*^?r^^^7^^^ 



166 



THE ILLINOIS FAKMER. 



JuiTE 



the home of the great novelist Cooper, 

 the seat of learning and the place where 

 the great publishing house of the Phin- 

 nejs dispensed to the "Western World 

 the standard literature of the day, is 

 one of the most populous and highly 

 favored of the great groupe of counties 

 that go to make up the Empire State. 

 Yet it is here that the game of humbug 

 has been played -with a strong hand 

 and the most triumphant success. 



THE WINE PLANT 



has seduced them — they have forsworn 

 the use of spurious wines from the drug- 

 gists, have ignored Catawba from the 

 hillside of Ohio, and the more humble 

 currant wines of their own gardens, and 

 henceforth the pure wine of the wine 

 plant is to be their only solace. For- 

 tunes are to be made out of it ; it is to 

 the farmer of Otsego county what the 

 lamp was to AUadin — to bring them 

 gold in untold thousands. How fortu- 

 nate that this wine plant from the holy 

 land, so celebrated for its vineyards and 

 its winepresses in olden times should 

 be first offered to the intimates and 

 neighbors of the immortal Cooper, but 

 such would seem to be the fact. 



A letter before us states that nearly 

 every farmer in the county is the happy 

 owner of a dozen or more of this invalu- 

 able plant, and that one of the writer's 

 near neighbors has thirteen hundred. 

 With him hogs, the great staple of the 

 county, have no longer any value, as 

 compared with this new acquisition, 

 that will place him in the van of prince- 

 ly farmers. Our friend who is a reader 

 of the Illinois Fakmek, on being ap- 

 plied to for the purchase of the wine 

 plant, was so stupid as not to see it. 

 He had been reading in the Fabmee, 

 on page 235 of the last year, in regard 

 to wine making, thinking he smelt a 



large mice was not disposed to pur- 

 chase. We think him decidedly green^ 

 in having lost an opportunity to enlarge 

 his stock of rhubarb. 



Early Cultivation of Hoed Crops. 



It is a good thing, a necessary thing that the 

 seed bed for all kinds of crops be well prepared. 

 It is also an important matter that the seed be of 

 the right variety — pure, well ripened, and properly 

 kept. But with many crops that the farmer raises 

 this is not all that is required at his hands. Corn, 

 sorghum, broomcorn, potatoes — all root crops must 

 have the assistance of the plow, cultivator or hoe, 

 or they fail to produce. 



And this work must commence with the early 

 growth of the plants. In their younger days all 

 animals and all plants are weak, feeble, and require 

 nourishing, care and management, or they perish. 

 Man is endowed with feelings that prompt, and 

 reason that guides the management of the young, 

 animals with instinct that dictates the same kind 

 ofiBces. In the vegetable kingdom nature guards 

 against the destruction of species by the profuse 

 production of seeds that ripen and fall upon the 

 surface ef the surrounding ground, many to decay, 

 the few to germinate and reproduce. But when 

 man seeks to turn the products of the earth to his 

 own pleasure and profit, he must take more care, 

 and fulfill every requirement to make every seed 

 germinate, and every rod of ground produce and 

 riden its product, or he loses a share of his time 

 and labor. 



As soon as the young plants appear above the 

 ground, the work must commence. The surface 

 soil must be stirred so that the areation may be 

 more complete, and that the warmth of the sun 

 may vivify. This stirring of the surface soil needs 

 not only to be done arly, but it must be frequent, 

 for the first few weeks. Experiment has fully es- 

 tablished the fact, that the yields of lands thus 

 tilled are far greater than when, though the first 

 tilling may have been done early, long intervals 

 intervene between the subsequent tillings. Our 

 prairie soils, too, are so infested with noxious 

 weeds that this early care is absolutely necessary, 

 or the plants are choked and the properties of the 

 soil subverted to the perfecting of a new crop of 

 weed seeds. 



Here in the West, where our corn fields are 

 measured by the hundred acres, the hoe and spade 

 have of necessity been discarded, but the inven- 

 tive genius of the people has given us horse im- 

 plements, that enable the farmer to cultivate these 

 vast tracts, with comparative by but little man 

 labor, and equally well — perhaps better than with 

 the old fashioned tools. The two-wheel cultiva- 

 tor, the horse-hoe, the expanding cultivator, the 

 shovel, plow, are all admirable contrivances for de- 

 stroying weeds, and properly stirring the soil. But 

 with these, it requires constant work in the early 

 stages of plants. Corn, we are aware, may be 

 grown here, in many localities, without being ma- 



