54 



QL\)t .farmer's iHon!!)ln faxsitor. 



sterile land may be made to produce not only 

 abundant garden vegetables and fruits and flow- 

 ers, but the best of English hay, clover, timothy 

 and herdsgrass, at the rate of three and four tons 

 to the acre. 



The farms, smaller or larger, which have been 

 brought into cultivation within the last few years, 

 all reclaimed out of this poor land, are many of 

 them as productive as the be.-t garden farms in 

 the vicinity of Boston. There are scores of these 

 places whose owners are not known to the edi- 

 tor. The famed Washington race ground has, 

 we believe, been converted into a cultivated 

 farm, so that the members of Congress are no 

 longer tempted to adjourn over for the sake of 

 attending the sport of doubtful moral tendency. 

 Of the farms which present fruit orchards, rich 

 garden fields and hay meadows, we may mention 

 those of Mr. Seaver, Mr. Stone, the engraver, Mr. 

 Brown, the taverner, Mr. Riggs, the new rich 

 banker, &c. 



Five years ago we accompanied Mr. Blair, late 

 editor of the Globe, to his then newly purchased 

 lot of land six miles out of Washington north, 

 just over the line of the district within the limits 

 of Montgomery county, Maryland. The avenue 

 leading to it is the turnpike road, taking a direct 

 line from the centre market of Washington city 

 upon the Pennsylvania avenue to Montgomery 

 court-house, a distance of ten miles. Mr. Blair 

 had accidentally pitched upon this lot, from the 

 pursuit of a horse which had thrown its lady 

 rider, Mrs. Blair, in which he found oozing fron 

 under a rock the Silver spring which has givei 

 to the plantation its name. The purchase em- 

 b'aced about two hundred and fifty acres, of 

 which much was covered with a growth of un- 

 derwood, part pine and part hard wood. Two 

 valleys carrying out streams of water, the sources 

 of the Georgetown creek, crossed in a circular 

 winding from east to west almost the. entire lot 

 leaving a tongue of land between, at the highest 

 point of which, the distance (say fifty rods) from 

 the main turnpike road, Mr. Blair has erected an 

 airy and comfortable, rather than a splendid man- 

 sion, corresponding somewhat with that of Gen. 

 Jackson at the Hermitage, but not upon so large 

 or so expensive a scale. The proprietor has like 

 wise made other extensive erections upon the 

 premises — farm and tenant houses with their 

 appendages — stables for horses and cattle, sheds, 

 &c. At the lime of our first visit he had made 

 an erection of a summer-house directly over the 

 stream oozing from the rock of the side-hill 

 which winds its way down the northenuost val 

 ley: since that time he has built a mill with a 

 recently invented water power fully supplied by 

 this spring only a few rods below its head. In 

 this mill are apparatus for threshing, winnowing 

 and grinding grain, making flour from wheat 

 chopped hominy for cattle or the use of man, 

 cutting corn-butts, hay or straw for horses, cows 

 and hogs, and machines for various other eco 

 nomical uses and purposes. The main wheel of 

 this mill is thirty feet in diameter, constructed of 

 cast iron : the water comes iu upon the top in an 

 overshot conveyance, being forced up to that 

 point by the power of the small stream issuing 

 from the hill. The mill stands adjacent to at 

 extensive walled building roofed with woodei 

 materials, large enough to deposite in masses the 

 corn and grain to be threshed, husked, chopped 

 or otherwise, to be prepared as they shall be 

 wanted for use. 



In the last five years Mr. Blair has expended 

 much money upon these premises; his perse- 



verance, if not his success in making farming 

 profitable, is worthy of much praise. He goes 

 into improvements where he can expect little re- 

 muneration other than in the gratification of 

 taste and fancy, with all the zeal of an enthusias- 

 tic young farmer of the north who works his ten 

 or fifteen hours in the day with the almost cer- 

 tain prospect of gain to his capital. It has had a 

 "capital" effect ; for the face of the editor farmer, 

 habitually of temperate bearing, as we used to 

 know in olden times, now presents a contrast 

 which would hardly admit his old opposers to 

 offer him the taunt of" skin and bones": his face 

 is that of many a full healthy laboring farmer of 

 sixty years. In a dark cloudy forenoon of one 

 of the last days of March, our company found 

 Mr. Blair with his laborers at work in the ro- 

 mantic valley below the mill — a new spot clear- 

 ed, which he was preparing to be adorned with 

 trees, shubbery and flower beds for a future ar- 

 boreum. Near this point is the rock, apparently 

 a boulder out of place lying partly under ground 

 — a rock of mica and gneiss approaching nearest 

 the granite— which it has been calculated to 

 transport to the city of Washington as the foun- 

 dation for the equestrian monument or statue to 

 be erected for Gen. Jackson. Not very far be- 

 low this rock the romantic northern valley here 

 becomes passway to a considerable stream from 

 the accumulated water of the springs, unites 

 with the southern valley with a stream of smaller 

 dimensions, but not less romantic than the other. 

 Along both these valleys the original trees are 

 left standing, of which the white wood or a spe- 

 cies of poplar is frequent — as also the beech anil 

 we believe one or more kinds of the maple. 

 The excavations along these valleys show an un- 

 dersoil, in our estimation, that will prove itself of 

 great richness if mixed in compost and applied 

 to the surrounding upland. It is of" the nature 

 of that rich marl which effervesces with vitriol, 

 acid or vinegar. 



Taking the path in all its windings down the 

 north and up the southern spring valley, we trav- 

 ersed the distance perhaps of two miles upon 

 these premises of Mr. Blair. This brought us 

 hack to the mansion, below which upon the 

 tongue of land, the proprietor has laid off" five 

 acres into a beautiful ornamental flower, fruit 

 and vegetable garden: this plat is an inclined 

 plane of slight depression on each side and end 

 of a lengthened oval. The mansion and the 

 cleared ground below, embracing the garden, was 

 a forest of small pines growing up out of a worn- 

 out soil when we visited the same place five 

 years before. 



This farm of Mr. Blair, if we remember 

 aright, is a portion of the extensive tracts of land 

 in Maryland originally owned in the Carroll 

 name, a family of well known wealth as the first 

 settlers of the Catholic State nearly two hundred 

 years a<ro. A stone boundary at the corner of 

 Mr. Blair's premises bore the mark " 1761." 

 Half a dozen years since next to nothing except 

 the brush-wood and trees jjrew upon this farm. 

 The cleared ground extending along the turn- 

 pike had been cultivated to Indian corn planted 

 in the old Maryland fashion, producing from the 

 starved appearance of the standing blades, proba- 

 bly not exceeding half a dozen bushels to the 

 acre. Mr. Blair has brought this laud to yield 

 already from 60 to 100 bushels to the acre : some 

 of these ears of corn in daily process for horse- 

 feed we saw at the mill — they were of the white 

 flint, the largest and best filled of that kind we 

 had ever seen. Upon this sterile land the pro- 



prietor raises from twenty to twenty-five bushels 

 of winter wheat to the acre. Forty acres of this, 

 covering the ground with a beautiful green, is in 

 growth the present year. Mr. Blair coming from 



old Kentucky had cultivated land and raised 

 crops in that 'garden of America," said to abound 

 in soil the richest of any part of the Union: he 

 declared that he had raised vegetables of more 

 sturdy size and growth at the Silver spring farm 

 .than he had ever seen in Kentucky. 



We had forgotten to mention as one of the or- 

 naments of the trees of the valleys immense 

 grape vines winding up and covering the limbs 

 of adjacent trees: these were the native grape 

 varying in kind from pleasant sweet to disagree- 

 able tart, sour and hitter, like the native apple 

 growing in various parts of the country. Of the 

 native flowers growing here, Mr. B. had noted 

 and enumerated as many as twenty-five different 

 kinds. 



If the proprietor of Silver Springs has brought 

 his grounds from a condition in which they were 

 literally without value, to a production worth the 

 income of at least a hundred dollers an acre, 

 public opinion, the looker-on who sees the labor 

 and expense he has given to this enterprise — 

 spending money instead of making it — does not 

 give him the credit to which he is entitled. His 

 lands are made rich, it is admitted ; but how are 

 they made rich ? His teams have been going 

 from the city nearly every day in the year carry- 

 ing manures or the materials for making them: 

 manures from the stables, lime and plaster, oys- 

 ter-shells to he converted into lime by burning, 

 gatherings from the streets — all these have been 

 used upon the Silver Spring farm without stint — 

 they have carried to the farm, it :.-<ay be said, all 

 the richness which it enjoys. Not so, not so. 

 The stimulants have been here used in larger 

 quantities and iu greater rapidity of process, in- 

 creasing perhaps the expense. If they have cost 

 more than they should do, this is no fault certain- 

 ly of the land which has been improved by them. 

 No one has a right to expect of a man com- 

 mencing the improvement of land as Mr. Blair 

 has, that he should find his expenditures return" 

 ing to him in money day by day or year by year. 



Of one thing we are certain, and that is, that 

 the example at the Silver Spring and of the opu- 

 lent and munificent owners of larger farms and 

 cottage garden plats within the district of Co- 

 lumbia, especially on the northern side, has had 

 the effect almost entirely to change the aspect of 

 the country within the last fifteen years. The 

 vegetable and fruit markets of the city formerly 

 so naked and diminutive but now abounding in 

 the richest and best, bear testimony to the great 

 benefits done to the public by these improve- 

 ments. If some gentlemen farmers have not 

 made the ends meet, they have set other men to 

 work who can and will do it. The scrubbing up 

 of bushy worn-out light high lands, the ditching 

 of wet meadows and morasses, the market carls 

 and wagons returning laden with manures, with 

 scraped-up bones and oyster-shells, spent lime 

 and ashes — all the way over the turnpike from 

 the city to the Silver Springs — is so much proof 

 that the latter state of this worn-down part of 

 the old thirteen States is not doomed to be by 

 any means its worst estate. 



So far as Peruvian guano has been applied to 

 the most sterile red-clay lands of this middle re 

 gion of the United States, the effect has beeu 

 wonderful : the demand for this increasing in the 

 United States will employ many ships. To the 

 action of guano, vie would recommend as Us best aid 



