GRAIN CROPS. 61 



The yaluc of the farm is not in its acres, but in the amount 

 of English grass it produces. Again, the profit of farming (if 

 it is profitable,) must depend on cultivation. The amount of 

 cultivation must depend on the quantity of manure at your 

 disposal ; but the quantity of manure depends very much on 

 the grass grown, — the more grass we raise the more stock we 

 keep ; the more stock, the more manure to make land rich and 

 raise grain. Grass, if we have it to sell, brings a good price, 

 but no one can tell in the spring which of the grains will sell 

 well in the fall. 



We have now the great West, with all her natural resources, 

 to contend against. Corn is raised more abundantly in this 

 country than any other grain, and we prefer and recommend it 

 above all others for its profitableness, its ease of cultivation, for 

 its great amount of valuable fodder, — often more than paying 

 the fall work, — and for its leaving the land in such good condi- 

 tion for a future crop. It requires from eighteen to twenty 

 days' work, only, on each acre. A case has been reported, 

 the past winter, of corn being raised at a cost of twenty-one 

 cents per bushel for the labor alone. We knew one farmer to 

 sell, last year, one thousand dollars' worth of the crop of 

 1864. 



In raising corn, plough thoroughly, manure well, furrow or 

 line out both ways three feet three inches, thin down to three 

 stalks, and be sure that every hill has that number ; keep in 

 advance of the weeds by running the cultivator through both 

 ways for three or four successive weeks, and therefore save much 

 labor in hoeing ; hoe level, as corn raised on a flat surface, when 

 the weeds are destroyed and ground kept loose, will not suffer 

 by the drought as when hilled. Many farmers practise sowing 

 grass seed the last boeing, and we commend it as a saving of 

 much labor in ploughing for other grain, and also saves the 

 great drain in straw and maturity of seed. Wheat, (the grain 

 of the world,) we think, can be raised profitably when the better 

 system of cultivation is forced on the farmer of the old States. 

 All cannot go West. Much more work must be done on less 

 surface. The poverty caused by sowing exhausting crops, such 

 as rye, oats and the like, must be repaired by the application of 

 more manure, rotation of crops and finer tilth. Wheat can be 

 raised by restoring the vegetable taken from the soil. Yery 



