334r 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[September, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 117. 
Tillage is a good thiug. Manure is a good 
thing. But tillage and manure together are far 
better than either alone. So I said to myself 
yesterday as I walked across my corn field. 
This spring I spread a little well-rotted manure 
on the poorer parts of the field and plowed it 
in. I have cultivated the corn very thoroughly 
— almost excessively. The land was far from 
clean, and I was determined that not a weed 
should grow that I could reach with a culti- 
vator. We harrowed the field four limes with 
a Thomas harrow after the corn was planted 
and before- -it was large enough to fuiltivate. 
Since then the cultivator has been through it 
seven or eight times, and I shall go through it 
once more in August. This is pretty good 
tillage, and the corn on the whole looks quite 
well for this season; but wherever the manure 
was applied the effect is very decided. I do 
not thiuk I ever saw so little manure do so 
much good. We did not put on over five tons 
to the acre. True, it was good manure, made 
from sheep, cows, and pigs fed largely on bran, 
and was pretty well rotted ; but still I think the 
good tillage has helped the manure. I am sure 
the manure has helped the good tillage. 
. What we want is good manure and good 
tillage. Aud when I so strenuously and so fre- 
quently urge farmers to cultivate the soil more 
thoroughly I have precisely this result in my 
mind. I never dreamed of depending ulti- 
mately on tillage alone. I use it merely as a 
stepping-stone to something better. If I have 
given any other impression it must be because 
I do not write and talk plainly and definitely. 
But it is also just possible that some people are 
Careless readers and uncandid' critics. 
I have urged again and again the great im- 
portance and many advantages of good tillage. 
1 have not a word to take back. I am sure that 
good tillage alone would add millions of dollars 
annually Jo the profits of our agriculture. Can 
any sane man doubt it ? But I never supposed 
that any farmer who had energy enough to cul- 
tivate his laud thoroughly would bo willing to 
stop there. As a rule, the men who have the 
cleanest farms make the most manure. I know 
a farmer who feeds a good many sheep every 
winter, aud makes a large quantity of manure. 
He has succeeded in bringing his land to a high 
degree of productiveness. 3ut it is very foul. 
The weeds rob him of half his profits. This 
farmer makes all the manure he can, but does 
not cultivate his land thoroughly. Now the 
point I want to make is this : A man may make 
a good deal of manure and not cultivate his 
laud ; but did you ever know a man who took 
special pains to kill all the weeds on his farm, 
aud get his land mellow and in the best me- 
chanical condition, who did not aim to make 
and use all the manure he could ? And so 
when I recommend good tillage I take it for 
granted that the extra crops so produced will, 
to a great extent at least, be used for feeding 
stock and making manure. 
There is a sense, of course, in which tillage 
is an exhausting process. It develops the 
plant food lying dormant in the soil. If you 
develop this plant-food aud convert it into corn 
or clover, and then sell the crops, you impover- 
ish the farm more than if you did not cultivate 
the laud so thoroughly. But, on the other 
hand, if the corn and clover are fed out on the 
farm, and the manure saved and applied, the 
good tillage will make the farm richer in avail- 
able plant-food. This process will soon enable 
a farmer to double his crops and quadruple his 
profits. 
John Johnston writes me (Jul}' 15th) that he 
thought until recently the wheat would be a 
failure this year, but that the late rains have 
improved it wonderfully. He incloses a head 
of Diehl wheat, and says: "You may be sure it 
is not the smallest, but I have not a doubt there 
are some on the outside of the piece that have 
uearl)' double the kernels, but they are out of 
shape as they are so full of kernels. I never 
saw anything equal to them. 
" Mr. Sturge was here, and I showed him the 
head and asked him how many kernels he 
thought there was in it. 'Probably forty,' he 
said. I told him that Diehl wheat always 
yielded better than it looked, and that I had 
often counted over 50 grains in a short head. 
I asked him to shell out this head, and he did 
so, aud found sixty-five (65) good plump ker- 
nels in it." 
Mr. J. says that an acre of his wheat was 
sown after corn fodder. The fodder was carried 
off early last September. The land was then 
manured aud plowed, and the seed drilled in at 
the rate of about one bushel per acre on the 
15th of September. This wheat, Mr. J. says, 
" is inferior to any wheat I have raised for many 
years." The rest of the land was plowed and 
manured in May, and cultivated and harrowed 
twice from that time until the loth of Septem- 
ber, when it was drilled in with wheat at the 
same rate as the other. The crop on this sum- 
mer-fallowed land, Mr. J. says, "I thiuk now 
will yield more than any wheat I ever raised." 
My own Diehl wheat has greatly improved 
during the last mouth. It is now (July 16th) 
aenci ripe, ana ougia to nave oeen cut several 
days ago, but I am not quite through haying, 
and the weather is very unsettled. The heads 
are full and the kernels plump, but I am afraid 
they will not be as white as they should be. 
Many farmers here are quite discouraged about 
raising white wheat. The millers grumble a 
good deal at the number of red kernels in the 
wheat, and will rarely pay the top price. The 
millers who make choice family flour want 
pure white wheat, aud some of them are willing 
to pay a liberal price for it, but they say it is 
almost impossible to find it of the desired 
quality. The farmers say that the wheat itself 
degenerates — that in the same heads some of 
the kernels will be white and others red. 
It is much easier to raise red wheat than white 
wheat; and unless we can raise white wheat 
that the millers will pay from teu to twenty- 
five cents a bushel more than they will pay for 
ordinary red wheat, we had better raise the 
latter. To do as many farmers do, sow red and 
white together with a considerable sprinkling 
of rye, is simply absurd. Such a mixture will 
only grade as common red wheat. For my 
part, I do not care for such extra white flour, 
but as long as there are people who want it 
and are willing to pay for it, those farmers who 
can grow choice white wheat should take pains 
to grow it pure and get the best price. 
The same principle holds good in other 
things. Six-rowed barley is worth ten cents a 
bushel more than two-rowed. But adding 
twenty or thirty per cent of six-rowed barley 
to two-rowed will not add to its value. It will 
sell for no more than tw T o-rowed. In fact, the 
mixture is not worth as much as two-rowed 
alone, for the reason that they do not malt well 
toeetuer. If Col. Waring should mix what 
chemists term a "trace" of grease- butter with 
his choice, gilt-edged Jersey he would have to 
bid good-by to a dollar a pouud. 
One of the papers speaks of me as a "high 
farmer." This is a mistake. I neither advoaate 
or practice high farming. I advocate good 
farming, aud I do not wish to be misunder- 
stood. There are places where high farming 
may bo profitable. Where land is worth from 
$250 to $500 an acre, high farming — or, as I 
like to call it, "fast farming" — is the only farm- 
ing that will pay. But to talk about high 
farming in sections where good land is worth 
only from $35 to $50 an acre is simply absurd. 
The kind of farmiug which I advocate, and 
which I am endeavoring to practice, is applica- 
ble anywhere and everywhere. I want to drain 
all laud that needs draining — at least, all laud 
that' is under cultivation. I want to cultivate 
the laud thoroughly. I want to get the weeds 
under control. I want to allow no weeds to go 
to seed; and I want to cause the weed seeds 
already in the ground to germinate, and then I 
want to kill the young plants. Then, too, I 
want to make good manure, and a good deal 
of it. The richer it is, and the larger the pile, 
the better it would please me. 
This is my agricultural platform. Here I 
stand ; and I am willing to argue the questions 
involved with the high farmers on the one hand, 
and the negligent, weed-growing farmers on 
the other. The Deacon does not like my posi- 
tion. He wants to raise side issues. He wants 
to talk about high wages and low prices; about 
cold winters and dry summers. He wauts to 
discuss the general unprofitableness of agricul- 
ture. Except for amusement, I do not argue 
this question with him. He aud I are both 
'""»»'•, and we mean to continue to be farmers. 
That is settled to start with, it is no use argu- 
ing whether I could make more money as a 
lawyer, or whether he could do more good as a 
minister than he can as a deacon. He aud I 
are both too old to change our vocations. Far- 
mers we are and farmers we shall continue to 
be, and the question for us to consider is which 
is the best kind of farming for us to adopt. 
Shall we plow and sow and take our chance of 
getting a fair crop one year in five when every- 
thing is favorable, with a moral certainty of 
half crops of grain and full crops of weeds in 
unfavorable seasons ? 
The Deacon dodges this question. He knows 
that his system is not profitable. He is too in- 
telligent a man to believe anything else. But 
still he does not change. He keeps hoping for 
favorable seasons. He is not willing to spend 
the necessary labor to clean his land. He keeps 
trying some method of holding the weeds in 
check rather than of killing them outright. If 
he was poor, and could not afford to wait, there 
would be some excuse for him. 
Mr. Harmon, one of our best farmers, called 
to see me an hour or two ago, and interrupted 
quite opportunely our talk about the Deacon's 
farming. We took a walk all over the farm, 
talking as we went. 
"Your mangels are capital," he said, "but 
there are some bare spots." 
" Yes ; that is where I sowed some English- 
grown seed I bought from the seed-store. I pre- 
sume it was old. At any rate, a good deal of. 
it failed to germinate. I sowed the mangels 
with a grain-drill, in rows 28 inches apart- 
sowing three rows at a time." 
