Vol 6. 



GENESEE FARMER. 



21 



WHEAT CULTURE. 



Mr. Editor — I am glad that W. Robinson, in tho 

 Dec. No. of the Farmer, corrected my errors, whicli 

 were published in the September number ; for it is 

 well known that we all can see others faults much 

 easier than our own : and some of us are so anxious 

 to correct others, that we imagine errors where they 

 do not exist. He is of my opinion when he says, 

 that " we are too anxious to raise wheat, and sow 

 too much." Now, it is rather my notion, that to 

 sow wheat on the same ground every other year 

 would be sowing rather more than to sow it once in 

 three or four years. 



Again, he says, " But look for yourselves, and you 

 will find plenty of evidence that our friend Garbutt 

 has committed an error in the September number of 

 the Farmer, where he says that green vegetables, 

 and manure made from them, are of but little value 

 when compared with that made from dried ones, such 

 ae hay, straw, and stalks." Now, Mr. Robinson, I 

 never thought so, nor ever said any thing like it. I 

 said that dried vegetables, such as hay, straw, and 

 stalks, make more and much richer manure by being 

 fed to animals ; but that green ones, and particular- 

 ly clover, did not require the same amount of fer- 

 mentation to prepare them for the food of plants : yet 

 there was nothing-, as manure, lost by feeding them. 



I am very glad to learn from him, that the past 

 ten years, and not the future, are to regulate the va- 

 lue of our agricultural products ; for I think that it 

 will be much to the interest of the farmer, and will 

 benefit the wool-grower, as well as the raisers of 

 wheat. 



He then " appeals to any set of candid men to say 

 which would enrich land most, feeding it one year 

 with sheep, which gnaw a little below the surface ; 

 or plowing under the first year, in its green state, 

 7 or 8 tons per acre, including roots and all." 



I cannot say how low Mr. Robinson's sheep gnaw 

 below the surface ; but mine generally leave some 

 of the clover roots in the ground ; and however un- 

 candid he may think me, I am willing to acknow- 

 ledge that pasturing ground enriches it, and that it 

 is equally beneficial towards improving the soil to 

 plowing it under — for such is the economy of 

 creation. 



I will take the freedom to inform Mr. R. that al- 

 cohol can be made from wheat, corn, and even pota- 

 toes, as well as barley ; and if it is his intention to 

 be so very consistent, he must not raise any of them. 



I am glad to learn that he and so many of his 

 neighbors have had such bountiful crops of wheat 

 the past season, and would like to know v/hat their 

 crops were in 1841 and 1842. 



The more animals that can be kept, and well fed, 

 both in summer and winter, on grain-growing 

 ground, the more we shall enrich it ; providing we 

 manage the manure aright. And Mr. R. is satisfied 

 that we ought to be particular and make all the ma- 

 nure we can. But I should like to know how he will 

 pasture his stock, when his ground is all in wheat 

 or clover, and the latter all plowed under ; and 

 whether he can winter them well on straw alone. 



But there is a consolation for us both : for what- 

 ever anxiety we may feel lest our neighbors should 

 fall into an error, we may rest assured that there is 

 very little danger to be apprehended from it by us ; 

 for each one will have his own way, independent of 

 any thing that we may say. 



WILLIAM GARBUTT. 

 Wheatland, Dec. 30, 1844. 



BOOK FARMING— A PLEA FOR ITS 

 OPPONENTS. 



Mr. Editor— Strange as it may seem, there are 

 perhaps not fifty agricultural papers taken in this 

 beautifully picturesque, rural county of rich alluvi- 

 ons. It was only last week that a wealthy farmer, a 

 descendant from that Germany which has produced a 

 Berzilius and a Liebig, complained to me that he had 

 been cheated out of the premium on a horse, which 

 had been awarded to him at our last Seneca County 

 Fair. From the impulsive manner in which he spoke 

 of the cheat, I suspected that he had been paid in a 

 counterfeit coin, or a bill of an exploded bank. It 

 was far worse than this, in his view of the case — he 

 had been compelled to receive, in lieu of a dollar in 

 coin, a bound quarto of the Albany Cultivator — a 

 thing about as useless to him, as were the shirt and 

 trowsers given by Captain Cook to the South Sea 

 Islander. 



If I mistake not tha cause why book farming is 

 in so little repute among practical farmers, the fault 

 is not altogether on the side of the unlettered man 

 of the plow. St. James truly says, " faith without 

 works is dead ;" yet nine book farmers out of ten 

 exhibit, in the appearance of their ill-managed, slo- 

 venly-worked farms, the very reverse of the apostolic 

 axiom. I once rode by a farm, adorned by a capa- 

 cious barn, v/ith a stone-basement stable, and paint- 

 ed ventilating window-blinds ; its strong stake-and- 

 rider fences, clean meadows, and finely-pulverized 

 fallows, filled me with respect for the proprietor, in 

 vesting him, in my imagination, with all the attri- 

 butes of a truly scientific farmer, and a man of taste. 

 Passing on a little farther, I came to a farm where 

 a large dog was driving the cattle out of a corn- 

 field, through a gap in the old rotten fence. The 

 whole farm was overrun with Canada thistles — the 

 fences would hardly have had an altitude, were it 

 not for the support they received from the alders and 

 briers — the big lumps in the fallow indicated what 

 the sailors would call " good holding-ground " — the 

 barn doors off the hinges, one of them laid cross- 

 wise of the door-way, to keep out the hogs — the 

 house (what a rambling piece of patchwork !) in ru- 

 ins, leaky eve-troughs, broken windows, with sun- 

 dry sashless holes in the attic gable. Said I to my- 

 self, here is the abode of a poor unintellectual toper, 

 perhaps a petty office-holder — an idler, who spends 

 his time and his substance at taverns, electioneering 

 for himself and the party that feeds him the small 

 crumbs in its gift. I soon found, that in both cases 

 I was sadly mistaken ; the neat, well-worked farm 

 was owned and improved by a Pennsylvania German, 

 so deficient in the first rudiments of school learning, 

 that he sometimes took his Dutch calendar to the 

 school-marm, to interpret its meaning. But he had 

 that in his physical manhood which is of more ac- 

 count to successful farming than mere book-learning 

 without it — he had the early-acquired habits of in- 

 dustry and self-denial — his physical education was 

 perfect. "I'is true he made great blunders and 

 waste in the application of his animal manures ; his 

 use of mineral or inorganic matter was often neg- 

 lected, or grossly misapplied ; he was also the vic- 

 tim to that disturbing force always at war with in- 

 tellectual improvement, in the mind of an imletter- 

 ed man — I mean superstitious and traditionary error; 

 but his powerful, well-trained nerves — his indomit- 

 able, plodding industry — his all-and-singular devo- 

 tion to his own calling, from which no petty ambi-i 

 tion for social distinction, in the shape of a petty 



