378 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Aug. 



being the staple product, and the most economical 

 and only reliable cattle feed. All other crops, 

 when made secondary to that, and rightly econo- 

 mized, may be raised in sufficient supply for most 

 farms. One of the greatest obstacles in the way 

 of farming generally, is inability to get over our 

 meadow land with some cultivated crop as often 

 as it needs resuscitating. Hence the necessity of 

 keeping land but one or two years at most under 

 the plough ; and of cultivating such crops as can 

 be grown on a large number of acres in a year, to 

 fit it for seeding down. 



The carrot seed is one very slow to germinate, 

 tender and delicate. The ground, for its success- 

 ful cultivation, needs a tilth and richness too great 

 to introduce it as a rotation crop on our mountain 

 farms. The almost endless amount of labor re- 

 quired in dressing a carrot field, at a season when 

 labor is from forty to furty-five dollars per month, 

 or from two to two and a half dollars per day, is 

 no inconsiderable item. And then the crop when 

 Introduced as above, might be set down, instead of 

 twenty-tive or thirty hundred bushels per acre, 

 more safely at one third, or at most, one-half of 

 that amount. 



The different varieties of the beet and turnip 

 may with much more propriety be introduced as a 

 rotation field crop. I like a variety, and have had 

 a limited experience in raising the different kinds 

 of roots for the last thirty years. But only to the 

 amount of six or seven hundred bushels in a year 

 of the other kinds, and to the amount of three, 

 and not less than one of the carrot, for the last fif- 

 teen years. I now raise less than formerly of the 

 carrot, and believe it is the case generally in this 

 mountain se'tion. 



In your correspondent's war of extermination 

 on weeds, 1 heartily engage, also against every 

 other foe of our soil, and with as much vigor as 

 though I expected the tight to close at the end of 

 ten years. Old Ned. 



Washington County, Vt., Jwie 4, 1867. 



HEN MANURE. 



I have seen in the papers many statements in 

 regard to the profit of keeping fowls, but few of 

 them make any account of the manure. Now I 

 think, judging from my own experience, that the 

 manure from fifty hens, if carefully s.aved, prop- 

 erly composted, and judiciously applied, is more 

 valuable than fifty dollars' worth of any of the 

 manures that can be bought in the market. 



Pelham, N. H., June. 1867. B. F. Cutter. 



AGRICULTURAL ITEMS. 



— The first strawberries were forwarded from 

 Cobden. Southern Illinois, to Chicago, May 20. 



—The Fair of the Franklin County, Vt., Agri- 

 cultural Society will be held at St. Albans, Sept. 

 18 and 19. 



—Geo. W. Rublee, of Berkshire, Vt., made 2000 

 pounds of maple sugar from 500 second growth 

 trees this spring. 



—Charles Washburn, of Reading, Vt., sheared 

 2^ pounds of wool from his two year old buck, 

 which had only ordinary keeping. 



—Mr. Oliver Wilkinson, of Townsend, Vt., has 

 a ewe sheep that has had and raised ttvcnty-two 

 lambs in eleven years. 



— A correspondent of the Coimtry Gentleman 

 says that the corn planting machines in use in 

 Illinois, though operating well when new and on 



land in good order, are liable to clog, and leave 

 the work badly done. An improvement is needed 

 by which the driver shall have warning when the 

 keraels cease to fall into the furrow. 



— Vermont suffers less from dogs than any State 

 in the Union, and yet five hundred sheep were 

 killed by these useless curs during the past year 

 in five counties of the State. 



—Messrs. S. and W. S. Allen, Vergennes, Vt., 

 inform us that a Short-Horn cow of their herd 

 dropped a calf that weighed 141 lbs. before suck- 

 ing. 



— The most wonderful labor-saving contrivance 

 is to be the Pennsylvania Agricultural College. 

 The students will be taught farming without learn- 

 ing to work. 



— Dyer and Seneca D. Townshend, of Walling- 

 ford, Vt., have recently sold their entire stock of 

 yearling merino ewes to A. E. Smith of Clarendon, 

 for fifty dollars per head. 



—The Shenandoah Valley, (Va.,) farmers have 

 recovered from the effects of the war to some ex- 

 tent, and now have growing the largest and finest 

 wheat crop ever raised in that section. 



— If you have a screw rusted into wood, or a 

 nut or a bolt that will not readily turn, pour on a 

 little kerosene and let it remain. In a little while 

 it will penetrate the interstices so as to be easily 

 started. 



— Through the whole South the earliest vegeta- 

 bles and the first spring chickens are brought into 

 the towns by the freedmen. "And they save their 

 money to buy them a farm, to lead a different 

 life." 



— Horace Greeley says that he lost $1200 by the 

 Fawks' steam plow failure in Illinois, but he still 

 expresses the belief that within ten years, land will 

 be plowed twenty inches deep at a cost of $1 per 

 acre. 



—The Prairie Farmer states that Dr. Hull has 

 adopted the plan of planting plum trees at stated 

 intervals in his orchards of peach, cherry, &c., as 

 nearly all the curculios can be caught upon them 

 so long as there is any fruit to sting. 



— The number of sheep returned by the auditor 

 of the county of Portage, Ohio, in 1866 was 137,- 

 633 ; while the number for 1867 is but 124,427,— a 

 decrease of 13,206 in a single county, equal to a 

 falling ofi" of one million in the whole State. 



—Last year 130 mules and 100 hogs were win- 

 tered in Ohio on the product of 65 acres of corn, 

 and they had it before theni all the time. The 

 foddering season there is usually about five months 

 in length. 



—At a late discussion on steam cultivation, in 

 England, Prof. Voelchcr said that he believed if 

 steam plows were placed on our strong clays we 

 should not want any drainage at all, further than 

 to carry off surface water. The superior cultiva- 

 tion would improve the mechanical condition of 



