So6 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



May 23, 1832. 



A sr r i c u 1 t u r e . 



AN ADDRESS 

 To the Essex ^i^riculbiral Society, delivered at An- 

 dover, Mass. Sept. 29, 1831, at their annual Cat- 

 tle Show. By Henry Colman. Published at the 



request of the Society. 



Mi President, and Gentlemen of the Agricultural Society,— 



I am uot insensible to the honor of your ap- 

 pointment on this occasion. 1 should not, how- 

 ever, have undertaken this duty, but from the con- 

 sideration that every man is bound to render any 

 practicable service, which the community demands 

 of him. You do not expect an oration. Agricul- 

 ture has little concern with rhetorical flourishes. 

 Determined princijjles, plain matters of fact and 

 the results of well conducted experiments, are 

 most useful. These will be the subjects of my 

 address. 



I. The first object of a farmer should be to 

 produce as much as he can. We are not speak- 

 ing of mere amateur farmers, who do not need the 

 products of a farm as a means of subsistence or 

 profit, and who are at liberty to farm as mucli or 

 as little as they please ; nor of our monjirel iarm- 

 ers, a sort of "jack-at-all-trades," who farm a lit- 

 tle, and trade a little, and manufacture a little, and 

 jockey a good deal ; but of those husbandmen, 

 whose whole dependence is on their farms for their 

 own and the support and comfort of their families. 

 The object of such fanners should be to produce 

 from their farms as much as they can, and of that 

 which is most needed or most profitable. We lay 

 lliis down as a great principle, and shall presently 

 come to the qualifications which belong to it. Ev- 

 ery man should obtain from his farm all that he 

 can. This will require labor and care ; but the 

 necessity of labor and care, where they are not 

 excessive, is a blessing, not an evil. Occupation 

 is enjoyment. Idleness is always hazardous to 

 Tirtue, and rend»rs a man a nuisance to his neigh- 

 borhood. There is a satisfaction in a farmer's 

 gains, not to be found in many of the occupations 

 of life. The increase of his products impoverishes 

 no other man ; but confers a benefit upon the 

 community, by extending the means of human 

 subsistence, rendering the land which he cultivates 

 more fertile, and inciting others to emulate his ex- 

 ample of good husbandry. 



There are three modes of increasing the pro- 

 duce of a soil, within the reach of every farmer: 

 draining, ploughing, and manuring. I can only 

 glnace at these topics, for it is not my intention to 

 give a treatise on agriculture. 



1. First, of draining. There are extensive 

 tracts of low and wet land in the country, enrich- 

 ed by the decay oi their own native growth and 

 the copious washings of centuries from the sur- 

 rounding hills, which require only to be drained, 

 to produce, instead of a worthless herbage, the best 

 of English hay and corn. In many cases, remov- 

 ing the water by opened or covered drains, so 

 formed as to cut oflTthe springs at the sides of the 

 meadow, is all that is necessary. In other cases, 

 the addition of^^ some firmer substance, such as 

 sand, or gravel, or loam, is needed to give it con- 

 iistency. This in general is to be found in the 

 ueighborhood, and may be placed on the meadow 

 at a season when such labor can be easily applied. 

 In most cases, the materials for manure obtain- 

 ed from the ditches, and the first or the two first 

 crops will defray the expense of the improve- 



ment.* Sand contributes to the improvement of 

 such lands, by dividing the soil into fine parts, and 

 rendering it favorable for cultivation and the growth 

 of the finer grasses; both sand and gravel serve 

 to give it firmness ; but probably the best mode 

 of managing such meadows, after being well drain- 

 ed, would l)e to invert the sod, and, after rolling, 

 to cover it with a coating of good loam mixed well 

 with manure, to the depth of about two inches ; 

 or to apply such a covering without inverting the 

 sod, and to sow the grass seeds immediately upon 

 this. Soine lauds have bet n managed in this way 

 with great advantage. A mistake is frequently 

 made in the too copious application of sand or 

 gravel to meadows. So much has been'put on as 

 to prevent in a great measure the benefits expect- 

 ed from it. Such applications do nothing towards 

 enriching the soil ; but are required only to aid in 

 dividing, drying and giving it firmness. Beyond 

 what is required for these purposes, the applica- 

 tion would be hurtful. The first object must be 

 to lay these lands as dry as ])nssible ; and it sug- 

 gests itself as an important improvement, where it 

 is [U'acticable, to erect a small embankment at the 

 outlet of such meadow, with a sluice-way and 

 gate, so that the meadow may I>e flooded at pleas- 

 ure. Thousands of acres in this country admit of 

 these improvements. They may be effected at an 

 expense which, by their increased products, would 

 be soon remunerated. 



2. The next means of improving land is plough- 

 ing. We do not cultivate land enough ; not near- 

 ly enough. Several farms in the country contain 

 hundreds of acres, with not more than six or ten 

 luider the plough. This is not farming ; this is 

 only seeing how we can get along without farm- 

 ing ; it is, in fact, going to sleep in the cart and 

 leaving the cattle to find their own way. But the 

 land, says the farmer, will not pay for cultivation, 

 — there is some such — in general, however, most 

 land will much more than pay for cultivation. 

 But it costs labor ; so does everything else in lifi', 

 that is worth having. It requires manure — true ! 

 but cultivation is the great means of obtaining ma- 

 nure. Ctdtivation increases the products of the 

 land. The more products, the more stock ; the 

 more stock, the more manure ; and land in gener- 

 al, under generous cultivation, and frugal manage- 

 ment of its products and manure, is capable not 

 only of maintaining but increasing its own fertility. 

 The great law of divine providence holds in this 

 as in other cases, the more you do, the more you 

 can do ; to him that hath shall more be given. 



The late Col. Taylor, of Virginia, one of the 

 most distinguished farmers in the country, could nt 

 one time scarcely manure five acres of his land ; 

 but in eighteen years, he so increased the products 

 of his farm as to be able to manure one hundreil 

 and fifty, from the resources of the farm itsclf.f 

 This improvement was chiefly efliscted by the ex- 

 tended cultivation of Indian corn, and a most care- 

 ful ap])lication of the fodder or offal. Cultivate 

 your liirm to the extent of your power of manur- 



" A successful experiment of this kind has been niaiie 

 by Asa T. Newhall, of Lynntield, wbere at least ten 

 acres of a sunken and useless hog have been, at a moder- 

 ate expense, brought into productive English mowing. 

 He has furni^lled the Commillce with ample details on 

 the subject, which will he found appended to their Re- 

 port on Reclaimed Meadows. An improvement of Ibis 

 sort 13 likewise lo be found on the farm of Isaac Osgood, 

 of Andover, where, by good judgment and labor, meadows 

 of some extent have been redeemed and made productive. 



t Albany Ag. Tracts, No. ii. p. 56. 



ing and keeping it clean ; and the power of ma- 

 nuring may by judicious management be increased 

 to an almost indefinite extent. Laud, which, when 

 it is manured, will not more than pay for the labor 

 of cultivation, should ue abandoned. 



There is a material distinction between plough- 

 ing too much land and ])loughing land ton much. 

 For garden culture and tap-rooted vegetables, the 

 land cannot be in too fine tilth ; but for other 

 crops it is not so important ; and the great object 

 should be to preserve all the vegetable matter in 

 the soil, that by fermentation and. decomposition it 

 may supply food to the growing ))liiuts. The 

 common mode of ploughing green sward, for ex- 

 ample, is to tear it in pieces in a rough and care- 

 less manner, to leave the sods loose on the surface 

 and l!;en by harrowing to break them fine, and if 

 possible, to bring all the grass and vegetable mat- 

 ter to the top to be exhaled by the sun and air — 

 a more wasteful process cannot be pursued. Mr 

 Phinney, an intelligent and practical cultiv.itor in 

 Lexington, Mass. had the curiosity to weigh the 

 vegetable niatler in a single foot of sward land, ta- 

 ken liom a field which had been mown for a num- 

 ber of years, the soil a light loam with a gravelly 

 bottom, and thinly set with red top and herds 

 grass; and found it to contain nine ouncec of veg- 

 etable matter, consisting of the roots and tops of 

 the grasses ; giving at this rate upwards of twelve 

 and a quarter tons to the acre. This itself would 

 be a very considerable manuring; but this by the 

 usual management is entirely lost. It is there- 

 fore of the last importance, in breaking up land, to 

 turn the sod as completely as it can be turned, and 

 at a season when there is the greatest quantity of 

 vegetable matter on the surface ; to roll it that the 

 air may be excluded, and all the benefit of the de- 

 composition of the vegetable matter retained in 

 the soil ; and afterwards to cultivate the crop as 

 iiir as possible without disturbing the sod. My 

 own authority is of litth^ importance in the case, 

 ihnngh I have for several years practised on this 

 system and been satisfied of its utility ; but in ad- 

 dition to the tcsti7nony of the gentleman referred 

 to, whose opinions are entitled to great respect, 

 you have the experience in its favor of two as em- 

 inent farmers as the country has produced, John 

 Lorain of Pennsylvania, and Earl Stimson of New 

 York, who have strongly recommended it. 



The depth of ploughing and the number of 

 ploughings to be given to land, are to he deter- 

 mined by circumstances. Ploughing is too deep 

 when it buries all the richer jiarls of the soil, and 

 brings to the to[i only a cold, gravelly substance, 

 unless you have manure in such abundance that 

 you can create a new vegetable surface. Frequent 

 phuighing in heavy and tenacious soils is useful with 

 caution only, that it must not be done when the 

 land is wet. Frequent ploughing injures light 

 soils, by bringing all the vegetable matter contain- 

 ed in them to the surface, to be exhausted by the sun 

 and air. Ploughing among growing crops is often 

 useful in time of drought. By some v\'ell con- 

 ducted experiments of John C Curwen, an accu- 

 rate observer and intelligent farmer, with glassei 

 contrived for the purpose to ascertain the quantity 

 of evaporation from the land, it was found to 

 amount on the fresh ploughed ground to nine hun- 

 dreil and fifty pounds per hour oil the surface of 

 a statute acre ; whilst on the ground uidiroken, 

 though the glass stoqd repeatedly for two hours at 

 a time, there was not the least cloud upon it, 

 which proved that no moisture then arose from 



