260 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



Feb. 29, 1833. 



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FOR THE NEW ENGI.AND FARMER. 



ON RAISING OATS AND POTATOES. 



Mr Fessendex— It is not with the vain expec- 

 tation of contributing anytliiug, thai will be either 

 very interesting or profitable to your numerous read- 

 ers, that I comply with the invhation in the 30th No. 

 of your useful paper. Should you deem the few 

 hasty remarks I propose to offer, of sufficient con- 

 sequence to occupy a place in your columns, (a 

 presumption which a censurable remissness on 

 the part of your more scientific and enlightened 

 correspondents and readers, will alone justify,) I 

 hope my contribution, like the widow's mite, will 

 not be appreciated according to its intrin.sic value, 

 but from the motive which induces it. 



Should every practical farmer who reads your 

 paper, obey your 1-equest by communicating from 

 time to time, the results of his experiments, ex- 

 perience and practice, whether successful or ad- 

 verse, they would amount, in the aggregate, to a 

 fund of useful information which would be of 

 incalculable worth to that numerous class of your 

 readers, to whose interest your columns are chiefly 

 devoted ; and whose object is to profit by the 

 experience of practical farmers, communicated 

 through them. 



As the sowing and planting season is rapidly 

 approaching, and as I have sometimes been accu- 

 sed of raising better oats and potatoes than some 

 of my neighbors, I propose to inform such of your 

 readers who know no belter way, my method of 

 cultivating these i)articulnr crops ; or rather, tlie 

 method which, after various experiments, I intend 

 to pursue in future, till I learn some more excel- 

 lent way, w^hich if known to any of your readers, 

 «hey will confer a favor by communicating. 



First then as to oats, I shall sow them as 

 early in the spring as the state of the ground will 

 admit, on land which the year before was planted 

 with corn and potatoes ; that ])lanted with corn 

 first received from twenty to twentyfive cart loads 

 of stable and barnyard manure to the acre, which 

 was spread and ploughed in five or six inches 

 deep. The crop of corn was good, hut I am sat- 

 isfied it would have been better had the ground 

 been ploughed more shallow, or first ploughed and 

 the manure harrowed in ; the ground not being 

 drawn into hills, is now level ; I shall jdough it 

 evenly to the same depth as before and sow it with 

 a little more than two bushels of oats to an acre, 

 recollecting that ' he that sowcth sparingly shall 

 nlso reap si)aringly,' (which those nnist do, if any 

 were so unfortunate, who followed the mistaken 

 directions in a former communication of mine re- 

 specting wheat ; I said Jive pecks instead of three 

 as it was printed ; ) I shall plough them in with a 

 very light plough, or harrow them in. I have 

 practised both ways and have never discovered 

 any essential difference in the crop ; in either case 

 the roller is not to be omitted. The ground from 

 which a crop of potatoes was taken will be mana- 

 ged the same. It may not be improper to remark 

 here, that the potato crop in this section was uncom- 

 monly light, generally. Several who saw rny croj) 

 while gathering, pronounced it nuich the best 

 they had seen, I impute the difference principally 

 to manuring and seeding. I select the finest po- 

 tatoes for seed while gathering the crop ; choose 

 to plant them the latter part of May or early in 

 June, on greensward ploughed once shallow, and 



apply from twenty to thirty loads of manure from 

 the hogyard, spread and harrowed in. The pota- 

 toes are cut into pieces, having two or three eyes 

 in each piece, and placed three in a hill. I choose 



therefore, of confining one of them till the yoke, 

 ring, staple and all are fastened to his neck, and 

 then setting him loose with this frightfid append- 

 age rattling and flying about his head, fill the. 



to plant shallow and near the surface. When they i poor animal, ' frightened out of liLs wits ' and ex- 

 are all well up I hoe ihern well, and before they hausled with running, stops and stands still for hi-s 

 be"in to top and fall down I hoe them again, form- mate to be served in the same way, by which time ' 



having recovered his breath, both are again set I 

 loose, tied tail to tail, to ])erform their \ cry inter- . 

 estjng and amusing evolutions ; they are now half j 

 subdued and the whip soon accomplishes the rest, 

 an<i teaches them to lead a team. Will not cattle 

 managed in this way, Irightcned, lacerated, abused 

 and provoked, be likely to remember it, and ever 

 after to be timorous or stubborn ? Right or wrong, 

 1 managed differently. My first care was to make 

 fast a chain to a post, having ready two j)air of 

 steady oxen near by. The yoke was then put on 

 to the first steer, to which the chain was imme- 

 diately fastened ; he made one or two cfi'orts to 

 get away, hut finding them unavailing soon desist- 

 ed ; the other was then yoked, and they were led 

 ofi"(piietly between the oxen into the woods ; they 

 were used in this maimer tliree days in succession, 

 they were not yoked again for several days on ac- 

 count of bad weather, when I directed my boys 

 to yoke them and put them forward in the team, 

 merely to exercise them ; this was done then and 

 several times since without the least difficulty — 

 they have neither deserved nor received a stroke 

 of the whip to hurt them. 



1 am confident that our domestic animals may 

 be so taught, as to make the inhuman and abusive 

 use of the lash, so often witnessed, altogether lui- 

 necessary. Is not this a subject worthy of the pen 

 of some one of your humane correspondent.s, whose 

 practical knowledge enables him minutely to point 

 out the proper course to obtain the desired result? 

 JNO. TOWNSEND. 

 Jlndover, Con. Feb. 18, 1832. 



ing a round, tiandsome hill, which by fall is gen- 

 erally well filled with fair, handsome potatoes. 



I obtained some (as I esteem them) very valua- 

 ble hints on the management of plough land, from 

 an address published in your paper, some four or 

 five years ago, (before I was a subscriber,) deliv- 

 ered before the Saratoga County Agricultural So- 

 ciety, by Earl Stimson, Esq.* I take the liberty to 

 suggest the pi-opriety of republishing it. An in- 

 telligent and successful farmer in a neighboring 

 town, who obligingly lent me the papers contain- 

 in? the address, assured me that lie had been 

 giiided, and much to his advantage, by the direc- 

 tions contained therein. 



It has been the practice of many farmers in this 

 and many other sections of Connecticut, to manure 

 both corn and potatoes in the hill, drawing the 

 earth into hills around the i>lants, and to split the 

 corn hills by striking one or two furrows length- 

 wise with the rows, (instead of harrowing them 

 down,) and then to sow oats and plough them in, 

 leaving the rest to nature, which must struggle 

 hard to bring forward a very abundant crop from 

 the cold depth where the seed hes buried. 



I offer these brief remarks, not so much whh a 

 view to instruct as to elicit instruction from oth 

 ers, who have the advantage of more extensive 

 information and experience, and a more hai)py 

 talent to communicate them than I pretend to claim. 

 JNO. TOWNSEND. 



Jlndover, Co7i. Feb. 18, 1832. 



TRAINING CATTLE. 



There is one subject connected with husbandry 

 which is of considerable importance, and which I 

 do not recollect to have seen noticed by any of 

 your correspondents. I mean the best method of 

 training cattle for labor. To be sure, every farm- 

 er's boy who is capable of handling a whip or goad, 

 imagines himself competent to break a pair of 

 steers. On this subject I confess myself wholly 

 unable to impart any instr-uction or advice, having 

 had but very little experience. I have generally 

 purchased my working oxen ready broke, of dif- 

 ferent persons, and have never bought two pair 

 which were alike with respect to their propensities 

 fi)r work ; I have found the difference to vary and 

 range from very good to good for nothing ; some 

 have been kind and docile, while others have been 

 timorous, or vicious and stubborn. What is the 

 cause of this wide difference? Has nature estab- 

 lished it? Is it to be found in their natural dis- 

 positions, or is it the result of education ? The 

 latter I am inclined to believe, and the more so 

 from my observations within two weeks. 



Having often been unfortunate in purchasing I 

 resolved to train my own, and commenced last 

 week with a pair of steers coming three years old, 

 which from habit had become rather wild, llav- 

 iu"- had, as I before observed, little or no experi- 

 ence of my own, yet common sense taught me to 

 avoid the practice of some others, who profess to 

 understand the art and mystery of subduing the 

 most stubborn animal almost in an instant ; instead. 



*See New England Farmer, Vol. v. page 244, 256. 



GRAPE VINES. 



Grafting grape vines is a new thing in this sec- 

 tion. But few have heard of it or tried the exper- 

 iment. The stock of the common wild grape, 

 numerous in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, 

 will answer for grafting almost any of the varieties 

 of the grape. A publication in a southern paper 

 induced me, the last spring, to try the experiment 

 of grafting at the surface, denuding the stock three 

 inches below the surface. The scions of the Isa- 

 bella grape, cut the fall previous and kept buried 

 in the cellar, were inserted at the surface, leaving 

 one eye above, tying a siring round the slock anil 

 drawing the earth to the stock. The scions 

 sprouted, but grew but little. It is said they will 

 grow over twenty feet the first year anil hear the 

 second. Rut my scions were probably injured by 

 being shaded, and by neglecting to cut off fre- 

 quently the s|)routs from the old and other contig- 

 uous stocks. I cut oft' another stock about three 

 feet above the ground, and grafted with composi- 

 tion, (one |>art of tallow, two of bees-wax, and 

 three of resin, prepared like shoemakers' wax,) in 

 the same manner that apple trees are generally 

 grafted. This Isabella scion succeeded well. In 

 the fall I measured as accurately as I could, with 

 a ten foot pole, the main and lateral branches, and 

 the length of each being added together amounted 

 to sixty feet, the main stock was twelve feet. 

 From this vine I anticipate this year a fine parcel 

 of grapes. The tops of the old stocks I cut into 

 more than fifty pieces, and planted them perpen- 



