146 



GENESEE FARMER. 



June. 



Leached Ashes. — Superior Soils &c. 



Leached Ashes are now carted to the canal, 

 and shipped from many points west of Syracuse, 

 all the way to Long Island, where they are found 

 to be the most economical amendment to the soil. 

 Per contra, thousands of loads of leached ashes 

 lie in heaps, around the ruins of many an old 

 ashery in Western New York, just as though 

 they contained no more of the elements of new 

 plants, than so much sand! 



It is not that the farmers of the sea coast are 

 better read in the science pertaining to their 

 calling, than the western farmer — but only that 

 the latter have not yet reduced their soil to the 

 starving point. If the Long Island farmers had 

 our alluvial subsoil, they would adopt the expe- 

 dient of throwing it up on the surface, for the 

 benefit of those inorganic elements which the 

 leached ashes supply in a concentrated form. 

 But necessity teaches these farmers that without 

 ashes, no grass — without grass, no stock — with- 

 out stock, no organic manure. 



Many of our Seneca county farmers have al- 

 ready reached that point in a starved crop, 

 where subsoil plowing and ditching, or both, are 

 indispensable to the growth of wheat. The 

 stereotyped causes of failure, freezing out, the 

 ravages of the fly, the worm, &c., &c., may 

 stand the farmer instead of the real causes of 

 failure, still a little longer. But necessity, that 

 stern school master, will sooner or later induce 

 a better and more intelligent husbandry, as the 

 only remedy for retaining the wheat plant as a 

 legitimate cereal of the farm. Whoever heard 

 of the winter-killing of a field of wheat, if well 

 put in, on newly cleared land, in Seneca county ? 

 Plenty of leached ashes on an old field, with per- 

 haps the addition of a little barn yard manure, 

 will enable the wheat plant to take so strong, 

 — root, and grow so rapidly — that it will resist 

 or counteract the action of frost ; — and the fly 

 must be on the alert and work hard indeed to 

 effectually destroy plants so full of life. 



The above remarks are the result of a colloquy 

 I had the other day with a farmer, whose pater- 

 nal estates is a small farm on one of those all fer- 

 tile alluvial ridges, in the north part of this 

 county. This man barters off all his house and 

 field ashes to the soap boiler's pedlars, for a mere 

 trifle. Such is the inexhaustible inorganic treas- 

 ures of his saliferous soil, that he could never 

 see, so he says, any amendment to it, by the 

 plication of wood ashes. 



David Thomas in his travels to the west tells 

 us, that near Vinccnnes, on the Wabash, he saw 

 Indian corn growing in great luxuriance, on up- 

 land fields that had been planted to corn by the 

 French and their descendants more than sixty 

 years in constant succession, without manure, 

 and with no perceptible diminution of crop. 

 Such spots on the earth's surface are few and far 



between, even on our best alluvial formations. 

 But iew as they are, the number of men digni- 

 fied by the title of farmers, who hold them in 

 fee simple, with a clear understanding of the 

 treasure they possess, are still fewer. The little 

 farm of A. Macumber, at Spring Port, Cayuga 

 Lake, lately noticed in the Genesee Farmer, in 

 a case in point. When I asked friend Macum- 

 ber if the former proprietors of his farm had 

 diminished its wheat feeding pabulum in their 

 thirty years plowing, he replied — " about as 

 much as a hen and chickens would have done it." 

 Seneca Co., N. Y., 1848. S. W. 



Agricuilural Improvement. 



Plowing. 



Messrs. Editors : — I have been for the last 

 fifteen months a subscriber to and reader of 

 your valuable paper, and I trust I have been 

 much benefited by a perusal of its pages. Your 

 paper pursues the proper course — it exposes our 

 errors in farming, and points out the remedy. 

 In this part of the country scientific agriculture 

 is in its infancy, and as a matter of course you 

 have to combat the errors and prejudices of the 

 people. We wish to go on in the same old beat- 

 en track which our fathers trod, and make no 

 improvement in our farming, or farming tools, or 

 stock, or any thing that pertains to the farm — 

 whilst the clothes we wear must be of the latest 

 fashion, and the most decided improvemeni . 

 Now why not give a portion of our time and 

 talents to the study of scientific agriculture — to 

 obtain a knowledge of our soils — whether it re- 

 quires vegetable or mineral manure, or what it 

 needs and what kind of grain our different soils 

 will produce the best crop of ? Let us give these 

 things our serious consideration, so that when 

 we come to put in a crop we may do so under- 

 standingly and scientifically. 



One of our great errors is our plowing, if in- 

 deed it may be called by that name. The cus- 

 tom is to plow in narrow lands, a broad furrow, 

 and from three to four inches deep. You may 

 see many fields that have been plowed for years 

 in narrow lands, and in every direction that you 

 look at the field, will show nothing but ridges 

 and hollows — ridges where the land is com- 

 menced, and hollows where it is finished. 



Now this kind of farming we consider poor — 

 it wears out the land and leaves the surface un- 

 even, and the finishing of the lands poor — and 

 the practice persisted in must inevitably destroy 

 the best natural soils in the country. This may 

 appear like a small matter to many, but we think 

 it deserving of the serious attention of every 

 farmer. We co'^sider it one of our errors, and 

 one that should be remedied. Allegheny. 



Allegheny Co., Pa., 1848. 



In cold climates the activity of vegetable growth 

 is suspended during winter ; but in hot or tropical- 

 regions the same thing takes place in summer. 



