NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



157 



men rise ol'len from poverty, and (Vcqiieiit- 



roin the laboring classes of society, would 



ise the rank from which it had jiist risen, 



to which, as the wheel of time rolls on, it 



5t soon return. Whose hlood, in this land of 



dom and industry, lias not flowed through 



veins of a farmer or mechanic, and who 



not exult in his honorable and athletic an- 



ry ? The man who is ashamed of it is a 



Vhen I look around me, and discover many 

 have thrown g:ray in the cultivation of the 

 and some, too, who are known as practical 

 successful tillers ; I can but with diffidence 

 mend many alterations in our system of 

 ming. Though willing to admit that the 

 ng are fond of novelty, yet 1 believe it is 

 ally true that the old are too averse to inno- 

 on ; they are either too tenacious of ancient 

 oms, or look with too much suspicion and 

 ousy on the eflorts of the rising generation, 

 rand and prominent error in tlie agricul- 

 1 system of Virginia — one which unfortu- 

 ly bears the sanction of time and the au- 

 ity of general adoption- -is the practice of 

 vating extensive farms. I am perfectly 

 fied that if correct accounts of profit and 

 were kept, it would he found that the j)ro- 

 tors of those unweildy and unmanageable 

 is live less comfortably and realize intinite- 

 ss than tliose who concentrate the same l.i- 

 nnd attenti'-in in one fourth of the quantity 

 ound. You who are candid and who have 

 regular accounts of your profits on farms 

 ;e or six hundred acres, will acknowledge 

 your clear "jain raiely exceeds five hun- 

 dollars per annum. Now if you have in 

 three fourths of such a .sized farm, and 

 the remaining fourth make annually one 

 :and dollars, which I am sure ought to be 

 is it not the best argument that can be of- 

 in favor of such a curtailment ? If you 

 t the practicability of realizing so much 

 so small a quantity, I can only ask of you 

 jpend your opinions until proofs the most 

 ^ctory can be produced of much larger 

 being realized from a smaller quantity of 

 id. In Saratoga county, New-York, there 

 a Mr. Stimson, who made in the summer 

 21 two thousand bushels of merchantable 

 from twenty acres of land, being an ave- 

 of one hundred bushels per acre. Among 

 memoranda which were taken during an 

 sion to the north, (with the hope that this 

 y could have gleaned from them some in- 

 tlon worthy of notice) but two were pre- 

 d — the one noticing the extraordinary crop 

 rn raised by the Messrs. Pratt, of New- 

 which is already in possession of the sec- 

 ,', and the other an imperfect sketch of the 

 of Judge Buel, near the city of Albany. — 

 the one last mentioned, 1 collect the facts 

 letailed. The farm of Mr. Biiel contains 

 ^ acres: the soil is principally silicious, 

 / resembling the poor lands bordering our 

 /aters; the timber, a stinted pine, with 

 undergrowth ; the flat land, a wet cold 

 1 the hands of nature, barren and unpro- 

 For the last five years the average 

 if corn on this farm has been fifteen bar- 

 er acre ; the average of wheat twenty- 

 ashels; of potatoes four hundred bushels; 

 a baga, or Swedish turnip, five hundred 

 's; of maDgel wurtzel, upwards of six 



i hundred bushels; and of common Am'^rican 

 I turnips, two hundred bushels. Mr. "Buel sold 

 {the produce of forty acres of this jioor land, in 

 'the summer of 1821, for 1500 (billars. Al- 



Jhougli wo must acknowledge that Mr. Stimson 

 and Mr. Buel arc among the best practical and 

 ; most zealous and successful farmers of New- 

 I'iork; yet when we are informed th;it the last 

 imi^ntioned gentleman cultivates land not .superi- 

 or in its natural condition to the poor pine hills 

 1 of Frederick, from wl.icli he produces crops in- 

 ' finitely superior to those on our best lands ; we 

 j are compelled to draw an inference most unfa- 

 1 vorahle to our sysem of farming and general 

 management. 



From some rough calculations which I have 

 made, 1 suppose that on a large portion of the 

 lands forming our eastern states, there are com- 

 fortably supported on each square mile, or six 

 hundred and forty acres of land, from twelve to 

 til'teen families. How frequently do we find 

 that a single family subsists on the same quanti- 

 ty of land in Virgin'a with much difficulty. — 

 We can ascribe this difference to nothing more 

 rationally than to superior skill in agricultiire. 



Although, gentlemen of the society, I have 

 already trespassed on your patience much long- 

 er than [ intended, I cannot refrain from em- 

 ployinar the present opportunity to recommend 

 to you, in the strongest terms, the application 

 of 2:reen crops as an enricher oJ your lands. — 

 The cost of applying a crop of oats in this way 

 will rarely exceed, under the most unfavorable 

 circumstances, fifty cents per acre. It is impos- 

 sible, without the fullest experiments, to say 

 what the gain may be ; but in all hunan proba- 

 bility it will exceed ten times the costs. No 

 one can for a moment appri^hend the least inju- 

 ry to the soil from such an application. 1 trust, 

 then, that none will, for the sake of saving a 

 trifling expenditure, remain longer in doubt on 

 so important a subject. 



Let me also recommend the substitution, in 

 some measure, at least, of roots for corn, par- 

 ticularly as a food fur milch cows, sheep and 

 hogs. There is no crop which we cultivate in 

 this country so injurious to our lands; there is 

 none which requires a more constant and unin- 

 terrupted attention; and, in fine, there is none 

 which returns so small a profit to the farmer, as 

 the corn crop. By a little superior cultivation, 

 the product in roots of one acre will go as far 

 as the corn gathered from ten In the vicinity 

 of Boston resides a Mr. IngersoU, who has de- 

 voted his attention almost exclusively to a pig- 

 gery, which he has established on a farm con- 

 taining in all but eighteen acres ; on one third 

 of this, which is the most he ever has in culti- 

 vation at one time, he cultivates roots of vari- 

 ous kinds, the mangel wurtzel, however, being 

 his favorite. From the produce of this six 

 acres he raises and kills annually one hundred 

 and sixty hogs, which have never averaged him 

 less than two hundred and fifty vveight each, 

 making the enormous quantity of forty thousand 

 pounds of pork annually. This pork is harden- 

 ed with corn previous to killing, which he al- 

 ways obtains by the sale of his surplus manure. 

 Then is Mr. IngersoU realizing more by pru- 

 dent management from eighteen acres of land, 

 than is made by, with a few exceptions, any far- 

 mer in the county of Frederick. 



Permit me once more, fellow-citizens, to in- 

 Tite and entreat you to join with us and aid in 



nccomplisliing what we have so auspiciously 

 commenced. Hest assured that, whatever your 

 occupation may be, the surest guarantee toyour 

 success is the prosperity of the husbandman. — 

 Although in your various careers of honor and 

 usefulness, ynu may prefer to tread the laby- 

 rinth of state — and ymi to hold converse with 

 other worlds, and to expatiate among the won- 

 ders of creation — and you to minister relief 

 to bodily diseases — and you cleanse the corrup- 

 tion of the lieart, and shed the light of immor- 

 tality o'er the gloom of the grave — and youio 

 hold the scales of justice, or to wrest from de- 

 struction the violated law ; — and in all these di- 

 versified employments, your chief dependence 

 is upon agricultural enterprise. Come, then, and 

 walk into the field with me, and contemplate 

 Nature robed in her own loveliness ; abandon for 

 a time the haunts of idleness and dissipation ;— 

 relinquish the vain and unsatisfying enjoyments 

 of crowded life ; come into the country, inhale 

 the pure atmosphere of rural peace and quiet, 

 and taste the genuine sweets of rural philosophy. 



From the Delawar- Gazette. 

 ON THE ALMOND. 

 The soft shelled almond, that fruit so remark- 

 able for its nourishing power and pleasant taste, 

 has, by supposition, (for by no other way can I 

 account for it) been thought to belong to temper- 

 ate and warm climates alone, and that we of a 

 middle latitude must be exempt and dependent 

 on them for a supply. But, if agriculturists will 

 make the trial, they will find the fallacy of this 

 opinion. They will discover that, like the vine 

 of temperate Europe, their almond may be suc- 

 cessfully cultivated. Nor does it require tender 

 care or constant watching due to the vine to 

 make it succeed ; but, like the peach, it springs 

 up from the stone, one of the most handsome, 

 and by far the earliest tree in your garden. 

 This circumstance requires that they should 

 stand on the north side of the house, or north- 

 ern slope of a hill, yet where a sufliciency of 

 sun may reach the nut or ripen it ; but not 

 where the warm days of March and April may 

 open its buds. Although to have success ia 

 bearing, a northern aspect must be chosen, yet 

 they should be planted in a warm sandy loam| 

 in a sunny place. The time in Sussex to cover 

 them in the ground, is about the first of April, 

 in the Upper counties, perhaps the middle 

 would be more proper. 



Some five or six years ago, being in Philadel- 

 phia, I procured six fresh nuts from a vessel 

 from Frnnce, and when I returned home, I plant- 

 ed them, and in two or three weeks I perceiv- 

 ed them looking above the ground ; but I had 

 no expectation of their surviving the winter. 

 However, they did ; and this year, being their 

 first bearing, I collected from every tree from 

 twenty to seventy nuts. No person can say but 

 that the climate has expended its strength on 

 them. Witness the cold and cutting winter of 

 1820, and the late frost in April, 1821, which, 

 indeed, nipt the Spring buds, and perhaps would 

 have destroyed the hope of fruit that year had 

 they borne. But such frosts happen early, and 

 like other productions of nature, the almond, of 

 course, must sometimes fail : yet I must recom.- 

 mend to farmers, gardeners and others, the cul- 

 tivation of the nut, which surpasses the most of 

 those of American culture. 



A Farmer of Sussex. 



