204 



GENESEE FARMER. 



Aug. 



Notes by S. W. 



" The harvest is great, but the laborers are few." 



A PARMER says he was called up'after going 

 to bed, by a neighbor with a long face, who said 

 he had 30 acres of wheat ripe, and he cou'd 

 hire no cradlers. He now wanted the aid of 

 Hussey's Reaper, which alone could enable 

 hinn to defy the caprice and extortion of that 

 class of artists yclept cradlers, many of whom 

 now demand two dollars a day and "roast beef" 



Tis true that the greater portion of male 

 {migrants, make awkward farm laborers ; but 

 many of them who have been farm laborers 

 even in the Emerald Isle, soon become expert 

 farmers' help here. 



Our Seneca County farmers are much indebted 

 to John Delapield, of Oakland Farm, for 

 many things which go to alleviate and lighten 

 the toil and responsibility incidental to a far- 

 mers calling. He has introduced into his neigh- 

 borhood many of the better class of Irish farm 

 laborers. He says, at mowing they are a little 

 awkward with our long scythes the first day, 

 but oa the second or third day they can gener- 

 ally keep up with a practiced Yankee. Mr. D. 

 is importing from England a tile machine, 

 which it is said will mould 12,000 ditching tile 

 per day. An establishment here furnishing tile 

 at that rate, will do much towards accelerating 

 the progress of under-draining our flat lands — 

 a consummation which is to give a new impetus 

 to vegetable growth, and an improvement in til- j 

 lage, which is yet to cast anything but commen- 

 dation upon the present system of farming. 

 Ours now is labor unemployed, or if bestowed, 

 unrequited. 



July 25. Since writing the above I have 

 been south as far as the first towns in Tompkins 

 County. Nearly all the wheat is cut ; every 

 crop, grass or grain, promises a very good yield. 

 One farmer who boasted of his corn, seemed in- 

 credulous when I told him that I had more ears 

 in full silk on one rod square, than he had on 

 four rods. His field was well tilled, but the drab 

 shaly soil, lacked that extra organic manure, 

 without which the maximium yield of Indian 

 corn cannot be had. 1 now felt more than ever 

 the true value of a clay soil. One of the great- 

 est enigmas to me in rural economy is, why so 

 many farmers of apparent common sense, will 

 consent to work so many acres of corn to so 

 little profit. One fourth part of the labor, with 

 forty loads of manure, on one worn acre, will 

 produce as much corn as four acres with the 

 same manure. Then again, a few days work 

 early applied, often insures a good crop, which 

 is nearly lost by a late application of the same 

 labor. I have sometimes thought it would be a 

 blessing to some selfstyled farmers, to have 

 no more land than they tilled well. But then, 



again, who has not seen the single acre en- 

 tirely neglected ? Stern necessity alone can 

 make man uniformly economical of nature's 

 blessings. The day will come, or at least it may 

 come, when Seneca county will be made to pro- 

 duce a thousand to one of its present edible pro- 

 ductions, grass alone excepted. And yet this 

 county is hardly second to any other county in 

 Western New York, in rural productions at this 

 day. 



Cheating the Worms. — A masterly farmer 

 on the flat lands of Romulus, told me he had a 

 lot of two acres, heavy pebbly loam, which had 

 been pastured by cattle, sheep and hogs, until 

 it was weedy, sward bound, and useless. He 

 broke it up and planted it with Indian corn ;. 

 the worms eat up the growing corn. He now 

 plowed and sowed it with buckwheat, the same 

 season ; the worms injured this crop. In the 

 spring he again planted the same field with corn ; 

 finding the worms in every hill before the 1st 

 of June, he planted again with the hoe between 

 each hill, alternately. The worms confined 

 themselves to the first hills, and he harvested 

 200 bushels of ears to the acre from the last 

 planting. He once after practiced the same 

 device with like success ; but the worms have 

 at length been starved out by good tillage. 



If the bugs attack jour garden vines, pull up 

 one or two vines to a hill ; the bugs will leave 

 the healthy to feed on the prostrate vines ; upon 

 a principle well known in animated nature, 

 where the strong always prey upon the weak. 

 The healthy vines will soon get beyond the reach 

 of the bugs ; but it is better to kill all the bugs 

 when congregated on the dying vines. 



S. W. 



Best Plan of a Barn. — It has been remark- 

 ed that no building on the farm in the northern 

 states is of more importance than the barn. — 

 Those who have had the charge of cattle during 

 our long winters, can at once see that much time 

 and hard labor could be saved by a judicious 

 arrangement of stalls, and bays, granaries, &c., 

 so that every creature could be fed by taking as 

 {ew steps as possible. One very important thing 

 to be considered, is the best mode of preserving 

 as well as collecting manure, so that itshall retain 

 all its valuable properties in the spring and be 

 easil) got out. We like the plan of having a 

 barn on the side of a hill, and so arranged that 

 you may drive your team or cart load pretty 

 near the ridge pole, and thus pitch most of your 

 hay down, instead of up. Having your stalls 

 near, you can continue to pitch the hay down, 

 and if you have a cellar beneath, you can throw 

 the manure down also, and thus make the attrac- 

 tion of gravitation perform much of the labor of 

 transportation from the mow to the manure cart. 

 — American Journal of Ag. and Science. 



