NEW ENGLAND FAEMER. 



Jax. 



AN ILLINOIS PARMER. 



R O A D- 

 LAKDS is 

 the very 

 appropri- 

 ate name 

 given to 

 a farm in the 

 Southern part of 

 Illinois, occu- 

 pied by Mr. J. 

 T. Alexander. 

 To a large pur- 

 chase made in 

 1866, he has 

 since made ad- 

 ditions, and the 

 farm now con- 

 sists of 26,500 

 acres. Cattle- 

 feeding is the leading object in the manage- 

 ment of the farm, and about 800 are weekly 

 sent to the New York market, making more 

 than 40,000 per year. By means of dams and 

 embankments on two streams of water which 

 pass through Broadlands, some twelve ponds 

 have been made for watering stock, which cover 

 some 200 acres in all, — one pond containing 

 50 acres, and is from four to eight feet deep. 

 About 100 miles of Osage Orange hedge have 

 been set out. A row of this hedge runs en- 

 tirely around the farm. The farm is divided 

 north and south by three road-ways, two miles 

 apart. They are sixty feet wide, and a hedge 

 is planted on each side of them. An avenue 

 150 feet wide divides it east and west, also 

 set with hedge. Meantime eighty-five miles of 

 post and board fence are set. The posts are 

 driven by a post- driver. The posts are sharp- 

 ened on two sides, like a wedge, and are found 

 to drive easier and stand better than when 

 sharpened in the usual way. 



Breaking prairie has been done in the old 

 way, with five yoke of oxen, in May, June 

 and July. During the last June twenty of 

 these teams were kept running, employing 100 

 yoke of oxen. 



Mr. C. L. Eaton, the superintendent of 

 Broadlands, has been experimenting with 

 trench ploughing, having ploughed last year 

 2000 acres, which were put in corn, and gave 

 a good crop. A large portion of the corn 

 grown this year was ploughed in the same way. 



This is done by ploughing a furrow as thin as 

 can be well turned, then a furrow of the 

 lower soil about four inches deep is brought 

 up and thrown on to the sod. This furnishes a 

 seed bed, and enables the crop to be thor- 

 oughly worked, producing crops the first year 

 equal to old ground. This process is com- 

 menced in April and continued through May. 

 In sowing for pasture, one bushel of red 

 clover and ten of Timothy are mixed, and one 

 peck of the mixture sown per acre. White 

 clover and blue grass come in of themselves. 



Mr. Eaton is trying an experiment this year 

 of seeding with corn. This is done by a fine 

 preparation of the soil by ploughing and har- 

 rowing, then planting to corn, after which the 

 whole surface is sowed with the pasture mix- 

 ture. Of course the corn is not worked at all. 

 By the time the grass is well up, the corn af- 

 fords sufficient shade to protect the young grass, 

 and it gets a good stand and fine growth. He 

 has seeded 300 acres this spring in this way. 

 It now looks finely. The corn will make a 

 good crop — though less than if worked. 



The present force on the farm is 160 able- 

 bodied men, mostly Scandinavians, who re- 

 ceive $20 per month and board. There are 

 six stations on the fkrm, each with from eigh- 

 teen to twenty-two men and a foreman and a 

 man cook. The bread is baked daily at the 

 centre station or headquarters, and distributed 

 to the other stations, together with beans, 

 rice, bacon, beef, mutton, fish, sugar, coffee, 

 tea, flour, hominy, potatoes, molasses, vinegar, 

 salt, pepper, dried apples, sour krout and can- 

 dles. The living is good and costs about 

 thirty- five cents per day. 



There are, at present, 4000 head of grazing 

 cattle on the farm ; 120 yoke of working oxen ; 

 100 horses and mules, and about 500 hogs. 

 The grazing cattle are brought from Texas. 

 When the arrangements are completed, Mr. 

 Eaton expects to manage from eight to ten 

 thousand head, by the labor of one man to a 

 thousand. There is no disease among the 

 stock. On the north side of the farm there is 

 a strip of land under cultivation six miles long 

 and half a mile wide, and another patch, east 

 of this, five miles long and one mile wide. 

 There are 400 acres of wheat, 140 of oats, 

 150 of Hungarian grass, 120 of rye, and va- 

 rious patches of potatoes for the use of the 

 farm, and fully five thousand acres of corn ; 



