248 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[July, 
of Bowing wheat, I should have sown rye, and ma- 
nured it. Then this spring it could have been fed 
off with sheep, or cut for the milch cows, and the 
l«ud then plowed and j^lanted with corn or beans. 
Red root, it is said, only grows among winter 
wheat; but if you will prepare the laud precisely 
as you would were you going to sow wheat, and 
then let it lie bare, or sow rye, the red root will be 
cheated ! It will germinate in the fall, and you can 
plow it up in the spring. Red root is easily des- 
troyed. What renders it formidable is, the fact 
that it only germinates in autumn and gets into our 
winter wheat, w'here we have no chance of destroy- 
ing it. If we prepare our land for wheat, and then 
BOW rye instead, and eat this off or mow it iu the 
spriug, and tlien plow the land and plant beans, we 
should destroy large quantifies of it — and as we 
coiild sow wheat after the beans, it is only delaying 
the wlieat croj) one year. The rye, if sown early 
and manured, would give ns a great crop of suc- 
culent food early in the spring, and would be jnst 
what we need for milch cows, or for ewes and 
lambs. For the latter purpose, rye is frequently 
grown on light lands iu England. Where lambs are 
raised early for the butcher, I do not see why it 
would not be very valuable. You think it would 
make the land too rich for beans. If so, give up 
the plan of sowing wheat the next fall, and plant 
corn instead of the beans ; or, what is visually done 
in England, sow turnips or some other root crop. 
But I do not believe the manure Avould hurt the 
beans. I think it is a mistalie that beans require 
such poor land. If well cultivated, they will ma- 
ture quite as early on rich laud as ou poor, and give 
a far better crop. But they must be kept clean. 
My be.ans last year paid me better than any other 
crop I raised, and I have put iu ten acres this sea- 
son. If the price is low, it will still pay to raise 
them to feed to sheep and milch cows. No grain 
makes such rich manure, aud nothing is better for 
milch cows than corn and bean meal mixed to- 
gether. Then there is this advantage about beans, 
they need not be planted until you are through the 
hurry of spring work, and they are off iu time to 
sow wheat in the fall, and as they are drilled in 
rows two aud a half feet apart, the land can be 
cultivated with the horse-hoe and can be made a^ 
clean as if summer fallowed. I say can be, because 
this is seldom the case. Harvest work comes on, 
and the cultivators are thrown aside, and before 
you know it, the beans are full of weeds, and you 
lose one of the chief advantages of the crop. Then 
what a jjleasant work it is to pull beans among 
thistles! I have known farmers " go into beans " 
with great enthusiasm, thinking to make their for- 
tune, who soon gave them up in disgust simply be- 
cause they neglected to keep them clean. I saw a 
crop last year that was comjiletely smothered with 
weeds, and was not worth pulling. 
Beans are an excellent crop, but must have clean 
culture. They should not be worked amongst 
■while the dew is on, as it is said to rust the leaves, 
but otherwise you caunot cultivate them too fre- 
qiiently. " What do I suppose is the reason there 
is so much red root in the wheat after beaBs?" 
Simply because the land had been so frequently 
plowed and eultivated,tbat all the seed in the ground 
germinated. It was just what was needed to des- 
troy the red root, jirovided it could have been 
plowed under this sirring. As it is, it will trouble 
me for years to come. I believe it would have paid 
to have plowed up the wheat and sown it to barley. 
As the seed that was in the ground doubtless all 
germinated from the repeated plowing and harrow- 
ing it received, this would have rid me of the pest. 
I have just been sawing wood with a machine and 
three horses and four men. I believe I could have 
got it sawed cheaper by hand. Th.at is not a 
" progressive " idea, but I am inclined to think it is 
a fact nevertheless. I know if you have everything 
just right you can do work cheaper with machinery 
than by hand, but the trouble is to get everything 
just right. If a man made a business of sawing 
wood, he could sa\v' it cheaper with a good machine 
than by baud, because he could keep his machine 
in order. But when you have only a little wood to 
saw, it takes h.ilf the time to get fairly started and 
everything working right. The saw perhajjs is a 
little rusted, or it is not sharp, or is not set quite 
true ; or if the saw perchance should be all right, 
something may be wrong with the horse-power. It 
is not set right, and the belt rubs or comes off, or 
there is a screw loose, or a little casting breaks — 
and you have to stop all h.inds and send a hundred 
miles for a new one. Those who depict so eloquent- 
ly the pleasures of modern farming by machinery, 
draw more on their imagination than their ex- 
perience. 1 have tried it, and while I do not 
despair, I am often discouraged. I have a machine 
with which I can, and do, turn the grindstone, cut 
fodder, thrash, grind the grain, drive the eider mill, 
saw wood iu the log with a drag saw, or cord wood 
with a circular saw. This it will do, aud do well, 
but oh, the care of kecpingall these things in order 
and getting them to work well. I have a potato 
planter, that at one operatiou marks out the rows, 
cuts the potatoes, drops the sets, covers them up, 
and rolls the ground. Also one that drills twelve 
acres of corn and beans in a day, and does the work 
well. We have cultivators that leave very little to 
be done Avith hand-hoes. We have mowing ma- 
chines aud reapers that leave little to be desired iu 
this direction. The tedding machine shakes out 
the hay as well as it can be done by hand and five 
times as fast, the wooden revolving rake pulls it in- 
to wind-rows, a pitching machiue attached to the 
b.ack end of a wagon will carry the hay on to the 
load, and a steel toothed sulky rake makes all clean. 
Then at the barn we unload with a horse fork, and 
the farmer can sit in the shade smoking the pipe of 
contentment as he witnesses the operation. Then 
we have a machine for millcing cows, and another 
to work the butter, while, if you make cheese, the 
American vats and presses make the labor mere 
child's play, compared with the old Cheshire system. 
I have not tried these last named machines, but I 
have little doubt that they work as well as some of 
the others I have named. The gr.ain binder, too, I 
have faith enough to believe will soon be attached 
to every reajier, and thcu with a steam plow and a 
good potato digger, won't farmers have an easy 
time? Not a bit of it. If these things would run 
themselves ; if they never got out of i-epair ; if 
they bad no disposition to lie round loose, but 
would put themselves up, then indeed we should 
be "gentlemen of leisure." But this will never 
be. We can change our work, but we can never 
get rid of it. If we do not work with our muscles, 
we must with our brains. And the encouraging 
feature of this age of invention is not that these 
"labor saving machines" do the work so much 
cheaper, as that they change the character of the 
labor required in agriculture. They lessen back- 
breaking drnggery, and increase mental activity. A 
farmer who uses a good deal of machinery cannot 
be dull and stupid. It will make a man of him. 
I expect great things from the young farmers of 
America. There is everything to encourage them : 
soil, climate, social position, political influence. 
The destiny of the country is iu their hands, But 
they must not expect to live lives of ease and 
luxury. Brains rather than muscles will be re- 
quired iu the new condition of our agriculture. 
Machinery will stimulate mental activity, and en- 
courage the growth of that rare grace, patience ! 
I look forward with much interest to the trial of 
implements at Auburn on the 10th of July. Great 
pains have been taken to secure reliable results. I 
think, however, from the Programme ou Horse 
Powers, the only one I have seen, that too much 
importance is given to " effective force," as a test 
of merit. Of course, other things being equal, 
effective force — or ease of draught in accomplishing 
a given amount of work — should secure the award. 
But unless the " other things " are taken into con- 
sideration, we may get a decision that will be an 
injury to agriculture rather than a beneflt. I can 
imagine a horse power that runs very easj', and 
which might take the prize, that would prove a 
nuisance ou any ordinary farm. The one great de- 
fect of American agricultural machines is, their 
liability to breakage, and to get out of repair. No 
matter how effective a machiue may be when it is 
properly set and run by an experienced machinist, 
if from an inherent defect in the principle of its 
construction, or of workmanship, it is very liable 
to break when not set exactly true; or if its ar- 
rangements are complicated, so that ordinary farm 
men cannot run it. I should greatly prefer some 
less effective but simj^lcr m.achine, that is strong 
enough to stand the abuse that it will be sure to 
meet with iu ordinary farm practice. On a farm 
large enough to use a sweep power to advantage, a 
extra horse at a season when it is most used is of 
little consequence. In the winter season, for in- 
stance, iu chaffing fodder, or grinding feed, or saw- 
iug wood, I would about as soon put on three 
horses as two, or five as four — that is if there is 
anytliing gained by it. I am not arguing in favor 
of keeping more horses than we neeil. I think this 
a great mistake. All I wishtoshow is, that an extra 
horse, during a leisure season, or at a time when all 
the men on the farm are employed in attending the 
machine, is nothing compared with the loss of time 
and annoyance caused by a machine that is forever 
getting out of order. In the hands of a careless 
mau an ordinary watch, for his purposes, would 
prove more useful than a delicate chronometer. 
How wretchedly poor most farmers keep their 
store hogs. Having more milk than my pigs would 
eat, I rode round to see if I could buy a few. I 
called on adozen farmers or more, and did not sec 
three that keep their hogs decently. In two or 
three cases the pens were filthy in the extreme. 
There is no excuse for it. If short of straw, the 
horse litter might be thrown into the pen. It would 
keep the pigs dry and comfortable, smother that 
horrible stench, and make a great quantity of rich 
manure. The pig is naturally the cleanest animal 
on the farm, why compel him to be the dirtiest? 
"Breeding sows should not be kept too fat," is 
one of those popular notions, half true and half 
false, that leads to grave mismanagement and loss. 
Most of the sows I saw were ravenously hungry, 
and some of them appeared to have bai-ely strength 
enough to walk, let alone suckling the little ones. 
Such treatment is cruel — and monstrously absurd. 
"Pigs are very scarce this spring," said one who 
asked me four dollars a piece for a litter five weeks 
old. "Mr. Blank, at the Corners, has six breeding 
sows, and only raised two pigs." I presume if he 
had twelve he would not have raised one. I bought 
one litter six weeks old, of a man who was over- 
stocked, for S3 a piece. Had they been fed as pigs 
should be, I would have gi^n him S4, and they 
would have been better worth it, for an animal 
starved when young never fully recovers. 
High feeding and high fiirming must, as a general 
rule, go together. We cannot farm high without 
good manure, and we cannot get good m.anure 
without high feeding. This little French book of 
Prof Ville advocates what he calls a new system of 
"high farming without manure." There is much 
iu the book that is both new and true ; " but what 
is true is not new, and what is new is not true." 
The Professor has been making some experiments 
on the Imperial farm at Vincennes, and found that 
by using nitrogen for wheat, phosphates for roots, 
and potash for leguminous plants, he could get 
large crops. This is not new. Mr. Lawes published 
the same thing sixteen years ago, as the result of 
his experiments, and thousands of farmers iu Eng- 
land have acted xipon it ever since. But will the 
use of these artificial manures enable us to dispense 
with ordinary manure, and will they pay? They 
are of great value when used iu addition to ma- 
nure ; but, as a general rule, it is neither safe nor 
profitable to depend upon them alone. The real 
value of these experiments in France is their strik- 
ing eonfirm.ation of Mr. Lawes' experiments in Eng- 
land. Ammonia for wheat, bones for turnips, and 
potash for clover, peas and beans. The practical 
difficulty is to get the former. It cannot be pur- 
chased except at a high figure, and in ordinary 
practice any system that will giveusammouia, will 
at the same time give us phosphates and potash. 
We get the whole in rich manure. 
