410 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[November, 
to take this case to the Farmers' Club, -where 
we get all the Hookertown wisdom boiled down. 
The topic for discussion, as printed in the Gaz- 
ette, was, " How cau farmers get forehanded ?" 
It called out a full meeting. Deacon Smith, who 
is about the richest mau we have in Hooker- 
town, said the cultivation of special crops was 
one of the best ways he knew of to make money. 
" I did not get ahead much as long as I under- 
took to raise a little of every thing. But when 
I gave the most of my attention to fruit growing, 
I found it paid, and I have kept cultivating 
more and more that which paid best. I always 
mean to raise what I want for my family on the 
farm, as far as I can, and then put all the rest of 
my force upon raising some one thing that will 
bring in money in a pile. It pays me a great 
deal better to raise 4 acres of strawberries and 
get $2,000 for them clear, than it does to run 
over 100 acres of laud, and get the same amount 
of money in a dozen different crops." 
Jake Frink said : " I hain't got any clear no- 
tions on this subject. I've been trying to get 
forehanded this thirty years, and could never 
bring it about. I started in debt, and I never 
could get out. Sometimes the folks have been 
sick, and doctors' bills eat up all the profits, and 
sometimes the cattle disease was ragin', and then 
there want any profits to eat up. Now if any 
boddy can tell a feller how to git ahead I should 
like to be a scholar and larn." 
Seth Twiggs said he had noticed "that a 
drinking disease kept a good many folks be- 
hindhand. As long as a man has a crook in 
his elbow he is sarlin' to have crooks in other 
places and he won't see to go straight any where." 
George Washington Tucker said : " That 
sounded a good deal like twitting on facls. I 
admit I take a drink occasionally with a friend, 
but as long as I pay for it, I don't see as it's 
any body's business. The trouble with me is I 
never could get any land of my own to work. 
I have always been helping raise other folks' 
corn and potatoes. A man must have land if 
he is gwine to git ahead any. As long as rich 
folks buy up all the land, there ain't any chance 
for the poor. They talk about ten acres enough. 
If I could git one acre and a house on to it, I 
should be as rich as a prince." 
So you see, Mr. Editor, Hookertown is not a 
unit on the way to get rich. Every man has 
his theory, except Jake Frink, who is all in a 
muddle, like a good many other people who 
own much land and don't work it. The secret 
of getting rich, I take it, all lies in a nutshell ; 
" Spend less than you earn." A man who sees 
to it that he does that, at the end of every week, 
month, and year, will be sure to get ahead. It 
was on this principle that Sally and I begun 
housekeeping, and every year has seen a little 
progress, until we have got things fixed up pretty 
much to suit us. By a fixed habit, we live 
within our means, and this makes a rich man in 
Hookertown, or in your city, no matter what 
his bank account is. We didn't have any car- 
pets on the floors, at first, because I thought the 
land wanted a carpet of manure a great deal the 
most. We had sheep, and it wa'n't long before 
Sally managed to weave a rag carpet, and she 
didn't have to pay out money for any thing but 
the dye stuff. By the time this was worn out 
the money that I kept laying out on the land 
begun to come back so fast that we could have 
a Brussels carpet in the parlor without running 
in debt for it. It was rather a proud day when 
that roll of carpeting was brought into the 
house. Sally had waited for it a dozen years, 
and every thread of it came out of her own 
bones, as much as if she had spun and wove it 
all herself. "Everything that comes into the 
house must be marked paid " was the motto she 
started with, and she has stuck to it like a true 
woman ever since. If a man begins farming 
with a small capital he must go upon this prin- 
ciple in his housekeeping. All he can afford to 
run in debt for is his stock in trade, tools, ma- 
nure, seed, and animals. These pay a big inter- 
est, while millinery and furniture, pianos and 
bronze clocks, cost considerable to keep them 
agoing. The Europeans of whom that Western 
mau speaks, adopt this principle, if they thrive. 
The average Irishman or German comes over 
here with very little money, and no credit. Al- 
most his whole capital is in his person. He 
works a few years, and saves his money. When 
he lias a few hundred dollars ahead he buys a 
few acres in the outskirts of the village, puts up 
a small, plain house, marries a prudent woman, 
and goes to housekeeping. She does not in- 
dulge in carpets, or pumpkin seed bonnets and 
things to match, but she works as steadily as 
her husband, and pays her way. She is ready 
for any kind of woman's work, and is not afraid 
to use the hoe and spade in the garden. She 
almost supports the family herself, with her 
washing, her eggs and milk, and garden truck, 
while Patrick saves his dollars and invests in 
more cows, a horse and cart, and more land. 
In a few years he is done with working other 
folks' land, and hires men to work his own. 
He is a tidy farmer, his house and barns are en- 
larged, his stock increased, his children are well 
educated and well dressed, and they smell so 
strong of Plymouth Rock that the old Hooker- 
town families intermarry with them. Now, 
what is there in an average Yankee that he 
should not pursue the same course, and pay for 
what he enjoys in his home before he comes 
into possession? If be can have a carpet with- 
out taking another man's money to pay for it, 
let him have it. But if he cannot afford it, bare 
floors will not hurt honest men's feet. Let him 
keep a carriage if he can afford it, but if he can- 
not, then drive the box wagon to mill and to 
meeting. The grist and the sermon will digest 
just as well. His pride may suffer a little, but 
his credit wont. " Pay as you go " was the good 
old maxim of our fathers, and by it they bought 
and paid for their homes. It would be better if 
more of their sons and daughters walked in their 
footsteps. No ! my Ohio friend, there is no 
short, easy road to riches for common folks. 
You can't do any better than to work right on, 
and wait for the millinery you can't pay for to- 
day. Yon might run in debt for pumpkin seed 
it' you cannot get them in any other lviy. But 
the pumpkin seed bonnet will ruin you if you 
agree to pay for it to-morrow. 
Yours to command, 
Timotity Bunker, Esq., 
Hookertown, Conn., Sept. 15, 188S. 
Carting Out Manure in the Fall. 
Our springs arc often so wet that the planting 
season is crowded into a very few days, and it 
greatly helps the hurried labors of seed sowing 
to have the manure upon the ground. Some of 
our best farmers cart out the most of their sum- 
mer-made manure in the fall and early winter, 
and if the heaps are properly protected the value 
of the manure will be increased. The advan- 
tage of making manure under cover is not that 
it is kept from moisture, but that the degree of 
moisture can be regulated, there being neither 
too much nor too little in any part of the mass. 
The compost heap needs water to regulate its 
fermentation. If it can be so constructed that 
it will receive just water enough, and so that 
the surface will not dry, nothing will be lost. 
The heaps should have six or eight cords of 
manure each, should be made four or five feet 
high, well trodden down, with sides sloping at 
an angle of 45 degrees, to shed a part of the rain, 
and both top and sides should be covered with a 
few inches of surface soil or muck. The fer- 
mentation will go on through the winter, and 
when the compost is forked over in the'spring 
previous to spreading, as it should be, it will 
be found very "short," and better than if it 
had lain in the open yard all winter. Most 
farmers have not room enough in their cellars 
and yards to store all the manure their stock 
is capable of making, and it is a great advantage 
to clean out all their accumulations in autumn, 
as well as spring, and furnish a new supply 
of muck, loam, or straw, for the winter. A 
much larger quantity of manure is made by this 
course. If concentrated manures arc used in 
addition to those made upon the place, they may 
often be mixed with the yard manure in these 
compost heaps with good results. The danger 
of burning the seed, which so often occurs when 
these artificial manures are applied in the hill 
in the undiluted state, would be avoided, and 
if the combined manure be used for spring 
grain a more even distribution is effected. 
In a Bog.— An Agricultural Problem. 
Our friend, Titus Oaks, Esq., of Westchester 
County, occasionally comes in with an agri- 
cultural problem, which he thinks will puzzle 
editors and others. There is a twinkle in his 
eye, as ho half exult ingly asks what he'd 
better do. This is his last statement : 
"I am in a bog. Will yott help me out? 
Eight years ago, I bought a piece of land, in 
the centre of which was a bog-swamp of about 
4 acres, with springy land around it. We cut a 
ditch through it, 14 feet wide, throwing the 
muck on each side ; then cut ditches four feet 
wide by four feet deep, at right angles, once in 
four rods. After carting off the muck, the bogs 
were cut off with sharp spades. We carted on 
common earth, and a little stable manure, and 
sowed with Timothy, clover, and red-top. The 
first year after, we had a fair crop of very good 
hay. The next, the grass was extra good, the 
Timothy, in some places, being 5 feet high. I 
mowed it two or three times a year, and kept 
the cattle off for five years ; but the water 
grasses gained on the upland grass, starling 
sooner in the spring and growing later in the 
fall. For the last three years I have mowed it 
but once a year, and have turned my cows in to 
eat the after-growth. Now it is one-half reeds 
and rushes. The muck was from 3 to G feet 
deep; it has settled li to 2 feet. The muck is 
more compact, and the water does not drain 
through, as at first. Tile-draining does well 
around the swamp, in the gravelly land, but not 
in the muck, except directly over the drain." 
We have here' a soft, pasty peat, which is 
made more and more compact the more water 
it loses. It is clear no half-way treatment will 
answer. The drains were deep; the}- are now 
li to 2 feet shallower than at first. If, by 
very deep plowing, sand or upland soil could 
be mingled with the upper foot of soil, it would 
not cure the difficulty, though it would help 
matters. If new drains, 4 feet deep, were dug 
half way between the others, the relief would 
only be very local. Paring and burning the 
