358 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[July, 
and the long or Spanish moss. The eggs, four in 
number, are coated wilh a chalky substance, which, 
upon being scraped away, shows the light-blue 
color of the shell beneath. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 139. 
[COPYRIGHT SECURED.] 
It is now the middle of May, and a fire is quite 
comfortable. I never knew the laud so dry. We 
have had some good showers, but no soaking rain. 
The underdrains have discharged little or no water 
this spring. The Deacon sowed some low land 
with wheat last fall, and I expected to see it 
drowned out ; but he has as promising a piece of 
■wheat as any in the neighborhood. This gives the 
old gentleman a cheerful countenance. I went to 
see Brother A., the other day. I have alluded to 
him several times. He is a capital farmer, and a 
true, noble man. He is always at work, but never 
Beems to be in a hurry. He visits the sick, and 
relieves the poor, and neglects no religious or 
social duty. He keeps a bed in his barn, and many 
" a tramp " gets a free lodging there, and a break- 
fast in the morning. This has been his practice for 
forty years or more, and I believe no one has yet 
abused his kindness. He has seen more than three 
score years and ten, but is as active as a man of 
forty. We found him pruning his young apple 
orchard. When he set out this eight or ten acres 
of apple orchard twelve years ago, many thought 
he would never live to sec the fruit. But he has 
had two or three fair crops, and a healthier and 
more promising orchard is not to be found in 
western New York. And is'nt he a happy man ! 
His very face shines with health, and his cheerful 
greeting showed a contented spirit and a mind at 
ease. His life is a life of active enjoyment and 
peace. " How well your wheat is looking on the 
summer-fallow," I remarked, " it is the best piece 
of wheat I have seen this spring. Mine is wretch- 
ed." — " Have you seen the wheat on the oat-stub- 
ble? It is almost as good." — Both these fields 
were iu a sheltered situation, and he will have a 
capital crop of wheat. — "A man who has got a 
good crop of wheat thi% year," remarked the 
Squire, whose wheat is even worse than mine, " can 
affoi'd to lie cheerful. And besides he has a lot of 
the prettiest pigs in the neighborhood. And pigs 
this year are pigs. You can't buy a little pig a 
month old for less than $5.(X), and some are asking 
S8.00 for a pig two months old — and will not take 
less." — ■' Mr. A.," I repUed, " took the rightcourse 
to get good pigs. He had a good thrifty common 
sow, and crossed her with a thoroughbred, and he 
has a litter of twelve pigs, with all the good jjoints 
of their thoroughbred sire, fine bone, quiet dispo- 
sition, small head and ears, square backs, deep 
sides, good hams and shoulders ; and united with 
these, they have the health, vigor, and hardiness of 
the mother. Such pigs have good appetites and 
good digestion, and will grow rapidly, fatten at any 
age, are easy keepers, and afford meat of the best 
quality." 
It is raining — and raining hard. It will do much 
good ; but it is too late to be of much benefit to 
our winter wheat. Much of this is injured beyond 
recovery. We shall not feed wheat to our stock 
next winter. A letter just received from Iowa, 
says; "Fall wheat entirely winter killed." And I 
fear the evil is genraal. I hope we shall have a big 
corn crop. With the present and prospective high 
price of pork, a good corn crop would bo a national 
blessing. Owing to the long continued drouth, the 
soil turns up beautifully, and corn as ii rule, will be 
planted in fine, mellow soil. This is .an important 
matter. If corn gets a good start, the chances are 
greatly in its favor. Let us cultivate thoroughly, 
and keep the land clean and mellow between the 
rows, and then we may hope for a good crop. 
It is twenty five years this spring since I put in 
my first crop of Indian coin on this farm. Our 
method of planting, cultivating, hoeing, hilling, 
cutting up, stooking, husking, and shelling, is 
essentially the same now as then. I question if the 
Deacon has changed his method in any particular, 
and the same is true of the Judge, Brother A., and 
other good old-fashioned farmers. A few of us 
drill in our com, and harrow it with a smoothing 
harrow ; but I find a constant tendency to drift back 
into the old plan. It wiU take another quarter cen- 
turj', and another generation of farmers, to effect 
any radical and permanent change. We want a 
new imi)lement for preparing sod land for com. 
We plant our corn in rows 3S to 4 feet .apart, and 
as soon as the com is up, we cultivate between the 
rows again and again. This land between the rows 
gets thoroughly worked ; but how is it under the 
hill or row of corn ? All the stirring and cultiva- 
ting, and pulverizing, and mullo\ving, which this 
small space gets, must be done hi the short and 
hurrying time before planting, when all the spring 
work on the farm is pressing us at once. And 
whatever we do for this small space of soil, where 
the seed is to be planted, must be done for the 
whole surface of the land in the field. We have to 
prepare the whole land for com, with drill rows 42 
to 48 inches apart, as completely as we do for 
wheat, barley, or oats, with drill rows only 7 or 8 
inches apart. 
Corn delights iu a warm, mellow, well pulverized 
soil. Our naturally loose, warm, sandy upland 
soils, are apt to be poor, and need manure ; while 
the richer and heavier loams, where we ought to 
get a good crop, are with great difficulty got into 
the proper condition for planting corn. And such 
will be th-> case so long as we attempt to work the 
whole of the land before planting. We must have 
an implement for working the soil where the com 
is to be drilled or planted, and let the rest go until 
we cultiviite. 
H. E. Hooker was here to-day. I was feeling 
"blue" about the poor prospects for wheat, and 
not less 60 in regard to a 33-acre field of clover, 
that is more than half winter killed. Along the 
sides of the fences for two or three rods" wide, the 
clover is as thick and luxuriant as could be desired ; 
and also on the west side of the dead-furrows, and 
the east side of the ridges, and wherever the snow 
protected the plants from the wind. The field was 
seeded down with clover last spring, half of it on 
winter wheat, and the other half on spring barley. 
The part seeded with the barley, is far better than 
that put in with the wheat, but neither are half as 
good as I expected, except where the snow protect- 
ed the plants. I thought I had a right to hope for 
a great crop of clover. I had taken great pains in 
draining, preparing and cleaning the land. The 
Squire has a held near by seeded at the same time. 
Last fall my clover looked so clean and nice, and 
his so full of weeds, that I fear I contemplated 
the difference with satisfaction. But now my clo- 
ver is half dead while his is green and flourishing. 
The weeds and rubbish protected the young plants. 
I have noticed several cases where wheat stubble 
was left high, that the clover seems better than 
where it was cut close. 
" Now," said Mr. Hooker, " if you will plow up 
a few acres of this land where the clover is most 
injured, and drill in three bushels of corn per acre, 
in rows 3 to 3i feet apart, and cultivate thoroughly 
as long as you can yet through with a horse, you 
will not regret the loss of the clover." 
Mr. Hooker has raised corn-fodder for years, and 
with such great satisfaction that he is quite enthusi- 
astic in regard to it. He thinks it the great Ameri- 
can fallow crop. Not only does it afford a great yield 
per acre, but it occupies the land only a short time, 
and leaves it perfectly clean and in good condition 
for future crops. He says he can kill even quack 
grass with a crop of well cultivated fodder com. 
Like nearly all others who have tried both plans, he 
recommends sowing in rows wide enough to admit 
the free use of the cultivator. He regards fre- 
quent cultivation between the rows as the vital 
point. Sometimes the wind will blow down a 
piece of such corn, when sown in rows, but if left 
alone, the crop will still mature, and not be se- 
riously injured. 
Mr. Hooker makes the rows 3i feet apart, with a 
swivel plow, and then scatters the com in the row 
by hand, at the rate of three bushels per acre. 
" If he had told us how long a row a quart of coK 
would sow," said the Deacon, "we could tell bet 
ter whether we were getting it on thick enough."— 
That is easily tigured. With rows 3i feet apart, 
a row 4,148 yards long, would be an acre. And so 
at the rate of 3 bushels per acre, a quart of com 
would sow a row 43 yards long. I have sown 4 
bushels per acre, and found it none too thick. At 
this rate a quart of corn would sow, at 3i feet 
apart, a row not quite 324 yards long. Or say half 
a pint of corn to 8 yards. I find, on trial, that I 
can fill a half pint measure with two himdf ills of 
oats; but it took six haudtuls of Champion of 
England peas, or five handtuls of corn. I got one 
of my men to try it, and he filled the half pint with 
four handfuls of corn. I think about one good 
handful of corn to two yards of row, would be 
about the right quantity to sow. 
Mr. Hooker sows it at different times, from the 
middle or last of May, to the first week in July, 
whenever he can getthe land ready. " Sow enough 
of it," he said, "so that you can use it freely. It 
has no enemies. Will produce at least 5 tons of 
good cured fodder per acre. And the whole crop 
can be used to advantage." — " But do you not 
have trouble in curing it ?" — "Not at all," he re- 
plied. " We make it into large stooks in the field, 
biud it round the top, and let it stay in the field 
and draw it to the barn in winter as it is wanted." 
"With good corn-fodder, mixed with a little mill 
feed and corn-meal," said Mr. H., "we make near- 
ly as good butter in winter, as when the cows are 
out at pasture. And last winter I kept sixteen 
horses on com-foddcr, and never had horses do 
better. Eight of these horses were turned out iu 
the yard, with a shed to run in, and had nothing 
but cora-fodder, and they got fat. The other eight, 
whicli were worked regularly, had mill-feed and 
ni'^al mixed with the chopped corn-fodder, and 
they also kept in high condition. They have not 
had a particle of hay." 
"J. G. C." sends me a newspaper containing an 
article on " Perfect Manuring," and writes that he 
wishes " Walks and Talks could give us light on 
the subject."— I wish so, too. With our present 
knowledge, it is safe to say that the wisest general 
course is to drain the land where needed, to keep it 
clean, to raise as much horse, cattle, sheep, and pig 
food as we possibly can with profit, and feed it out 
on the farm, taking care to save the manure from 
running away, or from leaching. Then, if we buy 
artificial fertiUzers, to use in addition to the manure 
made on the farm, we should select those that give 
us nitrogen and phosphoric acid, (and perhaps pot- 
ash), at the cheapest rates and most available form. 
And we need not trouble ourselves about getting 
other ingredients of plant food. 
If, instead of buying artificial manures, we buy 
food to feed out with the fodder raised on the 
farm, our aim, so far as the value of the manure is 
concerned, should be to select those which, other 
things being equal, furnish the most nitrogen. 
The able articles from the pen of Prof. Atwater, 
which have appeared, and which I hope will be 
continued in the AgriniUurht, should be carefully 
studied in this connection. Prof. Atwater shows 
very conclusively the advantage of growing or buy- 
ing food rich in nitrogen, (albuminoids), to feed in 
connection with straw, com fodder, etc. This has 
been my aim for years. But I have selected food 
rich in nitrogen forthe sake of getting rich manure. 
There is no doubt on this point. The richer the 
food in nitrogen, the richer and more valuable will 
be the manure. I have tried to grow as much 
clover and peas as possible, because these foods 
are rich in nitrogen. I have bought bran, and malt 
sprouts, for the same reason. Prof. Atwater con- 
firms this view ; but he goes far beyond me. And 
I hope he is right. He seems to think that foods 
rich in nitrogen are not only more valuable for ma- 
nure, but that they are also more valuable directly 
or indirectly for food also. I hope he will give us 
more information on this point. I have been acting 
on a different theory, and if Prof. Atwater is right, I 
could save some hundreds of dollars every year. 
