THE SOUTHERN PLANTER; 



ISeboteti to ^srftulture, ^orttcultunr, an* the ©oustfioUi &rts. 



Agriculture is the nursing mother of the Arts. Tillage and Pasturage are the two breasts of the 



Xenophon. State* — Sully. 



C. T. BOTTS & \j. M. BURFOOT, Editors. 

 Vol. III. RICHMOND, MAY, 1843. No. 5. 



PASTURAGE vs. TILLAGE. 



During the last winter we enjoyed the plea- 

 sure of a fireside conversation with one of the 

 most intellectual and experienced farmers in 

 Virginia. We made a note afterwards of the 

 most striking remarks of our friend, and it is to 

 the benefit of this memorandum that we propose 

 to treat our readers. As a conversation, it was 

 of course varied and desultory, and he who 

 reads what follows with any expectation of 

 finding an able and profound essay upon agri- 

 culture, will be sorely disappointed. But we 

 wish we possessed the power of transferring to 

 paper the zeal, the ardor, and interest, with 

 which this gentleman, the builder of his own 

 fortune, who has grown gray in the pursuit of 

 his profession, dilated upon the joys, pleasures, 

 and advantages of his favorite pursuit. How 

 we who are mewed up in a city, from year's 

 end to year's end, longed, while listening to him, 

 for what old Gervaise Mark ham calls " coun- 

 try contentments." But it was not so much 

 the poetical and sentimental ideas, as the prac- 

 tical remarks of our observing friend, that we 

 intended to transfer to our columns ; to these, 

 therefore, we proceed without further comment. 



This gentleman, himself an inhabitant of the 

 West, is very familiar with the agriculture of 

 the eastern portion of the State, especially with 

 the James River cultivation. He thinks the 

 great error of the East consists in the want of 

 grass and cattle. He is free to admit that 

 crops of wheat, corn, and tobacco, will put more 

 money in the pocket than grass, but he says the 

 cultivation will take more out also, and that 

 into the account must be taken the revenue de- 

 rived from the superior improvement of the soil, 

 from pasturage over tillage. In short, he con- 

 tends, that when the cost of production and all 

 the proceeds of the system are fairly considered, 

 products, which are consumed on the farm, af- 

 ford by far the best remuneration to the labors 

 of the husbandman. He says too, that the 

 proneness of mankind to make improvident ex- 

 Vol. III.— 13 



penditures of money, for which our Southern 

 people are so particularly remarkable, is in a 

 measure checked by this system, which creates, 

 as it were, a savings bank, in which their pro- 

 ducts are deposited ; therefore, all that increase 

 of wealth, which accrues from the improvement 

 of the farm, may be ofFsetted, he thinks, against 

 twice the amount obtained in money. Men mis- 

 lead by the glittering, but false, show of the 

 products of tillage crops, coming as it does all 

 in a lump, too frequently miscalculate the clear 

 profits of the two systems. He does not mean, 

 of course, that every farmer should be a grazier, 

 but he thinks that the farmers in Eastern Virgi- 

 nia would do well to incorporate the grazing 

 system with their tillage crops to a much greater 

 extent than they do. He himself sells very 

 little except pork and beef ; he cultivates a farm 

 of seven hundred and fifty acres; his annual 

 sales average four thousand dollars, and his force 

 consists of only six able bodied negro men, and 

 a couple of others hired for a month or two dur- 

 ing the busiest season of the year. Here is a 

 product of six hundred dollars to the hand; 

 where is the tobacco planter that can equal it? 

 But this is not all, in doing this our friend has 

 converted a wilderness into a garden ; beginning 

 originally with two hundred acres of Ohio bot- 

 tom, he has so improved hundreds of acres of 

 sandy barrens, as to increase their product from 

 five, to seventy-five, and a hundred bushels of 

 corn to the acre ; they are in fact now consi- 

 dered the most valuable portion of the farm. If 

 this great increase of wealth be, as it fairly 

 should, added to the amount of annual sales, 

 and if the outlay be estimated by the smallness 

 of the force employed, we do not hesitate to 

 say, that the clear profits of this gentleman's 

 farming will compare favorably with the pro- 

 ceeds of any other regular business whatever. 



All this, and more, much more, he thinks, 

 could be effected with its additional facilities 

 upon a James River estate. He laughs at the 

 idea of this not being a grass country — he has 

 seen our lands at all seasons during the extremes 



