406 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[November, 
of the good seed that has been sown in these 
pages. Yet the outflow from the farm goes on, 
and about as many boys are strapping their 
trunks and saying good-bye to the farm, this 
fall, as ever. Some few of the number have their 
faces turned in the right direction, but many, we 
know, are making a great mistake, and have 
before them much less of thrift and happiness 
than they could find in the calling of their fa- 
thers. This restless spirit is owing somewhat, 
doubtless, to the general diffusion of education 
among the masses, to that love of adventure 
which is a characteristic of the Yankee race, and 
to the apparent profitableness of other callings. 
-But with all due allowance for these things, 
there are causes still at work upon the farm that 
early alienate the affections of the boys, and 
drive them to other pursuits. The boys catch 
new ideas much more rapidly than their fathers, 
and, with the impulsiveness of youth, want to 
test them. They go to the fairs, and see the fine 
stock, the new tools, the premium fruits aud 
vegetables. They read the papers, if they have 
them at home, and if they have not, they borrow 
them. Agricultural papers are greatly multi- 
plied, and no religious or political paper quite 
does its duty without furnishing a column or 
two, weekly, of agricultural matter for its read- 
ers. People who read at all cannot very well 
keep themselves in the dark in regard to the 
changes that are coming over our husbandry. 
If the father keeps up with the times, has agri- 
cultural papers and books, reads, thinks, and 
practices, he retains the confidence of his boys, 
and can readily guide them. But if he is a man 
of routine, and keeps in the ruts, the boys soon 
become disgusted with farming. They do not 
want to break their backs over the scythe, when 
a mowing machine can do the work better, and 
at a lithe of the expense. They want tedders, 
horse-rakes, and horse hay-forks. They want 
subsoil plows, tile drains, and barn cellars. 
They want blood stock in the stable, and in the 
sty. They want to move a little faster, and to 
do business on a little larger scale. The boys 
have the facts and the argument on their side, 
and if 3'ou waut to retain them upon the farm, 
you must keep up with the times, and make 
farming a live business. The subsoil plow has 
spoiled the ruts for this generation. 
Another thing, the boys want an interest in 
the business, aud the sooner 3-011 give them an 
investment in the farm or its stock, the more 
likely you will be to make farmers of them. 
It is true, the law gives you a right to the avails 
of their labors until they reach their majority. 
It may be true that these services are no more 
than a fair compensation for the expenses of 
their childhood. The intercourse of parents and 
children should not always be graduated by the 
legal scale. You do-not want your son for a ser- 
vant, but for a companion, and a support in your 
declining years. You want to attach him by affec- 
tion: and interest to- the soil that he cultivates. 
Begin, then, early to identify- his interests with 
your business, as if he was under no obligations to 
you. If he fancies stock, give him what he likes, 
and let the increase be his. Especially encour- 
age him to plant orchards or vineyards of the 
finest varieties of fruit. Teach him to bud, 
graft, prune, ripen, and market, all the fruits of 
your climate. Furnish him with all the books 
and facilities that he needs to study and to prac- 
tice pomology and horticulture. If properly en- 
couraged, he will take an interest in these things 
very early, and before he is old enough to think 
of leaving your roof, his tastes will be formed, 
and his course in life will be determined. His 
heart will go down into the soil with the roots 
of every fruit tree that he plants, and the or- 
chards and gardens of the old homestead, or 
of another close by, will be his paradise, from 
which nothing but necessity can drive him. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm— No. 47. 
Sheep can be bought in this section for nearly 
half what they could be sold for at this time last 
year. And yet, low as wool is, it is worth nearly 
as much as it was a year ago. Then the depres- 
sion in the wool market was thought to be merely 
temporary, and wool growers hoped for remun- 
erative prices in the future. Now, however, 
there is a general feeling that wool will rule low 
for some years, and many farmers are selling 
their sheep at any price that is offered. Butter 
and cheese pay better than wool growing, aud 
thousands will quit the business in disgust. Ob- 
serving men predicted such a result during the 
sheep fever, and were laughed at as old fogies. 
If the best time to engage in a business is when 
others are leaving it, the present is a good time 
to buy sheep. It would be strange if the United 
States, with its almost unlimited extent of terri- 
tory, should not raise its' own wool, and if we 
are to raise wool, we can "hardly expect to see a 
time when sheep can be bought at lower rates. 
The duty on wool is now as high as we can reas- 
onably ask for, and if there is any business in 
which we can compete with the cheap labor of 
foreign countries, it is in wool-growing. There 
is less labor required to raise a dollar's worth of 
wool than to raise a dollar's worth of any other 
farm product. It is not so much the cheap labor 
of other countries that the wool-grower has to 
fear, as the cheap land, and the low rates at 
which so concentrated an article as wool can be 
transported. And this competition with cheap 
laud we cannot escape from. Those of us who 
have farms that cost $100 to $150 per acre must 
compete with the farmer on the prairie, who 
paid only $1.25. If we cannot compete with him 
in growing wool, we must grow something else, 
the freight on which affords us sufficient protec- 
tion. Buffalo skins are high, but I do not think, 
when land is worth $100 an acre, we can raise 
buffaloes, and feed them for four or five years 
simply for the skins. If we wish to engage in 
this kind of business, we must seek cheaper land. 
I do not say that we cannot keep sheep on 
land worth $100 an acre, simply for their wool, 
for the probabilities are that the profits cannot 
be very large. Take one of my three year old 
Merino wethers that I sold the other day for $2.75, 
and how much do 3'ou suppose it has cost to feed 
him ? He sheared four pounds the first year, 
and five poituds the next, and five pounds'this 
3 r ear — say fourteen pounds. I sold the first two 
clips for 60 cents. The last clip is not sold, but 
would not bring more than 40 cents. This sheep 
therefore has brought me in, say $2.40 for the 
first year, $3.00 for the second year, and $2.00 
for the third year— $7.40 in all. The sheep sold 
for $2.75, so that the gross receipts for three and 
a half years' keep amount to $10.15. "Washing, 
shearing, tying up the wool, and marketing the 
three clips, would cost 50 cents, aud it will be 
liberal to say that I have received $9.65 for feed 
and attendance. Now, such a sheep would prob- 
ably consume in three 3 r ears and a half, a ton of 
hay, or its equivalent. Of course he was not fed 
exclusively on hay, and I only put it in this form 
to enable us to get some idea of the amount of 
food such a sheep would eat. An acre of good 
clover would furnish food enough for half a dozen 
of such sheep for a year— part mown and part 
grazed. To keep a sheep three years and a half, 
therefore, we should need as much food as seven 
twelfths of an acre would produce in a year. In 
other words, this sheep which has brought me 
$9.65, has eaten food equal to what could be 
obtained from a little over half an acre of good 
clover. This makes a better show for the profit 
of wool-growing than I expected, and when we 
take into consideration the fact that the manure 
will do nearly as much good as if the clover had 
been plowed under, I am not sure that there is 
any kind of stock which, for the care and labor 
bestowed, will pay much better. 
The time has arrived in our agriculture, how- 
ever, when we must bestow more care and la- 
bor in feeding stock, and enriching our land. I 
think farmers are becoming convinced of this. 
High prices are a great incentive to improve- 
ment. We can all see that if our farms were in 
condition, we could make monej r . I was on a 
farm, the other day, where the wheat crop went 
37 1 ! » bushels per acre, and being very clean anil 
nice, was all sold to the neighbors for seed, at 
$2.75 per bushel. Most of us, on land natural!} 
just as good, only raise 15 bushels per acre, ami 
that not of the best qualit}-. In a ride of some 
twenty-five miles, through two of the best 
towns in this count3 r , in search of some good 
seed wheat, this was the only wheat I found that 
was clean ! It may be that I did not happen to 
fall iu with the right men. One farmer, who 
has always been noted for careful culture, aud 
who, I was told, would have clean seed if it was 
to be found, had wheat no better than my own. 
" I have had such dirty wheat," he said, and I 
do not doubt it, for, on going to the barn, where 
he had been cleaning some thirty or forty bush- 
els for seed, there were lying on the floor five or 
six bushels of stricken grains and foul stuff 
that had been cleaned out. This was on one of 
the best wheat farms in the State. Unfortunately 
such cases are not rare. Where one farm has 
improved during the past five 3 r ears, ten have 
run clown. Uncertainty in regard to future 
prices, and the scarcity and inefficiency of la- 
borers are among the chief causes of th ; s deplor- 
able state of affairs. I did not see during the 
whole ride a single dean piece of corn. Most of 
the corn was cut up, and in every case the rows 
could be traced by weeds running to seed, and 
not unfrequently the whole land was covered 
with weeds from six inches to three feet in 
night. In a dry season, like* the present, it— is 
not easy to understand how land could get so 
foul, where even nothing more than ordinary 
cultivation is emplo3'ed. Next spring, this land 
will be sown with barle3 r , followed by wheat in 
the fall. Is it to be wondered at that clean wheat 
is so scarce? Many farmers plow their land 
twice for wheat after the barley is off, and har- 
row, roll, and cultivate their land veiy nicety, in 
order to get it clean aud mellow. But this does 
comparatively little good. The time to clean 
land for wheat is while it is iu corn. If it can- 
not be made thoroughly clean with one corn 
crop, plant it two 3-ears in succession, and culti- 
vate it every week or ten days from the time 
the rows can be traced till the com is set. You 
will then have clean wheat. 
There are two objects in working laud. First, 
to kill weeds, and second, to enrich it by pro- 
moling decomposition, and rendering it capable 
of absorbing ammonia from, the atmosphere. 
These chemical changes require time. If you have 
two heaps of manure piled up last spring, and 
one heap has been turned over three times during 
four or five months, and the other has not been 
