1851. 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



59 



this point have been tried in Europe, the results of 

 wliich are highly instructive. The transformation 

 of grass, roots, ai.d grain, into milk, meat, and wool. 

 is now treated of as a branch of manufdchires, in 

 which labor and capital must be vastly more concen- 

 trated, to give the highest attainable profit. Instead 

 of being so anxious for an illimitable " range for 

 stock," as western and southern growers demand, 

 bring the whole operation into a narrow compass, and 

 add four-fold to the natural productiveness of the soil, 

 and at the same time make one animal worth three 

 or four common ones. 



WHEAT-CULTURE IN THE GENESEE VALLEY. 



In commenting on Prof. Johnston's description of 

 American agriculture, the editor of The Plough, the 

 Loom, and the Anvil, has this paragraph : 



We shoiilrl have been surprised too, to learn what he 

 avers, that in Genesee, " vvliere the land is [we suppose he 

 means mlurally] more fertile than in any part of Great 

 Britain, lliey were laying their lands down to grass because 

 they ran not afford to grow wheat." We should, we say, 

 have been a little surprised at the annunciation of the fact 

 as to Genesee, had we not been so recently told by tlie Hoti. 

 WiLLOUGHBY Newton, in his admirable address at Balti- 

 more, that " the Genesee valley has fallen in production 

 from twenty-Jive to te^i bushels of wheat per acre." 



We often meet statements similar to the above, in 

 our exchange journals, and the opinions therein ex- 

 pressed prevail very generally in distant States. 

 Had Mr. Newton reversed the story, and said that 

 the oak-barrens " in the valley of the Genesee," and 

 especially in the towns of Wheatland and Caledonia, 

 which in a state of nature produced only ten or twelve 

 bushels per acre, have been so improved by good hus- 

 bandry as to yield crops twice as large, or nearly 

 twenty-five bushels per acre, he would have come 

 very near the truth of the case. There are but two 

 wheat-growing counties, properly speaking, in the 

 Genesee valley, viz : Monroe and Livingston ; and 

 we hazard nothing in saying that no other two con- 

 tiguous counties in the Union will show, by the U. 

 S. census, equal crops of wheat, although the valley 

 of the Genesee has been forty years under the plow 

 and harrow by excessive tillage. Monroe county 

 beat the Union in 1840, and will do it again, although 

 there are many larger counties. Her closest com- 

 petitors are in Western New York and Ohio. 



While defending our frienrls from the charge of 

 having so exhausted their lands that they can "no 

 longer afford to grow wheat" upon them, they will 

 permit us to suggest the propriety of taking a crop 

 of wheat once in four, instead of two or three years, 

 from a field. By taking pains to fertilize the soil 

 through the agency of clover, gypsum, and manure, 

 three crops of an average of 33J bushels per acre 

 may be harvested in twelve years, or 100 bushels in 

 that length of time. Now, if you sow this land six 

 times to wheat in twelve years, neglect manuring as 

 you will, and lose all the pasture and hay that will 

 grow in three years, lose the extra tillage, extra seed, 

 and extra harvesting ; after all, you will reap only 

 100 bushels of wheat, being an average of I63 bush- 

 els per acre, for each crop. This last system is the 

 sure way to impoverish arated land ; because much 

 of the organic and inorganic elements of crops, which 

 tillage renders soluble and rains actually dissolve, 

 flow with surface and spring water into creeks, the 

 river, and lake Ontario. Keep land in grass or clover 

 three years in four, and carefully save all the liquid 



and solid manure which the grass and hay yield, 

 whether consumed by sheep, cattle, swine, or horses ; 

 and while your wool, pork, beef, and young horses, 

 will bring a fair profit on their cost, your crop of 

 wheat on the four year rotation will equal two ordi- 

 nary crops, and be produced at tlie minimum expense 

 per bushel. In this way you can keep double the 

 stock, sell butter if you prefer it to wool, have your 

 farms in first rate condition, and increase instead of 

 diminishing your annual harvest of wheat. 



Too little attention is paid to meadows and pas- 

 tures — to making manure from the hay that may be 

 cut by draining swamps, marshes, and swales, so that 

 herds-grass, timothy, blue-grass, and English ray- 

 grass will flourish on these low, wet places. We 

 well remember many such unprofitable places, un- 

 sightly wastes, in Monroe and Livingston counties. 

 A great deal of the cream of uplands now devoted 

 mainly to wheat-culture, has been washed into these 

 basins of variable extent and depth. Make this cream 

 into grass, tlie grass into manure, and the manure 

 into corn and wheat. By this operation, not only 

 your wheat and corn crops may be doubled, but a 

 double growth of clover in pastures and meadows 

 may also be realized. It is not more land, but more 

 skill and more science that you need, although we 

 have long inaintained that the readers of this paper 

 in Western New York are the best farmers to be 

 found in the United States. Many of our friends 

 from the south will visit you at the next State Fair, 

 and we have no apprehension that all we have ever 

 claimed for the valley of the Genesee, will not be 

 conceded as true to the letter and spirit of our com- 

 mendation. 



Mr. Neavton, Vvhose remarks we have copied at 

 the commencement of this article, paid if 1000 for 

 guano, last fall, to put on his wheat at the time of 

 seeding. He says that on a farm recently purchased 

 he will harvest as many bushels of wheat next season, 

 with ordinary luck, as it cost him dollars. He is a 

 Virginian, and applies 200 pounds of guano to the 

 acre, which gives an increase in the crop, beyond 

 what the soil would do without the manure, of some 

 ten or twelve bushels. That is to say, 600 pounds 

 of wheat are the product of 200 of manure. Some 

 of our Genesee friends in Monroe and Livingston 

 will remember how often we have called their atten- 

 tion to the interesting fact, in public lectures, that a 

 barrel of flour of 196 lbs., contains 187 lbs. of carbon 

 and the elements of sinjple water, the other 9 lbs. 

 being nitrogen and incombustible earthy matter. 

 Mr. Newton has paid four dollars a barrel for ma- 

 nure to apply to his wheat crop, and found it to 

 return a good profit. Rely upon it, there is some- 

 thing in the growth of wheat and in the chemical 

 composition of manure, not sufficiently understood 

 by most wheat-growers. In England, where both 

 fertilizers and grain-culture have been investigated 

 with extreme caution, every pound of ammonia in 

 guano is estimated at six pence sterling, or eleven 

 cents our money, calling wheat worth five shillings. 

 Phosphate of lime is worth three farthings a pound, 

 and potash about a penny more than in this country. 



Rochester can easily furnish the raw material to 

 form 300,000 bushels of wheat a year, so far as it is 

 lacking in the surface of the earth. It ought to be 

 a model city, surrounded by a model farming com- 

 munity — both co-operating to carryback in fertili- 

 zers, and bury in cultivated soils, every thing that 

 will render either the atmosphere or water of the 



