132 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



June 



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had just been cleared of its heavy maple, bass-, and 

 whitewood trees, a lieavy coat of virgin mould was 

 plowed in, the potatoes planted had been grown on a 

 sandy soil and were free from rot ; still the vines 

 died very early, and nearly the whole crop was lost. 

 On the best clay loams in Fayette, on old sward with 

 manure plowed in, every crop of potatoes has been 

 almost an entire failure — no matter how rich tlie soil 

 or how careful the cultivation. Strange as it may 

 seem, the potato plants on the poor, sandy plains in 

 Waterloo and Junius, have been very little affected 

 by the rot, although the yield is small. Near this 

 village, on six acres of light, sandy loam, never be- 

 fore planted witli potatoes, potatoes were planted last 

 year by Jos. Wkight. He manured v.'ith well rotted 

 manure, ashes, plaster, salt, kc, and had a great 

 yield of large potatoes, but one-third the crop rotted, 

 leaving about 250 bu. of sound potatoes to the acre — a 

 sufficient proof, and so far in favor qf Doct. Lee's 

 theory, that good manuring and culture will do much 

 towards overcoming the disease, on a dry sandy soil. 

 Our Couxtrv. — Napoleon once said that these 

 United States exhibited the simple manners of early 

 Rome, with the luxury of Rome in its decline. At 

 no period of our history, has this remark applied with 

 such truth as at present. If it is astounding to see 

 the rapid strides that luxury has made in our great 

 commercial metropolis, even within the last brief 

 year ; it is not less remarkable to note how very fast 

 it is creeping into the interior. How often have 

 I heard a farmer, in the midst of the annoying distur- 

 bances of his present social position, sigh for the 

 primitive simplicity of his early log-house life. The 

 day was when the household imported luxuries of the 

 farm were purchased by the gute vrow, with the 

 avails of her industry — the tow cloth, the home made 

 flannel, woolen socks, dried fruit, (which included 

 peaches, plums, and apples,) the churnings and the 

 eggs. The prudent farmer who " owed on his l(jnd," 

 had then a good excuse for appropriating all the 

 avails of his corn and his cattle to the liquidation of 

 the mortgage on his farm ; and his wife, with praise- 

 wortiiy self denial, sets herself to work to earn her 

 own pin mon'^y. But, as the French say, all that is 

 changed now. The spinning wheel and the loom, 

 once the never-failing, and I may say precious, appen- 

 dages of the farm house, the badges of its industry, 

 its simplicity, and true economy, more common forty 

 years ago than a carpet on the floor, are now con- 

 signed to the tomb of the Capulets ! The farm is 

 now paid for, and the lord of tlie soil can no longer 

 plead exem])tion from domestic taxation. Tiie wheat, 

 the Indian corn, and the pork, are now fairly assessed 

 by the wife, the sons, and the ckughters, that they 

 may adorn themselves and the house, to the delight 

 of their own eyes and to the critical approval of the 

 eyes of others. 'Tis true that with commendable 

 industry the fruit is still cut up and dried, and the 

 churnings are as large as ever ; but in the round sum 

 now required for family expenses, these things are 

 like the drop in the bucket. But tlie salvo is that 

 industry does not flag ; the time that was spent at 

 the wheel and the loom, is required in the now mul- 

 tipled duties of the menage and the increased claims 

 incidental to fashionable civilization. Still no oiher 

 class of our people are so little liable to exceed their 

 income, as the farmers. Their self-denial, if not per- 

 fect, is always respectable. While our manufactu- 

 rers besiege Congress yearly, clamoring for a bounty 

 on their probducts, in the sliape of a protective tariflf, 



to enable them to flourish and live comme il faut, 

 the farmer sees fine Mestizo wool imported into the 

 country, under a nominal duty, without a murmur ; 

 the idea of living on any other industry than his own, 

 perhaps never entered his head. His physical train- 

 ing, his industry, his economy and solf-denial, over- 

 comes all competition, and he is enabled to rejoice in 

 a self-sustained manhood that is truly respectable. 



Newspaper Imfluence. — It is said that every 

 man, woman and child, of a reflecting age and sound 

 mind, is brought under the influence of journalism 

 every twenty-four hours. To be convinced of the 

 truth of this assertion, only so far as relates to agri- 

 cultural papers, talk with a soi distant farmer who 

 reads nothing, and he will speak of many improve- 

 ments in manuring and tillage that he has orally 

 learned from his reading neighbor ; but only compli- 

 ment him with being under the influence of book 

 fanning, and he will deny the charge as though it 

 reflected on his manhood ; he is like the infidel who 

 denies Christianity, while he is ashamed to be found 

 acting out of the pale of the christian morality. Far 

 more excusable is pedantry in the reading man, than 

 the senseless pride of truth-hating, marvel-loving ig- 

 norance. 



Potatoes again. — Since writing the foregoing, I 

 have seen Joseph Wright. He said that about one- 

 third of his crop rotted ; that the other two-thirds 

 averaged considerably more than 250 bu. to the acre, 

 large sound potatoes. Twenty-five two horse loads 

 of soap boiler's ashes were applied to the acre, with 

 as many more loads of well-rotted stable manure. He 

 is decidedly of the opinion that the ashes alone saved 

 the crop, as where the most ashes were found in the., 

 hill, the potatoes were the largest and best. 4Ie sold 

 his Mercers for five shillings a bushel, and the bal- 

 ance of his crop to a shipper, this spring, at four and 

 sixpence a bushel. 



Tile Machine. — In this number of the Farmer 

 will be found an advertisement from Waterloo, of the 

 improved Tile Machine. Such is the demand for 

 draining pipe and tile, this spring, at Whartenbv's 

 Pottery there, that his large stock of ready baked tile 

 is already exhausted. The price averages about one 

 shilling or thirteen cents the rod. 



In the last Farmer a writer who sports the cogno- 

 men of "Anti Humbug,'' seems yet to lack that 

 equanimity and comprehensiveness of mind, without 

 which the critic himself is little better than a prag- 

 matical " humbug." That article of Joseph Harris, 

 which he so opprobriously assails, has been pronoun- 

 ced, by some of our best wheat growers, (and there 

 are none better on this side of the Atlantic,) to be 

 the best communication from a scientific practical 

 farmer that has appeared in the Genesee Farmer for 

 many a day. Mr. Harris does not condemn green 

 crops as manure. He is undoubtedly an advocate 

 for the system of manuring with green clover to a 

 certain extent, urging only the necessity of keeping 

 more stock, and making and applying some of the 

 nitrogenous manure of the stable, as indispensable to 

 the maximum yield of all cereal grains, after the soil 

 has been so long worn without other manure than 

 green clover. 



S. W. has always, in his articles to the Genesee 

 Farmer, held up the importance of the clover plant 

 as a medium of manuring. Its long tap root acts as 

 a subsoil plow to bring up the unexhausted pabulum 

 from below ; and then its ample leaves and lateral 

 branches also collect and organize nutriment from the 



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