482 



NE\r ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



For the Ntw Ensland Farmtr. ' 



CHAPTER ON HUSBANDaY---Ko. 3. 



Messrs. Editors : — With your permission I re- 

 sume my chapter No. 3 ; should any objection- 

 able matter appear draw your pen across it. I 

 continue with article 



21. Keep clean work around your field-walls ; 

 brambles, briars and bushes denote a slovenly 

 farmer, and are neither useful orornamental — bad 

 for hay cutters. 



22. Plow from the walls and carry the soil into 

 the barn-yard or collar ; this drift of vegetable 

 deposite makes excellent manure, but suffered to 

 lie, it proves a rich nursery for bushes. 



23. Surround your mowing fields with apple- 

 trees ; this plan helps out the orcharding, and 

 avoids shading the land and crops; if your neigh- 

 bor adjoins, (friendly or unfriendly) place your 

 trees 8 to 10 feet from the wall ; this gives the 

 treble advantage of plowing between them and 

 the wall, and of saving on your own land all the 

 fruit that falls, and above all the wrath of the 

 spiteful man, who seeks revenge by chopping off 

 the limbs perpendicularly with the line wall, 

 should they happen to overlie his field. Such de- 

 praved instances liiive occurred, even among men, 

 "professing and calling themselves Christians." 



24. Apple-trees thrive best near a stone wall. 



25. Never plow land when it is wet; it cakes 

 and hardens and does not easily mellow again ; 

 wait if it is a wet spring, (even like the past) and 

 you are the gainer; soil cannot be made too mel- 

 low for the tender reaching roots of the vegetable, 

 to whatever class it may belong. It would pay 

 well to plow twice for Spring crops ; yet I know 

 how anxious the farmer is to finish plowing, but 

 "Haste often makes waste." 



26. Never cultivate a two-acre corn-field for a 

 product of 60 to 75 bushels. The same quantity 

 of manure will give the same result on one acre, 

 and nearly one-half the labor is saved ; no other 

 doctrine will stand law — predicated on the relia- 

 ble principle tliat the great merit is in the man- 

 ure, as we all admit ; in times of drought it stands 

 better ; at harvest time — it is a cornfield. 



27. Never manure corn in the hill for the rea- 

 son that its roots immediately run away from it 

 and lose its nourishment; spread, and the roots 

 will journey through and get the benefit ; they are 

 many and long, and seek sustenance on their way. 

 In the hill it forces and looks more vigorous at 

 first — but spread even the little which you design 

 for the hill and test fairly the experiment ; al- 

 ways plow in manure as soon as spread, to save 

 the gases in the soil. 



28. Top dressing is much in practice, even by 



food farmers ; in my humble judgment it is of 

 oubtful utility, and I will givemy roasons. In th 

 first place, thoground is required to be wet whenitis 

 spread, or rain is necessary to soak it into the sur- 

 face ; we will suppose all this to be accomplished 

 and the season's crop is increased, perhaps, near- 

 ly sufllicient to pay the expense of the dressing, 

 yet one season exhausts all its value ; suppose it 

 to have been spread, and it turns out a dry sea 

 son; then dry sand is of about as much value as 

 top-dressing. Wiien grass-land needs to be top- 

 dressed, and it is done, it needs the flow most to 

 follou- and bury it ; then, and in aftor-time you 

 get its fertilizing effycts! This is the month to 



turn over old mowing land and sow down to grass, 

 and if well manured, a good crop is obtained the 

 next year and no loss of a season in the grass 

 crop. 



29. Beverage, or farm drinks, are not out of 

 place here,altliough changed somewhat from former 

 times. When a boy, I was allowed two swallows 

 from the old jug, against four swallows with the 

 men. But these were emphatically, the days of 

 'rum and molasses." Every farm was then a well 

 organized nursery for drunkenness ; rum, molasses 

 and wormwood, was the established worm vermi- 

 fuge for all the children. Now, men believe that 

 rum riots in the blood — enrages the brain — dead- 

 ens the appetite for food — enervates and prostrates 

 the system — embroils the peace of good neighbor- 

 hoods — brings wreck,ruin and the sheriff to a once 

 happy home — and while the outer man Avorks in 

 the field and cringes under a blistering sun — he in- 

 wardly scalds with an unnatural fire, turned into 

 his body at every round or two of the mowing- 

 field, and becomes a well-prepared subject for sun- 

 stroke, a broken neck, or a crushed body from his 

 loaded team. Molasses, ginger and water, cold 

 water, simple beer, are good and safe substitutes 

 for rum and leave no insanity upon the brain — 

 and while one hundred die from liquor, but one 

 man dies from drinking too much cold water.* It 

 is to be hoped tliis paragraph is not an innovation 

 upon your agricultural columns — not offered in a 

 spirit of rebuke — but to show what tvas, and ask 

 what 25. Yours truly, h. p. 



Brooklyn, N. Y., Sept. 8, 1854. 



* The papers publish all cold water deaths — quite rare ; how 

 would stand the other side .' 



SOWING YELLOW LOCUST SEED. 



As timber for posts is becoming scarce, it may 

 be well to sow a few quarts of locust seed, to 

 raise plants for the formation of a grove. It will 

 not be time for some weeks to sow the seed, and we 

 anticipate it, to enable our readers to make tho 

 necessary preparations. The ground to be selec- 

 ted should be a deep, well-exposed loam ; it should 

 be manured ploughed deep, harrowed, and the 

 seed sown thinly, in drills two inches deep, four 

 feet apart. Before being sown, the seed should 

 be soaked in hot water for twenty-four hours ; 

 all the seeds which float to be cast aside. The 

 plants, when they come up, must be kept clean. 

 At one and two years old the young trees will be 

 fit to be transplanted. They should then be set 

 out in a deep, warm soil, which has been well 

 manured, ploughed, and harrowed, in rows twelve 

 feet apart, ten feet asunder in the row, which 

 will give to each acre 363 trees. In twelve years 

 they will be large enough for posts — and we all 

 know they make durable ones. A grove once set 

 will, after being cut down, renew itself, and fur- 

 nish a new supply of post-timber every twelve or 

 fifteen yciirs. 



We have stated that these trees might be cut 

 over every twelve or fifteen years for purposes of 

 fencing, and we will add, that such of those as 

 remained from twenty to twenty five years, if 

 fair, vigorously grown, healthy tre^-s, would be 

 worth three dollars apiece for ship building — 

 would at all times command ready sale to ship- 

 wrights, as also with railroad companies, for use 

 on the tracks. What an acre of laud would bring 



