No. 2. 



The Beet Culture. — Fences, 



59 



For the Farmers' Cabinet. 



"Light and Darkness" — The Beet 

 Culture. 



Would our readers do us the favour to reconcile the 

 following conflicting testimony ? coining as it does from 

 two of the most enlightened agriculturists and stock- 

 breeders in the Union, we confess our inability to do 

 Bo. We have no private interest to serve, and our de- 

 sire has ever been, to follow truth wherever it may lead. 

 We shall first give extracts from Mr. A. B. Allen's tes- 

 timony in favour of the beet as food for all kinds of 

 stock, and then introduce a letter in direct opposition 

 to its culture — which we have just received from a very 

 intelligent friend near West-Chester — without note or 

 comment. — Ed. 



Mr. Allen says: "I have not only my own 

 taste for three years to prove that the sugar- 

 beet raised about Buffalo is exceedingly sweet 

 and nutritious, but can bring an hundred wit- 

 nesses at any time to corroborate the asser- 

 tion from their own experience. As food for 

 stock, I know that even when fed raw to 

 cows, they considerably add to the quantity 

 and especially to the quality of the milk, 

 making the butter as sweet and almost as 

 yellow as that produced from fresh summer 

 grass, keeping them, with the addition of hay 

 alone, in the best possible order; the young 

 stock on the same food keeping as fat and 

 fine and glossy in the coat as when fed on 

 summer pasture. But their most important 

 use is as food for hogs, which they keep in as 

 good flesh as I ever wish for breeders, while 

 to the full-grown hogs, I give a stinted allow- 

 ance, or they would get too fat for breeding: 

 to young animals I allow a small addition of 

 corn, and I never saw any thrive better or 

 remain more contentedly — they fill them- 

 selves and lie in their straw as contented as 

 puppies and whist as mice : and this is expe- 

 rience, and not mere theory^ 



Mr. B. of Chester county, writes: "I wish 

 you would come out in the Cabinet in your 

 might against the sugar-beet; depend upon 

 it, they won't do — they have almost driven 

 me mad this summer; I have had to neglect 

 other necessary work to attend to them, and 

 no crop at last ! I have been running hard 

 all summer to recover lost time, and shall not 

 catch up till Christmas — being about two 

 weeks behind-hand with everything. Five 

 acres of beets require more attention than 

 fifty acres of corn. It is customary here, as 

 £oon as the corn is planted, to repair fences 

 — this was neglected to attend to the beets, 

 and in consequence, my cows, sheep, and 

 hogs, have been trespassing on my own and 

 my neitrhbours' fields all summer : this is one 

 loss. Next, my harvest commencement was 

 delayed two weeks after the proper time, in 

 order to give the abominable roots an extra 

 hoeing — and this is a second loss. Again, 



my hired man, from stooping so much to plant 

 and weed the things, has a constant head- 

 ache, and probably a tendency to congestion 

 of the brain — to the distress of himself and 

 his young and dependent family — and this ia 

 a third evil. Fourth, since harvest, when all 

 weeds and rubbish are generally cut and 

 cleared away, I had to put the hands again 

 at the beets, and stand in danger of being 

 overrun with noxious weeds, thistles, St. 

 John's wort, mulleins, briars, elders, and other 

 rubbish ; while the apparition of a beet-root 

 haunts me day and night. 



Now, according to your plan of keeping a 

 Dr. and Cr. account for each crop, how will 

 my beet crop stand : — 



Dr. Sugar-beet crop, say 2 acres. 

 To damages from trespass on corn, potatoes and 



oats, from not repairing fences $75 00 



" Two weeks behindhand at harvest lOU 00 



" Congestion of brain, hired man, doctor's bill 

 for four years, perhaps, loss of his time, and 

 sufferings of a dependent family 400 00 



" Propagation and spread often thousand mil- 

 lions of no.xious weeds 300 00 



" Actual cost, seed, labour, manure, cart and 



Oien, harvesting, &.c 100 00 



§975 00 



Now, one of my neighbours says, after feed- 

 ing them a whole winter, the only effect he 

 observed on his cows was, for them to stand 

 all day and water ; according to this account, 

 sugar-beet will be 



Cr. By 3500 buckets of urine from cows 



But D. K. Minor, of the Urate and Poudrette 

 Factory, can estimate this item better than I 

 can, and to him I leave to strike the balance." 



B. 



Chester County, Aug. 28, ]841. 



Fences. 

 Little has been ^id in our agricultural 

 journals on this all-important though oft-ne- 

 glected subject. Bad fences have taught our 

 cattle to become unruly or breachy, whereby 

 our crops and those of our neighbours have 

 been destroyed, after the labour and expense 

 of raising them. But a greater evil even than 

 this is yet to be named; — bad fences have 

 often been the means of the most unhappy 

 disputes and downright quarrels amongst 

 neighbours, from which have flowed assaults, 

 batteries, law-suits, and ill-will for life, and 

 after — for the quarrel has often been entailed 

 with the property on the son — amongst those 

 who would otherwise have lived upon the 

 most friendly terms all their days: even 

 starvation and murder have found their way 

 into a happy neighbourhood through a bad 

 fence ! I would therefore beg those who wish 

 to live in peace and have something to live 

 on, and who mean to sleep in peace and not 

 be disturbed with the awful tidings, " the cat- 

 tle are in the crops," to attend more to their 

 fences. — Maine Farmer, 



