182. 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
such an opening, are the healthiest that can be had, unless 
it is apartments warmed by grates, and fitted with such a 
ventilator, the grates and room being fed with cold air in 
such a way as to prevent draughts on persons. 
SEA ISLAND PASTURAGE-TASKS FOR NEGROES, £C. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — Gentlemen — I take 
the liberty of addressing you, as I know that the very ob- 
ject of your journal is utility — to give practical informa- 
tion to planters. Can you, then, tell me the number of 
acres required as pasture on our sea islands for a given 
number of cattle ? 2d, Can you tell me the day’s task for 
a negro in all the various kinds of work on a plantation 1 
I understand that just such a schedule as I speak of was 
published a few months back in the Charleston Mercury^ 
but I have no opportunity for getting at the files of that 
journal. This information would be of great benefit to 
many who, like myself, are just beginning to plant. 
I am, gentlemen, very respectfully yours, 
'Waring. 
Savannah, April, 1855. 
Threshing . — 500 sheaves for a woman ; GOO for a man. 
In laying out fields into quarters or tasks, a man and 
boy will do 40 acres 
Getting task stakes . — 500 to a hand. 
Getting staves . — 4 men to 800 staves. 
Drawing staves . — 500 each hand. 
Getting barrel heading . — 4 men to 300. 
Hoop poles . — 100 and brought home', if the distance is 
short, or 120 if left in the woods. 
Getting puncheons . — 500 broad puncheons, 4 and 5 feet 
in length, for 3 hands. 
Squaring timber . — 100 feet per day each carpenter. 
Sawing pine . — 100 feet; cypress, 120 feet. 
Making loorm fences . — Rails on the spot, and every- 
thing ready and place clear — a man and woman can put 
up 100 pannels. 
Splitting railp . — 100 rails, 12 feet long and heavy. 
Post and rail fence . — 4 negroes can put up 30 or 40 
pannels per day, dig the holes two and a half to three feet 
deep, put down the posts, and rammed properly at 9 feet 
apart from each other. 
Morticing posts . — A carpenter can make 60 mortices 
Remarks. — It is impossible for us to answer the first 
question of our correspondent, owing to our entire 
ignorance of the quality of his pastures, the amount of feed 
which they produce, the kind of cattle kept, &c. Some of 
our sea-shore stock-raisers will oblige us by answering 
this inquiry. 
As regards the tasks or day’s work allotted to negroes, 
we find the following in Holmes’ Southern Farmer, and 
consider it to be, in the main, fair, and nearly right. — E ds. 
TASKS FOR ABLE-BODIED LABORERS. 
At the different employments of the farm and planta- 
tion. 
per day. 
Splitting garden palins;s . — 500 to 3 men. 
Cutting wood . — 1 cord, 8 by 4, by 4 feet. 
Making rice barrels. — 3*barrels a day ; half barrels, 4 a 
day. 
Shingling . — A square of 10 feet. 
Mowing hay . — For an experienced laborer, half an acre 
per diem. 
Cradling oats or small grain . — An expert hand after a 
little practice, can, with ease, cradle three acres a day ; but 
it is not uncommon for experienced hands to cradle four 
and a half to five acres. 
(Note. — The following tasks may under some circum- 
stances be too large, and should be varied, according to 
the state of land, &c., particularly in ditching, hoeing, 
and listing ; for in many places it would be easier to ditch 
800 feet, than it would 500 where there are stumps, sands, 
&c.) 
Ditching. — GOO square feet. 
Putting mud upon the bank. — 600 square feet. 
In making new drojins. — 15 inches wide, and 2 1-2 feet 
deep, 210 feet in length. 
Cleaning old drains. — 6 to 10 tasks, or quarters, accord- 
ing to the mud. 
Cleaning old ditches. — 1 to 2 tasks, or quarters, accord- 
ing to the mud. 
Turning up land uoiih a hoc. — 1 quarter of an acre; but 
if stiff clay, it will require a third more labor. 
Chopping. — One-halfan acre. 
Listing ground. — Ond-half an acre is the quantity al- 
lotted to each hand, but in old pastures, having a tough 
sod, one-quarter of an acre is as much as they can get 
through with ; and even then with difficulty. 
Bedding up. — In li^ht soil one-q'uarter and a half, to 
two-qaiarters, or one-half an acre. 
Trenching. — For sitiall grain on high land, three-quar- 
ters of an acre, 80 or 90 rows in each quarter. On rice 
plantations, the Suiveyor’s measure is seldom made use 
of. One-half acre is 150 feet each way; a quarter is 75 
feet each way, which is trenched 15 inches from centre 
to centre ; this gives 60- rows in the quarter. 
Covering.- — 3 quarters of an acre, 80 or 00 rows in each 
quarter, 
Sovhng. — 2 1-2 to 3 acres. If the wind is high perhaps 
not more than 1 to 1 1-2 acres, tliis depends on the num- 
ber of trenches in an acre. (See trenching.) 
Hoeing cotton, corn and potatoes. — one-half to one acre. 
Hoeing rice. —om-XmM an acre upon tide lands ; but in- 
lands sometimes not a quarter. 
TOPPING COTTON. 
Editors Southern Cultivator — I have not been in a 
hurry to present, through your journal, to its readers, my 
last experiment in topping cotton, seeing you always have 
a stock of valuable communications on hand which might 
be more acceptable to the readers of the Cultivator than 
any thing I could say on any subject; but the time will 
soon arrive, when if any thing has been gained by topping 
cotton the readers of your journal should know it, that they 
may avail themselves of said information in time to profit 
by a trial themselves the coming season. 
In advance of giving the result of my experiment 
last year, I will say : up to the last of July I have never 
known a fairer prospect for heavy crops of cotton in our 
section, but our hopes were soon blasted, as the drouth 
had then commenced and continued until at leastone-half 
of the forms had dropped off in our lowest bottom lands, 
and but little was realized by the rains afterwards, conse- 
quently not much was gained by topping last year. I 
measuied off, as usual, one acre of upland as good as I had 
on the plantation. Topped two rows and skipped two 
throughout the piece of land selected, which brings out the 
following result: 
Topped rows made of seed cotton 459 lbs. 
Rows not topped 439 
Difference 20 lbs. 
One more year redeems my promise, and I then will 
take leave of you on this subject. Respectfully, 
E, Jjnkins. 
Horse Pen, Choctaw Co ^ May, 1855. 
If you have a good manure heap, protect it -with a 
covering, and though you will not thereby make it any 
richer, you will keep it from growing poorer. 
