1868. 



NEW ENGLAND FARIVIER. 



265 



sun and drying wind prevail, parching the 

 earth from one to two feet deep. The season 

 for rain also always returns, but with different 

 results ; sometimes the clouds seem to have 

 every fastening to the heavens loosened, and 

 come pouring down, flooding the valleys, car- 

 rying away bridges, fences, and even houses. 

 At other seasons, and they are numerous, the 

 clouds are attracted to the heavens and moun- 

 tains, and furnish the valleys only from two or 

 three inches to eight or ten inches of moisture, 

 as in the rainy seasons from 1855 or 1856 to 

 1861, with one exception, which was in 1862, 

 and called the wet winter. 



My own and adjoining farms in Santa Clara 

 Valley, during those years, produced only five 

 or six bushels down to nothing per acre. One 

 year, from 100 acres sown, not a bushel was 

 gathered. This was the case all through that 

 part of the country. It was quite as bad, iY 

 not worse, throughout the San Joaquin Val- 

 ley, and, indeed, all the large valleys of Cali- 

 fornia. Almost all the cattle were starved 

 there, and also through all the Southern part 

 of the State. Those who sowed lost their 

 labor and seed, until the country of the San 

 Joaquin, especially, was thought to be unfit for 

 occupancy. Except for the little pasture it 

 afforded for cattle, every acre of that fine ag- 

 ricultural country would have been occupied 

 before now with bona fide settlers, who have 

 turned away and are gone back to their East- 

 ern homes, disgusted with California. 



The abundance of rain the three last sea- 

 sons has giverf a different aspect to these val- 

 leys, and there are plenty here ready to try 

 them again, and if the seasons prove the same 

 as heretofore, the results will be the same. 

 My experience of California goes to show that 

 the seasons of fertility and stertility come by 

 periods of years. Previous to 1855 there had 

 been plentiful rains, consequently plentiful 

 crop*. After that, the rains in the larger val- 

 leys were quite insufScient to make crops, ex- 

 cept in those places where the water was near 

 the surface. Now, again, we are in a period 

 of abundant rains, mud in the roads ankle or 

 knee deep, and very possibly next season may 

 not give us more than enough rain to lay the 

 dust. 



Take another view of the case, and suppose 

 the seasons of plentiful rain continue, there is 

 no building or fence timber in the San Joa- 

 quin Valley. It has to be brought some hun- 

 dred miles down the coast to San Francisco, 

 then up the San Joaquin River 100 to 200 

 miles, then by teams ; and this is not the end, 

 for wheft you have put that material into build- 

 ings and fences, you will have to pay 2| to 3 

 per cent. State and county tax, and on all you 

 possess, even to your pigs and wife's chickens, 

 nor is your individual person exempt, for that 

 will be taxed to the amount of six dollars per 

 year. The only things exempt from taxation 

 that I know of are your wife and children, and 

 they would no doubt be taxed, but that there 



are already so many bachelor housekeepers, 

 that to tax wives and children would not be 

 likely to make the number less. Should such 

 period of drought again prevail, farms in that 

 valley will not produce enough to pay the 

 taxes, which are from double to five or six 

 times that of any other State. Then thdre 

 are litigations and robberies of homes and 

 lands through the so-called Spanish grants, 

 which afford pettifoggers a fine field for the 

 exercise of their fleecing operations. 



Clover and Wheat. — A correspondent 

 of the Rural New Yorher, in Central Illinois, 

 in walking over a field where one of his neigh- 

 bors was sowing clover with his wheat, and 

 harrowing them in on a field which was 

 ploughed in the fall and was still frozen solid 

 within four inches of the surface, asked him 

 why he always sowed clover. His reply was : 



"0, well, it don't do any harm ; and I get a fine 

 fall forage from it any way, when I pnt in the 

 seed in February and March. Sometimes I change 

 my plans and do not plough the field in the fall ; 

 if I do the clover and its roots' do not hurt the soil 

 much. If I turn it over in the spring for corn, the 

 crop ploughed under the first to the 1.5th of May, 

 is all that need be desired to ferment green and 

 stimulate the germination of the seed. It is a 

 profitable plan, any ^ray. I like clover in my soil. 

 Some people do not ; but either I am a good deal 

 of an egotist or some people are foolish. I find it 

 a good substitute for weeds." 



ECONOMY IN THE FAMILY. 



The time is arriving when the introduction 

 of more economy in the family expenses will 

 become Imperative. Among our mercantile 

 people in the cities I hear of many failures, 

 so that families who have been living in opu- 

 lence and extravagance that a plain woman 

 like myself knows scarcely anything about, 

 will be obliged to economize fearfully. They 

 will have to adopt a totally different course of 

 life. Luxuries will have to be abandoned, 

 and unless they have wealthy friends to lean 

 on for succor, they may be driven to the dread- 

 ful alternative — even the wives and daughters 

 — to labor for their own support. The change 

 will be terrible, heart-rending to them, but it 

 will no doubt promote their health and diges- 

 tion, enable them to sleep soundly, and wake 

 up in the morning with the consciousness that 

 the breakfast about to be set before them they 

 have earned by the sweat of their brow. 



We have no doubt, however, that such a 

 change will in the end prove beneficial. The 

 wastefulness, extravagance and excess of the 

 American people, in eating, drinking and 

 dressing, has not had a parallel in the history 

 of the world ; and all this has been against 

 health, happiness, and morals. When, as a 

 nation, we tread in the footsteps of the old 

 nations, we shall have to follow them as fanai- 



