AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
79 
Tim Bunker on Losing the Premium 
at the Fair. 
fWlierein Esquire B. gives some broad hints about the 
way prem. 11 ns are not uiifrequently awarded.) 
Mr. Editor : 
I told you in my last about raising a carrot crop 
with a new kind of manure. I did not tell you 
how I lost the premium on the same crop. It is 
an old saying, that “ merit wins,” but I think that 
must have been said in times when men were less 
tricky than they are now. I had always thought, 
that the only thing necessary to get a premium, 
was to raise the best crop ; but I discovered at 
our last fair, that there was a mighty difference 
between raising a premium crop, and getting the 
premium for it. 
You see, our County Fair was held at Hooker- 
town, and the competition in the root crop was 
pretty sharp. The people of that town were up 
in force, and I guess, if there was one load of 
vegetables, there was twenty, heaped up with big 
cabbage heads and squashes,long turnips and beets, 
paisneps and carrots. The Rev. Mr. Slocum was 
up, and both his deacons, Fessenden and Foster, 
and Esquire Jenkins; and all brought along lots 
of garden produce. Smithville was well repre¬ 
sented by the Lawsons, the Tabers, and the Wil¬ 
coxes. 
Now, you see, it so happened that Tom Wilcox 
kept a livery stable, and lrad a mare that he thought 
might take a premium. He fed her high for a 
month beforehand, and got her into first-rate con¬ 
dition, and brought her on to the ground, without 
saying a word to the committee, or any body else, 
that she had the heaves. My neighbor, Jake 
Frink, was chairman of the Judges on roadsters, 
and must have known all about Wilcox s mare, 
as he sold her to him three years ago, and she was 
unsound then, and only brought seventy dollars. 
But Jake had an ax to grind, and was mighty 
anxious to get a premium on carrots, so as to 
take wind out of my sails, So he managed to get 
Tom Wilcox put down among the judges on ve¬ 
getables. Jake thought the thing might be ma¬ 
naged , and, sure enough, he did manage it con¬ 
siderable slick. As soon as the judges came on 
to the ground, Jake— accidentally, of course—met 
Tom, and says he : 
“Mr. Wilcox, you are not a going to enter that 
old mare, are you ; you know unsound horses are 
not allowed to compete.” 
“ Dew tell, Mr. Frink, you don't say so. But 
look here, Jake, she is as fat as a porpus, and I 
have fed her on green stuffs so much, that she 
hasn’t coughed for a week. Nobody ’ll know any¬ 
thing about it, if you do not tell ’em of it. Ha’n’t 
you got anything you want a premium on 1 ‘ One 
good turn deserves another.’ I’m on the commit¬ 
tee for garden sass, you know.” 
Upon this, you see, Mr. Frink took Tom aropnd 
among the roots, and I had the curiosity to keep 
within hearing distance. 
“ Good carrots,” said Tom, “ but you see, your¬ 
self they a’n’t so long or smooth as old Bunker s. 
“I’ll tell you what,” said Jake, “I ll double my 
.hill, to make more of a show, and you can give the 
premium on that.” 
I did not hear any more ; but I saw Jake’s 
hired man unloading a cart about an hour after ; 
and, I guess, if Jake’s sample of carrots had a 
half bushel in it, as the rules required, it had six. 
Some of the people opened their eyes, when 
it was read off at the close of the fair . 
First Premium on Roadsters, Thomas Wilcox, 
of Smithville.... ..$5 00 
First Premium on Carrots, Jacob Frink, of Hook- 
But you see, my eyes had been opened before. 
The only shadow of a claim these men had for a 
premium, was, that the one had the fattest horse, 
and the other had the biggest heap of carrots. 
At the last meeting of our Farmers’ Club, we 
had up the subject of loot crops for discussion. 
Of course, each man gave his experience, and, 
among others, Jake Frink gave the details of his 
mode of raising carrots, for which he took a pre¬ 
mium last Fall. 
When it came my turn to speak, I took occasion 
to congratulate my neighbor on his success, but 
was sorry that he had omitted to give one very 
essential item in his treatment of the crop, viz., 
a large application of horse manure. 
Mr. Frink looked very red in the face, and pretty 
soon had occasion to go out and take the air. 
Whether he is troubled with apoplexy, I could 
not say. 
Now, Mr. Editor, I think it is high time, that 
this business of giving premiums at the fairs, had 
an overhauling. If we can’t have premiums 
awarded according to the merits of the case, one 
very important end of the fairs is defeated. Peo¬ 
ple will very soon lose their confidence in them, 
and will not bring out their products for exhibi¬ 
tion. I hope, you, editors, who know how to 
write, will stir up your readers on this subject. 
Yours, to command, 
Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
Hookertown, Jan. 16, 1858. 
-- --- 
Three Kinds of Farmers.—Our Neighbors, 
Jones, Smith and Johnson. 
Within the range of our daily vision, are two 
farmers who represent two distinct classes of ag¬ 
riculturists. Farmer Jones’ aim and end in all 
his operations is to secure present profit, regard¬ 
less of the future. His house needs repairing and 
painting, not only for its appearance sake, but also 
for its preservation; but as that would take some¬ 
thing at once out of his pocket and yield no im¬ 
mediate return, he concludes to let it go, fur this 
year, at least. So with his barns and oilier out¬ 
buildings. He constructs them out of the cheap¬ 
est materials and in a hasty manner, satisfied if 
they answer for the present, to let the future take 
care of itself. Hence we see his foundations giv¬ 
ing way after the first year’s frost, and his build¬ 
ings leaning at all angles; the doors, hung by 
leathern or old rusty iron hinges, breaking down ; 
the siding, imperfectly nailed on, blowing off; and 
the floors made of thin and poor lumber, breaking 
through. His fences are in the same predicament. 
Wanted only to answer for present use, they are 
patched up out of old and lolten lumber, and are 
constantly breaking down and exposing his crops 
to the incursions of hungry cattle. His mode of 
tillage proceeds on the same principle. Draining, 
manuring, sub-soiling,—he has little faith in them, 
certainly no further than he thinks they will bear 
on the present year’s crops. Skinning, is his style 
of farming: this requires no outlay for an uncer¬ 
tain future: all that he gets out of the land is so 
much clear gain. And he carries out this princi¬ 
ple in his general style of life. His education suf¬ 
fices for the wants of to-day ; so he will not take 
the trouble to inform himself against the demands 
of the* future. Hence, books and papers contain¬ 
ing gelid and useful instruction are banished from 
his table to make room for those affording enter¬ 
tainment only. He mana ;es to get along with his 
present character as a n an and citizen ; so he 
don’t care to build up a i putation for integrity, 
generosity, intelligence 9 '' virtue. Alas, too, 
perhaps be cares only for ^trifles of the present 
life, regardless of the grander scenes of eternity ! 
Over the bill yonder, lives farmer Smith, an in- 
tirely differen. sort of man. Can it be that be 
and Jones both descended from Adam 1 His eyes 
have a good deal of the telescope in them, being 
very much given to look into the distant future. 
He thinks, plans, dreams and talks of time to 
come. He is going to he a grand farmer, one of 
these days. When he gets his plans all matured, 
and when he gets them all, or half of them exe¬ 
cuted, won’t people open their eyes and say he’s 
a long-headed man, that fanner Smith, a man of 
bottom, a genuine “ brick 1” Won’t they! 
To his very bones, he believes in draining, and 
that thorough draining. To prove it, he has been 
at work for two years past, on a range of sand 
hills, cutting trenches dowh their sides four feet 
deep, and laying them with pipe carted a longdis¬ 
tance at great expense. To be sure, lie has nev¬ 
er caught his drains delivering much water yet, 
but they are sure to do so by and by ; the princi¬ 
ple of draining is a good one, and is certain to 
show grand results at a future day. Subsoiling 
is another article in bis creed. And he is proving 
his faith in it by subsoil-plowing a twenty acre 
lot of meadow-land which has a surface soil ol 
virgin mould some two or three feet deep, resting 
on a porous substratum of gravelly loam. His' 
neighbors look over the fence and shake their 
heads, and tell him they think he bad better use 
first the rich soil on tlie surface, before going down 
after that near the center of the earth ; or if be 
is trying to loosen up the subsoil so that his crops 
can send down their roots deeper, lie needn’t 
trouble himself to do that, for his clover and oth¬ 
er crops already strike their roots lower than the 
point of his deepest plow. But he looks wise, and 
lets them talk on : he thinks they who plow shal¬ 
low, are shallow men ; they have n.o thought for 
the future; they have not read of the grand re¬ 
sults of subsoiling. One of these days, perhaps, 
they or their children will see something. 
Need we tell anything more about farmer Jones I 
How he builds stone fences six feet broad at the 
base, so as to have them durable ; bow lie is now 
laying wide and deep the foundations of an im¬ 
mense barn, which it took him five years to plan ; 
and how these and his other schemes for the fu¬ 
ture are on so grand and costly a scale that they 
exhaust his present means of living comfortably, 
and keep him continually in debt 1 He is a large 
hearted man, and lias large ideas, but lie rides his 
hobby to death. 
As we have observed the ways of these t wo men. 
Jones and Smith, we have often thought, what a 
grand thing it would be, if the two could be “ mix¬ 
ed together,” and so form a new product, such as 
we found in a third neighbor, Mr. Johnson ! Mr. 
J. does not manage bis farm fo r present profit oniy, 
but so as to secure immediate returns, and yet 
provide for the future. He constructs his build¬ 
ings in a sufficiently durable manner, and then 
keeps them in repair. He drains and subsoils 
only where such operations are needed, and 
will pay at once and in all time to come. He does 
not crop a piece of land without restoring the fer¬ 
tility taken from it. He manages his grain and 
grass fields, his orchards and his garden so as to 
reap present benefit and still greater returns in 
future. And while Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones loll 
alone will come to poverty, the two combined in 
Mr. Johnson would prosper, first and last. 
Sunday. —One of the most beautiful expres¬ 
sions of Longfellow is this : “ Sunday is the 
golden clasp that binds together the volume of the 
week. 
Bakers, generally speaking, are a set of loaf¬ 
ers, often knead-y, and not always well bred. 
