SECOND DISTRICT AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATION. 283 



thorouglily or you will fail. You must plant at the right time and 

 in the riglit manner or your crop will not reward your labors. There 

 are failures enough which is not the fault of the farmer, and which 

 the farmer cannot defend himself against. No man can devote two 

 months to planting his crop, two months to harvesting it, and eight 

 months to the corner grocery, and succeed. 



We often read of new systems of education, like learning French 

 without a master, or new patent medicines which are advertised will 

 cure every known malady, and do it right off. These things are all 

 possible, however improbable tliey may be, but no system of farming 

 has ever been discovered, or ever will be discovered, where a man can 

 crop his farm year after year and put nothing back on the land and 

 not wear it out. Manure is just as valuable in this country as in any 

 other place in the world. In Napa County every pound of manure 

 is now saved and put upon the vineyards. I do not say that there 

 are better farmers there than you are, but in our valley the grape 

 vine requires some nourishment, and it gets it, and it pays to do this. 

 A very distinguished French writer, and one of the French Commis- 

 sioners of Viticulture, reported to his Government some years since, 

 after making the most careful and patienft examination of the subject 

 of manures, extending through a term of years, that for every pound 

 of good barnyard manure they got back one of grapes. Now, in Napa 

 County we sell good grapes for $30 a ton, which would be a cent and 

 a half a pound for your manures. This may seem anomalous to those 

 who dump their manure in the slough or burn it up, or leave it as an 

 ornament to the barnyard. Haul your manure out on the land in 

 the Fall and scatter it and plow it under, and it is as useful to the 

 lands in Cd,lifornia as»it is to any land in the world. 



DIVERSIFIED PRODUCTION. 



The fertility of our soil will not always continue, unless we give it 

 back something that we take from it. In this connection I may be 

 pardoned for reminding you that wheat raising will not always pay. 

 Sooner or later, even in your great valley, you must adopt a more 

 diversified production. The wheat growers in this fertile valley must 

 profit by the experience of other people in other lands. You can't 

 raise wheat always; your soil will wear out for wheat production, 

 even though you manure it. Sooner or later you must produce 

 something else, or not ijroduce anything. Look at New York and 

 Pennsylvania. The Genesee Valley, in the State of New York, was 

 once the finest wheat-growing region in the United States. Now the 

 farmers in that beautiful valley do not raise even enough wheat for 

 home consumption; but they have adapted the soils to other uses. 

 You can raise cattle wherever you can raise wheat, although small 

 farmers would, of course, have to raise their stock upon a small 

 scale. Everybody cannot have 5,000 acres of land, or 1,000 head of 

 cattle. Indeed, it would be better that there were no such farms in 

 the country; but every man who lias a farm can raise a few head 

 of cattle and horses, and if he raise the best he can find a good 

 market for them. The best of anything never hunts a market. You 

 have an immense wheat crop this year. But where are the prices? 

 You have to store your grain or sell for less than it costs to produce 

 it; and you are the sufferers, because your eggs are all in one basket. 

 It may be answered that this great valley was only intended for 



