14 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Januakt, 
power iu catting wonderful stones are narrated. 
This dry, snug cranny is soon the receptacle of 
six eggs of the most beautiful pearly white, with- 
out a blemish, which a few days of maternal 
care replace with as many callow youug, in all 
their naked helplessness. 
Then there is care, and enough of it, too, de- 
lightful though it be, in the woodpecker family. 
The young must be fed and protected from ene- 
mies — snakes, for instance; they must soon be 
taught to fly, and by slow degrees to shift for 
themselves, for ere the summer is ended a sec- 
ond brood will take their places in the care of 
the parent birds. All this time, too, the nest 
must be kept clean, and the birds must provide 
themselves as well as their clamorous young 
with ants and young beetles, extracted from 
their hiding-places under the bark, and Sour- 
gum berries, and what not, so that they are at 
no loss for something to do in that lively home 
up in the cotton-wood. When the autumn is 
dyeing the leaves, the Golden-wings fly South. 
Audubon says that the Golden-wing lives 
well in confinement, never allowing his spirits 
to droop, " and, by way of amusement, will con- 
tinue to destroy as muck furniture in a day as 
can well be mended by a different kind of work- 
man iu a week." AVilson's success in keeping 
one was, however^ indifferent, and there is 
nothing about the bird which will ever cause its 
introduction generally into our houses. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 97. 
I have just had a visit from one of the most 
enterprising and successful farmers in Western 
New York. It was a stormy day — -just such a 
day when, it beinj: impossible to do anything 
out of doors, a farmer feels no compunction in 
spending a few hours in conversation with a 
friend. We had a long and interesting talk, 
and as the storm continued unabated he spent 
the night with me. At home, he said, he went 
to bed every night between nine and ten, and 
•was up, winter and summer, at five. He boards 
his men in the house. Breakfast is ready at 
six. Horses are fed, watered, cleaned, and har- 
nessed before, breakfast, and are expected to be 
in the field by seven o'clock at the latest. He 
uses three-horse teams, and insists on having 
two acres a day plowed by each team. He is 
verj» particular to have his land carefully 
plowed, and uses a "jointer." He thinks highly 
of the latter, as it completely buries the sod, 
stubble, weeds, etc. 
The Deacon enjoyed these remarks in regard 
to plowing. He has always contended that I 
make a mistake in not using a jointer or double 
plow. The mass of testimony is certainly 
against me. My aim has been to get the weed 
seeds to grow and then kill the young plants, 
rather than to bury them for a year or two, and 
then have them start in the barley or wheat 
crop, where I could not get at them with a hoe 
or cultivator. IE 1 was going to plant corn two 
years in succession, or potatoes the first year 
followed by corn, then I would use a jointer in 
breaking up the sod. The weed seeds which 
lie dormant under the sod the first year would 
spring up after the next plowing, and then I 
should have a chance at them. 
" I am surprised," remarked our visitor, "that 
you do not raise more beans. Tour land is 
better suited to the crop than ours, and yet we 
raise ten acres where you raise one. We find it 
one of our most profitable crops — though an 
exhaustive one. I once made over $100 an 
acre from my bean crop." 
t; Exactly," I replied, " and the next year we 
outsiders rushed into the business, and got our 
fingers burned. We paid a high price for seed, 
and planted ten, twenty, or thirty acres. It 
was a wet season, and the weeds got the start 
of us. When we came to harvest the crop we 
could hardly discover the rows, and found it 
difficult to get any one willing to pull the beans 
without extra paj-. Our expenses were extra 
heavy, the yield extra light, the quality very 
inferior, and the price, even after hand-picking, 
anything but satisfactory. I bought some of those 
beans, to feed sheep, at 35 cents a bushel. And 
I imagine the yield was not over ten bushels 
per acre. If your land is clean, and in good 
condition, and you live where you can get 
plenty of boys to harvest the crop, beans can 
be raised to advantage, but not otherwise." 
"What I particularly want to learn," he said, 
"is how to make manure enough to keep my 
laud in good condition. I sell nothing but 
beans, potatoes, wheat, and apples. I feed out 
all my com, oats, stalks, straw, and hay on the 
farm, and draw into the barn-yard the potato 
vines and everything else that will rot into 
manure. I make a big pile of it. But the 
point with me is to find out what is the best 
stock to feed this straw, stalks, hay, oats, and 
corn to, so as to make the best manure and re- 
turn the largest profit. Last year I bought a 
lot of steers to feed in winter, and lost money. 
This fall I bought 38 head of cows to winter, 
intending to sell them in the spring." 
" What did they cost you ? " 
" I went into Wyoming and Cattaraugus 
Counties, and picked them up among the dairy 
farmers, and selected a -very fair lot of cows at 
an average of $22 per head. I expect to sell 
them as new milch cows in the spring. Such 
cows last spring would have been worth $60 to 
$70 each." 
"That will pay. But it is not often that the 
grain-grower gets such a chance to feed out his 
straw, stalks, and other fodder to advantage. It 
can not be adopted as a permanent system. It 
is bad for the dairyman, and no real help to the 
grain-grower. The manure is not rich enough. 
Straw and stalks alone can not be fed to advan- 
tage. And when you winter cows to sell again 
in the spring it will not pay to feed grain. If 
you were going to keep the cows it would pay 
well. The fat and flesh you put on in the win- 
ter would be returned in the form of butter and 
cheese next summer." * 
" Why is not the manure good ? I am careful 
to save everything, and expect seven or eight 
hundred loads in the spring." 
"You had GO acres of wheat that yielded 25 
bushels per acre, aud have probably about 50 
tons of wheat straw. You had also 30 acres of 
oats, that yielded 50 bushels per acre, say 35 
tons of straw. Your 20 acres of corn produced 
40 bushels of shelled corn pfi* aeroj eay tla© 
stalks weigh 30 tons. And you have 60 tons of 
hay, half clover and half timothy. Let us see 
what your manure from this amount of grain 
and fodder is worth (see 'Harris on the Pig,' 
p. 139): 
Manure from 
50 tons wheat straw, @ $2.68 $1.34.00 
35 tons oat straw, @ $2.90 101.50 
30 tons corn-stalks. @ $3.5S 107.40 
30 tons timothy bay. @ $6.43 102.90 
30 tons clover hay, @ $9.64. ..... 2«9.20 
14 ton3 oats (1.500 bush ) ® $7.70. 107 SO 
24 tons com (800 bush.) @ $6.65. . 159.60 
Total. .213 tons. $1,092.40 
" This is the value of the manure on the land. 
Assuming that there are 600 loads, aud that the 
labor of cleaning out the stables, piling, carting, 
aud spreading the manure is worth 30 cents per 
load, or $180, we have $912.40 as the net 
value of the manure. 
"Now, your 250-acre farm might be so man- 
aged that this amount of manure annually ap- 
plied would soon greatly increase its fertiily. 
But you do not think you can afford to sum- 
mer-fallow, aud you want to raise thirty or forty 
acres of potatoes every year." 
"I propose to do so," he replied, "until the 
potato-bug arrives in this section. Situated as 
I am, close to a good shipping station, no crop 
pays mo better. My potatoes this year have 
averaged me over $100 per acre." 
"Very good. But it is perfectly clear to my 
mind that, sooner or later, you must either farm 
slower or feed higher. And in 3-our case, situ- 
ated close to a village where you can get plenty 
of help, and with a good shipping station near 
by, you had better adopt the latter plan. You 
must feed higher, and make richer manure. 
You now feed out 213 tons of stuff, and make 
600 loads of manure, worth $912.40. By fee 4- 
ing out one third, or 71 tons more, you can more 
than double the value of the manure. 
50 tons of bran or mill-feed would give manure 
worth $729.50 
21 tons decorticated cotton-seed cake 585.06 
$1,314.50 
"Bivy and feed out this amount of bran and 
cake, and you would have 800 loads of manure, 
worth on the land $2,226.96, or, estimating as 
before that it cost 30 cents a load to handle it, 
its net value would be $1,986.96." 
I am well aware that comparatively few 
farmers in this section can afford to adopt this 
plan of enriching' their land- We want better 
stock. I do not know where I could buy a lot 
of steers that it would pay to fatten in winter. 
Those farmers who raise good grade Short- 
horn or Devon cattle are not the men to sell 
them half-fat at low rates. They can fatten 
them as well as I can. For some time to come 
the farmer who proposes to feed liberally will 
have to raise his own stock. He can rarely buy 
well-bred animals to fatten. A good farmer 
must be a good farmer throughout. He can 
not be good in spots. His laud must be drained, 
well worked, and free from weeds. If he crops 
heavily he must manure heavily, and to do this 
he must feed liberally — and he can not afford to 
feed liberally unless he has good stock. 
It is a poor lime to talk about the profits of 
raising and feeding good stock. Meat of all 
kinds is very low. I do not know that the con- 
sumers find it so, but at any rate farmers are 
getting unusually low prices. But I do not feel 
discouraged. It is almost certain that the next 
few years will give us good if not high prices 
for good meat. Aud he is the wise farmer who 
prepares for it now. 
One of my neighbors bought a corn-huskiu"- 
machine, and a cheap sweep-power to drive it. 
The latter was made to sell and not to use, and 
soon broke. The busker did good work. And 
we may take it for settled that corn-husking by 
machinery is an accomplished fact. But it is 
equally certain that, at present, it costs more to 
husk with one of these machines than by hand. 
There were two horses, a man to drive, one to 
feed, one to give him the corn, and another to 
take away the stalks, and their best clay's work, 
when everything went right, was less than 100 
bushels of ears. 
I would like to raise 40 acres of corn on my 
