FARMING AS A BUSINESS. 11 



200 bushels per acre, and on the sandy knolls, where more manure 

 was applied, the yield was at least 250 bushels per acre. 



" Nevertheless," said the Deacon, " I do not believe in * high 

 farming.' It will not pay." 



" Possibly not," I replied. "It depends on circumstances; and 

 these we will talk about presently. High farming aims to get 

 large crops every year. Good farming produces equally large crops 

 per acre, but not so many of them. This is what I am trying to 

 do on my own farm. I am aiming to get 35 bushels of wheat per 

 acre, 80 bushels of shelled corn, 50 bushels of barley, 90 bushels of 

 oats, 300 bushels of potatoes, and 1,200 bushels of mangel-wurzel 

 per acre, on the average. I can see no way of paying high wages 

 except by raising large crops per acre. But if I get these large 

 crops it does not necessarily follow that I am practising 'high 

 farming.' " 



To illustrate: Suppose I should succeed in getting such crops 

 by adopting the following plan. I have a farm of nearly 300 acres, 

 one quarter of it being low, alluvial land, too wet for cultivation, 

 but when drained excellent for pasturing cows or for timothy 

 meadows. I drain this land, and after it is drained I dam up some 

 of the streams that flow into it or through it, and irrigate wherever 

 I can make the water flow. So much for the low land. 



The upland portion of the farm, containing say 200 acres, ex- 

 clusive of fences, roads, buildings, garden, etc., is a naturally fertile 

 loam, as good as the average wheat land of Western New York. 

 But it is, or was, badly " run down." It had been what people call 

 " worked to death ; " although, in point of fact, it had not been 

 half-worked. Some said it was " wheated to death," others that it 

 had been " oated to death," others that it had been " grassed to 

 death," and one man said to me, " That field has had sheep on it 

 until they have gnawed every particle of vegetable matter out of 

 the soil, and it will not now produce enough to pasture a flock of 

 geese." And he was not far from right notwithstanding the fact 

 that sheep are thought to be, and are, the best animals to enrich 

 laud. But let me say, in passing, that I have since raised on that 

 same field 50 bushels of barley per acre, 33 bushels of Diehl wheat, 

 a great crop of clover, and last year, on a part of it, over 1,000 

 bushels of mangel-wurzel per acre. 



But this is a digression. Let us carry out the illustration. "What 

 does this upland portion of the farm need ? It needs underdrain- 

 ing, thorough cultivation, and plenty of manure. If I had plenty 

 of manure, I could adopt high farming. But where am I to get 

 plenty of manure for 200 acres of laud? "Make it," says the 



