1850. 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



45 



NOTES FOR THE MONTH 



Thb late opening of the Chcimiiig R. R. to the head 

 of Seneca Lake, and the Ithac:i and Susquehanna R. 

 R. from Oswego to Ithaca ; has already opened a 

 winter trade between western JN'ew York and the city 

 of New York, through the Erie Rail Road, which 

 gives an earnest of that great change in trade, which 

 must favorably increase, change and inodily, both 

 the rural and domestic products of Western N. York. 



The beautifully rural village of Aurora, on Cayuga 

 Lake, has been of late, as if by magic, suddenly 

 transformed into a busy animated mart or depot, from 

 whence, fruit, pigs, and poultry, are daily shipped by 

 steam to Ithaca, thence by Rail Road to Piermont 

 and New York. On the Seneca Lake still greater 

 changes have taken place. From Geneva two Steam 

 Boats now start daily for the head of the Lake, 

 loaded with passengers and light freight, up and 

 back ; freight barges are towed daily, loaded with 

 bales of cotton and raw materials, for our Factories, 

 ar. well as other articles down ; and pork, whiskey, 

 flour, Sic, up. It is supposed that this very cheap 

 winter communication with New York, will have 

 the effect to lesson the fall purchases of our Manu- 

 facturers in Western New York, as well as to mod- 

 ify, change and increase the productions of our 

 farmers generally. Fruit, pigs, poultry, &.C., which 

 heretofore have not been considered as paying pro- 

 ducts to the farmer, beyond a limited home or barter- 

 trade : begin now to be a great element in this winter 

 trade with our great Commercial Metropolis. 



The late accounts from California seem to indicate 

 that a reaction has commenced there in earnest. 

 Labor is becoming cheaper, the Diggings are sub- 

 merged in water or covered with snow ; provisions 

 are enormously dear, and vegetables are not ; to 

 those diseases which ordinarily afflict himianity on 

 land, is added that loathsome scourge of the briny 

 deep, scurvy. The presence of this malady alone, 

 proclaims the sterility of the gold region to be a fixed 

 fact ; as in every other situation in the same latitude, 

 not a desert ; wild uncultivated nature has ever been 

 found rich and beautiful in anti scorbutic productions. 

 A practical farmer here just returned from the gold 

 region, avers that the best portions of Up])er Califor- 

 nia may possibly produce peas and grass, without 

 irrigation, but that Indian corn and vegetables, must 

 perish, either from cold and wet at first, or drought 

 afterw ards. He went over the famed plantation of 

 Capt. Sutter, seeing it only as a barren sandy plain, 

 with little evidence of itsever having been cultivated: 

 an arid waste which no verdure quickened ; but per- 

 haps some allowance is to be made for the distem- 

 pered imagination of a man longing after the leeks 

 and onions of Seneca County. 



Sixty-six subscribers to the Genesee Farmer, for 

 1850, have already been registered at our Post Office; 

 yet what is this number compared to the thousands 

 of farmers who sell their wheat and corn here ? 

 •While many of our best farmers aver that they would 

 not be without an Agricultural paper for ten times its 

 cost, such is the benefit they think they receive from the 

 theory and practice of others. Yet strange as it may 

 seem, the number of .hose who have learned all without 

 the aid of a book, is legion ; and the variety which be- 

 longs to the moon tilling genera, cannot but be truly in- 

 teresting to him who loves darkness rather than light. 



From the late recommendations of Grov. Fish, and 

 the President of the United States, it would seem, 



that .Vgriculture is now about to come in for a share 

 of that public bounty, which has been heretofore 

 almost limited to the Fisherman and the Mannfactu- 

 rer. But let every farmer put his own shoulder to 

 the wheel without waiting for Hercnles. In speak- 

 ing of the education of farmers sons the veteran 

 Editor of the Ohio Cultivator says: "However 

 unwelcome the truth may appear, it is a fact which 

 cannot be blinded, that the want of education or a 

 proper developement of mind on the part of the mass 

 of our farmers, is the great obstacle in the way of 

 all improvements ; and only by the removal of this 

 barrier, can we hope to see the profession of Agri- 

 culture rise to that position and dignity which it 

 should ever occupy in the land. 



Let farmers no longer be content to see the school 

 master abroad for the benefit of the more pretending- 

 classes ; but let them at once take him home to their 

 own school district, and domesticate him there, in 

 the place of that itinerant low priced nonentity called 

 a teacher, whose usurpation of the title is only a bur- 

 lesque or a satire, upon the intelligence of those who 

 employ him. S.W. — Waterloo, .V. Y., Jan., ISyO. 



PRODUCTS OF WAYNE COUNTY. 



Add ;t s delivered before ihe Wayne County Agricultural 



Society, at its Annual Exhibition, in Palmyra, N. Y., 



1849, by R. G. Pardee, Esq. 



Mr. Pardee's address has given us much satisfac- 

 tion. He has carefully brought out many useful 

 facts in regard to his own county, as will be seen 

 by the following extracts: 



We further learn that the offices in our county cleared, 

 during the las' year, withir, 8 per cent, as many potittoes as 

 the entire state west of us, via the Erie Canal, inchuling 

 Kochester. Buffalo, &ic., and within less than one per cent, 

 as mucli barley, as the whole state west on the Erie Canal. 



We also learn what wup to me an astonishing fact, that 

 the offices in Wayne county, during the year 18 18, cleared 

 more dried fruit, by more than 30 per cent, than the entire 

 state west of us. to and including Buffalo ; and also, more by 

 lo per cent, than the entire state east of us. The offices 

 west cleared 038, 000 lbs.— those east rtlO,0001bs,— while 

 Lyons and Palmyra cleared 703,000 Ihs.. or more than 30, 

 000 bushels. 



This is indeed a noble tribute to the industry of the daugh- 

 ters of Wayne county ; (for the women and children do the 

 most of this work;)for who can calculate the enormous 

 amount of labor, in drying 150,000 bushels of apples, peaches 

 and plums — this being the requisite amount to make the 30, 

 000 bushels when dried. 



For several years past, the Palmyro office has cleared about 

 60, 000 barrels of fine grafted apples per annum, or 150,000 

 bushels more of fruit ; and if Lyons. Newark and Clyde 

 together, send ofl'as much more, (as they doubtless do from 

 50 to 100 percent, more,) we then have the aggregate of 

 100,000 to 500,000 bushels of fruit, in a green and dried suite, 

 exported annually. 



We may deliberately add, that the superiority of Wayne 

 County .\pptes is as well known and appreciated in the 

 New York market, as are the Princess Bay Oysters, or 

 Orange county Butter. And if any of you wish to know 

 whether our county produces peaches, pears and plums, un- 

 surpassed in size and delicious flavor, even by tlie warm 

 climes of the more sunny south ; let me ask you to visit 

 such magnificent and well cultivated fruit yards as Mr. 

 Thcron G. Yeoman* s of Walworth, Messrs. J. Thomas 

 and Wm. R. Smith's of Macedon, or Mr. J. G. Dickinson's 

 of Lyons ; not to mention many others around us ; and you 

 will be entirely satisfied. 



And yet the capacity of Wayne county to produce fine 

 fruits, has hardly begun to be tested ; for at no previous day 

 has there ever been enkindled a tithe of the enthusiasm to 

 cultivate choice fruits, which is now prevading every man- 

 sion and hamlet with .i our borders, and infects almost every 

 man who is so fortunate as to possess a portion of our luxuri- 

 ant soil, sufficiently large to plant a tree, or nurture a hill of 

 strawberries. 





