116 



&l)c jfarmer's iHontljln bisitor. 



The Niagara Bridge. 



On Friday morning last, the extensive circus 

 and equestrian troupe of Col. Mann crossed the 

 suspension bridge, en route to Canada. The 

 company occupied twenty-two horse teams, head- 

 ed by the four-horse band wagon, together with 

 their baggage and paraphernalia. As little delay 

 occurred as at any ordinary bridge, and the men 

 and horses appeared quite at home. The whole 

 flooring of the bridge, eight hundred feet long, 

 appeared occupied at one lime, and presented 

 from the water's edge, three hundred and twenty 

 feet below, n scene of unequalled beauty and 

 grandeur — the wires resembling more a spider's 

 web woveu across this otherwise impassable 

 chasm, than the firm and solid carriage way. 



The fare on teams has been reduced, and sev- 

 eral hundred head of cattle, within the last last 

 few days, have availed themselves of the bridge 

 as a crossing plaee. 



There cannot be a doubt of this soon becom- 

 ing the principal point of intercommunication 

 between the two countries. Jt is already the 

 great attraction of the neighborhood, and since 

 the strengthening has been completed, a drive 

 over into Canada is quite the thing.— Buffalo 

 Commercial. 



&l)e Visitor. 



CONCORD, N. II., AUGUST 31, 1849. 



Events upon the Farm in August. 

 With scarcely more intense interest does the 

 statesman regard the effect of measures on 

 ■which he has staked his reputation, or the war- 

 rior watching the marchings and evolutions of a 

 wary invading enemy, than we have watched in 

 our humble sphere the growth of the crops of 

 the present season — indeed, we may say, the 

 growth upon the few acres under our own care. 

 We had tried a field in what might almost be 

 considered an untried field — an uncommon sized 

 field of potatoes for a small New Hampshire 

 farmer. This was upon the naked dry pine 

 plains — ground not considered as of strength 

 adapted to a potato crop. From the time of 

 planting through the last of the month of May, 

 and through June and July, what a season had 

 this been for an extensive field of potatoes upon 

 the dry pine plains! Week after week passed, 

 and all signs of even a cheering shower of rain 

 failed. Did you ever know a haying time from 

 early July to nearly the middle of August when 

 the farmer had nothing to do hut mow down his 

 grass and rake it up to well cure bis hay in any 

 quantity ? Potato vegetation needed rain so 

 much, that we had been even willing to have 

 two tons of mowed hay for each of four hands 

 drenched in wet, and even to be soaked our- 

 selves from head to foot, so that the parched, 

 famishing earth could receive a single copious 

 shower. But no! it seemed that the clouds with 

 all the usual signs denoting rain formed and 

 passed around and over us purely to tantalize 

 man and make him feel how dependent he is 

 on the smiles of that Providence which scarcely 

 fails to apportion the rains and the shines in 

 their due season. 



Our potato field has probably attracted more 

 attention than has commonly been bestowed on 

 any cultivation of a secondary crop in a part of 

 the country by no means rich in agricultural 

 products. It was natural to suppose it must be 

 a failure upon that ground this year if it failed 

 no other year. We feared that we might at least 

 lose our labor and the use of all the aliment with 

 which we had fed a portion of the soil for the 

 first season. It gives us no pain to say that our 

 calculations have been disappointed. During 



the whole of the month of July the anticipation 

 had been that the potato crop in all this part of 

 the country would be a failure: if so, we thought 

 our field of more than twenty acres must fail 

 with the rest. It is quite extraordinary, and cer- 

 tainly gratifying to be able to say, that while 

 every thing on the pine plains nliotit it was 

 parched and dry, our field preserved its green- 

 ness throughout. Nowhere in any field of the 

 lands strongest proof against drought have the 

 potato vines exhibited through the lengthened 

 drought a more constant greenness than ours. 

 The edge of this field which lies upon the upper 

 shelf or terrace seventy -five feet above the river 

 bed on the east side may be seen from the rail- 

 road on the west side of the Merrimack as we 

 pass along : the ploughed part lies on the level 

 to the very edge of the terrace. Below this 

 edge from the first part of July to the com- 

 mencement of the rains in August, the sun 

 striking his rays directly on the steep side hill 

 with a southerly aspect, had dryed the surface 

 to a crisp, changing the color as of evergreen 

 trees blighted by fire. Directly above them may 

 he seen the potato vines on this last day of Au- 

 gust as they had been the two previous months 

 in the most healthy vegetable green. This field, 

 called by our Irish laborers " the garden," attrac- 

 ted by a company of reapers working on the same 

 terrace level upon the opposite side of our muck- 

 bed valley in the hottest and dryest of the sum- 

 mer days of July, where a sparse, stinted crop 



and for the weight of seed put in the ground we 

 believe the product of increase will be in the 

 plains crop nearly twenty for one: the seed- 

 ing was only seven or eight bushels to the acre. 

 Our planting for the most part was of the size 

 of potato smaller than a pullet's egg, too little 

 for cooking. The rows three and a half feet 

 apart, were laid in drills with one, and of the 

 very smallest kind sometimes two potatoes in 

 the distance of twelve to eighteen inches apart. 

 The subsoiled ground was furrowed in the mel- 

 low soil by a single horse plough after the laud 

 had been levelled with the harrow. A little 

 more than half of the large field had compos', 

 with no intermixture of stable or barn-yard ma- 

 nure, made from the black muck taken from the 

 hollow running half a mile into and dividing 

 the pine plain, with the alkali of lime and ashes, 

 to which was added a sprinkling of salt that cost 

 thirty-three cents a bunhel at the Concord depot. 

 This cheap-made manure was so strong that we 

 have learned a lesson how to improve it next 

 time by a lessened quantity of the alkalies. The 

 beds in the field where the piles were laid last 

 September are and have been through the sum- 

 mer as naked as the travelled part of the road 

 ways. A few potatoes started at first on the 

 ground of these manure beds, which was not 

 broken and then only with a single plough 

 until the present spring. Potatoes having failed, 

 a second planting of cucumbers, turnips and 

 ruta baga was put in : neither these or the 



of rye had grown out of ground stirred four or 

 five inches deep, was regarded as a matter of 

 wonder. " What has he done to that ground to 

 make potatoes grow ? what does he put on it?" 

 One conjectured that the sheep and cattle which 

 had trespassed upon the ground till the snow 

 covered it, gnawing the clover down to its very 

 roots in three or four past seasons, had left on 

 the ground the richness which now gave life to 

 vegetation: another thought the owner of the 

 land had expended hundreds of dollars in buy- 

 ing stable manure to put upon it. Some con- 

 jectured one thing — some another. The truth 

 is, that the whole foundation of success on this 

 field was the double or subsoil ploughing and 

 preparation of the field last October: we car- 

 ried the plough eight inches deeper in the naked 

 sand than it had ever hefore been carried. We 

 can show upon this field that where with 

 the shallow ploughing we would have had 

 scarcely ten bushels, we will now have a hun- 

 dred bushels of potatoes. 



It is needless to say to the experienced that 

 the quality of potatoes raised upon this silicious 

 soil makes them at least twenty-five per cent, 

 better than the potatoes raised upon the old 

 ground filled with stimulating barn manures: 

 there is little fear of the rot in our pine plain 

 potatoes. We are just beginning in the first of 

 September to dig the early whites, which are a 

 valuable round potato after they are finally ripe : 

 these come out smaller, but in greater numbers 

 than the pinkeye potatoes which are a fortnight la- 

 ter. The latter kind, still growing, bang upon the 

 vines with very few small ones. The early po- 

 tatoes, which had extended to the usual time of 

 maturity previous to the copious rains which 

 have fallen in the last four weeks of August, 

 have increased in size and weight one half in 

 that time. They are of a small vine which has 

 now become dead and nearly dry; but the pota- 

 toes continued to grow so long as greenness re- 

 mained in the stalk. In the double-ploughed 

 land the potatoes hang in clusters like grapes, 



weeds have started upon these manure beds un- 

 til the present time. In many places over the 

 field where the small manure piles laid only a 

 few days the coming up and growth of the pota- 

 toes were seriously obstructed. There is evi- 

 dently great strength in the muck bed which lies 

 along the valley to which we have alluded. After 

 exposure to the atmosphere in its native bed it 

 is hard to make anything glow upon this muck: 

 upon it there arises a frost tasting as of strong 

 nitre. The action of this muck must be power- 

 ful upon a silicious soil; and this is more speed- 

 ily effected by the alkalies coming from fresh 

 slakeued lime and ashes. To the spreading of 

 about eight cords of this compost on the acre 

 were added before the last harrowing about two 

 hundred and fifty pounds of weakened African 

 guano and nearly the same quantity of ground 

 plaster mixed. Over ten acres of the field no 

 compost manure was laid on. About ten bush- 

 els of ashes to the acre were first spread, and 

 after this six hundred pounds to the acre of 

 mixed guano and ground plaster were sowed 

 and harrowed in as grain. The preparation of 

 this ground, first after the double ploughing of 

 last fall, was made with very little labor: the 

 whole cost of it would be scarcely as great as 

 the cost of hauling ten loads of stable manure u 

 single mile. The potatoes now standing upon 

 these ten acres, maturing and ripening as they 

 were in successive days planting, as far as they 

 have been tried, exceed our most sanguine ex- 

 pectations. They lie in clusters near the top of 

 the ground — for we formed little or no billing 

 beyond the swelling of the crop upon the sur- 

 face — they nearly all pull up with the vines from 

 the soft soil, leaving white rooly fibres which 

 may be traced in the ground to the depth of the 

 whole extent of ploughing. These rooty fibres, 

 reaching down to the dampened soil as the se- 

 vere drought dried up from the surface, we 

 think, must have furnished the aliment for the 

 potato crop in the time of its greatest exigency. 

 If the anticipated prices hold, our potato *■•■- 





