THE GENESEE EAUMEK. 



175 



;ood plan, as the pods dry so long before the juicy 

 ilks. 



" The feeding property of the grain is about the 

 lie as common beans. 



'"'It likes deep cniltivation. The land is never 

 ck ' of it, and where grown annually as manure, 

 • some six or seven years, it has turned the soil 

 lark color, from the quantity of decayed matter 

 posited. 



" If mown for hay, in full flower, it is considered 

 ite as nutritive as clover ; but I should doubt 

 it. It should always be mixed in the (long) stack 

 th layers of straw. April would be the time for 

 tviug it, and thicker than if intended to produce 

 iin. It has grown two tons of hay per acre. It 

 ^ood for all animals, but cows must not be al- 

 ved too much of it, or it will give a taste to the 

 Ik. On soils that suit it, (and any will do except 

 ilk,) it will grow a yard high, deeply plowed and 

 ^soiled. 



"If sown to be folded off by sheep, tares must 

 mixed with it, and they will then readily eat it; 

 t not so well if sown alone. 

 "The above is sufficient to give an idea of its 

 [tivation and use. But I should think its great- 

 ; value to us would be as a green crop, to be sown 

 er harvest 07i all soils, and plowed in as manure ; 

 on our poorest lands, as a means of making them 

 )rth cultivation, and which are now almost worth- 

 s. For this purpose, the first two years it should 

 sown twice a year ; after which, the four crops 

 ving been turned in the soil, we might expect it 

 be in a sufficiently productive state to be culti- 

 ted in that course the owner may think the best. 

 rhaps that would be to lay it down for sheep- 

 iding, as it is stated a small farmer in the village 

 Dusenan, having for some few years plowed in 

 5 lupins in full flower in the spring, and then 

 ived rye, he found the field began to be covered 

 th a wild white clover — it was a white sand, 

 d had been turned quite dark from the quantity 

 humus left in the soil." 



NOTES FOR THE MONTH— BY S. W. 



The Coming Crops and the FiTTtJRE Peosperitt 

 THE West. — I say West, because here in ever- 

 issed Western New York the crops are good, 

 th at least one-third more corn in little Seneca 

 m was ever grown here in any one season before, 

 1 farmers generally are easy. But there can be 

 doubt that the short crops of last year, through- 

 b the great fast West, was a dispensation neces- 

 y to bring back the people to those habits of 

 lustry and self-denial which had given way to 

 ,t fictitious pecuniary prosperity which preceded 

 I revulsion of last year and the panic of the pre- 

 ing autumn. Yet if ever the infliction of a 

 irt crop could be borne philosophically, it was 

 haps last year, when there was no foreign de- 

 ad to raise prices on the poor. Had the crops 

 L858 been above the average, freights from Lake 

 Jhigan to the seaboard, instead of falling off 50 

 Dttore per cent., would have risen after harvest 

 the close of navigation at least 50 per cent., and 

 >:W spring — instead of falling below remuneration 

 a water, and at a serious loes by rail — old rates 

 Dleast would have been sustained. Then, in the 



absence of all shipping demand for Europe, prices 

 in the seaports must have fallen so low as to leave 

 but little margin for the farmer. But now, with a 

 prospect of good crops at the West, such is the 

 competition created for western freights by the 

 Pennsylvania, Baltimore, and the two New York 

 railroads, tliat the great products of the West are 

 to be taken from Chicago to New York at fabu- 

 lously low rates, and by the Lakes and the Erie 

 canal, freight must fall by the aid of reduced toll, 

 steam, and the enlarged canal, to a rate lower than 

 has yet been dreamed of. Again, a war in Europe 

 is almost certain, which cannot fail to make a de- 

 mand for all our agricultural surplus, cotton almost 

 alone excepted. Added to this, tlie increased man- 

 ufactures in our own country are rapidly apprecia- 

 ting and extending, making a home demand for 

 western products, before which our exports of pro- 

 visions and breadstuff" now sink into insignificance. 

 Even this little toAvn, once a milling village on the 

 Seneca outlet, that sent its hundred thousand bar- 

 rels of choice flour to New York annually, now 

 buys wheat and flour from the West for its own 

 support. But to say nothing of other industries 

 here, we have a phcenix from the ashes of the Wa- 

 terloo flouring-mills, in the form of a woolen mill, 

 that at this time employs over three hundred ope- 

 ratives, male and female, to whom more than $5000 

 monthly is paid for wages. Then about $150,000 

 is annually paid to the farmers of this region and 

 farther west for fine wool. The operatives of this 

 mill now eat only the fiour made from the best 

 western white wheat, as this county, once the first 

 on the file for wheat, now, with here and there an 

 individual exception, grows only the poor Mediter- 

 ranean variety, and veiy little of that.- 



Harrowing in Eotten Manure for the Wheat 

 Crop. — After that truly matchless farmer, John 

 Johnston, not only insists on this mode of manur- 

 ing as the most manure-saving and effective, and 

 the experimental veteran editor of the Genesee 

 Farmer gives a quasi approval to the theory, it is 

 perhaps bootless for me to say that manure is more 

 economically employed as a permanent amendment 

 when plowed in, and none of those large lumps 

 noticed by Mr. J. are to be seen above the surface 

 of the prepared fallow. Yet there is no doubt that 

 if manure can be well rotted without being washed 

 or fire-fanged of its ammonia, it is the best imme- 

 diate food for growing crops, and when harrowed 

 into the wheat fallow, it will produce a more quick- 

 ening effect on the incipient plants than it would if 

 plowed under the surface. But I would respect- 

 fully ask, is it as permanent an amendment to the 

 subsoil ? — will it not, like Peruvian guano, be ex- 

 hausted by the present crop, and what is hardly 

 less important, has the soil below the surface been 

 mechanically benefitted by the surface dressing? 



To show how much more permanently amending 

 green stall manure is to a clay soil like Mr. John- 

 ston's, when plowed in deeply, than when applied 

 to its surface in a semi-rotten state, I here give the 

 result of my own experiment, which is none the 

 less significant for being on a small scale. As long 

 as I placed my manure on the surface and spaded 

 it in, I found the stiff clay below, although under- 

 drained, entirely unchanged mechanically; hence 

 to make it pulveruknt and absorbent, I began 

 trenching in the fall, two spades deep, filling the 



