12 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 37. 
I notice from the papers that the receipts of 
sheep and pigs in New York are now greater 
than ever before, and prices have fallen a little. 
The best sheep only bring about 6 cts.. per lb., 
live weight, and hundreds of poor sheep are sold 
as low as $3.00a$4.00 a head. It seems a pity to 
send such sheep to a distant market. After de- 
ducting the cost of transportation and other 
expenses, the prices received by the farmer must 
be very low. It costs no more to send a sheep 
to market that will bring $8.00, than one that is 
slow of sale at $3.00. If the expenses are a 
dollar a head, the farmer would get $3.00 in one 
case, and $7.00 in the other. 
Pork will probably be lower for a few weeks. 
The failure of the corn crop will induce many 
farmers to dispose of their hogs before they are 
fat: The receipts will be very large, and for 
the time being, will depress the market. But it 
seems to me that after the first rush of half- fat 
pigs is over, it will be found that good, well-fed 
hogs are scarce, and the demand will be large 
enough to insure a fair price for the corn they 
have consumed. After severe cold weather sets 
in, however, pigs will not fat rapidly. The in- 
crease of weight alone, will hardly pay for the 
food. The profit of keeping them, if there is 
any, will be from the increase in price. With 
warm, comfortable pens, hogs, as a general rule, 
can be kept until after Christmas with advan- 
tage, on account of the advance in pork. But 
in a cold, dirty pen, they will eat a good deal 
of corn, and do little more than hold their own. 
It is not half as interesting now to talk about 
pigs as it was last September, when our Roch- 
ester butchers were eager to buy them at 14 and 
15 cents a lb. They are now a drug at 10 cents, 
and some have been sold as low as 8 cents. The 
city papers are rejoicing over the decline in 
prices. They were too high, perhaps. But to 
attribute high prices solely to the "speculators " 
is absurd. The speculators do not create the 
scarcity, they only avail themselves of it and 
buy for a rise. If it proves that there is no 
scarcity, they are — ruined. But if there is an 
actual scarcity, they are really public benefac- 
tors, as by storing awa}' the food until it 
is wanted, and thus forcing up prices in the 
meantime, they check consumption. ■ If prices 
remained low, much more would be consumed, 
and in the end the scarcity would be greater. 
It may be that farmers, tempted by high 
prices, have raised too many hogs, and that they 
must sell them at a loss. Certain it is, that with 
corn worth $1.25 a bushel, there is little profit 
in fattening hogs at 8 cents a lb. It is a good hog 
that, with ordinary treatment, will give 7 lbs. of 
pork for a bushel of corn. Fed in a rail pen, 
cub and all, among the mud, it doubtless takes 
much more, especially in cold weather. The 
other day I wanted a new India rubber tube for 
my steamer, and a few lbs. of castings. The 
bill was $5.75. Now, with corn at $1.25 per 
bushel and pork at 8 cents a lb., how long, at 
the above estimate, will it take me to pay this 
bill out of the profits? I heard a farmer say 
last fall that " it took three bushels of potatoes 
to buy a pair of baby's shoes ! " 
"With all the drawbacks in our business, I 
have no reason to complain. Farming is as 
pleasant and profitable as I expected — especial- 
ly the former. Those who complain that the 
farmers charge such high prices do not under- 
stand what they are talking about. If our city 
friends will practice as close econom}- as the 
farmer is compelled to do, they will be able to 
pay him remunerative prices for his products. 
He asks nothing more. And when the farmer 
prospers, other business prospers too. 
The great trouble with farmers is, that they 
do not cultivate their land as well as they might. 
One reason of this has been the low price of 
produce. And now that we are getting good 
prices, the land is in such a poor state that too 
many farmers have nothing to sell. I kuow a 
farmer who had six acres of Peach Blow pota- 
toes, which yielded him 250 bushels, all told. 
This was not owing to the rot, or to a bad sea- 
son, but solely to poor farming, past and pres- 
ent. The land has never been manured, and 
the potatoes this year were not half cultivated. 
He works the farm " on shares." The profits, 
both to the owner and farmer, will not be 
exorbitant even if the potatoes bring $1.00 a 
bushel. But if, on the other hand, the crop had 
been, as it might, 200 bushels per acre — say 1200 
bushels, the extra yield at this price, would have 
paid for a little manure, and a good deal of cul- 
tivating. And this was all that was needed. 
Working land on shares seems to be a poor 
business for both parties. It is to the interest of 
the tenent to spend as little for extra labor as 
possible, because the owner of the land gets 
half the benefit without bearing any of the cost. 
When the country was new and the land rich, 
a man could perhaps afford to give half the 
products, as he could get fair crops with little 
labor. But now that the laud is more 'or less 
"run down," and it is necessary to build it up 
with manure and good culture, it is impossible 
for a man to expend the -necessary labor and 
give half the produce for rent. It may be done 
for a year or two on land in high condition, but 
the farm must inevitably deteriorate under the 
system. A man might afford to rent a grass 
farm on shares, but not an arable farm. It is 
difficult to take one of our ordinary "run 
down " farms and raise enough from them, for 
a few years, to pay the cost of labor and sup- 
port the teams, from the whole of the produce ! 
"What, then, is the value of a run-down 
farm ? " Not much, these times. It would be 
cheaper, so far as immediate profit is concerned, 
to pay $100 an acre for a farm in high condi- 
tion, with, good buildings and fences, than to 
accept as a gift one of these run-down farms. 
It is time this matter was understood, so that 
those uneasy mortals who are always expecting 
to sell, and consequently make no efforts to 
keep up and improve their land, should be com- 
pelled to turn over a new leaf, or else dispose of 
their farms at a low figure. 
The advance of farm lands has been greater 
in the dairy regions .than in any other districts 
of the Stale — certainly far more than in the 
wheat growing sections of Western New York. 
Dairy farms in Herkimer County have changed 
hands at two hundred dollars an acre. And yet 
I have always supposed that one acre of our 
land was worth two of their' s. Farms can be 
had in this section at $100 per acre— and dear 
enough at that ! The high rates of wages and 
other expenses of managing an arable farm do 
not affect the fanners in the grass growing dis- 
tricts as much as they do us. We should learn 
from this fact, not to cultivate so much land, 
but to let a larger proportion lie in grass. This 
would reduce expenses, and yet give us heavier 
crops of graiu. It is the one lesson which the 
history of agriculture clearly teaches. 
We must, however, improve our grass land. 
Most of our pastures consist of low land, which 
produces little except coarse grass of very in- 
ferior quality. Nothing can be done with such 
land until it is drained. But if we would drain 
our upland, we should in many cases cut off the 
springs which feed the low land, and then a few 
surface ditches would be all that is needed to 
make these low pastures dry and productive. 
The upland pastures must be top-dressed with 
manure. I am inclined to think that, for im- 
mediate effect, we can use our manure on grass 
land to greater advantage than in plowing it 
under for corn. I think I related before, that 
last fall I drew out some manure on an old up- 
land timothy meadow that we intended to plow 
up in the spring for corn. The year before wc 
mowed it, and the grass was hardly worth cut- 
ting. In the spring, however, I fouud we should 
hardly be able to manage so much com ground, 
and abandoned the idea of breaking up this 
meadow. Well, we pastured the field, and you 
would have been astonished at the effect of the 
top-dressing of manure. As far as the manure 
went, the grass assumed a dark green hue, 
thickened at the bottom, and. must have afforded 
three times as much feed as the other portion. 
The cows stayed pretty much all the time on 
the manured land, and evidently liked the grass. 
The timothy on the unmanured portion was 
light, but what there was of it the cattle did not 
eat, and it went to seed, while the other portion 
was eaten close and gave a green succulent bile 
all through the season. I am fattening aboui 
200 sheep, a dozen head or so of cattle, with ten 
milch cows, and some sixty head of pigs, little 
and big, black and white, and as Thomas says : 
" There will be some manure in the yard next 
spring, Sir, whoever lives to see it." I think of 
putting every bit of it on to the grass land. 
When I bought this farm three years ago. I 
came from a temporary residence in the 
city, where we had a rather nice lawn and 
garden. And of course when we moved into 
the country, the first thought was to "fix up 
things round the home." I bought the farm the 
latter part of November, and the first thing I 
did on it was to set out a large bed of roses and 
one or two beds of floweriug bulbs. The next, 
was to top-dress the "lawn." This took pretly 
much all the manure there was on the farm, ex- 
cept some loose horse litter that we used to 
protect the roses and other tender shrubs ! All 
this time, the corn stalks were out in the field, 
and I can now very well imagine that such a 
mode of farming did not call forth any very 
flattering remarks from the passers by, One 
day, when I was busily engaged in attending to 
the roses, and a man was carting the manure 
and spreading it on the "lawn," a young farmer, 
whom I had known for some years, came along 
on a load of wood, and after looking on for a 
few minutes and ascertaining what we were 
driving at, remarked, 'Til tell you what I 
think." " Well, John, what do you think," 1 
asked. "I think," he said, "yoiCte got a good. 
many things to learn." I had sense enough not 
to press him for particulars, and he passed on. 
Well, I have made a great many mistakes in 
farming, but that was not one of them. The 
effect of the top-dressing on the grass was truly 
wonderful. We mowed it three or four times 
during the summer, and sowed a little guano on 
it in showery weather, leveled down some of 
the inequalities by taking the soil from under 
the grass without removing the sod, and batting 
them down with the spade, throwing the soil in 
