154: HOW TO MAKE THE FARM PAY. 



There is no State but what can and ought to raise enough 

 wheat for its home consumption, and there are no obstacles in 

 the way greater than the tradition that wheat will not pay. 



The New England States produce only one fifteenth of their 

 consumption, and pay from eight dollars to sixteen dollars per 

 barrel for wheat flour. We do not propose to the farmers of 

 that section to raise wheat for exportation ; leave that to the 

 Western farmers; but they can, by an improved system of farm- 

 ing for wheat, produce the wheat for home consumption at a 

 great ultimate saving. It v/ill require the investment of con- 

 siderable capital in drainage, in improving soils, (see Chapter III.,) 

 in the purchase of stock, etc.; but the object is a worthy one, 

 and ultimate success and profit are, we believe, certain. The 

 Impeovement of Soils for Grain is discussed in Chapter III., 

 but we would say here that there are many soils that can be 

 made to produce good crops of corn, oats, rye and barley, that 

 will only yield small crops of wheat, because wheat requires 

 some elements not required by the other grains. Some soils, 

 with only a small admixture of clay, will only give a fair wheat 

 crop in a six years' rotation. Where clay and sand, or 

 clay and gravel, are commingled in just the proportion which 

 will insure drainage without drought, wheat can be profitably 

 raised every three years. If your soil is not of this character, 

 the first thing to be done is to drain. Clay contains the food 

 ''or the wheat plant, but it is also the most retentive of water, 

 and an excess of water is death to winter wheat. After drain- 

 age of a heavy clay soil a few hundred bushels per acre of sand 

 completes the work of improvement, and you have a soil which 

 can be made to yield remunerative crops. A pure sand cannot 

 he made a remunerative wheat soil. Clay can always be made 

 so by the application of Sand, Lime, Salt, and rich Barn- 

 yard Manure. The new soils of the prairies will, for a few 



