THE GENESEE FARMER. 



Ill 



TStor and the public. To illustrate my meaniuf^, 

 I will state that there are about one liundred mil- 

 lion acres of good cotton lands in the Southern 

 8tates, forty millions of which have been gone over 

 with the plow so often, and so exhaustingly, as to 

 be now turned out as utterly worthless for tillage 

 purposes. A continuance of the same policy of 

 extending cultivation as the soil is impoverished, 

 will reduce the other sixty million acres to a similar 

 condition by the close of the present century. In 

 this quarter, where a great commercial staple is 

 grown for export, and where State and Congress 

 lands cost next to nothing, to rejuvenate old planta- 

 tions appears almost as difficult as to make an old 

 man into a smart boy. 



We have no large markets for fat sheep, cattle, 

 and hogs, as ^^fr. Joiixstox and others in New York 

 liave, to encourage us to produce a full supply of 

 home-made manures ; and Peruvian guano has cost 

 $80 a ton delivered in Athens, the past year ; and 

 other commercial fertilizers are equally high, as 

 compared with their value. So long as military 

 lands and others may be bought at 80 or 90 cents 

 Ml acre, and the very best that belong to the Fed- 

 eral Government at $1.25, who does" not see that 

 planters can make far more money to wear out large 

 plantations and purchase more fresh land, than to 

 iHiy manure, or make it, to keep up the virgin fruit- 

 fulness of the soil ? IIow far will $1,000 go toward 

 putting thirty-five loads per acre, of good stable or 

 rard manure, over 800 acres of worn out land? 

 Mrho will haul and spread the manure for a dollar 

 and a quarter per acre ? 



Three years ago, I moved upon the farm where 

 I now reside, which contains some 500 acres of old 

 fields. One of the least worn was planted in corn, 

 fairly cultivated, and a third of the crop came to 

 me, which was not over a bushel to the acre. 

 Selecting the best two acres I could find in a forty 

 aero field, cultivated in corn, I had it well plowed, 

 dressed with thirty bushels of good house ashes, 

 and sown with two bushels of wheat. It grew 

 •oine twelje inches high, and turned out about as 

 much grain as was sown. Four acres adjoining 

 wei-e sown in barley, without fertilizers of anv kind, 

 and produced nothing. Other fields sown "in oats 

 and rye, when I came upon the place, did very little 

 better than my barley and wheat. I fenced in a 

 new field of seventy-five acres which ha« rested 

 acme fifteen years, and it affords grass (broomsedge) 

 enough to keep five cows, a yoke of oxen and a horse 

 six months in a year, with a little grain. As the 

 negroes and mules did not earn ten cents a day by 

 onltivating these old fields, they were taken by their 

 owner to the rich and cheap lands at the soutliwest, 

 whither so many thousands are going every year. 



It is useless to talk about "renovating crops" 

 grown _ on land too poor to produce cow peas, rye, 

 or Indian corn, in a good corn climate. The true 

 remedy for the evils that accrue from plowing and 

 hoeing the soil until all its organic matter and solu- 

 We minerals are dissolved out, is to raise crops for 

 manure long before the land is exhausted. Unless 

 the readers of the Farmer expect to abandon their 

 fwesent farms at some future day, they should learn 

 wisdom from the uniform experience of all cultiva- 

 tors, with but few exceptions, who have fairly 

 worked out to the bitter end the practice of excea- 

 •iT»- tiUage, joined with defective husbandry. A 



badly developed civilization, and misapplied indus- 

 try, demand more of American soil than it can pos- 

 sibly give and perpetuate its present fruitfulness. 

 Mr. John Johnston sees this, and seeks to avoid 

 the general impoverishment of the fertile region of 

 Western New York, by urging its farmers to resort 

 at once "to high feeding and high manuring." If 

 I had the water that runs off in his under drains, to 

 pass through land here that will not now yield over 

 two or three bushels of corn per acre, I have no 

 doubt it would soon produce thirty bushels per acre. 

 I am confident of such a result from the fact that 

 wherever a natural spring issues from the ground 

 on the plantation, no matter how poor the soil may 

 be in its vicinity, the water that flows out in a little 

 stream uniformly greatly enriches all the earth in 

 any degree irrigated by it. On evaporating tlie 

 clear spring water to dryness, it yields both com- 

 bustible, organic matter, and mineral salts, or the 

 dissolved food of agricultural plants. By clearing 

 oft' all bushes, briars, and trees, along the borders 

 of the several "branches," (as little streams of 

 water are called in this country,) ditching them 

 where it is necessary, and turning the water out of 

 its natural channels, as far as practicable, to increase 

 the irrigation of the impoverished soil, I have no 

 doubt that a full supply of corn and cheap manure 

 might be obtained from these perennial fountains to 

 enrich ultimately, aided by wise husbandry, the 

 whole farm. No part of it is so far exhausted that 

 it will not produce old field pines and mulberries ; 

 and the leaves of the latter make the best of leaf 

 manure. 



Where land is cheap and abundant, and witlial 

 thin and easily impoverished, forest culture is far 

 better than to cut down the valuable timber on 

 thousands and tens of thousands of acres, scourge 

 the soil under a burning sun for a few years in cotton 

 or corn culture, and then abandon it to repeat the 

 same operation elsewhere. Moving water which 

 has passed over and through more or less vegetable 

 matter on the ground, as well as through large 

 masses of earth, assisted by that which drops from 

 the clouds, and by the growth of forest trees, sup- 

 plies the farmer with the cheapest known means 

 for the improvement of poor soils. Without buying 

 a dollar's worth of manure, and with a garden spot 

 that would not produce ten bushels of corn per acre, 

 and fields such as I have described, I have raised 

 corn, meat, milk, butter, and vegetablas, beyond 

 the wanus of my family, by simply looking for their 

 elements where others did not see them — in run- 

 ning water and in the subsoil. Nevertheless, I have 

 done next to nothing, compared with what might be 

 done by one who knew that his bread and butter 

 depended on his farming industry. 



By saving all nightsoil^ soapsuds, stable and other 

 manure, and ttiking pains to augment the aggregate 

 quantity by the free use of forest leaves, I have 

 made a little land highly productive ; and to one 

 who seeks retirement and comfort, more than fame 

 or riches, a small area is more desirable than a large 

 plantation. Our Anglo-Saxon mania for farms of 

 the amplest dimensions, and whole continents to 

 overrun and desolate with the plow instead of the 

 sword, is leading us into the most perilous tempta- 

 tions and follies. A wise government would not 

 entice millions to wear out their paternal acres in 

 the old States, with tha oxpootatiou that Congress 



