108 TALKS ON MANUUES. 



and it could be seeded down with timothy and other good grasses 

 the Lst of August, or beginning of September, and produce a good 

 crop of hay the next year. Or, if thought betler, it might bj sown 

 to rye and seeded down with it. In either case the land would be 

 greatly improved, and would be a productive meadow or pasture 

 for years to come or until our young dairyman could afford to 

 give it one of Harris Lewis' " homo3Opathic " doses of 40 loads of 

 good manure per acre. He would then be able to cut two crops 

 of hay a year and such hay ! But we are anticipating. 



That stream which runs through the farm in the spring, and 

 then dries up, could be made to irrigate several acres of the land 

 adjoining. Tnis would double, or treble, or quadruple, (" hold on," 

 said the Deacon,) the crops of grass as far as the water reached. 

 The Deacon does not seem to credit this statement ; but I have 

 seen wonderful effects produced by such a plan. 



What I am endeavoring to show, is, that these and similar means 

 will give us larger crops of hay and grass, and these in turn will 

 enable us to keep more cow:>, and make more manure, and the 

 manure will enable us to grow larger crops on other portions of 

 the farm. 



I am aware that many will object to plowing up old grass land, 

 and I do not wish to be misunderstood on this point. If a farmer 

 has a meadow that will produce two or three tons of hay, or support 

 a cow, to the acre, it would be folly to break it up. It is already 

 doing all, or nearly all, that can be asked or desired. But suppose 

 you have a piece of naturally good land that d ^es not produce a 

 ton of hay per acre, or pasture a cow on three acres, if such land 

 can b3 plowed without great difficulty, I would break it up as 

 early in the fall as possible, and summer-fallow it thoroughly, nnd 

 seed it down again, heavily, with grass seeds the next August. If 

 the land does not need draining 1 , it will not forget this treatment 

 for many years, and it will b3 the farmer's own fault if it ever runs 

 down again. 



In this country, where wages are so high, we must raise large 

 crops per acre, or not raise any. Where land is cheap, it may some- 

 times pay to compel a cow to travel over three or four acres to get 

 her food, but we cannot afford to raise our hay in half ton crops ; 

 i. costs too much to harvest them. High wages, high taxes, and 

 high priced land, necessitate high farming; and by high farming, I 

 mean growing large crops every year, and on every portion of the 

 farm ; but high wages and low-priced land do rot necessarily demand 

 high fanning. If the land is cheap we can suffer it to lie idle with- 

 out mush loss. But when we raise crops, whether on high-priced 



