THE GENESEE FARMER. 



87 



S. the mixen; his hedger was plashing and repair- 

 £g the fences; his "pig-boy" attending to tUe 

 swine, boiling the potatoes, and mixing the .meal; 

 and his dafty-maid milked her cows and did the 

 kitchen-work. Hi* wife managed the house the 

 cooking, and her children. Nearly a 1 « done 

 « wicl.ru themselves." There was neither thought 

 nor enterprize in all their economy— as did their 

 fathers, so did they. 



In the summer, spring, and autumn the various 

 duties were carried through in a similar way. 1 he 

 master taking the higher work, he was the seed- 

 sower of the farm. With " hopper hanging to his 

 shoulder," be sows the wheat, the barley, the oats, 

 and the rye. The beans were mostly dibbled. 

 Peas, as a crop, were scarcely known. In the sum- 

 mer he attended to his stock, worked with the 

 weeders, superintended his men, took his place, at 

 the sheep-shearing, often joined them in mowing 

 the grass, as in making and stacking the hay. In 

 harvest-work he was first and foremost, as it the 

 whole depended upon himself. He would be up 

 with his reapers and mowers, and he would 

 "pitch" or " stock" the corn. In fact, the com- 

 mon farmer of the days J speak of was a hard- 

 working man. He was a model of industry ; and 

 he contrived, with strict economy, to " pick up a 

 living" in a most homely and inexpensive way. 

 The commercial, and what is now termed the 

 "scientific" part of his business never troubled 

 him a whit. True, driving his "cartee, and with 

 his wife, he attended his usual market, to sell ins 

 corn, and she to sell her poultry, butter, and eggs; 

 besides, "our fair" always found him behind his 

 stand of cattle, or his pens of sheep, or his geldmg 

 or young horses; but here ended his commerce 

 transactions. The main feature in his farming was, 

 to have something to sell, nothing to buy. lhe 

 purchase of seed for change, of artificial manure 

 (then scarcely known) to aid his coleseed crop or 

 the few turnips he cultivated (mangolds were then 

 unknown) never entered his head. Nor .did he care 

 a rush to procure a better bull or a better ram. To 

 him a bull was a bull, and a ram a ram, and that 

 was all, provided they would get stock; and al- 

 though the breeding of his horses was more com- 

 mendable, yet it did not depend upon his fore- 

 thought, but upon the general custom to travel 

 entire horses of repute. The strides that have 

 latterly been made in every department of modern 

 agriculture were unknown to him. His lease was 

 his text-book and guide; his account-book, the 

 balance in his stackyard when all was paid— 

 "That's mine!" My rent, tithe, taxes, rates, 

 Christmas bills all paid— "That's mine," as he looks 

 mpon the standing stack; and that is, in fact, the 

 balance of his last year's account (yes; and a 

 balance which many a good modern farmer would 

 have been glad to find during the past_ three 

 years.) He never seriously thought how his farm 

 could be made more productive by introducing 

 new-fangled schemes of management, and new- 

 fashioned implements, and new kiuds of stock. He 

 would have sooner thought a man doing this would 

 probably lose his farm. His first inquiry would, 

 likely enough, have been, " What would Mr. Cox 

 or his lordship say ? We shall all want new leases; 

 and that means a raise of rent. No, I shall let 

 things alone: I won't go first." Thus for ages was 



the intellect of the fanners cramped and curbed, 

 and their minds kept down to certain definite 

 courses; and he was thought a daring, presumptu- 

 ous man, who ventured to strike out a new path 

 for himself. It can not be wondered at. The ab- 

 sence of knowledge and enterprise fed to the 

 adoption of every course in farming likely to save 

 expense. Men did not travel a9 they do now. 

 Learning was a difficulty of great magnitude. 

 Where was a plain man to obtain knowledge? 

 Now, everywhere it is to be found. The world 

 teems with information. A man can not, if be 

 would, be ignorant. It meets him at every point, 

 at every turn. He must, in spite of himself, gain 

 knowledge — yes, knowledge of the most useful 

 kinds. But what was a man to do, fifty or sixty 

 years since? He might hear of the Holkham 

 Sheepshearing, or the Woburn Gatherings ; but 

 they were thought to be gentlemen's schemes, that 

 could do the farmer no good; and so he sets him- 

 self to save and save. He must reduce his labor- 

 ers' wages. He must not hire a servant for the 

 whole year. It makes one pauper more; and that 

 increases the poor's-rate. The taxes are heavy; 

 and he must lay aside his "cartee," and his wife 

 must mount the "pillion." The boys must come 

 to work, and save schooling. The girls don't re- 

 quire any. Tom may manage the pigs, and do the 

 boy's work, and Ben attend to all the little matters. 

 The girls must help their mother; and the las* 

 must have less wages, or leave. 



HUNGAEIAN GKASS. 



I nAVE grown this grass for several years and 

 find it a profitable crop. I sow a half a bushel of 

 seed to the acre, about the 25th of May, but it 

 may be sown as late as the 10th of June, and pro- 

 duce a good crop. But when sown the last of May, 

 it is ready to cut before the dry,, warm weather of 

 summer is past, and is more easily cured than when 

 sown later. 



Three tons per acre is a fair average crop on 

 o-ood land. If it be left for the seed to ripen, it 

 makes almost as good hay as when^ut earlier. In- 

 deed, the seed is mostly matured when the grass is 

 ready to he mowed. Twenty to thirty bushels of 

 seed are produced to the acre, worth $1 per bushel 

 to feed out to stock, either ground or whole. 



It is supposed that this grass impoverishes the 

 land very rapidly ; but I am not fully prepared to 

 endorse this opinion yet. I will, however, state a 

 circumstance that occurred in my experience with 

 it. I sowed a field of rich sod land, that had not 

 been plowed for 40 years, nor since the timber was 

 cut off that was growing upon it when first settled 

 br immigrants, about the year 1800. The crop 

 was enormous. The next year the same land was 

 planted to corn, and the crop was almost a total 

 failure, although the season was favorable to its 

 growth. It it probable that the Hungarian grass 

 draws such constituents from the soil as corn chief- 

 ly feeds on, to such an inordinate degree that a 

 corn crop can scarcely be produced upon land 

 where it has been grown, without an application 

 of manure. 



In regard to the alleged injury to stock, by teed- 



ing them on Hungarian grass, I will observe that I 



'have not experienced any disadvantage at all in 



