428 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[December, 
ciple, and it is the Icey to their success. They 
make it a settled, invariable rule, to enrich the 
laud, in proportion as they crop it, and to invest 
their surplus money in the soil if they can be 
sure of a fiiir interest for it. 
And this brings us to the old question, how 
to enrich the soil? Few farmers liave the 
means to bring up their lands at once. When 
the land-holder and his land are both poor, the 
farmer is in a pretty tight place. There is so 
little to begin -with. The great reliance must be 
on the barn-3'ard, pig-pen, poultry-house, privy 
and green crops, and the nmck bed. 
By some means, let him contrive to raise 
more grass and fodder crops; this will enable 
liim to keep more stock, and this, of course, 
brings the increased manure. By buying a 
few e.xtra tons of manure to start with, this will 
give the first increase in the grass, and so the 
ascent will surely follow. Grain and root crops 
will then come in for a share of the land, and 
produce a share of the pi'ofits. The importance 
of draining, of deep plowing, etc., we need not 
now dwell upon. No good farmer will neglect 
them. It must also bo understood, at the out- 
set, that the work of renovating an old worn- 
out farm is the work of years, and must be 
prosecuted with patience. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm.— Ko. 36. 
I made a great mistake in not cutting up my 
corn immediately after the frost. It was hardly 
glazed, but the fiost was so severe that there 
was no probability of its ripening any better for 
being left standing. I cut up about three acres 
and intended to have finished the field. But 
the beans wanted pulling, the clover seed had 
to be cut, the potatoes on the low land were 
I'otting, and what few apples we had needed 
picking. And e.xtra hands were more difficult 
to get than I ever knew. Labor was at a jirc- 
mium. Everybody Wanted men and bid high 
to get them ; and it seems as though the scarcer 
men are, and the more you pay them, the less 
they do. I have been paying .$1.50 a day for 
men, $1.00 for women, and 50 cents a day for 
boys, and at tliis season they do not average 
more than nine hours a day. 
No, we cannot afford to pay such wages ; but 
what can we do? It is better to pay them than 
to let the crops rot in the ground. And then, 
everything is high that the men have to buy, 
and judged by this standard, wages, after all, 
are not much, if any higher, than before the 
war. I should not complain if they would only 
work. Our National debt and high taxes must 
be paid out of the industr}' of the nation. We 
shall all be obliged to work harder ; but few 
will do it until compelled hy absolute necessity. 
Well, I stopped cutting the corn in order to 
pull the beans. These I was fortunate in secur- 
ing in capital order. We have had glorious 
weather. Nothing could be finer. But one 
night we had a sharp frost, and a few jiotatoes 
that were exposed in the hill were nipped a lit- 
tle. The ne.\t day all my Dutch hands, men 
and women, stayed at home to dig their own 
potatoes. For more than a week none of them 
came to work. Then one of my own men who 
is engaged by the year was taken sick, and I 
could do little but worry and fret. The result 
was that my corn was not finished cutting until 
about the first of November. In the meantime, 
we had a high wind, and the corn stalks being 
very dry it stripped off the leaves, blew down 
the stalks — making it tedious work to pick up 
and cut up the corn, — and destroyed the best 
part of the fodder. I shall know better next 
time. I should have cut up the corn at once, 
and stuck to it until it was done, no matter 
how pressing other matters were. 
I am now paying six cents a bushel for husk- 
ing, and may have to pay more, but I am tired 
of bidding high iu order to secure men. It is 
of no use. I saw at the State Fair a husking 
machine that did the work admirablj', and I 
hope by another season it will be generally in- 
troduced. If there ever was a lime when "la- 
bor-saving machines " were needed, it is now. 
My potatoes are all dug. My Flukes on the 
low land were more or less decayed, but the 
yield was good. The Peach Blows on the low 
land were sound, but the yield was veiy light. 
The hot, cold weather iu August checked their 
growth, just at the time when dr}% warm weath- 
er was most needed. The Flukes, being two 
weeks earlier, suffered far less. On the dry up- 
land, the Peach Blows were excellent inqualit}', 
but there were more small potatoes than there 
should have been. As it was, however, the 
yield was very fair. I did not measure the 
whole, but I measured off seventy 3-ards of one 
row and found it gave 4^ bushels, full measure.- 
And as the rows are 3 feet 4 inches apart, this 
is at the rate of 294 bushels per acre. 
The crop, iu this section, as a general rule, 
turns out much more than was anticipated from 
the growth of the vines in summer. Mercers 
have rotted badl}', and the Peach Blows are not 
as large as usual, though sound. Farmers ex- 
pect good prices for potatoes in the spring. 
They argue that as New York has hitherto re- 
ceived large supplies from Nova Scotia, and as 
there is now a duty on them, we ought to get 
the benefit of it. Everything else is high, and 
the consumption of potatoes this winter, while 
they are cheap, will be greater than usual, and 
create an active demand iu the spring. 
I am trying to buy some sheep to fatten this 
winter, but they are higher here than in New- 
York. Grain is advancing, and John Johnston 
says he has always found most profit in fatten- 
ing sheep when grain was highest. The reason 
of this of, course is, that farmers hesitate to 
feed grain when they can sell it at a high price. 
Few slieep are fatted, and consequently in the 
spring tliey command high prices. The profit 
of fattening sheep in winter is not due so much 
to the increase in the weight of the sheep, as to 
the improvement in the quality of the mutton, 
and to the increase in the price per lb. Last 
winter there was no money made in fattening 
sheep. The price iu the fall was as high as iu 
*he spring, and the sheep did not pay for the 
food consumed. He was fortunate who obtained 
reasonable pay for the food, and got the manure 
for his trouble. 
One of my neighbors has sold his farm for 
$100 an acre. On asking him how he came to 
sell, he replied, "I am going West, and intend 
to buy a small farm that I can work alone. / 
ain tired of paying lured help two thirds of all 
I can raise." 
I told him I should be quite contented to do 
so, provided I could raise enough. Thirty-three 
per cent, profit would do very well. A friend 
of mine who lives in the city and rents out a 
farm on shares, says he should be perfectly sat- 
isfied if the man would only steal one-quarter 
more than his share ; but he steals the whole ! 
Shall we ever be able in this country to carry 
on farming iu the same way that other business 
is conducted. I do not mean amateur forming, 
but real, practical farming, with an experienced 
man to direct aud furnish the capital, and others 
to do the labor? It must be confessed that 
there are few instances of success in this direc- 
tion, and many of failure and disgust. The gen- 
eral opinion among practical farmers is, that 
such a system cannot profitably be carried out. 
And the majority of them tliink that a farmer 
who paj-s two-thirds of all he receives from bis 
crops for hired help and expenses, will soon get 
tired of agriculture. A man who undertakes 
the business and who has the necessary jjerson- 
al qualifications, with sufficient capital, can usu- 
ally carry on a manufacturing establishment 
with profit. Why cannot farming be carried on 
in the same way. If it cannot, it must be owing 
to the difficulty of getting intelligent laboi^ or 
of making it, from the nature of farming, efl5- 
cient. If this is really the case, we must have 
small farms, and much of the work must be 
done by the farmer himself and his family. It 
would seem difficult to have a high order of 
farming on this iirinciple, or to use machinery 
to advantage. 
What pi-oportion of the money obtained for 
the produce of a farm is expended in labor? 
The late John Dclafield, kept accurate accounts 
of his receipts and expenses on his farm of 350 
acres, near Seneca — 273 acres under cultivation, 
and 77 acres woodland, for five j'ears, from 
1847 to 1851. The income from all sources in 
1847, was $3,044.05, and the amount paid for 
labor, $804.63, or about 20'| ~ per cent. In 1848, 
it was 31 per cent., and 1849, 29 per cent. Iu 
1850 (the receipts being $3,338.88), it was only 
21 per cent. The average cost of the labor was 
about 40 cents per day. 
At the present time, labor is about 2'|j times 
as high, and produce, on the whole, is also 
about 2'|3 times as high as at that time. If our 
crops were as good now as then, this would do 
very well. Instead of receiving $3,000 from 
the farm, the sales would amount to $7,500, 
while the labor, instead of costing $800, would 
cost $2,000. The profits iu the one case would 
be $2,200, and in the other, $.5,500— or 'i}\~. times 
as large. "Other expenses" would probably be 
about 2'|3 times as large now as then. If it 
took all the balance theh and now, there is no 
difference. If anything was saved, there ought 
to be 2'| 2 times as much saved now. The pres- 
ent high prices do not help a poor farmer at all — 
it is only the good farmer, who receives more 
than he spends, that derives any benefit. 
The prices obtained in those days read oddly 
enough at the present time. Thus one item of 
the receipts is : "6 pigs $3.00." 
The same pigs, say six weeks old, would now 
bring $15. I know of a litter that "were sold at 
two months old for $5 each, and I sold some 
myself at $4.00. It is not many years ago since 
such pigs could have been bought in the fall at 
from 50c. to $1.00. Milch cows have advanced 
.almost as much. At an auction sale near here 
a few days since, the cows brought over $100 
each, and one ran up to $125. Before the war, 
$30 to $40 would have been a good price for 
such cows in the fall. The advance on beef 
cattle is not as great as on milch cows. Sheep, 
mutton, wool, buckwheat and potatoes are now 
comparatively low. Sixteen years ago I sold 
good cider for $1.00 a barrel. It now is $10. 
There is one cause of high prices of farm 
produce, which is seldom alluded to— the in- 
crease in population. It is said tl)af, from the 
