THE GENESEE FAEMEE. 



Small Farms and thorough Cultivation. — The celebrated Mr. Robert Bakewell, of Dishley, 

 Leicestershire, aad the founder of the New Leicestershire sheep, used to tell an anecdote with 

 exceeding high glee of a farmer not only of the olden school, but of the golden times. This 

 farmer, who owned and occupied one thousand acres of land, had three daughters. When his 

 eldest daughter married, he gave her one-quarter of his land for her portion, but no money; and 

 he found, by a little more speed, and a little better management, the produce of his farm did 

 not decrease. When his second daughter married, he gave her one-third of the remaining land 

 for her portion, but no money. lie then set to work, and begun to grub up his furze and fern, 

 and plowed up v.iiat he called his poor dry furze, covering in some places nearly half the land. 

 Afler giving half his land away to two of his daughters, to his great surprise he found that the 

 product increased; he made more money because his new broken up furze land brought exces- 

 sive crops, and at the same time he farmed the whole of his land better, for he employed three 

 times more laborers upon it; he rose two hours sooner in the morning, had no more dead fallows 

 once iu three years; instead of which he got two green crops in one year and ate them upon the 

 land. A garden never requires a dead fallow. But the' great advantage was, that he had got the 

 same money to manage five hundred acres as he had to manage a thousand acres; therefore he 

 laid out double the money upon the land. When the third and last daughter married, he gave 

 her two hundred and titty acres, or half which i-emained, for her portion, and no money. He 

 then found that he had the same money to farm one-quarter of the land as he had at first to farm 

 the whole. He began to ask himself a few questions, and set liis wits to work to see how he 

 was to make as much of two hundred and fifty acres as he had of a thousand. He then paid off^ 

 his bailiff, who weighed twenty stone ! rose with the lark in the long days, and went to bed with 

 tlie lamb ; he got twice as much work done for his money ; he made his servants and laborers, and 

 horses, move faster; broke them from their snail's pace; and found that the eye of the master 

 quickened the pace of his servant. He saw the beginning and ending of every thing ; and to his 

 servants and laborers, instead of saying, " go and do it," he said to them, "let us go, my boys, and 

 do it." Between come and go he soon found out a great difference. He grubbed up the whole of 

 liis furze and ferns, and then ]dowed up the whole of his poor grass land, and converted a great 

 deal of corn into meat for sake o-f the manure, and he preserved his black water (the essence of 

 manure); .cut his hedges down, which had not been plashed for 40 to 50 yeai's ; straightened his 

 zig-zag fences; cut his water c;>urses straight, and gained a deal of land by doing so ; made dams 

 and sluices, and irrigated all the land he could ; he grubbed up manj^ of his hedges and borders 

 covered with bushes, in some places from 10 to 14 yards in width, some more in his small closes, 

 some not wider than streets, and threw three, four, five and six closes into one. He found out that, 

 instead of growing whitethorn hedges and haws to feed foreign birds in the winter, he could grow 

 food for man instead of migratory birds. After all this improvement he grew more and made more 

 of 250 acres than he diil frtun 1000 ; at the same time he found out that lialf of England was not 

 cultivated at that time for want of means to cultivate it with. I let him rams and sold him long- 

 horned bulls, (said Mr. Bakewell,) and told him the real value of labor, both in doors and out, and 

 what ought to be done with a certain number of men, oxen, and horses, within a given time. I 

 taught him to sow less and plow better; that there were limits and measures to all things ; and that 

 the husbandman ought to be stronger than the farm. I told him how to make hot land colder, and 

 cold land hotter, light land stiffor, and stiff land lighter. I soon caused him to shake off his old 

 deep-rooted prejudices, and I grafted new ones in their places. I told him not to breed inferior 

 cattle, sheep, or horses, but the best of each kind, for the best consumed no more than the worst. 

 My friend became a new man in his old age. — Gardeners' Chronicle. 



Time to Cut Timber. — From tradition, I had cut hoop-poles in the autumn and fencing stuff in the 

 winter, perhaps for the convenience of moving rails, es.pecially by sledding, and because the draught 

 on the labor of men and team is less pressing than in summer ; but I found that posts would rot 

 off at the surface of the ground, if sandy, in a few years, and the sap of rails become defective, 

 and worms, and wet, accelerate decay. It was therefore a great tax to support several hundred 

 rods of post and rail fence on pine plain. In a few instances, posts were morticed at the butt, and 

 the tip end set in the ground, and th.ese were sound when the others failed ! I read of a ship car- 

 ]>enter, who cut the timber for a vessel iu Fedruary, and built it ; but being short of a few plank, 

 ho cut and sawed them in the summer, and he lived to see the plank all a dead rot under the paint, 

 except the few cut last, which had tm appearance of decay ! 



In 1840, I designed to make posts of several large oak trees, and it was quite an object to peel 

 them, for tanners' bark, so I waited till the snmmea* solstice, cut and peeled and made them into 



Eosts, which stand well to this day. At the same time, I split some staves and cut some poles as 

 oops for a pork barrel, which was made, and though the bark peeled from the hoops the firet 

 year, they are now as somid and tight as ever, while I have formerly lost much by their failure in 

 damp cellars, sometimes in a single year. I have been thus particular to convince the skeptical, 

 by assigning my experience of the profit of cutting and peeling when all the saccharine portion of 

 the sap is in the full le.af, when the peeled surface dries and becomes hard and impervious to Avater 

 — and also, the reason why I set the tops of post downward. In addition to this, if lime-mortar is 

 put round posts, I reckon that the man will not live to see them need resetting. — Cor. Boston Cult. 



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