THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



161 



has generally been one fault that has greatly les- 

 sened the effect and the value of the best agricul- 

 tural theorists ; and that is the fact whicii has 

 come home to the bosom of almost every man 

 wlio has not been practically taught from his 

 childhood to be a farmer, that each improvement 

 he has made has cost him more than its direct 

 positive value. The fancy iiirmer adonis every 

 thing in beauty around lam; but he finds his 

 forming ojierations to be not a gaining but a losing 

 business. He joys in the grow tli of his crops ; 

 but if he be not a rich man, that enjoyment is 

 marred by the consideration that his liirm is a 

 drain upon his means and his purse ; and the 

 worst of it is, that his more liardy and more ex- 

 perienced neighbors who know bow to make 

 money, instead of thanking him that he is aiming 

 to do some good, talk about him, and either pity 

 or laugh at his lolly and infatuation. 



The farming business in New England is yet 

 only in its infancy. It would be my purpose to 

 improve it by teaching the tiue economy of the 

 farm ; and I would have wealthy men who have 

 gained property in other pursuits, instruct them- 

 selves how to enjoy all the comlbrts of the for- 

 mer by making this pursuit to them a gaining 

 business. 



The price of labor must soon adapt itself to 

 the price of every thing produced by labor. Now 

 it seems to me that the present is peculiarly the 

 time when the piu'suit of agriculture may be com- 

 nienced and cari-ied on as a business lor the pro- 

 fitable investment of capital, like manufactures 

 or any other enterprise. To this end the econo- 

 my OF AGRICULTURE must be studied ; and if 

 oiu' agricultural amateurs can invent some scheme 

 by which a man with nearly mathematical accu- 

 racy can assure himself that his new occupation 

 «ill not be a losing business, thousands of our 

 liberal high minded men will become farmeis, 

 and a new face will soon be put upon the coun- 

 try. 



Let the " true economy of the farm" be the 

 motto of every man in the community who desires 

 the promotion of the cause of agriculture ; and let 

 the learned and the scientific, the shrewd obser- 

 ver and the zealous theorist, direct his attention 

 and inquiries mainly to this point of our object. 

 Let him seek out ihe cause why a liberal man 

 upon his farm who has not been taught to labor 

 himself, or who, if he be taught, is obliged for 

 any cause to be away from his work while it is 

 going on, encOLinters more expense than profit in 

 the piU'suit of iarming. 



I will suggest at first thought — for I have only 

 taken this subject in my mind, while on a hurried 

 journey a few days ago — that the ca|)ital of the 

 liberal fanner is wasted in various ways, where it 

 might be saved under those exact calculations 

 that are made in some large jiiechanical or man- 

 ufacturing establishments in which profit comes 

 as a matter of course. 



I know of a wealthy man in the lower part of 

 the State, near the sea, who has one of the mest 

 productive farms of New Hampshire. The price 

 of hay and potatoes at his door is twice as much 

 as the same articles would bring a hundred miles 

 in the interior. He annually raises some two hun- 

 dred tons of hay and some thousands bushels of 

 potatoes for sale. After doing this he may save 

 a hundred tons or more for the consumption of 

 his own stock, which is certainly always well 

 kept, for the evidence of which I need only recur 

 to the fact that the largest ax ever raised in New 

 Hampshire, with the exception of the Hubbard ox 

 raised in Claremout, after him, was born and 

 reared upon this farm. The hay sold is repaid to 

 the farm in the abimdance of manure taken from 

 the stables of the adjacent town where the hay is 

 consumed. The arrangements of this great liuni 

 are as good as could be imagned. Its wealthy 

 owner must enjoy a mental feast when he sees 

 the spacious fields turning out an average of three 

 tons of the best English hay to the acre, and 

 when he witnesses the rapid growth of his 

 improved cattle. But, I understand, his calcula- 

 tion to be, that he chars no money from his farm. I 

 Hid not know how to account for it ; but another 

 gei'ieinan, who for the love he bears the occupa- 

 tion, U' . undertaken to be an experimenter in 

 cultun, - ' . . 



agncuiuui , j j^l^^yyj, ]jo\v at least the income ers, and liberal and gene 

 ot a '°. ^^I' • j|,t)i} is annually lost on this great i be tainted with the repro 

 farm , It is ^^^^ ^j- ^^ .of the extended buildings expense applied to farmi 



and lences,^so ^^ jj,)|,, „|,,.j. fo,. „gg^ ^ut more 



- in «nd nbonr 



for oriwr 



these buildings. The houses, (not over extrava- 

 gant) barns and other buildings, for this form, 

 erected of perishable materials, cover acres of 

 ground ; the board fences, cither for use or 

 ornament, part the farm into mmecessary lots. 

 The gentleman thinks that all the buildings and 

 fences necessary might be built and supported at 

 a for less expense ; and if they were cheaply erect- 

 ed with granite or other material not so perisha- 

 ble, that a very large annual saving might be 

 made in this one item alone. Thousands of our 

 formers make a great mistake when they build a 

 great house, two-thirds of which is never occu- 

 liied, if it is finished, for any purposes of the farm, 

 — likewise in erecting other buildings with roofs 

 pitched, so that the shingles will become rotten 

 in from five to ten years, and sills laid in the 

 ground to decay in a still sliorter time. If a great 

 real e.state be lell to a child or children, free and 

 clear, ten to one, he or they, follovving in the foot- 

 steps of the father, at the time of taking posses- 

 sion, must tear down the old to build an entire 

 new set of buildings; and incur at once a debt 

 which shall either drive him from the premises, 

 or make him a slave for life. 



The true economy of constructing buildings is 

 one item, the study of which may teach a lawyer, 

 clergyman, merchant, or other man of business, 

 how to take up farming as an independent occu- 

 pation, and pursue it with the satisfaction not 

 only of making "two blades of corn or two spears 

 of grass grow where only one grew before," but 

 be will accomplish this object with benefit to his 

 own purse. 



The economy of labour is another important 

 point of Ihe farmers calculations. All labor saved 

 is money earned. If from the use of some new 

 agricultural implement that shall cost little more 

 than one that is not improved, as the plough, the 

 cultivator, the seed sower, the horse rake, &c., 

 manual labor can be lessened, — all this is so much 

 gained. But to purchase an ingenious and ex- 

 pensive machine that is but little used for every 

 forming operation will be money expended, that 

 the farm will not return. For exainple, the pur- 

 chase of an improved seed sower or corn planter, 

 costing twenty to thirty dollars, to s.ive a single 

 da\'s work in a year, is bad economy. 



Expense may be saved by a proper division of 

 labor ; and this can be better done on large farms 

 than on small one?i. iVIueh of the labor done by 

 human hands might be done with teams, as 

 ploughing instead of the use of the hoe, &c. &c. 

 The benefit of division of labor, is, that each per- 

 son pursues thai for which he is better qualified. 

 This division can take place only to a limited ex- 

 tent on the small farms of New England. But 

 the business of the farm should be so arranged 

 that the laborer in all working days ma}' never 

 have occasion to stand still in the time of work- 

 ing hours, whether the system be eight, ten or 

 twelve hours daily. In the case of liiring, the 

 man hiring and the man hired, should mutually 

 understand how many hours per day are to be 

 employed ; and on this understanding no hour 

 should be lost, cither in wailing for breakfast or 

 dinner. The rainy days also of such a liired man, 

 instead of being spent idly at an adjacent tavern, 

 store, or shop, where others are hindered in their 

 business by bis presence, should be occupied in 

 the repaij- or making of utensils — for every farmer 

 should have a broad axe, an auger, or gimblet, a 

 shave and a plane ; in the cleansing of cellars, in 

 thrashing and cleansing grain, in mixing mate- 

 rials for compost, or in some other business that 

 may be done under cover. The liired man, each 

 and every day, should make it a matter of con- 

 science to earn for his emplover not less than the 

 price of his boaid and wages ; and ihe parents of 

 all children who are intended for working men — 

 the best part of man's education is to be taught 

 how to work — will not do them a more valuable 

 service than bring them up habitually to consider 

 that it is dis'ionest to do less work for an employ- 

 er while he is out of sight, than he feels obliged to 

 do when that employer is present. 



If these and other rules which might be sug- 

 gested were invariably oliserved by the working 

 men of New England, their character might be 

 elevated to an equality with that of their employ- 

 rous men need no longer 

 oach that their labor and 

 ling was vain, and worse 

 than vain. 



Tlte eronomv of .tv-^tennnc^ i^ rtnotber HUhject 



connected with forming that requires calcu- 

 lation and forecast. I am not sure that those who 

 stint their workmen and families are ever the 

 gainers. I know a noble spirited farmer who has 

 been a tenant, paying rent tor his form for the last 

 forty years, and has cleared from it in that time 

 sufficient money lo purchase half a dozen com- 

 mon farms. His ten hired men were at work 

 haying in July, when I called upon him ; and the 

 good matrou, his wife, informed me that these 

 hired men had their meals five times a day while 

 engaged in this hard work of haying— that she 

 cooked lor this family, including two hired girls, 

 a nephew, her husband and herself, precisely six 

 pounds of meat in a day; and this with just as 

 much bread and butter and cheese, and tea or 

 coffee, once a day, as was wanted, with no spirit 

 stronger than home brewed beer, constituted the 

 sustenance of the family. Regularity of diet, good 

 salt pork, corned beef, fresh' and salt fish, with 

 now and then fresh beef veal or mutton, is a 

 maimer of living fit for kings ; and these, with 

 good calculations, the employer can afford to sup- 

 ply to his workmen, with the better alacrity in 

 proportion to the fidelity and assiduity of those 

 who are performing tho labor. The main 

 source of profit of the fanner to whom I have last 

 alluded has been his flock of thirty and forty cows, 

 the milk from which has been regularly six times 

 a week in the morning, and every Saturday night 

 carried to the city market, and there disposed of 

 at a somewhat higher profit on the cost than the 

 Caledonia farmers obtain on their butter and 

 cheese. However, when the price of the last ten 

 years is considered, and that of the pork which 

 the large dairy affords, together with the differ- 

 ence in the price and sustenance of labor between 

 this country and the sea-board are considered, I 

 do not see why the interior country farmer may 

 not have increased his means with an equal ra- 

 pidity as the tenant milkman in the vicinity of 

 Boston. 



The economy of sustenance will not, therefore, 

 OS is evinced in Ibis case, be so much consulted 

 by stinting the allowance or lessening the number 

 of meals, or by affording food of an inferior qua- 

 lity, as it will be by the careful use and good pre- 

 paration of that which is supplied : the fragments, 

 in imitation of the example of the Saviour, who 

 fed those who were an hungered, should be all 

 saved to be applied to some valuable purpose. 



Though perhaps, last not least, should be re- 

 garded the economy of investing additional capi- 

 tal to our farms. The usual passion of the thrifty 

 farmer is directed to the enlargement of his num- 

 ber of acres, and the increased quantity of ground 

 brought under cultivation. Frequently is he 

 much mistaken in the means of accumulation. 

 My facts may not as well apply to your natural 

 fertile lands in Caledonia, where the "ground may 

 long yield good crops without inmiure. as well as 

 they do to the more rough and sterile parts of 

 New England, where little or nothing can be 

 done without the use of aitifical stimulants. The 

 labor expended in well preparing and cultivating 

 land for a crop is capital always well invested. 

 Many farmers, I am confident, do not well appre- 

 ciate the benefits of generously manuring their 

 ground in some manner as ot\en as once in every 

 half a dozen years. The manure ordinarily put 

 on to four acres, say at the rate of ten cart loads 

 to the acre, if all placed upon one acre, will give 

 the farmer probably as mucb profit the first year, 

 according to the amount of labor, and fit tbatacre 

 for the five subsequent crops, so that it shall yield 

 liiur times the profit on the same labor. In the 

 mean time it would be equally well to cultivate 

 three aci-es left uiimanurcd witjiout any stimulant, 

 and still better to sow and plough in a crop of 

 clover or buckwheat, and thus at least half manure 

 the land for the next year's crop. 



Another economical investment, if it be not so 

 now, will in future years be understood, and ex- 

 tensively pracliccd by fiirmtrs, esjiecially by those 

 w ho can find a ready market for their" produce. 

 A general improvement under this head might 

 increase the jiroduction of New England ten-fold. 

 I am happy to see a part of this improvement 

 going into effect. The improvement is there- 

 claiming of meadow lauds by ditching, draining, 

 and hardening with gravel, sand, and manure, 

 thereby changingthe stinted crop of wild grass to 

 excellent English hay ; likewise the reclaiming of 

 hard, cold uplands, where the water running npar 



