1309.] 
am i ;rioan agric ulturist. 
55 
rain puts it into such a condition that it is im- 
possible, or at le:ist injudicious, to work it for a 
week after the appointed day. During this 
week, weeds grow and the evaporation of water 
from the surface causes it to become baked and 
hardened, so that when the work can be done it 
requires greater force and more time for the 
eradication of weeds, which, a few days earlier, 
might have been killed in their germination. 
The soil must be rich, that is, it must contain, 
within the reach of the roots of the plant?, all 
that they require to enable them to assimilate 
in the most rapid manner possible that larger 
part of their nutriment which they gain from 
the atmosphere. Not only should it be rich, 
loose, and friable near the surface, but the sub- 
soil itself should be so loosened, by either natural 
or artificial means, that the deeper reaching 
roots will have no difficulty in descending to a 
point where they may, during the dryest season, 
find the moisture needed for the largest growth. 
By the richness of the soil wo do not mean 
simply such an accumulation of stimulating 
manures as will force the growth of luxuriant 
stem=, but an ample store of those mineral mat- 
ters which are needed for the strengthening of 
the stem, and for the large and perfect develop- 
ment of the seed, or, in the case of root crops, 
for the storing up of a large quantity of nutri- 
ment in them. This bountiful supply of mineral 
matter is necessary to success in high-farming, 
and, indeed, no good farming, whether it be 
high-farming or not, is possible without it. 
The buildings of the farm should comprise 
everything that is necessary for the safe storing 
of all crops which require shelter; for the 
economical handling of the supply in the feed- 
ing of animals, or in the preparing of grain, 
etc., for market; for the comfortable and well-, 
ventilated shelter of animals; and for the per- 
fect protection and preparation of manure. 
About the house and dairy, also, everything 
should be so arranged that the largest amount 
of work may be accomplished with the least 
possible waste of time and energy. The imple- 
ments with which the soil is to be cultivated 
and the crops harvested and prepared for market 
or for use should all be such as to save labor, 
and to enable every thing to be done in the best 
manner and at the right moment of time. 
The disposition of the crops should be well 
considered. If it will pay belter to sell every- 
thing that the soil produces, and to buy back a 
sufficient quantity of foreign manure to keep its 
fertility constantly increasing, rather than to feed 
the crops out on the farm, and to sell them indi- 
rectly in the form of butter, cheese, beef or wool, 
this should be done. There is no sensible 
foundation for the idea that every farm that is 
devoted to the production of hay, grain, tobacco, 
or other crops for sale, is on the sure road to ex- 
haustion. The soil is, in a measure, exhausted 
by the simple raising and removal of the crop. 
After the crop has been taken info the barn it 
really makes no difference, so far as the soil is 
concerned, whether it is consumed there by 
animals, and the residuum returned to the land, 
or whether it is carted away and fertilizers 
equivalent to that residuum brought back and 
applied to the land. Whatever pays the best is 
the best, a part of the pay alwa3 T s being taken in 
the form of an improved condition of the laud. 
The moment we step beyoinl these three lead- 
ing requirements, and put fancy gilded weather- 
cocks on our barns, expensive hard wood fiuish- 
ing in our stables, too much ornament on our 
implements, too expensive or unprofitable ani- 
mals in our stalls, or do any of the things which 
constitute what is properly designated as " fancy 
farming," we recede from the position of high- 
farmers, and in so doing not only lessen the 
value of our example for others, but make for 
ourselves a plaything of that which we profess 
to call a business occupation. 
Above and beyond all this, high-farming re- 
quires a high-farmer ; a man whose best energies 
are devoted to his business; who allows no 
single improvement in the agriculture of the 
world to escape his careful attention; and if it 
promise an improvement in his own practice, 
who does not, after cautious experiments, adopt 
it into his system. There is an old and good 
maxim that "there is no manure like the mas- 
ter's foot." And every day's hard work which 
the proprietor himself performs in the field with 
his men will profit him very much more than 
the simple amount of work accomplished. It 
will give him a greater familiarity with the daily 
operations of his farm, and a far better influence 
over his assistants, than he can get in any other 
way. At the same time he cannot afford to 
devote so much of his time or of his energy to 
field labor as to lessen in the slightest degree his 
capacity for an intelligent management of every 
detail of his operations, and for a keen fore- 
sight which shall constantly compass, not only 
the operations of the day and of the season, but 
the execution of a well-laid and well considered 
plan whose great results lie in the distant future. 
Winter Work. 
We fancy that our readers are well-nigh tired 
by this time of the rules that we have felt it 
our duly to din into their patient ears, about 
painting tools, oiling gudgeons, tacking fast 
loose shingles and clapboards, and mending up 
wife's wash bench, and all that; and about the 
turning, hauling out, and spreading of manure 
heaps, gathering leaves, cutting fodder, sorting 
apples, and the whole of the long list of things 
which it is necessary for farmers to do, and 
which it has been, and always will be, (more is 
the pity), our duty to remind them of. 
Just now we are going to say never a word 
about all that, but only to suggest that there is 
other work, which the farmer can only attend 
to when somewhat at leisure, and which is 
more important to his "getting on" than any of 
the out-of-door or indoor patching and mending. 
Now that winter has fairly closed in, and 
winter arrangements are comfortably settled, 
ever}- farmer, — at least every farmer who cares 
enough about good farming to read the 
Agriculturist, — should set vigorously about the 
cultivation, planting, and enriching of that other 
farm from which his greatest satisfaction, — aye, 
and his most paying crops, loo, — must come. 
Dickens saj's : "The part of the holding of 
a farmer or laudowuer which pays best for cul- 
tivation is the small estate within the ring fence 
of his skull." It is mainly this small estate to 
which our wiuter work should be devoted. 
Of course, other duties must not bo neglected, 
and among other duties we include the very im- 
portant ones of visiting and of entertaining 
friends, and of making life generally pleas- 
ant and cheerful for ourself and for the family. 
But, after all this is done, there are hours 
passed in twirling the thumbs over the fire, in 
unprofitable twaddle at the store or post-office, 
and in idleness about the house, which ought 
to be devoted to better things. 
We are often told that farming is the noblest, 
as it is the freest, of all occupations. That de- 
pends. There is nothing especially noble in 
the life of a farmer who drives his business at 
the pace at which he drives his oxen, and who 
gives about as much thought to the one as to 
the other; who wastes one-half of his labor in 
raising crops under unfavorable circumstances, 
which he does not know or care how to im- 
prove ; who wastes one-half of his crops in ill- 
managed feeding ; and whose years, from one 
end to the other, are spent in a struggle to make 
both ends meet, and to scrape together a few 
dollars, to lend out on bond and mortgage. 
On the other hand, no life is more noble than 
that of an intelligent farmer who commences 
as a young man with straitened means and a 
poor farm with a mortgage on it, and who, by 
activity of mind and body, makes every year a 
marked improvement in the productiveness of 
his land, in the character and thrift of his stock, 
and in his knowledge of his business ; who 
sees where he can make an improvement, and is 
judicious in procuring the means for making it. 
Such a man as this will get more satisfaction 
and happiness out of his life as a farmer than 
he could get in any other avocation, and he will 
count far more in the general advance of civir- 
ization. The other will get no satisfaction, and 
only an animal sort of happiness, and when he 
dies the cause of the world's improvement will 
not have sustained a loss. 
The best index to the difference between these 
two classes of men is to be found in the manner 
ill which they pass their leisure winter hours. 
The one will simply doze them away, coming 
out in the spring as nearly like what he was the 
spring before, as it is possible for him to do. 
The other will turn his spring furrow in pur- 
suance of well-laid plans for the season's work, 
and with a mind eager for their execution. 
Let the loose clapboards be not neglected, 
and give the stock a full meed of intelligent 
care, but above all let the fanner keep his own 
mind in the most perfect trim, and bestow a 
good share of cultivation on the only part of 
his possessions to which his title is indefeasible. 
Clover— How it Benefits the Land. 
The reason generally given for the bene- 
ficial effect of clover is that it receives most of its 
nutriment from the atmosphere, and that, con- 
sequently, when either the whole crop or the 
heavy roots and stubble left after mowing are 
plowed under and allowed to decompose in the 
soil, this matter, taken from the atmosphere, 
adds to the resulting fertilizing elements. 
This is perfectly true, but it is also true, and 
true in almost equal degree, of every plant that 
grows. In "How Crops Grow," p. 381, table 
ii, the number of pounds of earthy matter in 
1,000 pounds of different crops, coming under the 
head of " green fodder," is given as follows : 
Meadow Grass 23 
Rye Grass 21 
Timothy 21 
Oats IT 
Barley 23 
All of the rest comes either directly or indi- 
rectly from the air, and the difference in the 
amount of atmospheric matter assimilated by 
meadow-grass and by clover is the difference 
between 977 and 987. Obviously, then, the ar- 
gument in favor of clover, that it derives most 
of its nutriment from the atmosphere, applies 
with equal force to every other crop. 
The beneficial effect of clover must be sought 
in some other circumstance attending its growth, 
and, so far as science has been able to discover 
the difference between it and many of our other 
Wheat 92 
Clover 18 
Peas 31 
Eye Fodder l(i 
