288 
.>• 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August, 
t:itocs ?" inquired ParsOH Spooner of Deacon 
Smit.li. 
" They produced wonderful]}'," said the Dea- 
con. "I sprouted them five times, and must 
liave got five hundred fold. But they more 
than half rotted, I suppose because they hap- 
pened to be worth forty dollars a barrel this 
spring. But I saved my bacon." 
'•As you always do," added Jones. "I be- 
lieve things would grow on a bare rock if you 
planted 'em. It's jest some folks' luck." 
"I don't think there is a great deal of luck 
about farming," said the Deacon. "If you know 
how, and use the means, the result is about 
as certain as anything under the sun. You 
may calculate on thirty, sixty, and a hundred 
fold with entire confidence, take it one year with 
another. I bad no business to expect five hund- 
red fold, and I suppose it would not have been 
a good thing for me, or for the public. I might 
have been sot up too much with my success, 
and then, if every body produced five hundred 
fold, the market for potatoes would be a little 
overstocked, and prices would bo so low that 
it would not pay to plant them. 
"It hain't paid this year, any how," said 
Jake Frink. "Last spring I sold potatoes for 
tew dollars a bushel, and was mighty sorry I 
hadn't hung ou to the whole crop. This spring 
I kept every thing over, and was mighty glad 
to git rid of the last on 'em, down to Sliadtown, 
for thirty cents a bushel. I might have sold 
every one of 'em for eighty cents a bushel last 
fall. There's no calculation on any thing in 
farming. I didn't plant over an acre of pota- 
toes this spring. It don't pay." 
"That is where you made a blunder," the 
Deacon replied. "Any man, who has studied 
the markets, might have known that when po- 
tatoes were two dollars a bushel, everybody 
would rush into them. There hasn't been so 
many potatoes planted in years as last season. 
The crop was uncommonly sound, and every 
body was loth to sell at paying prices last fall. 
This spring, everybody must sell for what they 
can get, and that is as little as ten cents in some 
of the great potato counties. Everybody is dis- 
gusted with potatoes, and goes into something 
else. I keep straight on planting potatoes, cal- 
culating that for any four years they will pay 
about as well as any farm crop. I have put in 
eighteen acres this year, and I calculate that 
next spring my turn will come to make some 
money. If it don't, my cattle will have plenty 
of potatoes to eat. A farmer can do a good 
deal worse business than to raise potatoes for 
his cattle, especially when they turn out three 
hundred bushels to the acre." 
" There is some sense in that," said Jake. " If 
a feller could only git the three hundred, or 
even two hundred. But, ye see, jest as sure as 
I git the promise of a big crop, the rot strikes 
on, and the potatoes turn up missing." 
" Ah !" said the Deacon, " there is where you 
make another mistake. You don't plant the 
right sort. You plant the Mercer, and other 
old sorts, because you have always planted 
them, and you know they rot more or less every 
year. The only question is how much you can 
save. I plant the Harison, the Gleason, and 
other new sorts, and with them rotting is the 
exception, and sound potatoes the rule. I 
didn't lose ten bushels in a crop of a thousand 
last year. Joe Blake, my next neighbor, in an 
adjoining field, lost half bis crop of Peach- 
blows, and, like a fool, be has planted Peach- 
blows again this spring. I profit by the folly 
of such people. The more they stick to the old 
sorts, the more certain the}' make it that we 
cannot rely upon them. A few give out every 
year, and try the seedlings of Mr. Goodrich and 
other new kinds. The price of potatoes is kept 
up by the persistence of farmers in planting the 
old kinds, that will rot in spite of all you can 
do for them. Nothing could better illustrate 
the doggedness of farmers in following the 
ruts than the fact that the Mercer potato is still 
planted after twenty-five years of rotting." 
"Not quite so fast, Deacon," said Betli 
Twiggs, puffing away at the stump of his pipe. 
" I tried some of your Early Goodrich last year, 
and they rotted like pizen." 
"Well, they ought to have rotted," the Dea- 
con curtly replied. "You planted them in a 
swale, you didn't hoe them but once, and by 
August they caved in under the double pressure 
of weeds and water. Any sensible potato 
would have backed out under such treatment. 
I give mine well-drained land and thorough 
cultivation, and did not see a bad potato." 
"Then your doctrine is," inquired Mr. 
Spooner, "that if a farmer studies his business, 
and takes care of it, he won't have any losses?" 
" Not exactly that," said the Deacon. "But 
if he does this, he will have fewer losses than 
in any other calling. Most of our losses and 
trials are due to ignorance and carelessness." 
" I should like to know," said Jake Frink, 
indignantly, "how I could have prevented the 
foxes from killing my turkeys." 
"That is just the question I'd like to answer," 
said the Deacon. "You and a few other mean 
farmers have voted for years against a bounty 
on foxes, and have carried your point. As a 
consequence, these animals have increased, and 
you have lost some of your poultry, worth 
probably ten times as much as yoti would have 
paid in taxes. I am rather resigned under your 
losses. I think you will vote for a bounty next 
spring. Then you have been suffering the 
bushes to invade your farm, and a thicket has 
grown up along the brook, within ten rods of 
your house, making as nice a shelter for foxes 
as could be desired. You can't blame them, if 
they accept your invitation, walk into your nice 
little jungle, ami snap up 3'our sitting turkeys. 
If you clear up your brush, and provide coops 
for your turkeys near the house, the foxes will 
not trouble you, especially if you keep on the 
bounty, and kill them off. You can make as 
clean work with the foxes as has been made 
with bears and catamounts. Man was made to 
subdue the earth and wild beasts. If he don't 
do it, something is the matter with his brains." 
The Deacon is as sound as a nut. The fact 
is, we are to blame for most of our losses; and 
blameworthy or not, we do not have so many 
troubles as other people. City folks, who turn 
farmers, are apt to get the key note pitched a 
little too high, but they soon learn that the best 
hen will not average an egg a day, and the best 
turkey will not always lay twenty eggs, hatch 
them, and raise the young ones. People some- 
times lose what they never bad. 
Hookertown, Conn., 1 Yours to Command, 
July loth, 1S60. j Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
About the Rotation of Crops. 
• — 
Frequent attempts are made to lay down 
specific rules for the rotation of the crops of a 
farm; but there are so many circumstances 
which render it necessary to deviate from any 
fixed directions, that it seems to us much more 
useful to slate the principles upon which the 
necessity for rotation is based, than to attempt 
to prescribe definite rules. There are various 
objects to be attained by means of a rotation. 
The mo<U important of these arc the improve- 
ment of the condition of the soil and the prop- 
er adjustment of the demand for labor. All 
other matters arc incidental, although, of course, 
the question of the sale of crops, that is, the 
production of that which will yield the most 
money without injury to the land, is of the ut- 
most consequence. 
It is perfectly well known by all farmers who 
know anything, that the raising of ihe same 
crop — unless, indeed, it be permanent pasture 
grasses — for many successive years on Ihe same 
land, gradually injures its quality. Not only 
are certain elements of fertility that the soil 
contains, removed out of all proportion to the 
quantity of other available elements that the 
crop requires; 1ml, as each crop is attended by 
its peculiar weeds and peculiar insects, these in- 
cidental drawbacks to the success of our opera- 
tions tire fostered in increasing degree in pro- 
portion to the length of lime during which a 
single crop is grown. Therefore, we should con- 
stantly aim to so alternate our cropping, that, 
while this year's crop may make an excessive 
demand on the phosphoric acid of the soil, that 
of the next year may require lcs3 of this ingre- 
dient, and more of some other ; and so that the 
weeds that are induced by the growth of Ibis 
year's crop may, by the more thorough cultiva- 
tion of the next year, be exterminated. It will 
be found in practice that the greater the num- 
ber of different crops that enter into the rota- 
tion, provided they are all such as can be grown 
with success and disposed of with certainty, the 
better will be the ultimate result; — and espe- 
cially should clover or some other deep-rooting 
plant find a prominent place in the shift, for 
these plants obtain a large amount of nutritive 
matter from the subsoil, which on their decom- 
position they yield to the surface soil, while the 
decay of their deeper reaching roots opens in- 
viting channels for the descent of the roots of 
more delicate plants. 
It is not always — indeed, not generally, — 
possible to adopt such a system of rotation as 
shall develop the greatest possible productive 
capacity of Ihe land, even in those cases where 
the supply of manure is ample for the purpose. 
The reason for this is that some of the more 
productive crops require a large amount of 
manual labor, and also that the chief labor re- 
quired by two entirely different crwps may fall 
duo on the same da}-. It is necessary, therefore, 
to take into consideration the amount of labor 
that a given area of any crop will require at 
any particular period ; and matters should be 
adjusted, so far as possible (due allowance being 
made for bad weather), in such a way that, from 
the first, opening of spring, until the final setting 
in of winter, the regular force of the farm may 
be constantly employed ; and also so that the 
requirement for extra labor, that necessarily at- 
tends all systematic farming during certain sea- 
sons, may be surely met by the supply of tran- 
sient men within reach. For instance, the 
raising of roots and cabbage", which are highly 
important, not only as yielding a very valuable 
addition to the stock of winter food, but as 
greatly improving the soil through their high 
cultivation and the rich manuring that they 
need, requires that a very large amount of hand- 
labor be done at the precise lime when the get- 
ting in of hay calls for every moment's labor of 
the regular farm force; and, consequently, the 
extent of these crops must be limited almost 
exactly by the amount of help that the neigh- 
borhood affords, — due account being taken of 
the services of women and children, who, for 
this work, are even belter than men. 
