTUUF.. 143 ening the soil, and steam cultivators for keeping weeds down and rendering tillage more efficient, we have had many heralded in sanguine bulletins throughout the last forty years, but I am not aware that one of them has fulfilled the sanguine hopes of its author. Though a do/en Steam-Plows have been invented in this country, and several imported from Eur ipe, 1 doubt a that single sijuare mile of our country's surface has been plo»ved wholly by steam down to this hour. If it has, Louisiana — a State which one would naturally expect to find in the van of industrial progress— has enjoyed the l)enefit and earned the credit o( the achievement. Of what Steam has yet accomplished in direct aid of Agriculture, 1 have Hide to say, though in (Ireat ikitain cjuitea number of steam-plows are actually at work in the fields, and {I am assured) with fair success. Until something breaks or gives out. one of these plows does its appoint- ed work better and cheaper than such svork is or can be done by animal power ; but all the steam-plows whereof I have any knowledge seem too bulky, too complicated, too costly, ever to win their way into general use. I value them only as hints or incitements toward something better suited to the purpose. Whnt our farmers need is not a steam-plow as a specialty, but a loco- motive that can travel with facilit) , not only on common waggon-roads, but across even freshly plowed fields, without embarrassment, and prove as docile to its managers's touch as an average span of horses. Such a locomotive should not cost more than $500, nor weigh more than a tun when laden with fuel and water for a half-hour's steady work. It should be so contrived that it may be hitched in a minute to a plow, a harrow, a waggon, or cart, a saw or grist-mill, a mower, or reaper, a thresher, or stalk-cutter, a stump or rock-puller, and made useful in pumping or drain- ing operations, digging a cellar or laying up a wall, as also in ditching or trenching. We may have to wait some years yet for a servant so dexter- ous and docile, yet I feci confident that our childien will enjoy and ap- preciate his handiwork. The iarmer oftcii needs more power at one season than at another, and is compelled to retain and subsist working animals at high cost through months in which he has no use for them, because he must have them when those months have transpired. If he could replace those animals by a machine which, when its season of usefulness was over, could be cleaned, oiled, and put away under a tight roof until next seeding-time, the saving alike of cost and trouble would be very considerable. When our American reapers first challenged attention in Great Britain, the general skepticism as to their efficiency was counteracted by the suggestion that, even though reaping by machinery should prove more expensive than reaping by hand, the ability to cut and save the grain- crop more rapidly than hitherto would overbalance that enhancement of cost. In the British Isles, day after day of chilling wind and rain is often encountered in harvest-time : the standing Wheat or Oats or Barley becoming draggled, or lodged, or beaten out, while the ovwier 144 WHAT I KNOW OK FARMING. Ill impatiently awaits the recurrence of sunny days. When tliese at length arrive, he is anxious to harvest many acres at once, since his drain is wasting and he knows not how soon cloud and tempest may again be his portion. But all his neighbors arc in like j^redicament with himself, and all etjually intent on hurrying the harvest ; so that little e.xtra help is attainable. If now the aiil of a machine may be commanded, which will cut 15 or 20 acres per day, he cares less how much that work will cost than how soon it can be effected. Hence, even though cuttinr by horse-power had proved more costly than cutting by hand, it would still have been v/elcome. So it is with Plowing, here and almost everywhere. Our farmers have this year been unable to begin Plowing for Winter drain so early as they desired, by reason of the intense heat and drouth, whereby their fields were Ijaked to the consistency of half-burned brick. Much seed will in consequence have been sown too late, while much seeding will have been precluded altogether, by inability to prepare the ground in due season. If a machine had been at hand whereby 15 or 20 acres per day could have been plowed and harrowed, thousands would have in- voked its aid to enable them to sow their drain in tolerable season, even though the cost had been essentially heavier than that of old-fashioned plowing. I traversed Illinois on the 13th and 14th of May, 1859, when its entire soil seemed soaked and sodden with incessant rains, which had not yet ceased pouring. Inevitably, there had been little or no plowing yet for the vast Corn-crop of that State ; yet barely two weeks would intervene before the close of the proper season for Corn-planting. Even if these should be wholly favorable, the plowing could not be effected in season, and much ground must be planted too late or not planted at all. In every such case, a machine that would plow six or eight furrows as fast as a man ought to walk, would add immensely to the year's harvest, and be hailed as a general blessing. I recollect that a derman observer of the Western cultivation — a man of decided perspicacity and wide observation — recommended that each farmer who had not the requisite time or team for getting in his Corn- crop in due season should plow single furrows through his fields at in- tervals of 3 to 2)4 feet, plrint his Corn on the earth thus turned, and pro- ceed, so soon as his planting was finished, to plow out the spaces as yet undisturbed between the springing rows of Corn. I do not know that this recommendation was ever widely followed ; buv' I judge that, under certain circumstances, it n)ight be, to decided advantage and profit. I have not attemjjted to indicate all the benefits which Steam is to con- fer directly on Agriculture, Avithin the next half-century. That Irrigation must become general, I confidently believe ; and anticipate a very exten- sive sinking of wells, at favorable points, in order that water shall be drawn therefrom by wind or steam to moisten and enrich the slopes and plains around them. Such a locomotive as I have foreshadowed might be taken from well to well, pumping from each in an hour or two suffi- STEAM IN AORICUITURP:. >4S cient water to irrigate several of the adjacent acres ; thus starting a se- cond crop of Kay on fields whence the first had been taken, and renew- ing verdure and growth where we now see vegetation suspended for weeks, if not months. 1 feel sure that the masses of our flxrmers have not yet realized the importance and beneficence of Irrigation, nor the facility wherewith its advantages may be secured. ti'iUO'M *■;!»■ XLII. CO-OPKRATION IN KARMINC;. \ The word of hope and cheer for Labor in our days is CoiiPKRATioN — that is, the combination by many of their means and eftbrts to achieve results beneficial to them all. It differs radically from Communism, which proposes that each should receive from the aggregate product of human labor enough to satisfy his wants, or at least his needs, whether he shall have contributed to that aggregate much, or little, or nothing at all. Cooperation insists that each shall receive from the joint product in proportion to his contrib' tions thereto, whether in capital, skill, or labor. If one associate has ten dildren and another none. Communism would appoiMon to each according to the size of his family alone ; while Co- operation would give to each what he had earned, regardless of the num- ber dependant upon him. 'i'hus the two systems are radical antagonists, and only the grossly ignorant or wilfully blind will confound them. A young farmer, whose total estate is less than $500, not counting a priceless wife and child, resolves to migrate from one of the old States to Kansas, Minnesota, or one of the Territories : he has heard that he will there find public land whereon he may make a home of a quarter- section, paying therefor $20 or less fot the cost of survey and of the nececessary papers. So he may : but, on reaching the Land of Promise, whether with or without his family, he finds a very large belt of still vacant land beyond the settlements already transformed into private property, and either not for sale at all or held or. speculation, cjuite out of his reach. The public land which he may take under the Homestead law lies a fiill day's journey beyond the border settlements, to which he must look for Mills, Stores, Schools, and even Highways. If he persists in squatting, with intent to earn his ([uarter-section by settlement and cultivation, he must take a long day's journey across unbridged streams and sloughs, over unmade roads, to find boards, or brick, or meal, or glass, or groceries ; while he must postpone the education of his chil- dren to an indefinite future day. Gradually, the region will be settled, and the conveniences of civilization will find their way to his door, but not till he will have suffered through several years for want of them ; often compelled to make a journey to get a plow or yoke mended, a CO-OP',RATI()N IN FAR MI NO. '47 > a grist ot gniin ground, or to minister to some other trivial l)ut inexorable want. I Ic who thus ar.(|uires his (juarter-sertion must t'airly earn it, and may l)e thankful if his children do not grow up rude, coarse, and illiterate. Hut suppose one thousand just such young farmers as he is, with no more means and no greater efficiency than his, were to set forth together, resolved to find a suitable location whereon they might all cttle on adjoining ([uarter-sections thus appropriating the .soil of five or si.x embryo townships: who can fail to see that three-fourths of the obstacles and iliscouragements which confront the solitary [)ioneer would vanish at the outset? koads, Hridges, Mills — nay, even Schools and Churches — would be theirs almost immediately ; while n-^chanics, merchants, doctors, et(\, would fairly overrun their settlement and solicit their patronage at every road-crossing. Within a year after tlie location of their several claims, they would have achieved more progress and more comfort than in five years under the system of straggling and isolated settlement which has hitherto prevailed, 'i'he change I here indicate appeals to the common sense and daily experience of our whole people. It is not necessary, however desirable, that the pioneers should be giants iii wisdom, in integrity, or in piety, to secure its benefits. A knave or a fool may be deemed an undesiralSle neighbor ; hut a dozen such in the the township would not preclude, and could hardly diminish, the advan- tages naturally resulting from settlement by Coiiperation. Nor are these confined to pioneers transcending the boundaries of civilization. I wish I could induce a thousand of our colored men now precariously subsisting by servile laboi in the cities, to strike out boldly for homes of their own, and for liberty to direct their own labor, whether they should settle on the frontier in the manner just outlined, or should buy a tract of chei'p land on Long Island, in New-Jersey, Maryland, or some other .State further .South. 1 cannot doubt that the majority of them would work their way up to independence ; and this very much sooner, and after undergoing far less privati' ., than almost every pioneer who has plunged alone into the primitive forest, or struck out upon the broad prairie and there made himseKa farm. The insatiable demand for fencing is one ot .le pioneer's many trials. Though he has cleared off but three acres of forest during his first Fall an 1 Winter, he must surround those acres with a stout fence, or all he grows will be devoured by hungry cattle— his own, if no others. Whether he adds two or ten acres to his clearing during the next year, they must in turn be sui rounded by a fence ; and nothing short of a very stout one will answer : so he goes on clearing and fencing, usually l)Urn:ng up a part of his fence whenever he burns over his new clearing ; then build- ing a new one around this, which will have to be sacrificed in its turn. I believe that many pioneers have devoted as much time to fencing their fields as to tilling them throughout their first six or eight "ears. It is different with those who settle on broad prairies, but not essen- i i 148 WHAl I KNOW (JF FARMING. tially better. Kach pioneer must fence his patcii of tillage with material which costs him more, and is procured with greater difficulty, than though he were cutting a hole in the forest. Often, when he thinks he has fenced sufficiently, the hungry, breachy cattle, who roam the open prairies around him, judge his handiwork less favorably ; and he wakes some August morning, when feed is poorest outside and most luxuriant within his inclosure, to find that twenty or thirty cattle have broken through his defences and half destroyed his growing crop. If, insteatl of this wasteful lack of system, a thousand or even a hun- dred farmers would combine to fence several sijuare miles into one giand inclosure for cultivation, erecting their several habitations within or without its limits, as to each should be convenient— apportioning it for cultivation, or oa ling it in severalty, as they should see fit — an immense economy would be secured, just when, because of their poverty, saving is mo t important. Their stock might range the open prairie unwatched ; and they might all slee]) at night in serene confidence that their corn and cabbages were not in danger of ruthless destruction. Among the settlers in our great primitive forests, the system of ('oiipera- tive Farmin^ would have to be modified in details, while it would be in essence the same. And, once adopted with regard to fencing, other adaptations as obvious and ()cneficent would from day to day suggest themselves. Each pioneer would learn how to advance his own prosperity by com- bining his efforts with those of his neighbors. He would perceive that the common wants of a hundred may be supplied by a combined effort at less than half the cost of satisfying them when each is provided for alone. He would grow year by year into a clearer and firmer convic- tion that short-sighted selfi:ihness is the germ of half th*. evils that afflict tho human race, and that the true and sure way to a bounteous satisfac- tion of tiie waiits of each is a generous and thoughtful consideration for the needs of all. And licre let me pay my earnest and thankful tribute to Mr. E. V. de Boissivrc a philanthropic Frenchman, who has purchased 3,300 acres of mainly rolling prarie-land in Kansas, near Princeton, Franklin County, and is carefully, cautiously, laying thereon the foundations of a great cooperative farm, where, in addition to the usual crops, it is expected that Silk and other exotics will in due time be extensively grown and transformed into fabrics, and that various manufactures will vie with Agriculture in affording attractive and profitable employment to a con- si'derable population. I have not been accustomed t "» look with favour on our new States and unpeopled Territories as an arena for such experi- ments, since so many of their early settlers are intent on getting rich by land-speculation — at all events, through the exercise of some others' mus- cles than their own — while the opportunities for and mcitements to niigra- GO-OPERATION IN FARMING. 149 tion and relocation are so multiform and powerful. Doubtless M. de Boissi 1 1 1 1 XLIII. i!^ 'j t Farmp:rs, like other men, divide naturally into two classes — those who do too inucli work, and those who do too little. 1 know men who are no farmers at all, only l)y virtue of the fact that each of them inherited, or somehow acquired, a farm, and have since lived upon and out of it, in good part upon that which it could not help producing — they not doing so much as one hundred fair days' work each per annum. Oneof this class never takes a periodical devoted to farming ; evinces no in- terest in county fairs or township clubs, save as they may afford him an excuse for greater idleness ; and insists that there is no profit in farming. As land steadily depreciates in (juality under his management, he is apt to sell out whenever the increase of population or progress of improve- ment has given additional value to his farm, and move off in quest of that undiscovered country where idleness is compatible with thrift, profits are realized from light crops, and men grow rich by doing nothing. The opposite class of wanderers from the golden mean is hardly so numerous as the idlers, yet it is quite a large one. Its leading embodi- ment, to my mind, is one whom I knew from childhood, who, born poor and nowise favored by fortune, was rated as a tireless worker from early boyhood, and who achieved an independence before he was forty years old in a rural New-England township, simply by rugged, persistent labor — in youth on the farms of other men ; in manhood, on one of his own. This man was older at forty than his father, then seventy, and died at fifty, worn out with excessive and unintermitted labor, leaving a widow who greatly preferred him to all his ample wealth, and an only son who, as soon as he can get hold of it, will scjuander the property much faster, and even more unwisely, than his father acquired it. To the class of which this man was a fair representative. Farmers' Clubs must prove of signal value. Though there should be nothing else than a Farmers' Club in his neighborhood, it can hardly fail in time to make such a one realize that life need not and should not be all drudg- ery : that there are other things worth living for besides accumulating wealth. Let his wife and his neighbor succeed in drawing such a one into two or three successive meetmgs, and he can hardly fail to perceive farmers' clubs. 151 that thrift is a product of brain as well as of muscle ; that he may grow rich by hearing and knowing as well as by delving, and that, even though he should not, there are many things desirable and laudable beside the accumulation of wealth. A true Farmers' Club should consist of all the families residing in a small township, so far as tbey can be induced to attend it, even though only half their members should be present at any one meeting. It should limit speeches to ten minutes, excepting only those addresses or essays which eminently qualified persons are re(iuested to specially pre- pare and read. It should have a president, ready and able to repress all ill-natured personalities, all in-elevant talk, and especially all straying into the forbidden rej^ions of political or theological disputation. At each meeting, the subject should be chosen for the next, and not les.s than four members pledged to make some observations thereon, with liberty to read them if unused to speaking in public. These having been heard, the topic should be open to discussion by all present ; the hum- blest and younge'^t being specially encouraged to state any facts within their knowledge which they deem pertinent and cogent. Let every per- son attending l)e thus incited to say something calculated to shed light on the subject, to say this in the fewest words possible, and with the ut- most care not to offend others, and it is hardly possible that om? evening per week devoted to these meetings should not be spent with equal plea- sure and profit. The chief end to be achieved through such meetings is a develop- ment of the faculty of observation and the habit of reflection. Too many of us pass through life essentially blind and deaf to the wonders and glories manifested to clearer eyes all around us. The magnificent phenomena of the Seasons, even the awakening of Nature fiom death to life in Spring-time, make litttle impression on their senses, still less on their understandings. There are men who have passed forty times through a forest, and yet could not name, within half a dozen, the various species of trees which compose it ; and so with everything else to which they are accustomed. They need even more than knowledge an intellectual awakening ; and this they could hardly fail to receive from the discu.ssions of an intelligent and earnest Farmers' Clul). A genuine and lively interest in their vocation is needed by many farmers, and by most farmers' sons. Too many of these regard their homesteads as a prison, in which they must remain until some avenue of escape into the great world shall open before them. The farm to such is but the hollow log into which a bear crawls to wear out the rigors of Winter and await the advent of Spring. Too many of our boys fancy that they know too much for farmers, when in fact they know flir too little. A gooil Farmers' Club, f'.ithfully attended, would take this con- ceit out of them, imbuing them instead with a realizing sense of their ignoronceand incompetency, and a hearty desire for practical wisdom. A recording secretary, able to state in the fu'west words each important l52 WHAT I KNOW OF KARMING. suggestion or fact elicited in the course of an evening's discussion, would be hardly less valuable or less honored than a capable president. A single pace would often suffice for all that deserves such record out of an evening's discussion ; and this, being transferred to a book and pre- served, might be consulted with interest and /rofit throughout many succeeding years. No other duty should be required of the member who rendered this service, the correspondence of the Club being de- volved upon another secretary. The habit of bringing grafts, or plants, or seeds, to Club meetings, for gratuitous distribution, has been found to increase the interest, and enlarge the attendance of those formerly indifferent. Almost every good farmer or gardener will sometimes have choice seeds or grafts to spare,' which he does not care or cannot expect to sell, and these being distributed to the Club will not only increase its popularity, but give him a right to share when another's surplus is in like manner distributed. If one has choice fruits to give away, the Club will afford him an e.vcellent opportunity ; but I would rather not attract persons to its meetings by a prospect of having their appetites thus gra- tified at other's expense. A Flower-Show once in each year, and an Exhibition of Fruits and other choice products at an evening meeting in September or October, should suffice for festivals. Let each member consider himself pledged to bring to the*Exhibition the best material result of his year's efforts, and the aggregate will be satisfactory and instructive. The organization of a Farmers' Club is its chief difficulty. The larger number of those who ought to participate usually i)refer to stand back, not committing themselves to the effort until after its success has been assured. To obviate this embarrassment, let a paper be circulated for signatures, pledging each signer to attend the introductory meeting and bring at least a part of his flimily. When forty have signed such a call, success will be well-nigh assured. XLIV. WESTERN IRRIGATION. I HAVE already set forth my l)elief that Irrigation is everywhere prac- ticable, is destined to be generally adopted, and prove signally beneficent. I do not mean that every acre of the States this side of the Missouri will ever be thus supplied with water, but that some acres of ev Ty town- ship, and of nearly every farm, should and will be. I propose herein to spea'-. with direct reference to that large portion of our country which cannot be cultivated to any purpose without Irrigation. This region, which is practically rainless in Summer, may be roughly indicated as extending from the forks of the Platte westward, and as including all our present Territories, a portion of Western Texas, the entire State of Nevada, and at least nine-tenths of California. On this vast area, no rain of consequence falls between April and November, while its soil, parched by fervid, cloudless suns, and swept by intensely dry winds, is utterly divested of moisture to a depth of three or four feet ; and I have seen the tree known as Buckeye growing in it, at least six inches in diameter, whereon every leaf was withered and utterly dead before the end of August, though the tree still lived, and would renew its foliage next spring. Most of this broad area is usually spoken of as desert, because tree- less, except on the slopes of its mountains, where certain evergreens would seem to dispense with moisture, and on the brink of infrequent and scanty streams, where the all but worthless Cotton-wood is often found growing luxuriantly, A very little low Gamma Grass on the Plains, some straggling Bunch-grass on the mountains, with an endless profusion of two poor shrubs, popularly known as Sage-brush and Grease-wood, compose the vegetation of nearly or quite a million square miles, I will confine myself in this essay to the readiest means of irrigating the plains, by which I mean the all but treeless Plateau that stretches from the base of the Rocky Mountains, 300 to 400 miles eastward, slop- ing imperceptibly towards the Missouri, and drained by the affluents of the Platte, the Kansas, and Arkansas rivers. The North Platte has its sources in the western, as tiie South Platte has in the eastern, slopes of the Rocky Mountains. Each of them pur- I I 154 WHAT I KNOW OK FARMINd. sues a general north-east course for some 300 miles, and then turns sharply to the eastward, uniting some 300 miles eastward of the moun- tains, where the Plains melt into die I'rairies. Between these two rivers and the eastern base of the mountains lies an irregular delta or triangle, which seems susceptible of irrigation at a smaller cost than the residue. The location of I'nion Colony may be taken as a fair illustration of the process, and the facilities therefor afforded i)y nature. Among the streams which, taking rise in the eastern gorges of the Rocky Mountains, run into the South Platte, the most consiilerable has somehow accjuired tiie French name of Cache la Poudre. It heads in and about Long's Peak, and, after emerging from the mountains, runs some 20 to 25 miles nearly due east, with a descent in that distance of about one hundred feet. Its Waters are very low in Autumn and Win- ter, and the highest in xMay, June and July, from the melting of snow and ice on the lofty mountains which feed it. Like all the streams of this region, it is broad and shallow, with its bed but three or tour feet below the i)lains on either side. (jreeley, the nucleus of I'nion Colony, is located atthecrossingof the Cache la Poudre by the Denver-Pacific Railroad, about midway of its course from the Kansas Pacific at Denver Northward to the Union I'aci- fic at Cheyenne. Here a village of some 400 or 500 houses has sudden- ly grown up during the j)ast Summer. The hrst irrigating canal of l^nion Colony leaves the Cache la Poudre six or eight miles above (Jreeley, on the south side, and is carried grad- ually farther and forther from the stream until it is fully a mile distant at the village, whence it is continued to the Platte. Branches or ditches lead thence northward, conveying rills through the streets of the village the gardens or plats of its inhabitants, and the public s(]uare, or plaza, which is designed to be its chief ornament. Other branches lead to the farms and five-acre allotments whereby the village is surrounded ; as still others will do in time to all the land between the canal and the river. In due time another canal will be taken out from a point further up the stream, and will irrigate the lands of the colony lying south of the present canal, and which are meantime devoted to pasturage in common. Taking the water out of the river here is a very simjjle matter. At the head of an island, a rude dam of brush and stones and earth is thrown across the bed of the stream, so as to raise the surface two or three feet when the water is lowest, and very much less when it is highest. 'I'hus deflected, a portion of the water flows easily into a canal. A very nuich larger and longer canal, leaving the Cache la Poudre close to the mountains, and gradually increasing its distance f tiine. 7'//r l^aily .Ahiw of Oct. 17th. says : " Breton's I'arm consists ot 121 aires of light and poor gravelly soil ; and it now receives the whole available sewage of the town of Romford - that is, of al)oul 7,000 persons. This is conveyed to the land by an iron pipe of iS inches in (liaineter. which is laid under grcnmd. and dis- charges its contents into an open tank. I'rom this tank, the sewage is pum])cd to a height of 20 feet, and is then distributed o\er the land by ircn (jr concrete troughs, or 'carriers' fitted with sluices and taps, so that the amount of sewage applied to any given jiortion of the field ran SKWAUK. »59 and be regulated with the greatest facihty and nicety. 'I'o insure the regular and even How of the sewage when (Uscharged from the carriers, it was necessary to lay out the land with mathematical accuracy ; and it has been leveled and formed by the theodolite into rectilinear beds of uni- fomi width of thirty feet, slightly inclining from the centres, along which the sewage is applied. The carriers or open troughs, by which the sew- age is conveyed, run along the top of eac:h series of these beds or strikes; and at the bottom there is in every case a good road, by means of which free access is provided for a horse and cart, or for the steam plow -the use of which is in contemplation- -to every bed and croj). These arrangements — the carrying out of which involved the removal of six hundred trees and a great length of heavy fences, the filling up of a number of ditches and no less than nine ponds, as well as the complete under-draining of the whole farm — were nainly effected last year ; but it was not until the middle of April, 1870, that Mr. Hope received any of this sewage from the town of Romford, and not imtil the following month that hi- obtained both the day and night supply. Satisfactory, therefore, as have been the results of the present seasons operations, they have been obtained under di.sadvantageous circumstances, and can- not be regarded as aftbrding complete evidence of the benefits which may be derived from the applicauon of sewage to even a poor and thin soil, which had already ruined more than one of those who had attempt- ed to cultivate it. To mention only one drawback which arose from the lateness of the period at which the sewage was first received, Mr. Hope had not the advantage of being able to a])ply it to his seed-beds : and thus many, if iiot all his plants, were not ready for setting out so early as they would be in a future year, and some of the crops have suf- fered in consecjuence — that is to say, have suffered in a comparative sense. Speaking positively, they have in all instances been much larger, not only than any that could have been grown upon the same land without the use of sewage, but than any which have been raised from much superior land in the immediate vicinity. The crops which have been or are being raised on different parts of the farm, are of diverse character ; but, witli all, the method of cultiva- tion adopted has been attended with ecjual success. Italian rye-grass, beans, peas, mangolds, carrots, i)roccoli, cabbages, savoys, beet-root, Ba- tavia yams, Jersey cabbages, and Indian corn, have all grown with won- derfiil rapidity and yielded abundant harvests under the stimulating and ujurishing iniluence of the Romford sewage. The visitors of Saturday last, as they train|)e(l over the farm under the guidance of its energetic proprietor, had an opportunity of witnessing the abundance and excel- lence of many of these crojis. Even where the mangolds, from being planted late, had not attained any extraordinary size, it was noticeable that the plants were especially vigorous, and that there was not a vacant space in any of the rows. .\11 the plants which had been planted in the ground had thriven, and would give a geod return. Where this crop i6o WllAI I KNOW or I'AKMINd. i I H hud been specially treated with a view to forthcoming shows, the root had att.iined an en, whereof two, by way of experiment, are now in |)rogress at Denver ;ind Kit ("arson ies|)ectively. : need not here (k.-iriibc the .\rtesian well, farther than to say it is iti.tde by boring to a depth ranging from 700 to more than 1000 feet, Liibing regularly from the top downward until a stream is reached which will ri.ie to and above the surface, flowing over the top (jf the tube in a stream often as large as an average stove-pipe. Such a well, after sup- |)lying a settlement or modest village with water, may be made to fill a reservoir that will siilfu iently irrigate a thousand cultivated acres. Its water will usually be warmer than though obtained from near the sur- face, and hence better adajjted to Irrigation. (Jf course, the .Artesian well is n be con- t^r 1 164 WHAT I KNOW or FARMING structed for uses purely agricultural : but the railroads traversing the Plains and tlie (Ireat Hasin will sometimes he compelled tc> resort to one without having use for a twentieth part of the water thej- thus entice from the bowels of the earth ; and that which they cannot use they will be glad to sell for a moilerate price, thus creating oases of verdure and bounteous production. 'I'he palpable interest of railroads in dotting their long lines of desolation with such cheering contrasts of field and meadow and waving trees, render nowise doubtful their hearty coopera- tion with any enterprising pioneer who shall bring the reciuisite cajjital. energy, knowledge, and faith, to the prosecution of the work. These are but hasty suggestions of metliods which will doubtless be multiplied, varied, and improved ujjon, in the light of future experience and study. And when the very best and most effective methods of sub- duing the plains to the uses of civilized man shall have been discovered and adopted, there will still remain vast areas as free conuiions for the herdsmen and sporting-grounds for the hunter of ihe Klk and the Ante- lope, after the Buffalo shall have utterly disa])peare(i. 1 do not doubt the assertion of the plainsmen that rain increases as settlements are multipliefl. Crossing the Plains in 1H59, I noted indica- tions that timber had formerly abounded where none now grows; and 1 presume that, as young trees are multiplied in the wake of civilization, finally thickening into (lumps of timber and beginning a forest, more rain will fall, and the extension of woodlands become comparatively easy. Hut, relatively to the country eastward of the Missouri, the Plains will always be arid and thirsty, with a pure, bracing atmosphere that will form a chief attraction to thousands suffering from or threatened with pulmonary afflictions, A million of scpiare miles, whereon is foiuid no single swamp or bog, and not one lake that withstands the drouth of Summer, (an never have a moist ( limate, and never tail to realize the need ol Irri:(ati(jn. The I'laiir^ will in time give lessons, wlr' h even the well-watered and verdures I', isl ma\ read with i)rofit. Such level and thirsty clays as largely Ii inier Lake (■hami)lain, for examj)le, traversed by streams from mount.: ii i.uiges on either hand, will not always be owned atid cultivat- ed b\ ii.iii insensil)le t(j the profit of Irrigation. Nor will such rich valleys .is those of the Connecticut, the KenMebc(, the Sus(|uehanna, be left to s iffer year after year from drouth, while the waters whi( h should refresh them runs idly and uselessly by. Agriculture rejjels innovation, and loves the beaten track ; but such lessons as Xew-Kngland has re- ceived in the great drouth of iH-jo will not always be given and endured in vain. XLVII. UNDFA'KI.OPF.n SOURCKS OI COWKR. Thk more I consider the present state of our Agriculture, the more emphatic is my discontent witli the farmer's present sources and com- mand of Power ; but the manuflicturer obtains his from sources which sujiply it (■hea[)ly and in great abundance, while the former has l)een content with an inferior artiile. in Hmited supply, at a for heavier cost. Yet the stream which turns the factory's wheels and sets all its machinery in motion traverses or skirts many farms as well, and, if properly har- nessed, is just as read}- to s])eed the plow as to impel the shuttles of a woolen-mill, or revolve the cylinders of a calico-printery. Nature is itnpartially kind to all her children ; but some 'j we shall be able to do better ere long. I recognize the enormous waste involved in the movement of an engine, boiler, etc., weighing several tuns, back and forth across our fields, and apprehend that it must be difficult to avoid a compression of the soil therefrom. A stationary engine and boiler at either end of the field, hauling a gang of plows this way and that by means of ropes and pul- leys, must in\()lve a very heavy outlay for machinery and a considerable cost in its removal from farm to farm, or even from field to field. Kither of these may be the best device yet perfected ; but we are bound to do better in time. i^recisely how and when the winds will sweep over oiir fields shall be employed to pulverize and till the soil, are among the many things 1 do not know ; but, that the end will yet be achieved, 1 undoubtingl} trust. I know somewhat- — not much — of what has been done and is doing, both in Kurope and America, to extend and diversify the ultilization of wind as a source ef power, and to compress and retain it so that the gale which sweeps over a farm to-night may aftbrd a reser\ e or fund of power for its cultivation on the morrow or thereafter. 1 know a little of what has been devised and done toward converting and transmitting, through the medium of compressed air, the power generated by a water- fall — say Niagara or Minnehaha so that it may be expend(;d and util- ized at a distance of miles from its source, impelling machinery of all kinds at half the cost of steam. 1 know vaguely of what is being done with F.lectricity, with an eye to its employment in the production of power, by means of enginery not a tenth so weighty and cumbrous as that re- (juired for the generation ancl utilizrition of Steam, and by means of a consumption (that is, transformation) of materials not a hundredth part so Inilky and heavy as the water and steam which fill tlie boilers of our factories and locomotives. I am no mechanician, and will not even guess from what source, through what agencies, the nvw power will be vouchsafed us which is in time to pulverize our fields to any reipiired depth with a rapidity, )i rfection. and economy, not now anticipated by the great Ixjdy of our farmers. lUit my faith in its achievement is un- iloul)ting : and, though I may not live to see it, 1 ])redi( t that there are readers of this essay wlio will find the forces abimdantly generated all around us l)\ the sp(.)ntaneous nunenient of Wind, Water, and Klecti- ity- -one or more, and probably by all of them- -so utilized and witlded a.s to lighten inmiensely the tanner's labour, while (iuadru])ling its effici- ency in producing ail by which our I'larth ministers to the sustenance and comfort of man. : I XLVIII. RURAL DEPOPL'I.ATION. Complaint is widely made of d decrease in the relative population of our rural districts ; and not without reason, or, at least, plausibility. 1 presume the ("Census of 1S70 will return no more farmers in the State of New York, and probably some fewer in Xew Kn^dand, llian were shown b) the Census of i860. The very consider.d)le augmentation of the numl)er of their people will l)e found living wholly in the cities and in- corporated villages. 1 doubt whether tliere are more farmers in the State of Xew York to-day than there were in 1S40, though the total i)op- ulation has meantime doubled. Many farms ha\e been transformed into country-seats for city bankers .nerchants, and lawyers ; others have been y those who have means ;ind know how. by buying New IJIRAI. DKF'OI'IIATIDN. f7« ■ l)orn in Irish or \\hcTeof leir chil- work on ■s. As a the altcr- rsities of my con- ncnt I)) blv true FMiglanri farms, tilling them better, and growing much larger crops than their present occupants have done. There are many who can do better in the West ; but the right men can still make money by farming thi.s side of the .Sus(|uehann;i and the denesce : and I would gladly incite some thousands more of them to try. umption ng. The e prose- ssant al- id some serious, xtcd by :es, and ^trij) of rnier of xtcnds, 1 which i Corn, always prairie ply nor ) cover luently costly other "iinber ile our ? Ash, while lie, do most L-rally, r tun, L^ht to ■ed of riy so loney New -i \IAX. i.ak(;k ami -^m \i.i. i arms. 'I'ni'KK is fascination for most minds in naked niaffuitiuk'. Tlio young colonel, who can hardly handle a brigade effei tivelv in 1);itlle. would like of all Uiings to connnand a great ami)' ; and the tiller of tifty rugged acres has his ravishing dreams of the delights inherent in a great West- ern farm, with its scjuare miles of cornfielrls, ;'.nd its thousands of cattle. Kach of them is jxirtly right and partly wrong. 'I'here are generals capable of conmianding 100,000 men. Napoleon says inere were two such in his day himself and another: and these generally fmd the work they are fit for. without aspiration. St) there aie men, each of whom can really tarm a township, not merely lei a herd of catUe roam over it unfed and unsheltered, living and dying as may chance : the owners exjjecting to grow rich by theirnatural increase. This raiiih- ing is not properly farming at all, but a very different and tar ruder art. I judge that the farmers who can really till — or even graze — several thousand acres oflantl, so as to realize a fair interest on its value, are even scarcer than the farms are cajjac ious. Hut there is such a thing as farming on a large scale ; and it is a good business for those who understand it, and have all the means it re(|uires. The farmer who annuall) grows a thousand acres of gooil drain, and takes reasonable care of a thousand head of (Jattle, is to be held in all honor. lie will usually ^jos\ both his drain and his Heef cheaper than a small farmer could do and will generally tind a good balance on the right ^ide when he m;.kes up and s([uares his accounts of a year's operations. I could recommenii no man to run into debt for a great fixrm, expecting that farm to work him out of it ; but he who inherited o*- has aci|uired a large farm, well stocked, and knows how to make it psy, may well cling to it, and count himself fortunate in its possession. Hut the great farmer is already regarded with sufficient envy. Most boys would gladly be such as he is ; the ditfu ulty in the case is that they lack the energy, persistency, resolution, and self-denial, requisite for its achievement. We will leave large farms anil farming to recommend themselves, while l.ARGK AND SMALL KAKMS. 173 l)oys lack - its we consider more directly the opportunities and reasonable expectations of the snull fanner. The impression widely cirrenl that money cannf)t he made on a small farm thai, in farming, thcj^reat fish eat up the little ones -is de- ducteil fnjin very impcrfe<,l data. I have adinitterl that Orain and Beef can usually he produced at less cost on great than on small farms, though the rule is not without exceptions. 1 only insist that there are room and hoi)e for the small farmer also, aiul thai large farming can never ahsorh or enable us to dispense with sukUI farms. I. And first with regard to i-'ruit. Some 'I'ree-Kruits, as well as drapes, are grown on a large scale in (!alifornia it is said, with profit. But nearly all our Pears, Apples, Cherries, I'lums, et( ., are grown by small farmers or gardeners, and not likely to be grown otherwise. All of them neeil at particular seasons a [)ersonal attention and a vigilance which can sekhjin or never be accorded by the owners or renters of large farms. Should small farms be generally absorbed into larger our Fruit- culture would thenceforth steadily dec line. II. 'The same is even more true of the production of Eggs and the rearing of Fowls. 1 have had knowledge of several attempts at pro- ducing Eggs and Fowls on a large s( ale in this country, but I have no trustworthy account of a single decided success in such an enterprise. On the contrary, many attempts to multiply I'ovds by thousands have broken down, just when their success seemed secure. Some contagious disease, some foreseen disaster, blasted the sanguine expectati()Il^ of the experimenter, and transmuted his gold into dross. Yet, I judge that there is no industry more capable of indefinite ex- tension, with fair returns, than Fowl-breeding on a moderate scale. Fggs and Chickens are in universal demand. They are luxuries ap,)reciated alike by rich and poor; and they might be doubled in ([uantity without materially depressing tiie market. Our thronged and tashionable water- ing-places are never adeijuately supplied with them ; our cities habitually take all they can get and look around for more. 1 believe that twice the largest number of Chickens ever yet produced in one year might be reared in 1871, with i)rofit to the breeders. Fven if others should fail, the home market found in each family would prove signally elastic. This industry should especially commend itself the poor widows, struggling t(j retain and rear their children in frugal indei)eiulence. A widow wlio, in the neighborhood of a city or of a manufacturing village, can rent a cottage with half an acre of southward-slooping, sunny land, which s!\c lU.iy fence so tightly as to confine her Hens therein, whenever their roaming abroad woul injure or anno;,- her neighbors, and whocan incur the expense of constructing thereon a warm, commodious Hen- house, may almost certainly make the production of Kggs and Fowls a source of continuous profit. If she can obtain chea])ly the refuse of a slaughter-house for feed, giving with it meal or grain iii moderate ([uanti- ties, and according that constant, personal, intelligent supervision with- II I : { '74 WHAT I KNOW OF I ARM [NO. out which Fowl-brecdiiiK rarely prospers, she may reasonal)iy expect it to pay, wliilc affording licr an ok iipation not subject to the raprires of an •i-niployer, and not re. lie has heard and believes that Cabbages bring from .$5 to .$g, I must condemn that which flatters fiirmers as though they were d^ii.i-gods and their calling the grandest and the happiest ever followed i >y mortnis, whin the hearer, imless very green,, mu' feel that the speal ir <]( ^^'^ n't believe one word of all he utters ; for, if h did. he would be farmi^~g, instead of li\ ing by some profession, and talkmg as though his authors did not know wheat from chaff. I regard the Agriculture of tins count: y as very far below the standard which it ^lould ere this have reach;:d : I hold that the great mass of our culti- vators might end should farm !)etter than they do, and that better Carm- ing would render their sons better citii'.ens and better men. If a single hne of this little work should seem calculated to cajole its readers i;<.fo self-complacency rather *han instruct them, I beg them, to believe that their impression wrongs my jjurpose. I am fully aware that others ha\e treated my theme with fuller know- ledge and fr-r greater al)ility than I bvoiighl to its discussion. "Then why not leave them the field ;'' Simply l)ecause, when all have writtei; who can elucidate my theme, ar least three-fourths of those who ought fx' study and jjonder it will nut have any treatise whatever upon Agri- tiuture — will hardly have yet regarded it a'; i theiae; v/liere»tn. books should be writtt;n and read. And, since th-jre may be some who will read this treatise for its writer's sake — will read it when they could not be persuaded to do iike honor to a more elaborate ajul enidite work — lS2 WHAI 1 KNOW x the wettest part of such field, and, having carefully read and digested Waring's, Krench'.s, or some other approved work on the subject, ])rocure tile and i)roceed next Fall to drain that field or part of a field llioroughly, taking esjjecial precautions .against back-water, and watch the efifect until satisfied that it will or will not pay to drain further. 1 think few have drained one acre thoroughly, and at no unnecessary cost, without being impelled by the result to drain more and faster until they had tiled at least half their respective farms. 9. As to Irrigation, I doubt that there is a farm in the LInited States where something::; \\\\\^\\. not be profitably done forthwith to secure advan- tage from the artificial retention and application of water. Whenever a brook or runnel crosses or skirts a farm, the (juestion — "Can the water and ovi- rost cfiil and list. litf ncr in- rd tor- )Ie will |)cr 1 or lore ro- der- ead Is of ight to SUMMINC. I'P. 185 here running uselessly by he retained, and m due season e(|uably dif- fused over some portioii of this land?'— at once presents itself. One who has never looked with this view will be astonished at the I'acility with whieh some acres of iieaily every farm may be irrigated. Often, a dam that need not ( ost $20 will siilVice to hold bai k ten thousand bar- rels o( water, so that it n)ay be led off alonj,' the upper edge of a slope or glade, falling olf just enough to maintain a gentle, steady . 187 |\s to iin- tcrili- i:in(j I \ Iter fid to (liavc If let of our iilianc is neither so deep nor so thoroiiRli as it should be. As a ruk', the feeding roots of plants do nf)t rini helow the Itottoin of the fur- rows, thougli in some instant es they do ; and he who fancies that five or six iiuhes of soil will, under our fervid suns, with our Sununers often rainless lor weeks, prodiu:e as liounteous and as sure a crop as twelve to eighteen in< lies, is impirvious to fact or reason. He might as sensibly maintain that you «()uld draw as long and as heavily against a tieposit in bank of $500 as against one of $1,500. I 2. I'inally, and as the siun of my ( onvi( tions. we need more thought, more studj, more intellect, infused into our Agriculture, with less blind devotion to a routine which, if ever judicious, has long since ceased to be so. 'Ihe tillage which a pioneer, fighting single-handed and :ill but empty-handed with a dense forest of giant trees, whi( h he (an do no better than to cut down and burn, found in(lis|)ensable among their stumjjs and roots, is n(Jt adapted to the altered ( ircum- tances of his graiuh hililren. If our most energetic firmers would abstract ten hours ea( h per week from their iiuessant drudgery, and devote them to reading and reflection with regard to their noble calling, they would live longer, live to better purpose, and betpieath .1 better exami)le. with more prop- erty, to their t hildren. My self-impose