1867.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
51 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 38. 
Jly best paying crop on the farm last year 
-was Beans. They cost but little labor and bring 
a good price. I have just sold them to the 
seed-store for $3 25 per bushel. The early kind 
turned out better than last year, but the late 
sort was nipped by the frost, and is not so good. 
I had to have them picked over by hand at a 
cost of 15 cents per bushel. 
Beans have always been, theoretically, a 
favorite crop with me. And I am now more 
than ever convinced that, on wheat farms at 
least, they should always form a part of the 
rotation. True, we cannot always hope to get 
such a high price for them as they have brought 
this year. But I think they will pay to grow 
even for feeding out on the farm to sheep. They 
are very nutritious, and nothing except oil cake 
makes such rich manure. The vines are excel- 
lent fodder. I was fortunate in getting the crop 
well cured. The growth of vines was unusally 
large — completely covering the ground, and 
though the frost struck them before they were 
pulled, I find that the sheep ate them with 
avidity. In fact, they seem to like them fully 
as well as clover hay. 
John Johnson writes me that he is fattening 
over three hundred sheep. Like nearly all of us, 
he paid more for them than they could have 
been bought for later in the season. But he 
thinks that there is not one eighth as many sheep 
being fattened this winter as last, and conse- 
quently they are likely yet to bring a fair price. 
He urges me to feed a little oil cake, and I am 
doing so. I bought a few tons of it at $50 per 
ton. It is a high price, but less than it has been 
for several years. If it were not for the manure 
I question if it would pay. But if, as 5Ir. Lawes 
estimates, the manure from a ton of oil cake is 
worth $28, and you can buy cattle or sheep ill- 
fed for two or three cents less per lb. than you 
can get for them when fat in the spring, we may 
be sure that we can afford to buy oil cake 
enough at least to use up all our fodder. 
Feeding straw and stalks alone to any kind of 
stock is of rather doubtful economy. "We must 
feed a little grain or cake with it to get out its 
full value. With ha)-, the case is somewhat dif- 
ferent, as it contains both grain and straw — or 
rather, it is cut while all the juices which would 
go to form grain are still in the stems and leaves. 
But for fattening animals, it is still desirable to 
feed out a little grain or roots in addition. 
Farmers feel the high taxes this winter more 
than ever before. They are higher in this town 
than at any time during the war. The effect, as 
a general rule, is to check improvements. There 
is less work being done than for some time past, 
and wages will come down. But it is no use 
holding back. The taxes must be paid, and we 
shall have to get the money out of the land. If 
we stop work we shall be worse off instead of 
better. After all, the money paid for State and 
count}' taxes does not leave the country. It 
soon finds its way back again into circulation. 
If farmers only had to pay high taxes, or if 
they were merely local, it would be all loss and 
no gain, but as they arc general, all over the 
country, we will not complain. Let us lend all 
our energies to make the land as productive as 
possible, and we shall find it less difficult to pay 
the high taxes than we anticipated. Our County, 
State and National debt is really a mortgage on 
our farms, but as everybody's farm is thus mort- 
gaged it does not affect any one firmer as an 
ordinary mortgage would. Let us be cheerful 
then, and keep on working. The prospects of 
farmers are as good now, compared with other 
occupations (except office holders), as ever. 
How much do you suppose I paid the Doctor 
for that cow ? One hundred and ten dollars ! 
I am a little ashamed of it, but try to persuade 
myself that I should not have given so much to 
any one else. She comes in very early, is a well 
built cow, with a trace of Shorthorn blood in 
her, and is in high condition. The latter point 
I think more of than the generality of farmers. 
I like to see a milch cow pretty fleshy in the 
spring, for if she is a good milker you will get 
all the fat she has stored up during the winter 
back again in the form of butter before the sea- 
son is over. This cow gave, last summer, two 
lbs. of butter a day. And if she will do this for 
me, I would rather give $120 for her than $60 
for one that will give only one pound of butter 
a day. For of course she will not eat as much 
again food. 
The high price of cows will prove a boon to 
farmers if it teaches us to feed our milch cows 
better. In the dairy districts I presume they 
have paid more attention to this point, but there 
are not a few farmers that have treated their 
milch cows and young stock during the winter 
months as though they did not care whether 
they lived or died. And even now, while cows 
are so scarce and high, I can take you to several 
farmers in this "highly enlightened commu- 
nity," in this " centre of the garden of the Em- 
pire State," where cows, colts and young cattle 
are wintered in the field with no other shelter 
than a rail fence ! * 
Neighbor Sloe has sold all his straw to the 
paper makers, and now lets his cattle run in the 
fields to pick up what grass they can find under 
the snow. It's a fact. 
I was glad to see the Agriculturist, last 
month, recommending currying cows and fat- 
tening cattle. Animals that are stabled need it 
more than those in the yards, but it is beneficial 
to both. "When I want a little recreation I take 
a currycomb and card the cows. They like it 
beyond anything. I have seen them stop eating 
their corn meal as soon as I commenced. I wish 
the practice was general. A man that curries 
his cows will not be apt to starve them. 
There is another thing in the Agriculturist 
this month (January), that I like — the allusion 
in "Hints about "Work," to future prices of 
farm products. "We are all interested in this 
matter, and there is no way in which the Agri- 
culturist could benefit its readers more than by 
giving all the facts which have any bearing on 
the subject. Of course, no one can predict with 
any degree of certainty what prices will be a 
year or a month from this time, -but still some 
idea can be formed by a careful consideration of 
the facts. But the difficulty is to get the facts. 
These the Agriculturist could give us even more 
fully than it now does. The advice it gives to 
"sell when you can get a fair price" is cer- 
tainly correct; and, on the other hand, hold 
on to any article that is below the cost of pro- 
duction, if there is a chance for a rise. 
" What do you find to do on the farm in win- 
ter?" asked a city friend. ""What do you peo- 
ple in the city ever find to do?" I replied. 
Whatever sources of discontent there ma}' be 
in farm life, want of occupation is not one of 
them. I do not pretend to do much work 
myself. I would like to do more than I do, but 
cannot afford it. There arc but few men who 
can work both with then- hands and their brains. 
But there is no lack of work for man and horse, 
provided it is properly laid out. In stormy 
weather you can grind grain, chaff fodder, 
thresh beans, and if you have a tool-house, with 
a stove in it, you can repair tools and imple- 
ments, paint wagon wheels, cultivators, har- 
rows, plows, &c., and get everything ready for 
spring. 
"We have been latterly busy drawing stones to 
build fences. There are hundreds of tons of 
stones on my farm that have been taken out 
of the land and drawn into large heaps. It is 
no little labor to draw these stones on a wagon 
or a stone-boat in the summer, even if we had 
time ; but with sleds it is less work to load, not 
having to lift them so high, and you can draw 
a much heavier load. In the summer time it 
would cost me nearly as much to draw the 
stones as to build the fence ; and when the ground 
is wet in the spring and fall it is still more ex- 
pensive, and, besides, injures the land. It is 
rather cold work handling stones, but the winter 
is thie time for moving such heavy materials. 
Did I tell you of a discovery the Deacon made 
last summer ? He has a small ditch running 
through one of his fields which carries off the 
water from ten or fifteen acres of my farm. 
Last summer he observed that there was a hole 
in this ditch into which the water soaked away. 
He took a crow-bar and enlarged the hole. I 
have two long underdrains discharging into the 
ditch, and during the heavy rains of last fall 
there was a great quantity of water discharged, 
but this hole took every drop of it. I presume 
the hole goes down to a fissure in the rock. If 
it was opened out and then stoned up so as to 
prevent choking, I see no reason why it should 
not prove a permanent outlet for all the water. 
There is on my farm a low spot from which 
there is no outlet, into which flows a considera- 
ble quantity of water, which all disappears. 
The great difficulty in draining is to get a 
good outlet. There is scarcely any land that 
cannot be readily drained if the natural water 
courses were kept free from obstructions, and the 
ditches which run into them were deepened and 
widened and kept clean. But as this must be 
doue by the several farmers through whose laud 
the water courses run, any one of them can 
seriously damage all the rest by his negligence 
or obstinacy. This matter demands the imme- 
diate attention of our legislators. A well con- 
sidered law, compelling farmers to clean out 
water courses, &c, or in case of refusal authori- 
zing the proper authorities to do the work and 
assess the expense on the property benefited, 
would do much for agricultural improvement. 
The Deacon last night was telling me of an 
interesting fact in regard to wheat, which he 
observed on his farm some years ago. He and 
another farmer had bought some wood which 
lay back of my present farm. By going across 
my farm they could save a mile or so of 
travel. They obtained permission from the 
owner to draw their wood during the winter, on 
condition that they should pay for any damage 
done to a piece of wheat they had to go over. 
Before spring the snow broke through occa- 
sionally, and they expected to have to pay con- 
siderable damage. But during the summer the 
wheat on the track was far superior to the rest 
of the field. The snow being pressed hard, did 
not melt in the spring for a long time after it 
had all disappeared from the rest of the field. 
There may have been some droppings from the 
