1866] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
321 
least straighter than it usually is planted. On 
such a clover sod, nearly all the hoeing can 
be done with the cultivator. The clover iivUI 
decay and furnish food for the coru, and if 
thoroughly cultivated, a noble crop will be 
obtaiued. After the corn is otf, plow the land 
in the fall, and the next spring run a three horse 
cultivator through it once or twice, harrow and 
drill in barley. Follow with wheat in the fall, 
and seed down with clover again in the spring. 
If we are ever able to get Peruvian guano, or 
some other equally good artificial manure, at a 
reasonable price, it would pay to give the wheat 
a dressing of two or three hundred lbs. per acre 
in the fall. It would help the wheat a good 
deal, and would greatly increase the growth of 
the clover. The barley, too, would be much 
benefitted, especially if sown early, by a similar 
dressing of gnano or other good fertilizer. 
As soon as we were able to afford it, I would 
top-dress the young clover in the fall, after the 
■wheat was off, with some well-rotted manure. 
This would give a heavy growth of clover for 
hay early in the season, and in addition to this 
it will insure a good crop of clover seed. 
" You have no timothy." No. We cannot 
afford to raise it on the upland portions of the 
farm. It impoverishes the soil as much as a 
crop of wheat. Raise it on permanent mead- 
ows on the low land. Such land, if drained, 
will give great crops of hay, and this fed out on 
the farm will make manure for the upland. 
We have no crops that we can raise to sell that 
will injure the land less or pay better than 
wheat, barley, and clover seed. The clover 
hay, and the corn and fodder will, of course, 
be fed out to stock in winter This rotation 
may be easily varied without throwing it out of 
gear For instance, you might plant potatoes 
instead of com, and follow with barley just the 
same. But as the potatoes are sold, the enrich- 
ing effect of the rotation would be weakened. 
They are, however, usually a profitable crop, 
and if we used more artificial manures, the land 
could be kept in heart equally well. I know of 
no ordinary farm crop to wliich a good artifi- 
cial manure can be applied with as much profit 
as potatoes. The reason of tliis is not that the 
manure benefits potatoes more than other crops, 
but simply that we get a better price for pota- 
toes than we do for ordinary grain crops. For 
instance: An average crop of wheat without 
manure, would be about 1.5 bushels per acre ; 
and an average crop of potatoes 100 bushels. 
Now a manure that would add one-half to the 
wheat would also add, probably, one-half to the 
potatoes. In other words, it would give an in- 
crease of 7i bushels of wheat on the one hand 
and 50 bushels of potatoes on the other. The 
wheat at |2.00 a bushel, would be worth $15, 
while the potatoes at 50c. a bushel, would be 
worth $35. And in this section wheat is much, 
more frequently below $2.00 than potatoes are 
below 50c. — on the farm. I say " on the farm," 
because the labor of storing and marketing po- 
tatoes is considerable. 
The Deacon always shakes his head when I 
talk about artificial manures. "You have 
raised one good crop," he said the other da}', 
" but we shall see." He alluded to my wheat. 
I have not yet thrashed, and of course cannot 
tell how it will turn out, but as the pomologists 
say of a new fruit, " it promises well." If I 
could buy Peruvian guano containing 16 per 
cent, of ammonia, and 25 per cent, of phos- 
phates, for $90 per ton, I would put 300 lbs. on 
every aci-e of my wheat this fall By the time 
it was on the land this would cost say $15 per 
acre. In England, 5 lbs. of ammonia give an 
extra bushel of wheat. According to this rule, 
300 lbs. of such guano would give an extra yield 
of about 10 bushels per acre. If we got $1.50 
a bushel, the account would just balance. But 
we should get a greater growth of clover the 
following year. And even if all the guano is 
used up by the wheat and clover, the extra 
growth of clover roots would serve to enrich 
the land, and this with the extra crop of clover 
hay and seed would afford a profit — " not gor- 
geous," as the author of " My Farm of Edge- 
wood" says, but still a profit. 
I see that the editors of the Agriculturist ask 
its readers in different sections of the country 
to inform them of the price of manure. This 
is a good idea. I think it will astonish those 
who have thought little on the subject to find 
how much it costs to manure an acre of land. 
I was talking to a farmer who draws consider- 
able manure from the cit)-, and he told me that 
he believed it cost liira $100 an acre. He does 
not raise ordinary farm crops. If he did I do 
not believe it would pay. Asa general rule, the 
more labor a crop requires to grow it, the more 
profitable will manure prove. That is awk- 
wardly expressed, but you get the idea? This 
is the reason why market gardeners, seed grow- 
ers, and nurserymen can afford to pay so much 
for manure. If they can double the crop with- 
out increasing the labor, they can well afford 
to pay a high price for manure, for the price of 
the product is usually in proportion to the labor 
and skill required to produce it. 
The Doctor says he sowed oats this spring on 
land that was plowed last fall, and simply har- 
rowed in the spring without anotlier plowing, 
and he raised a splendid crop. He thinks 
harrowing is better than cultivating, as oats, 
like wheat, seem to prefer a firm soil. 
Last spring I drilled in some of my barley, 
and sowed the other broadcast. We are cutting 
it to-day (.luly 28), and Dutch Peter, who was 
cradling round the field to make a path for the 
reaper, remarked, " You sowed the barley with 
a machine?" " Yes," I said, " Part with a ma- 
chine and part by hand." I showed him the 
place where the drilled barley ended, and re- 
marked that the broadcast seemed the best. 
" Ten times better than the machine," he said. 
This was a slight exaggeration ! Peter, of course, 
is prejudist against all machines. Butitwould 
seem to be a fact in this case that the broadcast 
barley was the best. Still it is so much more 
convenient to sow with a drill — you never have 
to stop on account of a high wind — that we 
cannot afford to be without one. 
Speaking of the prejudice against macliincs, 
I heard one of my men tell Jacob, who drives 
my reaper, that if we had another man who 
could cradle as fast as he could, they could cut 
more wheat in a day than he could with a ma- 
chine. This was in the morning, before we 
commenced to reap. I told Jacob not to mind 
their taunts, but to drive steadj'. The horses 
were disposed to be a little frightened at the 
reel. But I knew all the bolts were tight 
and everything snug, and that there was not 
much danger of breaking one of Wood's best 
reapers. " Keep 'em straight Jake, and lot 'em 
go " — and away they went round the field as 
fast as they could walk, and sometimes a little 
faster. But the machine stood it. The wheat 
was pretty heavy, and there was no need to put 
the break on the self-raker. The sheaves came 
off thick and f\tst, aud the five men who were 
binding, were soon left behind and I had to put 
on another hand, and even then they thought 
they had to work hard. Now, we ask the op. 
ponents of machines, where .arc the two cradlers 
that can keep six men bus}- to Ijind after them? 
Topping Corn and Corn Fodder. 
We are in little danger of over estimating the 
value of well-cured, or only tolerably well- 
cured, corn-fodder. As feed for milch cows it 
is hardly surpassed by very good upland hay, 
and has to encounter only one serious draw- 
back, namely: it must be cut up fine, salted and 
wet up with a httle meal, bran, or oil cake of 
some sort, in order to get the full benefit. The 
necessity of spending so much labor upon it de- 
tracts from its value, so that while in New 
England a farmer may perhaps afford to pay 
two-thirds what he would have to pay for hay, 
at the West, where fair liay may be liad for the 
cutting and hauling, its value is less in propor- 
tion. Still, fed whole, it is highly relished by 
all kinds of stock, and constitutes the chief liv- 
ing of the young stock in winter over a large 
portion of the Northern States. At the West 
the great corn-fields, upon which the stalks are 
left standing after the cars are picked, afford 
winter feed, poor and weathered though it is, 
which helps many a herd through that might 
perish otherwise in the hard winters. 
When the corn-stalks are very large, it is 
hardly worth while to attempt to cure the big 
butts and cut them up for fodder. There is 
probably a small gain in the weight of the 
grain, if after the kernels glaze well the corn be 
cut up at the ground, rather than topped above 
the ears. Yet where the great dent corn is 
planted, we incline decidedly to the opinion that 
there is a decided advantage gained when it is 
topped, and the tops and suckers (earless side- ' 
stalks) are well cured. 
The practice at the South of breaking out the 
suckers together with the lower leaves of the 
corn, while yet it is green and the ears not 
glazed, certainly affords a very excellent fod- 
der, and if enough of the strong growing suck- 
ers, whicli would make good male flowers, be 
allowed to stand to fertilize the tips of the ears, 
it is probably economical. Wliere the small 
kinds of corn are grown as throughout Cana- 
da, New England, and New Yoilc, we regard it 
as poor policy and a loss of fodder to top corn 
for the sake of getting a kind of fodder which 
the cattle will eat up clean if not chaffed. 
With a little pains and labor, but a very small 
portion of the stalks are refused by the stock. 
Dr. R., of Hartford Co., Conn., had a corn- 
stalk stack accidentally put up too green, (or 
perhaps, it got thoroughly rain-soaked,) so that 
it heated, and the interior came into a con- 
dition of very active fermentation. The result 
was, that he thought it mostly ruined, and as 
soon as he could, threw off the unhurt portions 
to save them, and thus opened what appeared 
to be a mass of corruption beneath. The butts 
were the only parts of the staling which retained 
their form, all the rest was a brownish or black 
mass, smelling, however, not unpleasantly. 
The cows showed their preference at once by 
rejecting the sound stalks, and eating the others, 
the softened ones, with great gusto. The fer- 
mentation had proceeded just so far as to form 
the famous " brown hay," the stalks being soft, 
sweet and flavorsome. The Doctor has, we 
believe, repeated the operation with success. 
