THE GENESEE FARMER. 



339 



NOTES FOR THE MONTH.— BY S. W. 



FouiJ Okops of Gkass in One Season. — At the 

 Fair of the Aquidnik Agricultural Society, at 

 Nevri)ort, H. Greeley told them that if the lands 

 in Rhode Island were properly' subst)iled and ma- 

 nured, four good crops of grass could be grown 

 there in one season. Did Mr. G. ever see four, or 

 even two extra large hay crops cut from the same 

 patch in one season, without irrigation or the re- 

 peated application of liquid manure? The larger 

 the first crop, the smaller and later will be the sec- 

 ond, unless its growth is hastened by immediate 

 heavy showers. I have cut clover and red-top, so 

 heavy that it would not stand up, on the 25th June ; 

 the inference would be that the strong soil would 

 continue to grow the second crop witliout pause ; 

 no such thing; even with the aid of small summer 

 showers, the stubble fails to put on life for sevCi-al 

 weeks; and if it is dry, hot weather, without rain, 

 the stubble will look pale and dry, as it has no 

 longer the aid of its early leaves to collect moist- 

 ure and plant-food from the atmosphere. True, 

 these remarks apply to the calcareous soils and dry 

 climate of Western New York, but methinks it will 

 be long before more than two crops of grass — even 

 with tlie help of liquid manure — can be profitablj' 

 taken from the same field, even on the granite soil 

 and moist climate of Rhode Island. But apropos 

 of subsoiling those old daisy meadows: I once 

 asked a Xewpoi't farmer why he did not break up 

 and re-seed his little stone-fenced meadows. His 

 reply was, the surface stone on this field made the 

 wall that encloses it. If a plow or team could be 

 had strong enough to subsoil it eighteen inches 

 deep, stone enough would be brought to the sur- 

 face to fence two such fields. True, many fields 

 are not thus stony, and they might be improved by 

 draining. But although this little State has a very 

 generous, enduring soil, which even bad farming 

 cannot exhaust of its mineral elements, yet its 

 central slaty ridges, and other stony portions, can 

 only be kept for sheep pasture, or daisy meadows, 

 — the hay from which some of the best farmers say 

 is very good. But grass is a very remunerating 

 crop along the sea-girt shores of Narraganset Bay ; 

 menhaden fish and seaweed keep the old pastures 

 and meadows alive ; the grass makes butter at 87i 

 cents a pound, and fats mutton ; and the buttermilk 

 fats pigs, which bring $3 apiece at four weeks old, 

 while the breeding sows compost the rockweed 

 they do not devour, into manure for the corn crop, 

 it' there is added a fish to each hill. 



The Growing Wealth of the Grass Regions. 

 — Thirty years ago the Seneca county farmers said 

 wheat was the only paying crop. At that time liay 

 had no cash price, butter was worth only nine and 

 ten cents a pound, in store pay, and cows were 

 bartered oif at $12 each ; but wheat was good, and 

 brought cash at over a dollar the busiiel. Then the 

 farmers in the grass regions, from Otsego to Cha- 

 tauque, lived in great simplicity and were very poor. 

 Once a year, perliaps, they got a little money from 

 the drovers for their bovines, sold at very low pri- 

 ces; which, with their butter and cheese at still 

 lower prices, paid their taxes, and sometimes bal- 

 anced their accounts at the store. But now all this 

 is changed ; while the soil of the wheat region has 

 been growing poorer under the plow, the grass re- 

 gions proper have grown richer under pasturage^ 



until they can beat us in both grain and grass, — 

 corn only excepted. A farmer writes from Cha- 

 tauque, that the farmers there, who once had only 

 ox teams, now ride behind fine horses in spring 

 carriages; farms there had risen in a few years 

 more tiian 100 per cent., and were very saleable ; 

 that in tlie village where butter was once sold at 

 eight cents a pound, in store pay only, now. $2000 

 in cash is paid for butter at 22 cents a pound, and 

 in proportion for cheese. But little land is plowed 

 there that has not lain ten years in pasturage, and 

 on such soils the crops this year were very large, — 

 spring wheat, corn and potatoes in particular. In 

 order to compete with the grass regions, our farm- 

 ers must sow more clover seed and less grain, and 

 keep more stock — sheep in particular, for wool as 

 well as mutton. It is a mistaken i.otion, to say that 

 our lands are worn out ; they onl^- require gener- 

 ous treatment to make them again productive. 



The Largest Corn Crop of the Age. — Our 

 amateur farmer, Jos. Wright, has this year grown 

 the largest crop of corn, on two and a half acres, 

 that this deponent ever looked upon. It was large 

 16-rowed Dent corn, planted after tobacco, on a 

 well underdrained and manured field of sandy loam, 

 once a cat-tail swamp. The hills were four feet 

 apart; not a stalk without one large ear, and not a 

 hill without a stalk with two large ears; one ear 

 had twenty rows, containing D72 kernels. The 

 beauty of the crop was its great evenness, the ears 

 being all large, which is attributed to the tile 

 draining, as all undrained fields have some spots 

 more bearing than others. The tobacco crop that 

 preceded this corn was also extra large, and all the 

 plants of a size at maturity — a consummation never 

 witnessed where underdrains are needed, no mat- 

 ter how well manured the soil may be. 



Decrease in oue Grain Export.s. — From the 

 1st of September to the 8th of October, this year, 

 there was but 36,326 barrels of flour, 111,873 

 bushels af wheat, and 72,000 bushels of corn, ship- 

 ped from New York to Great Britain and Ireland, 

 while no flour was shipped to Europe from any 

 other American port, and but very little wheat or 

 corn. But in the face of this decreased export of 

 breadstuflfe, it is gratifying to note how well prices 

 are kept up by the enormous increase of the home 

 consumption, as it indicates a corresponding in- 

 crease in our m.-mufacturing and mechanical indus- 

 try. While the South justly claims that she is the 

 great exporter of agricultural staple products, the 

 North can boast — like England— that she consumes 

 hers, by which alone she is enabled to supply the 

 world from her workshops. Our shipyards^ and 

 foundries now supply steamships and ships-of-war 

 to many foreign nations; our manufacturers also 

 compete with those of England in the foreign mar- 

 ket, besides supplying our own great South and 

 increasing Far West, with all that handicraft can 

 invent or make of the ornamental or useful. 



The Present High Price of Wool. — Yesterday 

 I heard an astute manufacturer of woolen stuffs 

 say that if our Government would, like England, 

 admit wool duty free, he would never ask for a 

 tarilf on woolens for his protection ; the superior 

 skill, improvements in machinery, and saving of 

 hand labor, now enables our manufacturers to com- 

 pete successfully with those of England, if they 

 were only left to enjoy the same free trade in wool, 



