THOROUGH TILLAGE. 99 



thoroughly. I spent three or four of my boyish 

 Summers planting and tilling Corn and Potatoes on 

 fields broken up just before they were planted, never 

 cross-plowed, and of course tough and intractable 

 throughout the season. The yield of Corn was mid- 

 dling, considering the season ; that of Potatoes more 

 than middling ; yet, if those fields had been well 

 plowed in the previous Autumn, cross-plowed early 

 in tlfe Spring, and thoroughly harrowed just before 

 planting-time, I am confident that the yield would 

 have been far greater, and the labor (save in har- 

 vesting) rather less the cost of the Fall plowing 

 being over-balanced by the saving of half the time 

 necessarily given to the planting and hoeing. 



Fall Plowing has this recommendation it lightens 

 labor at the busier season, by transfering it to one of 

 comparative dullness. I may have said that I con- 

 sider him a good farmer who knows how to make a 

 rainy day equally 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 him before May comes round again. 



There is no superstition in the belief that land is 

 (or may be) enriched by Fall Plowing. The Autumn 



