1864. 



THE ILLINOIS FARMER. 



3 



ter. So well is this understood that 

 many persons will not have the cellar 

 under the house, but made separate. 

 This we think an extra expense, and 

 imposing extra labor on the family. 

 These out door cellars, as they are call- 

 ed, jire never well aired, and the veg- 

 etables do not keep s^o well in them, as 

 the kind that we have when well aired, 

 as it can be ; besides this the house will 

 last much longer with a good dry cel- 

 lar under it. 



[Correspondence Chicago Tribune.] 



Farm Labor and its Equivalent. 



The cropa of 1863 — Care of the corn Crop — Fall 

 plowing — Killing of Vie Peach Buds — Frozen Cellars. 



Champaign, 111., Jan. 4, 1864. 



The holidays are now over, and we again settle 

 down to the staid realities of farm life. The Gov- 

 erniiieiit Assessor will ?oon be looking into the 

 profit side of the ledger, for the purpose of making 

 up our incomes. Have your book posted, p ly what 

 1 ou owe, renew your subscription to the Tiiibuxe, 

 your county paper, and at least one agricultural 

 journal, keep good fires, and be happy. 



The season, or rather the year 1863 has been 

 a most singular one for the farmer. Commencing 

 with a large stock of ten cint corn, and closing 

 with a light supply at ninety cents, a difference of 

 nine hundred per cent. It is not probable that such 

 extremes will occur again in the history of the pres- 

 ent generation. 



During the year a lirge per centage of the labor 

 has been drawn away from the farms to assist in the 

 war, not ouly as soldiers, but in the corelatire de- 

 partments of the army. These drafts have been 

 seriously felt, but less so than if the country had 

 produced the usual crops and no new improvements 

 had been made in farm machinery. This latter can 

 be reckoned as a respectable per cent, of the labor 

 abstracted. The boy on his sulky two-horse culti- 

 vator has done more and better work than two men 

 with their old double-shovel plows, and three to 

 four times that with the single shovel or one horse 

 plow. The girl driving the sulky rake rolls up the 

 wiurow and bunches the hay ready for the pitcher. 

 Two horses and the boy have done the cutting of 

 the grass, and in many case>? have bnilt the loads 

 and tended the hay fork, and with the aid of one 

 horse, put it far up in the hay-mow or on top of the 

 stack, thus saving the labor of strong arms under 

 the old mode. The millions of bushels of com that 

 have been sent to market, have been shelled in ma- 

 chines with self-regulating feeders and bagging ap- 

 paratus that have saved largely in human muscles. 

 The threshing machine has b«en armed with a straw 



carrier that has done the stacking, while the new- 

 screens cleaned the grain ready for market. 



Thus have the farmers of the Northwest kept on 

 in the eiren tenor of their ways, and had the season 

 been a usu '1 one for crops, would have made a lar- 

 ger aggregate of farm products than ever before. 

 The spring was favorable, on the whole, for the put- 

 ting in of the spring crops, and all those which ma- 

 tured Curly, such as spring wheat, flax, oats and bar- 

 ley, have made good nturns ; while sorgho, corn, 

 buckwheat, potatoes and late vegetables have suflTer- 

 ed seriously. 



The autumn has been favorable for the gathering 

 of the light ctop, for plowing and the setting of or- 

 chards. In the north part of the State the plowing 

 is well along, but in the center and south little of 

 it has been done. With the exception of our own 

 work in that line we do not know of an acre that 

 has been turned over. Now that the Tribune has 

 a large circulation in these parts of the State, we 

 have some hope of arousing the farmers to the great 

 value of fall-plowing their land. 



Great complaints are made, all through the basin 

 of Egypt, that the spring rains prevent getting the 

 crop in, in season. The land cannot be plowed, con- 

 sequently the crop cannot be put in until after the 

 rain ceases, when, too often, the summer drouth 

 comes in to cut short the hopes of the farmer. 

 Xow, if the land hod been plowed in antumn into 

 narrow beds, say of two rods wide and in early 

 spring stirred to the depth of four or five inches 

 with a six-shovel cultiviitor, and the crops sowed 

 or planted in March and Apiil, so as to have the 

 benefit of the spring rains, we can see uo reason 

 why that part of the State would not produce annu- 

 al crops with as much certainty as other parts. 



The late call of troops will make another draft 

 on farm labor, which we must be prepared to make 

 good with new implements and a more economical 

 application of labor. This is attainable to a great 

 extent. In the first place, now is the time to be- 

 gin, bj getting up the year's supply of fuel, of fence 

 posts, timber for shed:^, corn houses and other pur- 

 poses. The man who has to send a team to the 

 woods for fuel in harvest time, will find that he 

 committed a fatal error in January, and if he fails 

 to have his cribs ready at the time for husking corn, 

 he will have cold fingers before the crop is harvest- 

 ed. Every fall we see hundreds of teams wending 

 their way over muddy roads^to haul rails, four to 

 eight miles to make corn cribs. We never could 

 afford to put our corn in a rail pen, as we have no 

 money or time to throw away in that direction, and 

 a crop of corn once made is worth the saving in 

 good order. Farm after farm c;m be pointed out 

 within sight of our window, where not only hun- 

 dreds but thousands of bushels of corn have been 

 thrown out of the cribs or rail pens as rotten and 

 I worthless, and that within the List three years. It 

 would appear that lessons thus appealing to their 

 pocket would sink deep into their hearts, for many 

 of them are now paying seventy-five to eighty-five 

 cents a bushel, six successful crops gave us an over 

 supply, and the price went down so low that on ev- 

 ery dollar received for corn another dollar wm 

 lost, but a single short crop occurs and the price 

 goes up nearly four times that at which it can be 

 profitably produced. If it takes six full crops to 

 ^arry the price down to half its cost of production 

 j^nd but one failure, to place it four hundred per 

 ent. above, will it not be found good economy to 



