604 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Nov. 



a team of horses, and there were enough build- 

 ings on the place to make a shift with, and 

 master proiiiiscd to put up more if I paid my 

 rent and did the land justice ; so we strapped 

 to work ; we got a little stock about us, and I 

 worked the land as well as I could ; but for 

 the first three years 1 had to work out with my 

 horses to pay the rent." 



"How long did it take you to get the land 

 that was out of condition into a good state ; I 

 suppose you had no manure ?" 



'•No, I had none; it took three years. I 

 fallowed it, ploughed in green stuff as much as 

 I could ; I soon got some manure together and 

 raised turnips, for 1 could have done nothing 

 without them. I manure for the turnips in the 

 fall. As soon as I got turnips I got stock, and 

 fatted them, and sold them and made manure. 

 Then the land began to get better, and I raised 

 capital crops of barley, then clover, and final- 

 ly I got to raise some tidy wheat. I had great 

 trouble though to struggle on with my small 

 means ; but I have managed to get through 

 my trouble, and I now get good crops on all 

 the land except one piece, which is very light 

 and poor. That piece, however, raises pretty 

 good crops sometmies, and is getting better." 



I then asked him had he ever ploughed in 

 any crop that had a particularly beneficial in- 

 fluence on the land. 



"I planted about three-and-a-half acres of 

 corn, and with the help of ashes and plaster 

 and manure to each hill, got a pretty good 

 crop. I cultivated it, and kept it clean, and 

 harvested the ears in the usual way ; then 1 

 turned in the stock for a few days, and let 

 them eat what they would ; they did well on it. 

 As soon as they had what they wanted, I 

 dragged the stalks all down one way, the way 

 I wanted to plough ; then ploughed lengthwise 

 and ploughed them in. Xext spring I sowed 

 the land to barley, and had a good crop, which 

 I seeded down with clover ; and 1 never saw 

 such a crop of clover as I got off that field. I 

 could never have supposed that corn stalks 

 would have done so much good as they did. 

 You know corn stalks, are very sweet, and I 

 think there is a deal of good in them." 



In reply to questions as to how, he fed his 

 corn and peas, he said he gave his horses and 

 pigs only what they eat clean and digest thor- 

 oughly, — using his corn mostly before it be- 

 came so hard that stock could not chew it i-ead- 

 ily, and boiled all his peas. 



This man had been on the rented farm eight 

 years and with what he had previously saved 

 was about to pay fourteen hundred dollars, 

 cash down, for a farm of his own. 



tie roots, sometimes exceeding ten feet in 

 length. On careful examination I found the 

 roots to strike upward or sideways, never 

 downwards, or rarely so. I also found by 

 transplanting some of these roots, and entire- 

 ly removing them from their original bed, 

 that numbers died and became rotten, espe- 

 cially when severed from the parent stem ; 

 whereas if allowed to be simply turned over 

 by the plough, and not removed, but severed 

 from the parent stem, they always throve 

 splendidly and increased wondei fully, especi- 

 ally after fall ploughing. I therefore aban- 

 doned ploughing in the fall altogether, as be- 

 ing worse than useless where thistles existed 

 and summer fallow was intended the follow- 

 ing spring ; and by leaving the ploughing un- 

 til about the fore part of June, or even later, 

 the thistles had obtained complete mastery 

 and a most rank growth, many of them show- 

 ing for flower, and all several feet high. I 

 now went at them with a vengeance, my 

 strength increasing as their ])ower of resist- 

 ance increased. They had fulfilled their mis- 

 sion, or nearly so, and were in flower and 

 bearing seed, and so far were decreasing in 

 vitality or power of recuperation. The land 

 was rather hard and turned up rough, and one 

 day's ploughing in hot dry weather in June 

 destroyed millions. Some, however, lived on, 

 but the ploughing (without harrowing) total- 

 ly cleared a field of twenty seven acres. I 

 was then quite satisfied that to destroy Canada 

 thistles you must not plough in the fall or 

 early spring, but wait until the thistles were 

 in bloom, and then ploughing as roughly as 

 possible, and never harrowing until after the 

 second ploughing, thus keeping the land as 

 rough as possible, to admit of the greatest 

 quantity of surface exposure to the sun and dry 

 wind. This course completely eradicated the 

 thistles in that field. Afterwards I grew bar- 

 ley, the year following sowed wheat after the 

 fallow in which I killed the thistles, and to this 

 day that field is clear of these pests. — Cor. 

 Canada Farmer. 



HOW I KIIiliED CANADA THISTLES. 



In our land thistles do not go deeply into 

 the sub-soil ; it is level, rather wet land, and 

 the sub-soil does not seem inviting to them. 

 Often in j)loughing I have chanced to run the 

 plough just over or under a long line of this- 



Western Farms not Exhausted. — The 

 editor of the Rochester Rural Home gives a 

 description of the farm of H. H. Olmstead of 

 Leroy, in Genesee County, N. Y. The farm 

 contains 250 acres in the highest state of cul- 

 tivation, and so far from being "run down" 

 by seventy years cropping, it will give to-day, 

 we believe, as good returns for seed and labor 

 as it did the day that the removal of the prim- 

 itive forest exposed the virgin soil to the sun. 

 The oat crop just harvested, was one of the 

 heaviest we ever saw. We spent an hour in 

 a ten-acre field of Early Rose potatoes, which 

 were then being dug with a Mareellus potato 

 digger, the first successful operation of a po- 

 tato digger we had ever witnessed. The yield 

 by actual, correct measurement, was 244: 

 bushels to the acre. 



