FARMING AS A BUSINESS. 15 



throws great light on the art of cooking, but a farmer's wife will 

 roast a turkey better than a Liebig. 



When Mr. James O. Sheldon, of Geneva, N. Y., bought his farm, 

 his entire crop of hay the first year was 76 loads. He kept stock, 

 and bought more or less grain and bran, and in eleven years from 

 that time his farm produced 430 loads of hay, afforded pasture for 

 his large herd of Shorthorn cattle, and produced quite as much 

 grain as when he first took it. 



Except in the neighborhood of large cities, "high farming" may 

 not pay, owing to the fact that we have so much land. But whether 

 this is so or not, there can be no doubt that the only profitable 

 system of farming is to raise large crops on such land as we culti- 

 vate. High farming gives us large crops, and many of tliem. At 

 present, while we have so much land in proportion to population, 

 we must, perhaps, be content with large crops of grain, and few of 

 them. We must adopt the slower but less expensive means of 

 enriching our land from natural sources, rather than the quicker, 

 more artificial, and costly means adopted by many farmers in 

 England, and by market gardeners, seed-growers, and nurserymen 

 in this country. Labor is so high that we can not afford to raise a 

 small crop. If we sow but half the number of acres, and double 

 the yield, we should quadruple our profits. I have made up my 

 mind to let the land lie in clover three years, instead of two. This 

 will lessen the number of acres under cultivation, and enable us to 

 bestow more care in plowing and cleaning it. And the land will 

 be richer, and produce better crops. The atmosphere is capable 

 of supplying a certain quantity of ammonia to the soil in rains and 

 dews every year, and by giving the wheat crop a three years sup- 

 ply instead of two years, we gain so much. Plaster the clover, 

 top-dress it in the fall, if you have the manure, and stimulate its 

 growth in every way possible, and consume all the clover on tho 

 land, or in the barn-yard. Do not sell a single ton ; let not a weed 

 grow, and the land will certainly improve. 



The first object should be to destroy weeds. I do not know how 

 it is in other sections, but with us the majority of farms are com- 

 pletely overrun with weeds. They are eating out the life of the 

 land, and if something is not done to destroy them, even exorbitant- 

 ly high prices can not make farming profitable. A farmer yester- 

 day was contending that it did not pay to summer-fallow. He 

 has taken a run-down farm, and a year ago last spring he plowed 

 up ten acres of a field, and sowed it to barley and oats. The re- 

 mainder of Lhe field he summer-fallowed, plowing it four times, 

 and rolling and harrowing thoroughly after each plowing. After 



