294 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August, 
grower who visits the Park than the well- 
fed and well-known South-Down. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 104. 
At this date, June 18th, my wheat is better 
than the Deacon's. All admit that the harrow- 
ing did it good. It broke the crust, and fresh- 
ened up the soil, and made a splendid seed-bed 
for the clover. The ground was very dry, but 
there was moisture enough in the freshly-stirred 
soil to start the clover-seed at once. I never saw 
abetter catch. I do not say, neither do I believe, 
that the harrowing is the only or main reason 
why my wheat looks better than the Deacon's 
in the adjoining field. I have spent more labor 
on it, and gave it a slight dressing of dried 
blood. I think there is wheat in the field that 
•will go over 40 bushels per acre, but there are 
other parts where the crop is light, and these 
will pull down the average. The wheat on the 
clay laud, where I expected the heaviest growth, 
is the poorest in the field. And I imagine that 
this is generally the case the present year. I 
suppose it is owing to the severe spring drouth. 
We had a glorious rain the last week in May, 
but it was too late to save the wheat. In this 
section — and I presume the same is true of the 
Middle States generally — we shall uot have more 
than two thirds of an average crop. There are 
thousands of acres which will barely pay the 
expense of harvesting. I have just been through 
one of the finest wheat-growing sections in 
Monroe County, and did uot see one really good 
field of wheat. This is not the fault of our 
system of agriculture, for while it is emphati- 
cally true that the best farmers have decidedly 
the best crops, yet even those fields which have 
received good treatment have many spots where 
the crop has either failed entirely, or been so 
weakened by the cold and the drouth that they 
will yield little more than the seed. 
The Deacon aud I both sowed our wheat too 
late last fall. I have generally aimed to sow 
from the 10th to the 15th of September; and in 
ordinary years, on good land, this is the best 
time, but this season, as a rule, the early sown 
wheat is the best. And drilled wheat is very 
decidedly better than that sown broadcast. I have 
never been au enthusiastic advocate of drilling. 
I have seen wheat that was sown broadcast 
just as good as that sown with a drill. But 
few will claim that broadcast wheat is ever 
better than drilled. And so, if-every few years 
we have a season in which drilled wheat is de- 
cidedly the best, and never one in which it is 
worse, it would seem to be the part of wisdom 
to always drill in the wheat. 
John Johnston writes me from Seneca Co., 
which is one of the best wheat-growing coun- 
ties in Western New York: "Wheat is bad 
around here, and I believe over all the winter- 
wheat-growing sections of the Eastern, Middle, 
and Western States, as well as iu Canada. I 
have seen 51 crops grown here, but never saw 
such a failure except in 1836. I am really afraid 
of a wheat famine." 
I do not feel at all alarmed. Wheat will 
doubtless command a high price before the har- 
vest of 1873. But we need not starve. High 
prices always check consumption. If wheat is 
very high, we shall eat less wheat-bread, and 
more corn-bread, potatoes, and meat. Corn, 
pork, aud potatoes are so abundant that they 
are now selling far below the cost of produc- 
tion. Cheese, butter, and beef are compara- 
tively low, and fruit of all kinds bids fair to be 
exceedingly abundant. We shall not starve. 
But I have said for many months that all the 
signs pointed to a higher range of prices for 
our leading agricultural products. I believe 
such would have been the case even if we had 
had a favorable season for wheat. But the 
failure of the wheat crop will undoubtedly 
hasten the time, and serve to carry prices higher 
than I had anticipated. 
Farmers have seen hard times for a few years 
past, and a higher range of prices will not hurt 
us. The lesson that we, as farmers, have to 
learn is not to be discouraged, but to keep on 
the even tenor of our ways, studying how to 
improve our farms, to cheapen the cost of pro- 
duction, to raise such crops and keep such 
stock as are adapted to our soils and situations, 
to sell when we can get reasonable prices, and 
be content with fair profits, and not rush into 
every new thing that for the time being is 
bringing an extravagant price. 
There is seldom a year when a good, steady- 
going, enterprising, intelligent farmer who 
works his land thoroughly and improves his 
stock has not something to sell that affords a 
good profit. If pork is low, wool is high; if 
beef is cheap, wheat is dear. If corn can not 
be sold for what it costs to produce it, he knows 
that in a well-ventilated corn-crib it will keep 
for any length of time. Some years ago I was 
offered corn in the streets of Bloomington, 111., 
for "nine cents, cash, per bushel, and ten cents 
in trade." Iu less than two years I was in Illi- 
nois again, and asked the price of corn iu the 
same neighborhood, and was answered " one 
dollar and ten cents a bushel." Of course such 
fluctuations are demoralizing'. But we must 
make the best of our situation. 
"E. W. H.," of Grand Rapids, Mich., writes 
me that be has a field of eight acres of dark, 
gravelly soil that he broke up three years ago. 
Plowed once, cultivated twice; then plowed 
again, cultivated, and sowed to winter-wheat. 
Had an average crop, or about 20 bushels per 
acre. Next spring be covered the field with 
stable-manure, plowed, and planted with corn. 
Yield, 40 bushels per acre. The next spring 
(1871) plowed aud sowed oats and seeded with 
timothy and clover. The season was dry, and 
the oats a light crop. This spring he top- 
dressed the field with manure. There was a 
good stand of timothy and clover, but now 
(June 2d) the clover and timothy are literally 
choked out with sorrel. He asks what he had 
better do. 
If I bad such a field on my farm I think I 
should plow it up early in August, cultivate and 
harrow as often as was necessary to kill weeds, 
and also with a view to cause as many weed- 
seeds to germinate as possible. Then in Oc- 
tober I would plow it again. The next spring 
sow it to barley, peas, or oats. Then follow with 
winter-wheat, and seed with timothy iu the full, 
at the time the wheat was sown, and witli clover 
iu the spring, say twelve pounds red clover and 
two pounds white Dutch clover. If lime could 
be obtained at anything like a reasonable price, 
say from fifteen to twenty cents a bushel, I 
would put on from 50 to 100 bushels per acre 
before the wheat was sown, and cultivate aud 
harrow it in. I should do this not because I 
believe in the old theory that sorrel indicates a 
sour soil, and that lime is needed to neutralize 
the acid, but simply because it is a matter of 
experience that liming land is one of the best 
means of bringing in good grasses and clover. 
And if we can get a good crop of grass and 
clover, especially white clover, the sorrel will 
be crowded out aud disappear. 
I have great faith in lime as a manure, even 
on our limestone soils, and should use it freely 
if I could get it for twenty cents a bushel, but 
I can not buy it for Jess than thirty cents. We 
must try and get along without it until some one 
has sense enough to burn lime for agricultural 
purposes and sell it at a fair price. As long as 
I can get a good crop of clover I feel pretty 
sure of getting good grain crops. But when 
clover begins to fail we shall then have to resort 
to the use of ashes or kainit to furnish potash, 
or we shall use lime to render the latent potash 
and nitrogen in the soil available. On my land 
at present I have no doubt the latter would be 
the cheaper method, if I could get lime at 
twenty cents a bushel, as I need nitrogen rather 
than potash. But as long as good tillage, or an 
occasional sumnler-fallow, with the free use of 
gypsum, will give us good crops of clover, we 
can get along without lime. 
John S. Bowles, of Hamilton Co., Ohio, 
thinks that I must live in a very benighted 
agricultural section, because we plow with 
double lines, and put the lines back of our 
Bhoulders. I dislike the practice as much as he 
does. But it is of no use to talk to us about sin- 
gle lines and left-hand plows. Neither men 
nor horses understand the system, and even if 
we acknowledge all the advantages claimed, 
which I am not prepared to do, it would take 
us some years to make the change. " Iu another 
number of your ' Walks aud Talks,' " he says, 
"you speak of the Deacon hoeing his corn. If 
you will come here next fall, I will show you a 
clean corn-tield that has never bad a hoe in it 
the whole season." I have no doubt about it. 
Neither do I despair of doing' the same thing, 
before many years, on my own farm. Mr. B. 
raises corn after corn for several years, aud by 
the free use of the cultivator can hardly fail to 
make his land clean. Mr. B. says he believes 
"one man and horse with a good cultivator 
will accomplish as much as four men with hoes." 
There is no doubt about it. But it seems curious 
to us to hear so intelligent a man as my corre- 
spondent say : " I do not know whether it would 
be possible to cultivate corn properly without 
driving with a single line, but I doubt it." The 
truth is, you want a steady horse that will haw 
and gee promptly as you tell him, aud that does 
not need any lines at all. Iu such a case two 
lines do no barm, and may occasionally be use- 
ful. I think this is all there is to the question. 
I once saw a boy take the first prize at a plow- 
ing match of the Royal Agricultural Society of 
England who had no lines on his horse?. I do 
not think that if a pair of rope lines had been 
hanging by their sides they would have done 
any harm, and in case the horses had got fright- 
ened they might have proved useful. Still, I 
should be heartily glad to have my horses so 
well trained that no lines were needed. 
Mr. Bowles says he has drained some of his 
swamp land with tiles, three feet deep, and the 
underdrains three rods apart, at a cost of $31 
per acre, reckoning labor at $1.75 per day of 
ten hours. "But, in point of fact," he says, "it 
has not cost me nearly so much. I do it in this 
manner. I hire my meu by the month for six 
months or a year at a time. I hire at least one 
more than I would want if I carried on no im- 
provement. Whenever in the spring I have no 
work for my meu to do I set them at uuder- 
