FARMING IN ALABAMA.-RAISING WHEAT IN NEW JERSEY. 
183 
upon the subject. We are personally acquainted 
with Mr. Young, and can recommend his school to 
the attention of our friends. Such a thing has been 
long wanted in this State, and we trust he may meet 
with that encouragement in its establishment which 
the paramount interest of the subject demands. His 
associates in the conduct of the institute, Messrs. 
Thomas and Thompson, are among our most reputa¬ 
ble citizens, and are peculiarly qualified for their sta¬ 
tions. No man now living in this State is so well 
and favorably known in the ranks of agriculture as 
our estimable and venerable friend, David Thomas, 
the Visitor and Adviser of the Institute. 
FARMING IN ALABAMA. 
We have the pleasure to inform our brother farm¬ 
ers in the different sections of our wide-spread coun¬ 
try, that in this State, as well as in the south and 
southwest generally, there has been for some months 
past a general movement by the cultivators of the 
soil in favor of an improved state of husbandry. This 
is manifest from the late agricultural conventions 
held in Montgomery, Mobile, and Tuscaloosa, in 
Alabama, and the one recently held in Milledgeville. 
in the State of Georgia. These meetings must result 
in much good to the agricultural interests of the 
country. We need not expect sudden changes. 
Indeed, it would not be best for the cause of agricul¬ 
ture ; but that there is a much greater spirit manifest¬ 
ed throughout the southern States at the present, in 
the improvement of husbandry, than has before ex¬ 
isted, cannot be doubted by the most casual observer. 
So far as it respects our immediate section of coun¬ 
try, I have forwarded you the Southern Shield, which 
gives the published accounts of the meetings of the 
Barbour County Agricultural Society, and I will take 
this opportunity to observe, that, as a farmer, I feel 
under much obligation to the political press, for the 
interest that appears to be taken by them in the cause 
of agriculture recently. 
I have been much interested by the communica¬ 
tions which have appeared from time to time in the 
American Agriculturist from my brother farmers in 
different sections of our wide spread country. Your 
periodical appears to be what its name would indi¬ 
cate, completely an American publication, as I have 
found in its pages correspondents from Maine to 
Louisiana. This, being the case* I will give you 
some small account of the farming operations of 
1845, so far as my own farm is concerned ; and we 
must first say that this is a new section of country, a 
large part of the farms in Barbour County have not 
produced more than ten crops, and many of them not 
more than five; secondly, that ours is what may be 
termed with propriety the cotton growing region, and 
on most of the large farms on the Chatahoochee river, 
there is much more than half the land planted in cotton. 
My farm has 250 acres of cleared land. It is 
mostly sandy land, or what is termed pine land. We 
commenced in the woods, and have made six crops 
on it, and have now planted the seventh. We sowed 
last November 60 acres with the common black oats, 
which have stood the winter well, and will soon be 
headed out. The business of 1844 was wound up 
with the year. The month of January was a fine 
month for business with us, there having been but 
littie rain and but little cold weather. That month 
was principally taken up in hauling out compost ma¬ 
nure, rolling and burning logs, and knocking down 
cotton stocks. We hauled out 475 cart-loads of 15 
bushels to the load, making 7,125 bushels. This 
manure is a compost of the blue marl and pine straw, 
of about equal parts of each, with the treading of 
cattle. We commenced last July to haul in the straw, 
and hauled in the marl in October. The cattle being 
about 40 in number, are penned every night the year 
round. The manure we put on our land in the drill. 
About half the plantation which is cultivatedj is 
broken on the horizontal plan, and is planted in corn 
on the drill system; the rows are 6 feet apart, and 
the stocks 2| feet apart in the drill. We have 
100 acres in corn, 80 in cotton, 60 in oats, 3 in 
potatoes, and 3 in rice. The whole is now planted, 
and we are at this time plowing and hoeing out the 
corn, and putting it to a stand. We intend, should 
we be spared the next year, to add the sugar cane to 
our provision crop. We had green peas on the 25th 
of March, and in our climate we have vegetables the 
year round of some kind. Thus, my dear sir, I have 
attempted to throw together a rough sketch of our 
farming operations away down south. Should you 
deem them worthy a place in your paper, you are 
at liberty to use them as you think best. 1 have 
some hope (should nothing take place to prevent) of 
visiting your city the coming summer, and making 
an agricultural tour through your section of country. 
Alexander McDonald. 
Eufaula, Barbour Co., Ala., April 6, 1845. 
We shall be highly pleased to see our respected 
correspondent in New York, and hope he will make 
it convenient to attend the State Society show at 
Utica when he comes on. We observe that Mr. North, 
senior editor of the South Western Farmer, intends 
to be there, as well as many other southern gentle¬ 
men. We are heartily glad of this, and do assure 
them that there are few things in the United Slates 
better calculated to instruct and interest them as farm¬ 
ers and planters, than the annual shows of the New 
York State Agricultural Society. 
Raising Wheat in New Jersey. — I will suggest 
the inquiry whether the culture of wheat might not 
be improved in this and adjoining counties, where the 
soil is somewhat wet and clayey, by adopting the Ca¬ 
nadian mode of summer tilling; plowing light the first 
time, and the second time running the plow one or 
two inches below the first, and laying the land off 
into narrow beds or lands—plowing up and down 
instead of sideways of any elevation in the ground, 
and taking care to keep open the furrow between the 
lands, that the water in fall and spring may be carried 
off and not left to stand upon and kill the wheat. 
This is almost the universal practice in Upper Cana¬ 
da, upon moist clay lands, with a thin soil above the 
clay, where the farms are more noted for good wheat 
than in any other part of the province. Their new 
lands produce better and more wheat after a few 
plowings, and several crops have been taken off 
The first crops the straw has too rank a growth. 
Essex Co., N. J. E. P. 
Clayey soils are universally plowed in the above 
manner in this State and the West. It is called 
“ laying the ground up into lands.” Subsoil plowing 
would be a great additional advantage. 
