5-1 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[February, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 74. 
The winter months bring me a good many 
letters asking advice, and giving useful sug- 
gestions. I am always glad to receive them. 
One man gives me his views on the financial 
problem. He wants more greenbacks. So do 
I. But I do not feel certain that, if more are 
issued, any of them will find their wa} r to my 
pocket. I think he and I have a better chance 
to make money from attending to our farms 
than by looking for aid from Washington. 
Another farmer writes : " Your ' Walks and 
Talks ' are all good, but No. 72 is ahead of any- 
thing yet. After reading them I could return 
to specie payments or withstand a financial 
crash, and still have pluck left. Tour remarks 
did me good, as I am rather deficient in pluck, 
but am improving by the example of one of 
the pluckiest of wives." — There are many other 
farmers who can say the same thing. Nine out 
of ten owe their success to their wives. The 
same man says — " I commenced to farm because 
I had a love for it. I love it still, but w T ould 
love it still better if I could make more money 
by it. * * I follow mixed husbandly, and 
try to do everything w T ell — hire more help than 
my neighbors, and my farm shows quite a dif- 
ference. Have more tools, and read more pa- 
pers than any farmer in town — had rather lend 
than borrow. Usually board a boy to do 
chores, but this winter I do them myself, with 
the help of my eight-year-old son, who takes as 
much interest in them as any farmer. I always 
sleep better when I know that every animal I 
own is comfortable. I wish every farmer in 
America could say the same. It would add 
millions to our wealth. Have not sold my 
grain. I had concluded, before reading your 
remarks on the subject, to convert it into beef, 
butter, and pork. Pigs are very scarce. I am 
wintering four sows, and expect to raise pigs 
from them all. Have bought a thorough-bred 
Essex to cross with my Chester Whites. I think 
it will pay. I let them run out in the yard. 
Pork is bringing 15c. to 16c. per lb. I had some 
good pigs, but not heavy. They averaged 226 
lbs. at eight months old, and thicker pork I 
never saw." — His grade Essex will do better 
than that, if he will feed them well until they 
are three months old, and then let them have 
the run of a good clover pasture, and a pint or 
two of corn a day, with the milk and wash 
from the house. 
Here is a letter from a city man, who writes : 
" Though not a farmer, I am a lover of farming, 
but am prejudiced against farm life, because it 
seems to me that liviug on and working a farm 
is unfavorable to the development of the intel- 
lectual part of our nature." What nonsense ! 
"In town," he continues, "one is thrown in 
contact with one's own kind, and through the 
Library and Reading-room, can keep up an ac- 
quaintance with the current literature and the 
history of one's own times, while a farmer could 
not afford to buy all the good periodicals and 
books." In conclusion, he thinks that " liviug 
in a village or town is more favorable to the 
cultivation of the thinking powers than living 
on a farm." — If he had said the " talking " 
powers, he would have been nearer the truth. 
The " current literature of the day " is not the 
kind of food I should prescribe for strengthen- 
ing a weak intellect. The study of "How 
Crops Grow" will do more for the "thinking 
powers" than reading a whole circulating 
jibrarv of light literature. The young farmer 
who carefully reads Allen's American Farm 
Book, with a view to practice what he finds ap- 
plicable to his circumstances, will find more to 
think about than a whole regiment of dry goods 
clerks can extract from the sale of calico and 
ribbons. The truth is, however, that a city 
youth may know more than a farmer's boy, or 
a farmer's boy more than a city youth. It de- 
pends on how they use their time. Both have 
opportunities for study and improvement, and 
it will depend entirely on themselves, whether 
they become intelligent men or stupid dolts. 
As a rule, an intelligent farmer becomes more 
of a man than an intelligent shopkeeper ; on 
the other hand, a stupid farmer is more stupid 
than a frivolous city clerk. 
Here is another letter, from a man who owns 
twenty-three acres of poor, undulating, clay 
loam laud, situated less than two miles from 
the centre of the City of Memphis. He pro- 
poses to move on to it, and intends to devote 
six acres to small fruits, asparagus, celery, and 
cabbage ; the remainder to be planted in corn, 
potatoes, etc. He wants me to tell him how he 
can best break it up, enrich it, etc. Stable ma- 
nure can be had, in large quantities, for ten 
cents a load. — I would first thoroughly under- 
drain the land, and, at the same time, draw out 
a hundred loads of stable manure per acre, and 
plow it under. Keep the surface mellow and 
clean by the use of the harrow and cultivator. 
Then, in the course of a month or six weeks, 
cross-plow the land. The manure may not be 
sufficiently rotted to allow neat work, but no 
matter. Keep working the land, and during 
the hot weather the manure will decompose 
very rapidty, and will be thoroughly incorpo- 
rated with the soil. This will beoue great point 
gained. Another is, that the soil will become 
very loose and mellow, and if the work is done 
properly, millions of weeds will spring up after 
each plowing, and will be destroyed. In short, 
what I would do in such a case, would be to 
give up all idea of planting anything the first 
year, and bend all my energies to getting the 
laud into first-rate condition. With manure at 
ten cents a load, I would make the land as rich 
as a hot-bed. Of course I have no idea that 
my friend will follow this advice. He will be 
anxious to get the laud into crop this spring. 
With the exception of asparagus and corn, 
however, he would certainly make more by 
devoting one year to draining and preparing 
the land. Twenty acres of land on the borders 
of a large city, prepared as I have recommend- 
ed, would make any skillful gardener's fortune. 
And I would devote every dollar I could spare 
to drawing out manure while it is worth only 
ten cents a load. In a few years it will be hard 
to get at a dollar a load. 
Here is another letter, from a young Penn- 
sylvania farmer, who says he " is full of enthu- 
siasm in his vocation, aud willing to learn, and 
believes in thorough cultivation and super- 
thorough manuring." — -This is an excellent 
ground-work for success. He has large quanti- 
ties of old timber on the farm that is rotting 
and going to waste, and he wants to know how 
to make it into ashes, so as to secure the great- 
est quantity and the best quality. By simply 
burning the wood he thinks the ashes are burnt 
up, and a good portion of them lost. This, I 
think, is a mistake. The value of ashes con- 
sists principally of the potash and phosphate 
they contain, and these are not lost by burning. 
If the wood cannot be turned to any good ac- 
count as fuel, I would draw it into piles and 
set fire to it, and then spread the ashes on the 
land. Perhaps this wood may be used for 
burning limestone in a rough way for manure, 
or perhaps it may be made into charcoal. If 
this timber lies on low, wet land, that is rough 
and weedy, I would first dig a ditch through it 
to get off the surface water, then remove the 
old wood and logs out of the way, to allow a 
team and plow, to get through. After plowing 
three or four furrows place the wood in heaps 
on the plowed land, and keep on plowing aud 
removing the wood out of the way of the plow 
and putting it on the heaps. I cleared up a 
rough piece of laud in this way, and made it 
smooth and level at one operation. All the 
tough sods, tussocks, aud bunches of rushes, 
etc., we threw on to the heaps of wood and set 
fire to them. In this way we got quite a large 
quantity of charred soil, ashes, charcoal, etc., 
which was spread on the land. We then seed- 
ed it down with timothy, and had a splendid 
crop of grass on land that previously was sim- 
ply an e3 r esore and a nuisance. 
A Minister in Canada writes : " Is there any 
amount of ammonia contained in snow, or ab- 
sorbed by it, so as to make it a real benefit to 
the crops ? I have heard it stated that a heavy 
covering of snow is as good as a coat of barn- 
yard manure. Is it so ?" — It is so to a certain, but 
quite limited extent. Snow contains ammonia 
and nitric acid, and so does the water from rain, 
dew, and fogs. There is no satisfactory evi- 
dence that, on the average, snow contains more 
ammonia or nitric acid than rain-water. Bous- 
singault, indeed, found twice as much nitric 
acid in snow as in rain, but the mass of testi- 
mony indicates that the^;t7 - centage of ammonia 
and nitric acid in rain or snow, depends princi- 
pally on the quantity of water precipitated. 
The first shower of rain or snow, after a drouth, 
contains the highest proportion of ammonia 
and nitric acid. When we have continuous 
rains or snows, the quantity of ammonia and 
nitric acid contained in them becomes less and 
less. Snow has been called " the poor man's 
manure," aud he will bo a poor man who de- 
pends upon it. Still, the quantity of nitrogen 
brought to the surface of the earth in a year is 
equal, on each acre, to about ten pounds of am- 
monia, or as much as is coutaiued in a ton of 
ordinary barn-yard or stable manure. The 
trouble is that for want of underdraining a 
large proportion of the water from melting 
snows and heavy rains, instead of soaking into 
the soil and leaviug its ammonia and nitric 
acid for the use of plauts, runs off on the sur- 
face, often doing harm rather than good. My 
impression is, that a well-worked loamy soil 
absorbs more ammonia from the atmosphere 
than is brought to it in snow and rain. At any 
rate this source of ammonia is worthy of the 
most attention. The snow descends on the 
poor land as much as on the good. We cannot 
increase the supply. But the amount absorbed 
from the atmosphere by the soil is under our 
control. The more we pulverize a heavy cak 
careous loam, the more ammonia will it absorb 
from the atmosphere ; and, at the same time, 
this thorough working of the land will develop 
the plant-food lying latent in the soil. 
A farmer in Canandaigua wants me to tell 
my " experience with Essex pigs and their 
grades." I have kept them several years, and 
the more I know of them the better I like 
them. But I would not advise him to buy them 
in hopes of selling to his neighbors. The 
Essex, you know, are black, and in this section 
