THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



" At the head of this lower Valley, on tlie right 

 bank of the river, commence the almost princely 

 domains of the Messrs. Sullivants, stretching a 

 Inng distance down its clear winding stream, en- 

 closing the village of Franklin immediately op- 

 positeColumbus, and rimning in parallelograms 

 of about an equal width on each side of the Na- 

 tional Road west, to the distance of between six 

 and seven miles, making an aggregate of land, in 

 one compact body, of upwards of eight thous- 

 and acres. 



"The bottom lands of this large estate are 

 about two and a half miles wide, and till within 

 a few years, from time immemorial, have been 

 devoted almost entirely to corn, they having 

 been found in this crop when first discovered un- 

 der the sway of the aborigines of the country. 

 The Sciota then occasionally overflowed its 

 banks with bark water, which left a thick rich 

 sediment, that kept up the fertility of the land 

 drawn out by the growing crop. But this over- 

 flow has occasionally been found to destroy the 

 corn, and latterly an embankment or levee has 

 been thrown up along the lower banks of the riv- 

 er, which sei-ves to keep the water out, and the 

 consequence is, that the same lands that would 

 average with common attention 75 to 90 bushels 

 per acre, do not now yield over about fi.'i bushels, 

 when the stalks and corn are annually cut up and 

 carried ofl^ In order to recruit them then, under 

 this exhausting system, as soon as ihe corn is 

 glazed, say the fore part of September, it is cut 

 up close to the ground, and shocked in straight 

 rows across the field, and the ground between 

 immediately plowed and sowed to wheat. In 

 the course of the winter, the corn is husked out 

 in the field, and the stalks carried off as wanted 

 for fodder, and the narrow strips of land they 

 occupied in shocks between the wheat in the 

 spring is sowed to oats and the whole field stock- 

 ed down with clover, and then fed off for two 

 seasons and the land again put into corn till 

 found to lessen its crop, hi this way, with the 

 application of a little lime, which can be made 

 from the quarries of the estate at the triHing 

 cost of eight cents per barrel, the Messrs. S. 

 think they can keep up the fertility of tlieir bot- 

 tom lands to the end of time, and yet annually 

 carry off all the corn and fodder when in crop, 

 to be fed ujjon and fertilize the uplands. 



" The fields being very large, the soil light and 

 friable, and no obstructions of stones or any 

 thing else in the way, all the labor of planting, 

 covering, and weeding is done by different made 

 ploughs, harrows, and cultivators, drawn by 

 horses, and with great care and rapidity, the de- 

 tails of which 1 will give hereafter, when I have 

 fully witnessed them. I shall confine myself 

 now to the manner in which the lands are farmr 

 ed or rented. The first and most usual way, is 

 for the tenants to find eveiy thing and tiiUe one- 

 half of the crop shocked in the field, or deliver 

 neatly husked one-third in the crib. Second, 

 pay a corn rent of twenty bushels to the acre, of' 

 sound bright corn, delivered in the crib. Third, 

 find seed and cultivate the crop for three dollars 

 per acre, to shocking it in the field, and two 

 and a half cents more per bushel for husking, 

 and cost of delivery according to the distance to 

 be transported. Fourth, the owner of the soil 

 hiring his own men by the day or the month, and 

 doing every thing then within himself 



"There are two ways of feeding off" the corn 

 and pumpkins here. One is to turn fatting cat- 

 tle into the field, and let them eat at ihcir own 

 discretion, and then be taken out and followed 

 by droves of hogs, who clean up pretty much all 

 that is lef^. This, to a northern man, may be 

 considered very wasteful, but it is a great saving 

 of labor, and the corn being comparatively soft, 

 is easily ground by the animals and digested." 



Fai'ming seems to be indeed an easy htisiness 

 on a soil so productive as {h'!t of Ohio. The 

 earth yields an abundance ; and for years there 

 is so little diminu'.ion of the crops that the pro- 

 prietors and occupants of the land dream not of 

 » necessity of replenishing them with manure. 

 This pristine fertility is not uncommon in othei- 

 I>arts of the country. A veteran of the revolu 

 tion who marched through the forests and over 

 the Green Mountains from " No. 4 " in the au- 

 tumn of 1777, a few days before the battle of 

 Bennington, came upon the settlements of Man- 

 chester and the vicinity just at the time of early 

 harvest ; and of that coiintrv he remarked that 



it was more productive and beuuiiiui timii any 

 ground he had ever set eyes upon. His own 

 domicil was situated in sight of the then inviting 

 alluvion grounds situated upon the Merrimack, 

 which at this day are nmch more productive and 

 show a better soil than the grounds about Man- 

 chester : the latter, we think — perhaps it is he- 

 cause they are older — ^are inferior to almost any 

 other farming region of Vermont. Forty years 

 ago the ftlassachusetts young men sometimes 

 used to venture as far to the west as the river 

 Hudson and the banks of the Mohawk in the 

 State of New York, whose settlements thou had 

 hardly extended beyond that point. They came 

 back with marvellous stories about the Dutch 

 farmers in that region ; and from them we think 

 the saying "This heals the Dutch" must have 

 originated. It was said of their farms that ma- 

 nure, if applied to them, would injure rather 

 than benefit them ; and that they were under the 

 necessity, as the most ready and easy manner of 

 getting "rid of the trouble, of removing their 

 barns out of the way of the accumulating mass 

 that had been gathered in piles about them ! 

 At this day there is nothing very remarkable in 

 the soil of that country above any of the soil of 

 New England: without manure the ground there 

 produces no better than it does in almost any 

 part of New Hampshire. The river alluvion is 

 always more feasible and of deeper vegetable 

 mould than the upland ; but the rich valley of 

 the Mohawk is by no means now su|)eri()r to 

 that of the Connecticut ; and much of , it hardly 

 better than the land found on the Merrimack. 



The State of Ohio is a most magnificent and 

 flourishing section of om- country. It is at this 

 time of that green age when its natural fertility 

 and its products will appear to the best advantage. 

 Twenty, filteeii and even ten years ago, like most 

 of the level <u- gently rolling countries at the 

 west, its inhabitants were troubled with those fe- 

 vers an(l bilious complaints which carry to a jire- 

 tnature grave so many of the settlers from the 

 New England States ;" it has now become much 

 more heaUhy than the newer settled Slates further 

 west. But even from the longest settled parts of 

 Ohio, often do our citizens return pale and ema- 

 ciated, shaking with the chills or burning with 

 the fevers which have been there contracted. 



We are told that Indian corn has been raised 

 fifty years in succession in the Sciota, the Miami 

 and the Wabash valleys ; some say that in a hun- 

 dred successive years tlie crops there have not 

 been sensibly diminished. There are certain 

 laws ill relation to production that operate every 

 where. If a man was to come from a distant 

 land with the information that human beings 

 there never waxed old or died from the eflecls 

 of age or disease, no sensible person would be- 

 lieve him : so when we are told that the fertile 

 lands of the west which are not annually sup- 

 plied with nutriment by some overflow or wash 

 will never wear out, we are alike incredulous. 

 There is no part of the United States, he it ever 

 so fertile, that will not in the course of time re- 

 quire constimt periodical stimulants to keep up 

 its production. 



Of the thirteen old Atlantic States, we believe 

 the middle and southern were originally more 

 productive than those of the north. Where has 

 the greater deterioi-ation of soil been fell, but in 

 that most productive region ? Whole districts of 

 counti7 in Maryland and Virginia long produc- 

 ing abundant crops of corn and tobacco, have 

 been abandoned because they will not yieUl 

 enough to support a scattered population ; and 

 a portion of the once fertile regions of Carolina 

 and Georgia that turned out great crops of cot- 

 ton have been deserted by their owners who 

 have sought new plantations in Alabama and Mis- 

 sissippi. 



The first settlers of New England are liable 

 to the same charge of indiscretion as others. In 

 too many cases they injured their lands at the 

 very first step. In their anxiety to get much 

 land cleared, they chopped down the under- 

 growth, girdled the large trees, burned partially, 

 and laid into mowing or pasture without putting 

 into the ground the due quantity of grass seed. 

 The consequence was that, much of the value 

 and production of the first fertility was lost; the 

 places of the useftil grasses were usurped by 

 brakes and briars and pod ; and the ground nev- 

 er paid for the first labor of cutting down the 

 forest trees. Afterwards tJie renovation of the 



same ground cost its owiieis more than the ex- 

 pense of the first clearing ; in some cases no im- 

 provement is made on the grounds until after 

 the lapse of many years. 



In some parts of New England we see farms 

 well cleared and vei^ productive at first, growing 

 less and less profitable from the indolent man- 

 ner of their treatment, finally abandoned by the 

 bad husbands who have imjioverished themselves 

 for the want of due industry. On these fiirms 

 the first erected log fences, v.hen rotted down, 

 are not supplied with good and permanent stone 

 walls; an insufficient barrier only exists between 

 the corn and grain fields and the pasture, leaving 

 the fiirmer a prey to unruly cattle which break 

 out of the latter, or else range upon the high- 

 way. 



Every new countiT, after it passes out of the 

 slate of its first ferlility, meets a crisis that will 

 require all the energy and enterjirise of the good 

 farnier to keep it in that jiosition wiiere popula- 

 tion and wealth shall increase. Such a country 

 must tiill back if it goes not lorward — it cannot 

 stand still in its position. Tlie greater part of 

 New England has passed, or is passing that cri- 

 sis. When a man has cleared all the land upon 

 his farm except what he wishes to have as a 

 wood or timber lot, he should begin to look about 

 him to see where improvement can be made. 

 He adds to the value of his farm in every well 

 cleared acre ; she may continue to add to its val- 

 ue by making one acre produce what two acres 

 before produced. The land losing its fir.st fer- 

 tility should he kept up in its production by ar- 

 tificial means — by labor and stimulants. The 

 acre reclainwd is more likely to be made perma- 

 nently vahiahle than the acre that has not yet 

 .seemed to need reclaiming. 



We believe it will not be many years before 

 the farmers of New England will be convinced 

 that their sons can jiursue the business of culti- 

 vation more profitidily at home than to go to dis- 

 tant lands to find an easier and a better soil. It 

 is true they may find a deeper mould, a land 

 more free from hardness, a more level and a less 

 rocky countiy ; but can they find any part of the 

 world where labor is better paid than upon our 

 own New England soil ? Suppose they may 

 raise Indian corn upon the bottoms of the Sciota 

 without the use of the hoe or the hard labor of 

 the hand in promoting its growth ; one bushel of 

 corn here will give as much money if it is raised 

 for sale as lour bushels of corn in Ohio. With 

 the easier growth in Ohio, the personal labor 

 there must be as great or greater in preparing the 

 corn or other crop lor the market in proportion 

 to its value than it will be here. We may well 

 alTprd to pay for making our i)Oor lands as fertile 

 by artificial means as the best lands of Ohio, and 

 still obtain os much profit from an equal amount 

 of labor. 



But the best lands in Ohio and the West are 

 destined to wear out as the New England lands 

 have been worn out The older ])arts of Ohio, 

 the region that was settled thirty and forty years 

 ago, for some years iiave mauifested symptom of 

 decay. The re|)orts brought to us are that the 

 land grows belter the farther we go west: the 

 fact is, the land there is no better than it \fas 

 further east, only the lancj longer cultivated ap- 

 pears to be less fertile than that which has but 

 just been entered. 



Five years ago a most intelligent and venerable 

 citizen of New Hampshire who has been a clo;e 

 observer of the agriculture of New England <hu> 

 ing the last fifty years, travelled the Atlantic. 

 States from New Hampshire to Virginia, and 

 throujh western Ppnnsylvania, Kentucky and 

 Ohio from Cincinnati on" the southwest through 

 the centre back to the easterly line of that State. 

 He says the older parts of Oliio, already show a 

 diminished production when compared with the 

 newer settled portion of that State. He exam- 

 ined particularly the fertile lands upon the Scio- 

 ta river; and he does npt dpubt that with the 

 succession of exhausting crops, without the ap- 

 plication of stimulants, that land must bccpino 

 barren like othei worn out lands. 



David Hkivshaw, Etq. late Collector of Bos- 

 ton, has succeeded, the last season in raising a 

 crop of winter wheat on his faim at Leicester, 

 Massachusetts. Leicester is situated on that 

 ridge of land which extends through, Worces- 

 ter rpsin|v, Mass. and central throii^th New 



