156 



Advantages of Travel. 



Vol. VI. 



For the Farmers' Cabinet, 

 Advantages of Travel. 



Mr. Editor, — Having cut my corn, and 

 removed it to an adjoining meadow for the 

 convenience of husiung, cleared t!ie ground 

 of the roots, and ploughed and sown it with 

 wheat, I thought I could not do better than 

 put in practice the plan recommended in the 

 Cabinet, and go and see what my friends were 

 doing. Accordingly, one fine morning during 

 this remarkably fine Indian summer, 1 mount- 

 ed my horse, and rode across to my old neigh- 

 bour Curtis's place. I had not seen my friend 

 for many years, but had often heard of him 

 as a tip-top manager, well to do in the world, 

 but rather singular in his system of farming. 

 I found him on a noble farm of 250 acres, 

 which he cultivates with the hand of a mas- 

 ter; and after a week spent with him, if I 

 have not returned with the experience which 

 will pay me cent, per cent, for the capital in- 

 vested in travelling expenses, it will be my 

 own fault. 



All hands were busily employed, although 

 his wheat was sown, his corn husked and put 

 safely away, with the stalks snugly built into 

 a stack, adjoining his bullock-houses, and co- 

 vered with straw — for while one party with 

 a couple of ox-teams were carting a lot of 

 capital rich earth from the roadside, at the 

 bottom of the hill half a mile from home, 

 where it had been accumulating the last year 

 a drainage from several establishments near, 

 where the custom is to permit the washings 

 of their cattle yards to pass away, by the 

 ditch leading down the road, and placing in 

 it a large pen, to the depth of three or four 

 feet, upon which to feed his hogs, fifty in 

 number, during their first season of fatting, 

 and by which it will be trodden and rooted 

 into capital manure for dressing corn-land, — 

 another party was busily employed tiirowing 

 the contents of a muck-hole on to the dry 

 bank, preparatory to the formation of a mag- 

 nificent compost-heap, during winter — the 

 Btraw-yard furnishing the means of convert- 

 ing it into a dressing far more valuable than 

 the best stable dung, more lasting in its ef- 

 fects, and better suited as the food of plants, 

 from the purifying processes of fermentation 

 and pulverization. Two other men were 

 cutting a very wide ditch, or narrow canal, 

 to drain an adjoining swamp, that i)ad for- 

 merly been the cause of much sickness, but 

 now, having come into his hands, it will soon 

 be rendered the most valuable spot of his 

 possessions, giving many hundred loads of 

 earth and muck for future dressings, and ren- 

 dering what had hitherto been a nuisance, a 

 healthy spot of rich pasture — an old quag- 

 mire, in which many a beast had fallen and 

 been lost, into a lovely meadow, with a stream 



meandering through it, and supplying with 

 water a second cattle-yard below. 



My friend is a stickler for the theory and 

 practice of top-dressing, in all its variety of 

 application, having followed it for years, and 

 derived ample proof of its efficacy; and of- 

 fers to cultivate a field in the following man- 

 ner, the whole to be managed exactly alike 

 in its preparation. One half to be manured, 

 and turned in before sowing with wheat, the 

 other half to be sown at the same time, witli- 

 nut manure; the same quantity of manure, 

 however, which had been given to the wheat 

 on one-half, to be reserved as a spring top- 

 dressing for the other, after being composted 

 during the winter; and if one-third more 

 wheat, and of equally superior quality, be 

 not reaped from this half the field than on 

 the other, then he will forfeit any sum that 

 might before have been agreed upon. He is 

 also a strong advocate for top-dressing mea- 

 dows in the autumn and winter, and has a 

 heap of compost ready for carrying abroad, 

 that will cover many acres, by which he ar- 

 gues, tlie grass will be greatly protected from 

 the frost, and be enabled to make earlier pro- 

 gress in the spring, affording a bite to his 

 cattle a week or ten days earlier at that im- 

 portant season of the year. Like many others 

 of our improvers, he limes heavily, but his 

 mode of application is singular, and appears 

 to have an excellent effect, judsring from the 

 herbage which now clothes his fields, of most 

 excellent quality, white clover and green- 

 !jrass predominating. He spreads his lime 

 thickly on the grass-land the year before he 

 intends to top-dress with compost, and de- 

 clares that the effect is surprisingly benefi- 

 cial, the natural herbage springing after, 

 being of quite another species, and peculiar- 

 ly adapted for fatting purposes; and thus he 

 is in no danger of liming to excess. On a 

 meadow on which he practised this mode of 

 top-dressing, the last year, he has, at the pre- 

 sent time, a second growth of the finest ver- 

 dure, far superior in quality to many of the 

 first crops in the neii^hbourhood ; and the 

 cattle eat the whole indiscriminately, leaving 

 no tufts, as is so usual on meadows at this 

 season of the year. 



On my asking if he did not find it expen- 

 sive, thus to take up and put down, and mix 

 and turn his muck and dtmg, so often before 

 carrying abroad, he replied — "Certainly: 

 and that is the pt^rfection of the system. 

 When I go to Philadelphia, and see the men 

 in Market street busily packing and preparing 

 for sending abroad their merchandise, I do 

 not hear them complain of the labour and 

 time which it takes. The hope of reward 

 sweetens that, and the more persons they can 

 find employment for, the greater they calcu- 

 late their profits will be ; — it is labour, not 



