366 



THE GENESEE FAKMER. 



lar, and I can sincerely say that if I could not get 

 another, I would not part with it for five dollars in 

 gold! x. y. z. 



Remarks. — "We are glad our esteemed correspond- 

 ent is pleased with his purchase. "We feel sure that 

 no one interested in agriculture or horticulture can 

 have a more useful work in his library than the 

 last six or seven bound volumes of the Farmer — 

 and certainly nothing cheaper and more convenient 

 for reference can be found in the whole range of 

 agricultural literature. "We greatly need an Ameri- 

 can Cyclopedia of Agriculture ; but in the absence 

 of such a work, our best and most convenient 

 source of information on the various subjects which 

 almost daily occur to the mind of one engaged in 

 the multitudinous labors of the farm, the garden 

 and the orchard, will be the bound volumes of a 

 monthly" agricultural journal, furnished with a 

 complete index. 



The volume for 1860 is one of the best of the 

 series. The Prize Essays, to which our corre- 

 spondent alludes, are specially valuable, and they 

 are as useful and interesting now as on the day 

 they were written. — Eds. 



ASHAMED TO BEING STRAW TO THE CITY. 



NOTES BY S. W. 



A few days since, we asked a good farmer of this 

 county to bring us a load of straw for bedding 

 horses. He replied, "I have plenty of straw, and 

 would like to accommodate you; but the fact is, / 

 am ashamed to le seen bringing a load of straw to 

 the city ! 



Knowing our friend was in the habit of bringing 

 potatoes, grain, etc., to market in person, we rlid 

 not, for the moment,, see the point of his objection ; 

 but we were not left long in doubt. He is an ob- 

 serving farmer, and has found that the only way 

 to raise good crops is to keep up the condition of 

 his land by making manure, and for this purpose 

 he is careful to preserve his straw both for fodder 

 and litter. He would be ashamed to let red-root 

 and Canada thistles overrun his wheat fields, be- 

 cause it would show that he was a bad farmer, and 

 for the same reason he did not like his neighbors 

 to see him selling straw. 



We like the idea. It is a healthy and hopeful 

 feeling— this sense of shame at farming poorly, — 

 We all like the good opinion of the community in 

 which we live, and that man is highly favored who 

 ]ia-< tieighbors who do not approve of poor barns, 

 broken fences, scrubby cattle, foul fields, and slov- 

 enly cultivation. And not less so when they can 

 see the folly of growing too much grain, keeping 

 too little stock, and selling the hay and straw in- 

 stead of converting them into manure. 



We must get our straw from a le.ss enlightened 

 neighborhood. 



Eds. Gen. Far. — If anything ought to recom- 

 mend an agricultural paper to the reflecting part 

 of the farming community, it is the apparent un- 

 selfishness of its editor, who spends both his time 

 and money in experimenting with varied manures, 

 on a growing crop, that his readers may have, gra- 

 tuitously, the benefit of his patient labor and prac- 

 tical experience. But perhaps I set your self-denial 

 a little too high, and that your field experiments, 

 year after year, are mainly due to your darling pas- 

 sion for the art Agriculture. I well remember 

 when I was a boy, hearing Washington Allston 

 say, that painting was his highest enjoyment, and 

 that the only reason he did not paint more, was 

 that his health and strength would not permit. — 

 You probably have as great a passion for producing 

 the maximum in vegetable growth, as he had to 

 reach the greatest excellence in his high art. Both 

 lived in the gratification of a darling passion, and 

 the scoffed miser does no less. 



As your experiments this season in the growth 

 of sorghum, gives a mysterious value to gypsum 

 as manure, I will recite a single experiment of my 

 own, made without the aid of either gypsum or su- 

 perphosphates, in specific form. Three years ago 

 I grew a few rows of sorghum in my clay garden ; 

 stall manure in a crude state had been trenched in 

 the fall before, the soil was forked over before 

 planting, and the drills made with the hoe; al- 

 though I sowed the seed liberally along the drills, 

 and covered them with fine, warm, rich soil, not 

 more than one half germinated ; and as with you, 

 there were many vacant spaces of two or three 

 feet each ; as I thinned out the rows, I filled up 

 the vacant spots with strong plants, then four 

 inches high, and every one thus transplanted lived' 

 and grew as thriftily as any in the rows ; the plants 

 were thinned out to eight and ten inches apart, the 

 rows three and a half feet apart. For several weeks 

 the sorghum grew very slowly, not half as fast as 

 sweet corn in the same garden ; but after hot 

 weather set in, it was rampant, sending out many 

 suckers that attained a bight of six or eight feet, 

 while the main stalks were from 11 to Yo feet high, 

 and from one to one and a fourth inches in diame- 

 ter. I cut up the stalks in October, and fed them, 

 cut in short pieces, to the cow, as long as they 

 lasted, but the seed failed to ripen thoroughly. 



Joseph Wright has grown another monster crop 

 of Dent corn this season, on seven acres; he got 

 the seed as usual from the West. One acre care- 

 fully measured, yielded 157 bushels of ears; as the 

 ears are longer and better filled to the end of the 

 cob than prairie corn generally, he intends to mea- 

 sure, the shelled corn of this acre accordingly, pre- 

 mising that it will measure nearly 120 bushels; the 

 cob has no collar, and it, does not weigh as much by 

 nearly one-fourth as the cob of the eight-rowed 

 Flint corn. Vincent Shtjtx, of Fayette, has also 

 grown the Dent corn the three past seasons, with 

 great success; he is confident that its cereal yield 

 is full one-third more on the same soil, than that of 

 Flint corn. 



Catawba grapes only ripened well here this sea- 

 son when they had been thinned out early; where 

 the bunches hung in masses there were many sour 

 grapes. I picked my Concords by the 20th of Sep- 



