194 



NEW ENGLAm) FAEAIER. 



April 



stock manure mixed. He used it last season and 

 you should have seen his crops. Three or four 

 years a,2o he ploughed up about four acres of 

 land in the fall, and had a man drawing muck all 

 winter, and covered his four acres all over. He 

 planted it in the spring with corn, and took good 

 care of it. In the fall he found his labor was in 

 %ain. His corn was from six to ten inches high, 

 but wi'hout one ear of corn. Then he plouglied 

 it up again and seeded it down to grass. The 

 next season, to his surprise, there was a crop of 

 Roman wormwood, and that land remains in the 

 same state now ; but he is going to try another 

 medicine, called fish guano, in which I have as 

 liitle fai(h as in the many other nostrums we hear 

 of. In rny opinion Professor Hey wood's salt and 

 plaster is worse than nothing. The only way to 

 larm it that I know of, is to put under your crops 

 the best bta!)le manure, and take good care of 

 them. By so doing you will get a good harvest. 

 But I will not write any more at this time. 



0. J. XJPHAM. 



Needham, Mass., Feb. 12, 1870. 



Remarks. — We like such square expressions of 

 opinion and experience, whether they tally with the 

 "authorities" or not. We think our correspondent 

 must have experimented with poor muck, or 

 rather bad muck, as it seems to have destroyed 

 the virtue of the manure with which it was mixed. 



PROFITABLE PIGS. 



As the Norway oat and early potato fever has 

 prot)aoiy passed its height, may not farmers, 

 while lookmg for the explosion of these and sun- 

 dry other humbugs, consider the old subject of 

 pork raising. Pork and pigs now command good 

 prices, andl will give a statement from which you 

 can see whether it will pay or not. A year ago 

 last December, we bought a white Cnester County 

 pig for $\2. She weighed about one hundred 

 pounds. She will now weigh more than three 

 hundred pounds. Last spring she had a litter of 

 pigs, of which I sold six at four weeks old for (^30, 

 aod had one left that I dressed when seven 

 moQths old that weighed two hundred and tifty 

 pounds. The last of October the old sow had 

 anoitier litter of seven. When they were tive 

 weeks old I sold two of them for $10; the two 

 weighing fo;ty-eight and a half pounds. I sold 

 one more at eight weeks old, for $8 and one at 

 nine wee.is old lor $8.50, and we have now three 

 left that are good for $10 each. Wo shall keep 

 the mother of these pigs another year. The 

 amount of sales and value of pigs on hand stand as 

 follows : — 



6 pig3 at four weeks old, $30.00 



2 " five " " lO.u^ 



1 " eight " " 8.00 



2 " r.ina " " 8.50 



1 dressed, seven months o.d, 250 pounds .... 35.00 



3 pigs Oil b^ud, 30.00 



$121.50 

 In the above statement I have not added any- 

 thing fur the gain of two hundred pounds on the 

 old hog, nor the expense of keeping. 



HIRED HELP. 



In r?lation to hired help, much depends upon 

 the taimer that hires, whether he will be about 

 with his help or not. Mo^t farmers want a man 

 that knows how to do all kinds of work, and how 

 to do it well ; one that can take his axe and go 

 into the woods and cut wood or mend a piece of 

 fence, or take his scythe, pitch fork, or hoe and go 

 into the ticKt and do a good day's work ; one wdo 

 IS always up in the morning before the sun is 

 peeping into his windows, and is ever ready for 



work. It doesn't make much difference whether 

 he was born in this country or not. 

 Hartford, Vt., Jan. 17, 1870. Amos French. 



WHEAT CULTURE IN NEW ENGLAND. — DRILLING, 

 PRESSING AND ROLLING, IN ENGLAND. 



In 1861 I made a machine for my own use for 

 drilling, having one fertilizing plough, and one 

 seed plough, both on one beam, which did the 

 work complete. The first plough deposited the fer- 

 tilizer and covered the same ; then the seed plough 

 followed right in the same drill, dropping and 

 covering the seed, all at the same operation, leav- 

 ing a sufficient layer of earth between the seed 

 and the fertilizer. I used for the fertilizer air- 

 slacked lime. I drilled the wheat on land that I 

 sowed onions on the year before. It was spring 

 wheat. I drilled nearly an acre. The land was 

 not very rich. I threshed and winnowed thirty- 

 seven bushels of handsome wheat ; some of it was 

 as good as I ever saw in my life, but a part was on 

 low springy land, and did not yield so well. 



When the wheat was four to six inches high, I 

 sowed grass seed and hoed the land at the same 

 time, cutting up all the weeds, leaving the wheat 

 free from weeds. The grass looked beautiful 

 when I reaped the wheat, and was free from 

 weeds. I drilled the rows of wheat about one 

 foot apart. One man drilled it in one day. 



In the previous articles on the cultivation of 

 wheat, by our triend Hebb, mention was made of 

 treading and pressing. Are there not lands that 

 would be ruined by pressing and treading ? I 

 have seen lands in wet seasons in which wheat 

 would never germinate if pressed and trodden, 

 and I have seen other lands that would do well by 

 pressing and treading. 



Farming is an art that no man can compass 

 fully. In the first place the farmer should make 

 himself acquainted with the soil he has to culti- 

 vate, and this necessitates such analyses as will 

 enable him to know how to treat the soil, and how 

 to use different fertilizers. Some lands need one 

 kind and some another, and some all kinds. 

 Such knowledge will enable him to be more suc- 

 cessful in the management of different soils and 

 in the application of different manures. I have 

 cultivated land for forty years, from four hundred 

 acres to four thousand ; so, Mr. Editor, you must 

 think I have had some practice in farming. Still, 

 I can learn something new every day and every 

 year. 



I should like to write more, but this article, the 

 first I ever attempted to write on agriculture, is 

 already, perhaps, too long. If I had had as much 

 practice in writing as in farming, I might have 

 done a little better. Hereafter 1 may offer some 

 remarks on restoring lands to fertility by different 

 fertilizers, and by different modes of cultivation. 



Lowell, Mass., Feb., 1870. Thomas Wilson. 



Remarks. — In Mr. Hebb's article on the use of 

 the presser-roller, and on treading wheat fields, it 

 was expressly said, "this mode of cultivation is 

 applicable only in cases where the soil is too loose 

 and pliable for the healthy and continued growth 

 of the wheat plant, as in case of a heavy clover 

 lea, &c." 



— The wool clip last year amounted to about 

 150,000,000, or 52,000,000 more than in 1852, and 

 was worth about $62,000,000. The stocks on hand 

 in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, at the be- 

 ginning of the current year, were 15,900,000 pounds, 

 against 24,500,000 a year previous— showing a de- 

 ficiency of nearly 8,500,000 pounds. 



