128 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



March 



I^or the New England Farmer. 

 CKOPS AND "WEATHER IN MINNESOTA. 



Mr. Editor : — The ■winter so far has been 

 very mild for this latitude ; the weather has been 

 more like autumn than like winter. We have 

 splendid sleighing now, with about six inches of 

 snow. We had our first severe frost the twenty- 

 seventh or twenty-eighth of September. Nearly 

 all the cix)ps were then out oi the way of frost. 



We raise here the white and yellow dent corn 

 principally, the same as is raised in Ohio, Illinois 

 and Indiana ; most of the seed having been 

 brought from those States, and we find no diffi- 

 .culty in its ripening here. I planted my dent 

 corn about the twentieth of May, and I never 

 saw sounder corn than I raised from it ; I also 

 planted some eight rowed yellow flint on the fif- 

 teenth of June, which got perfectly ripe, and 

 which I cut up before the frost. 



I raised last season a small piece of winter 

 wheat from three bushels of seed, which yielded 

 me something over forty bushels of fine plump 

 wheat ; it stood on an average from five to six 

 feet in height. 



My farm is situated in what is called the big 

 \foods, fifty miles south-west from St. Paul, 

 on the Minnesota river. The soil is a rich, black 

 loam, and is from one to three feet deep, and is 

 said to be equal to the best soils of Illinois, by 

 men from that State. 



I cannot close this without expressing to you 

 the pleasure I feel in reading the Farmer; it has 

 been a constant visitor to me for the last seven 

 years, and I intend it shall continue so as long as 

 I live. C. A. Sherwin. 



Belle Plain, Minnesota, Jan. 17, 1858. 



PLOWS, AND PLOWING. 



The attention of mechanics, of agricultural and 

 of scientific men, has for several years past been 

 considerably occupied in endeavors to learn 

 whether the operation of plowing cannot be per- 

 formed in a quicker and cheaper, and at the same 

 time, in a more thorough msinner. That atten- 

 tion has been the means of introducing a great 

 variety of plows, of different construction, and 

 of varied capacity for performing the work re- 

 quired of them. Some, after exhausting the 

 means of their patentees, or manufacturers, and 

 taking a large aggregate from farmers who were 

 desirous to avail themselves of every improve- 

 ment which they thought would prove of practi- 

 cal benefit in their labors, have utterly failed to 

 accomplish the work claimed for them, and are 

 abandoned. Others, possessing some good qual- 

 ities, while they were deficient in most others 

 which go to make up a perfect plow, have been 

 introduced, and perform their work indifferently, 

 but just well enough to prevent their being re- 

 jected and sent off the farm. There is a third 

 class of plows, undoubtedly, which may be made 

 to execute good work, in the hands of skilful 

 workmen, but they are neither so perfect, nor so 

 cheap, as to preclude all hope of devising and 



constructing another, which shall be cheaper, 

 meet all the practical wan's of the farmer better, 

 and more permanently and satisfactorily turn and 

 pulverize his furrows, than any plow now extant. 



But we cannot form a correct judgment of a 

 plow, nor of a horse, entirely by their good 

 looks ; the latter may have a clear and unblem- 

 ished-looking eye, but be stone blind, and the 

 former, to an unmathematical critic, may appear 

 to possess all the lines of beauty and utility nec- 

 essary to perfection in a plow, and yet utterly 

 fail to turn a deep, sufficiently broad, and well- 

 broken furrow. 



A plow with true proportions, is constructed 

 upon strictly mathematical principles, and this is 

 as necessary to the ease and comfort of the team 

 and prompt despatch of the business, as it is to 

 the execution of the work itself. 



The plow being the fundamental implement of 

 agriculture, it has justly received the large share 

 of attention of which we have spoken, and lias 

 been the subject of careful consideration by many 

 distinguished minds. For several years, in Eng- 

 land, experiments have been made to work it by 

 steam, and they have so far succeeded as to 

 arouse the attention of many leading agricultu- 

 rists in that f ountry, and to some extent in our 

 own. To be profitable, however, if they are found 

 to work well, we suppose they must be used on 

 extensive lands, and not on freeholds so small as 

 those generally are in New England.. 



The plows which are represented in the accom- 

 panying cuts, possess some peculiarities which 

 are new, and some advantages over all other 

 plows, 'fthat have not heretofore been realized. 

 They are the invention of Frederick Holbrook, 

 Esq., of Brattleboro', Vt., and have groion grad- 

 ually out of Ms own practice in the Jield, the only 

 place where a person can consistently decide how 

 a plow should be constructed in order to secure 

 certain desired results. He did not go to work 

 to make a j>low, without an accurate knowledge 

 of its importance, and of what is commonly re- 

 quired of such an implement, — but while ploioing, 

 saw the deficiencies of the one in his hands, and 

 corrected them, and so doing again and again, 

 through a series of years, has succeeded in pro- 

 ducing "The Universal Ploio," which is destined, 

 we think, t» meet a want of the farmer that has 

 never before been supplied. 



The implement embraces various forms and 

 sizes of mould-boarjl, each nicely fitting one com- 

 mon standard and frame-work — thus adapting 

 the plow to a wide variety of soils and modes of 

 culture. Each mould-board is constructed to 

 perform its respective work in a thorough and 

 finished style. 



We introduce on the opposite page two or 

 three forms of the plow, contenting ourselves with 



