1869.J 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
291 
a great mistake. We should not feed our horses 
less, but our cows more than is generally done. 
You think Mr. J. was rather hard on me. 
Not at all. He simply detected my weak 
points. 'Would you have fared any better ? Do 
you work your horses more constantly, or feed 
your cows more generously? "In an experi- 
ence of forty years," said he, " I have never 
met with but two men who could be trusted to 
take care of fatting sheep, and one of these was 
a thief! Where there is one man who is fit to 
come near a cow or sheep, there are a hundred 
who can plow, and mow, and do all kinds of 
farm work." This is undoubtedly true. Neg- 
lect a fatting animal for a single day, and you 
lose all your feed for a week. A farmer must 
give his stock his personal attention, or he can- 
not hope for success. He need not necessarily 
do all the work himself, but he must, at any 
rate, see that it is done, and done promptly and 
regularly. And he must be able to detect, at a 
glance, any slight change in an animal, and if 
it will not eat enough of one kind of food, try 
something else. Mayhew says that a horse has 
such a great desire to do anything that a kind 
master wishes, that he can soon persuade him 
to eat bitter aloes, while I have known men 
who could not induce a cow to eat steamed po- 
tatoes and corn meal, or a sheep to eat oil-cake. 
Such men may be allowed to pile manure in 
the barn-yard while the stock is in the field, 
but their harsh voices should never reach the 
ear3 of a gentle cow or a timid sheep. 
My remarks in regard to plowing with lines 
round the shoulder have brought me letters by 
the bushel. And nearly all the writers condemn 
the practice, and think I must reside in a be- 
nighted region. Throughout Western New 
York it is the general practice. I know of 
but one man who does not adopt it. He 
uses a jockey stick between the horses, and two 
single rope lines, which he holds in his hands, 
or lets them hang on the handles of the plow. 
He guides his horses by " haw" and "gee," and 
seldom needs to use the lines, except to touch 
up the horses occasionally. 
One of the editors of the Agriculturist thinks 
I have got "fall-fallowing and barley growing 
on the brain." He is right. And I will do all I 
can to communicate the complaint to others. 
Not that I wish to induce any one to raise bar- 
ley. Such is not my desire. But I do want 
farmers to try fall-fallowing for any or all 
spring crops they propose to raise. I am satis- 
fied that, if generally adopted, the practice 
would add millions of dollars to the profits of 
American farmers. Of course it is not adapted 
to all soils and all situations. In the neighbor- 
hood of our large cities, where land is too valu- 
able to be allowed to remain idle for three or 
four months, we must grow crops and clean the 
land at the same time. And on light sandy soils, 
generally, fall-fallowing may not be necessary. 
By the constant use of the cultivator among 
corn, potatoes, beans, and other hoed crops, we 
can keep such land perfectly clean. And this 
is all that is needed, except manure, to produce 
good crops. But, away from the cities, and on 
the heavier class of soils, such as "clay loam," 
"calcareous loam," and even " sandy loam" or, 
in shoi't, on any soil that contains latent plant- 
food, fall-fallowing will prove exceedingly use- 
ful. I do not mean fall-plowing merely. I 
mean much more than this. Plow the land in 
July or August, and cultivate and harrow it 
thoroughly, to cause the weeds to germinate. 
Then cross-plow it, and repeat the harrowings 
and cultivatings until the surface-soil, fir five 
or six inches deep, is as mellow as a garden. 
Then plow it ngain, deep and well, and let 
it lie up rough for the frosts of winter to disin- 
tegrate and mellow the inch or two of subsoil 
last thrown up. Then in the spring sow what 
you will, — wheat, barley, or oats ; or, better still, 
if the weeds, root, branch, and seed, are not all 
killed, plant corn, potatoes, or beans, and culti- 
vate thoroughly, and this will soon give us clean 
farms, rich land, and large profits. 
Pigs are very scarce this summer, aud farm- 
ers are anticipating very high prices for pork 
next winter. My own opinion is, that those 
■who fat early will make the most money. Corn 
is low, and it will pay well to convert it into 
pork at present prices. In August aud Septem- 
ber, if the pigs have the run of a good pasture, 
I have no doubt that three or four bushels of 
corn will make one hundred pounds of pork. 
Ordinarily, when pigs are shut up to fatten, it 
requires seven or eight bushels of corn to make 
one hundred pounds of pork. In the summer, 
with a good pasture, the pigs get enough grass 
to keep them growing, aud all the corn they 
receive is converted into pork ; whereas, when 
they are shut up to fatten, probably more than 
half the corn they eat is needed to sustain the 
vital functions, and all the growth and fat are 
derived from the corn eaten over and above this 
amount. When pigs are scarce, and corn cheap, 
as at present, nothing can be more unwise than 
to feed them nothing but the slops and milk 
from the house, and grass. Let them have a 
quart or so of corn a day besides, and they will 
grow as fast again. There is no cheaper way 
of making pork. No half-fat hogs should be 
sent to market this year, and now is the time to 
prevent it. If a farmer ha3 no corn, let him 
buy it. It will pay, as it has rarely paid before. 
Agricultural writers are inclined to run to 
extremes. Farmers often cure their hay too 
much, and to guard against this mistake, some 
writers urge us to put it into the barn before it 
is cured half as much as it ought to be. I have 
found, to my cost, that it is not safe to follow 
their recommendations. Better dry it too much 
than not dry it enough. And so in cutting 
grain. There is undoubtedly a loss in letting it 
get dead ripe. But there is a still greater loss 
in cutting it before the graiu becomes firm. 
Steam thrashing machines are destined speed- 
ily to take the place of the horse machines. 
Then we can thrash out our graiu as we draw 
it in from the field, and put the straw in the 
barn. And to those farmers who are short of 
barn room, and who have to stack their grain, 
this plan will be of even still greater advantage. 
It saves all the expense and loss of stacking. 
In stacking grain we always have two men, or 
a man and a strong boy, on the stack; and in 
thrashing from the stack, it requires two men, 
and sometimes three, to pitch the grain off the 
stack to the machine. Now, in drawing direct- 
ly from the field to the machine, all we need is 
one man to pitch the grain from the wagon to 
the machine, and consequently we save the la- 
bor of four or five men. We require three 
wagons and two teams, one man to pitch, and 
three men to load, drive, and unload. This force 
will furnish the grain as fast as any ten-horse 
power machine can thrash it. Last year I was 
all through harvesting and thrashing by the 
first of August, except some oats, and we had 
four months of good weather, before winter set 
iu, to get the land ready for spring crops. We 
shall have no cause to complain of our " short 
seasons" when we find out how to avail our- 
selves of the long aud delightful period between 
our early harvest and late winter. We have, 
agriculturally, the best climate iu the world — if 
we only use it properly. 
Low as produce is, farmers in this section 
have been compelled to pay higher wages this 
season than during the war. We shall be com- 
pelled to find cheaper labor. We shall only find 
it when we give steadier employment to men 
and women, and provide work, also, for the 
boys. " Have you nothing my boy can do ?" 
asked a foreman the other day; "I would rath- 
er keep him with me than let him go to the 
city, but he can get work in the city, aud cannot 
find it here in the country." We must find 
such boys work aud keep them in the country. 
Steaming Food for Cattle and Swine. 
Many a farmer raises magnificent crops of hay, 
which he stores in barns, only to feed it out either 
on the ground or in racks in his yards and fields. 
The profit of farming by no means ends with 
the raising of large crops. The disposition of 
what is raised is quite as important to success 
as is the raising itself; and every ounce of nu- 
tritious matter which is allowed to find its way 
to the dung heap, if it might have been con- 
verted into meat, milk or wool, is a throwing 
away of just so much of the result of the year's 
work. Ample practical experience lias proven 
that the action of the digestive organs of farm 
animals is not of itself sufficient to extract from 
hay or corn fodder or grain nearly all of the 
nutritious matter that they contain ; and has 
shown that, by the aid of cooking, much of 
this wasted matter may be saved. 
It is only withm a few years that any con- 
spicuous attention has been paid to the question 
of cooking food, but its advantages have long 
been known to careful and scientific feeders. 
The more recent experiments, made on a large 
scale, and by practical men, have demonstrated 
the economy of the operation. 
The easiest means by which cooking may be 
done is with the aid of steam. If it were at- 
tempted by boiling in iron vessels immediately 
in contact with the fire, great care would be re- 
quited to prevent scorching, and enormous cal- 
drons would be needed. By the aid of steam, 
the cooking may be safely, conveniently, and 
economically done, and scorching avoided. 
It has been demonstrated by carefully con- 
ducted trials, that if all of the hay and other 
coarse fodder, aud all of the graiu and roots, 
fed to live-stock of any description, is thor- 
oughly steamed, quite one-third of the raw 
material is saved. That is to say, if the month's 
feeding on a large farm requires 10 tons of hay, 
100 bushels of grain, and 500 bushels of roots, 
the same feeding, with the aid of the steamer, 
will be accomplished by the use of about 7 tons 
of hay, 70 bushels of grain, and 350 bushels of 
roots. Here, then, is a profit of 3 tons of hay, 
30 bushels of grain, and 150 of roots, to pay 
for the use of an inexpensive apparatus, for a 
small amount of fuel, and a trifling amount of 
labor. Nor is this all. While successful feed- 
ing by the non-cooking profess requires the use 
of the best grain and fodder, steaming enables 
us to substitute for these, coarser herbage, which 
may even have become slightly musty, and 
musty or unsound corn. This is in part due to 
the freshening influence of the steam, and in 
