1853. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



381 



a clay loam by the river side, and on a sandy loam 

 on the hill side, with equal success. My practice 

 has been, to lay the land to grass, ivithout first 

 raising any hoed crop, or grain, upon it. The com- 

 mon practice has been, among our fanners, first to 

 clear the land, then take off a crop of winter rye, 

 pasture a few years, plow up and plant with corn 

 or potatoes, two years, and lay down to grass with 

 oats, rye or wheat, in the spring. This may be 

 the best mode of doing the thing, on many old 

 farms, but it is too long a ivay to a hay crop, when 

 one must keep a stock of cattle, and sees plainly, 

 that hay will be worth twenty doUiirs a ton, next 

 year ! I have a couple of acres of upland, which 

 you may recollect, just over the bridge, now under 

 treatment, and I will give you the process, as an 

 illustration of the shortest crit to a crop of hay. 

 Late last autumn, my men dug out by the roots, 

 all the growth, enough to make twenty cords of 

 wood ; principally, yellow pine. We dug round 

 the trees, cut off the principal roots, attached a 

 rope to the trunks some twenty or thirty feet 

 from the ground, and pulled tlie trees over, cut 

 them into cord wood, and hauled the wood away. 

 We have now drawn upon the lot, about twenty 

 loads of good compost manure. Next week we 

 expect to burn the brush, and plow the land with 

 a heavy plow. Three good*yoke of oxen, with one 

 man to drive, one to hold the plow, one to cut be- 

 fore the coulter, with a sharp axe to sever the 

 roots ; and a fourth to follow with a bog hoe to 

 turn the balks, make up my regular team for the 

 business. This force will thoroughly plow from 

 one-half to two-thirds of an acre a day. Gener- 

 ally, I use no harrow, but level the furrows with 

 bog hoes. This may seem an unnecessary expen- 

 diture of labor, but the object is, to finish the 

 work without disturbing the furrow, and the har- 

 row will often bring up the sods, so as to require 

 more labor to remove them , than to level the whole 

 by liand. Six men can level with hoes an acre of 

 any land thoroughly turned over by the plow, in 

 a day, burying the turf in the hollows, and piling 

 up for burning, whatever roots come to light. The 

 next step, after taking off, or burning these roots, 

 is, to spread the manure, say seven cords to the 

 acre. If there is need of drains, they must be fin- 

 ished before the manure is applied. Brush the 

 manure in well with a birch brush, drawn by a 

 horse. Sow a half bushel of herdsgrass, and a bush- 

 el of red-top to the acre, roll the land, and the 

 business is done. I prefer to sow it the last of 

 August, or early in September, but have had a full 

 crop when I have sowed as late as the first of Oc- 

 tober. Early in spring, on one of the last snows, 

 sow eight or ten pounds of ck>ver seed to the acre. 

 Clover generally dies in winter, if sowed in the 

 full. Farmers will, of course, find it for their in- 

 terest to vary the details of the operation accord- 

 ing to the condition of their land. My land is en- 

 tirely free from stones, and when once properly 

 plowed, ten or twelve inches deep, is in pretty 

 good subjection. It is indispensable to success, 

 that a very heavy furrow be turned and laid flat, 

 that the small bushes and grass, may not find their 

 way to the surface. 



I have more than a dozen acres which have been 

 treated substantially in this manner, except that 

 most of it had been cut over, so that I had stumps 

 instead of trees, to dig out. A stump-puller would 

 much facilitate operations, but I have never been 



able to procure one when I stood in need of it. 

 My belief is, that land reclaimed at once, in this 

 way, may be brought into grass with less manure, 

 than by the common method. The usual crops 

 of potatoes and grain exhaust the land, so that 

 the grass runs out sooner than on land entirely 

 !new. My fields, thus made, are as smooth as old 

 fields ordinarily are— smooth enough to be raked 

 perfectly clean with Delano's Independent Horse- 

 ' rake. 



I last year laid down about a half acre, with 

 grass seed and English turnips the last of July. 

 Most of my turnip seed proved to be mustard, but 

 not all, and I picked up between thirty and forty 

 bushels of excellent turnips, with no extra labor 

 or expense, but the gathering. I </?>/, however, 

 apply one barrel of bone-dust to the land, which 

 was intended for the good of the turnip crop espe- 

 cially. I propose this year, to lay down one acre 

 with turnips, if I can procure a bag or two of su- 

 per-phosphate of lime, which is undoubtedly a 

 powerful specific manure for all plants of the Bras- 

 sica genus. 



I am experimenting, in a small way, with the 

 super-phosphate, this season. Tliere is no doubt 

 that it will prove a valuable aid to the market gar- 

 dener and nurseryman. Whether it will be cheap 

 enough for several field crops, is o«e of the ques- 

 tions. Another is, whether we shall ever be able 

 to know whether the article is genuine, or a hum- 

 bug. I am using Mapes's, and think well of it, so 

 far. One of my neighbors is using another stamp, 

 and thinks it an imposition. We shall be ready 

 to say more of it by and by. 



Many of our farmers are adopting the practice 

 of turning over their grass lands after haying, ap- 

 plying a dressing of compost, and seeding again to 

 grass. I think well of this method, having tried 

 it with success. With the help of the Michigan 

 Double Plow, the work can be done to perfection. 

 I have top-dressed my grass-land a good deal, but 

 am convinced, that as a general practice, it is a 

 waste of manure, that is to say, that it is not the 

 most economical mode of using it. There may be 

 low places, on every farm, where top-dressing may 

 be judicious. 



And now, friend Brown, I want you to try one 

 acre of your land, with grass seed and turnips, 

 manured with the super-phosphate. Your hill 

 pasture will not be injured by the experiment, I 

 am confident. "Verbum Sap," &c. 



Yours, H. F. FrexNxh. 



Ejneier, N. H., June 8, 1853. 



PRODUCTIVE FARMING. 



In a treatise on Productive Farming just issued 

 from the press, the following observations occur: — 

 "It is in vegetable as in animal life ; a mother 

 crams her child exclusively with arrow root — it 

 becomes hi, it is true, but, alas ! it is rickety, 

 and gets its teeth very slow.ly, and with difficulty. 

 Mamma is ignorant, or never thinks, that her off- 

 spring can not make bone — or what is the same 

 thing, phosphate of lime, the principle bulk of 

 bone — out of starch. It does its best ; and were 

 it not for a Uttle milk and bread, perhaps now and 

 then a little meat and soup, it would have no 

 bones and teeth at all. Farmers keep poultry ; 

 and what is true of fowls is true of a cabbage, a 

 turnip, or an ear of wheat. If we mix with the 



