286 
AMEEICAl^ AGEICULTUEIST. 
[ J ULY, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm. 
New Series.—No. 1. 
JOSEPH HARIHS, M. S. 
It is over eight years since the last number of my 
“ Walks and Talks on the Farm ” appeared in the 
American Agriculturist. Since then, my good friend 
and neighbor, the Deacon, and I have had many 
walks and talks together on the farm. The Dea¬ 
con’s farm has greatly improved. A portion of his 
land has been underdrained and produces splendid 
crops. He plows earlier and cultivates more thor¬ 
oughly, and if he is not careful he will soon be a 
model farmer. 1 do not think he keeps any more 
stock or makes any more or better manure, but he 
grows better and cleaner crops simply because he 
works his land better. Like most of the farmers 
in this section, he has been using more or less 
phosphates, especially for winter wheat. Some¬ 
times he thinks it pays and sometimes not. The 
truth is, that nearly half of my farm and the Dea¬ 
con’s consist of low, mucky land which, if partial¬ 
ly drained and well worked, will yield good crops 
with little or no manure. Last year the Deacon 
raised an acre or more of good winter cabbages on 
this black mucky soil without any manure. And 
land whicli is rich enough to produce good cabbage, 
certainly will produce ordinary farm crops, such as 
corn, oats, potatoes, and grass. Adjoining the 
cabbages, on similar land, he sowed a few' acres of 
millet and had a splendid crop ; the land was left 
remarkably clean and in good condition. The other 
half of the Deacon’s farm consists of higher, drier, 
and poorer land—but which, when thoroughly 
cultivated and kept free from weeds, will produce 
good crops of wheat, beans, corn, and clover. 
I have always told the Deacon, that the best way 
to manage his farm was to keep more stock and 
make more manure, even if he had to buy bran, 
malt-sprouts, and corn, to feed the animals in con¬ 
nection with the coarse fodder raised on the farm. 
I have not converted the Deacon and never shall, 
though I felt strong hopes of him last spring when 
he set out an acre of cabbages. He had so much 
success with them, that doubtless he will continue 
to grow cabbages as a farm crop for years to come. 
On my own farm there has been no change in the 
management during the last nine years. I con¬ 
tinue to keep a large amount of stock, and to buy 
considerable food for them, especially that which 
will make rich manure. I have adopted this 
method for about twenty years, and I see no 
reason for changing it. 
Even the Deacon agrees with me now, that the 
plan, in my circumstances, is a good one. He crit¬ 
icised me formerly, because he did not understand 
what I was aiming at. He thought I was ljuying 
feed and consuming nearly everything that I raised 
on the farm, in order to make manure for growing 
ordinary farm crops. He thought it would not 
pay. He may be right, though I think much might 
be said on the other side. 
In my own case, however, I use manure for 
growing mangel-wurtzel, beets, carrots, parsnips, 
■cabbages, onions, and similar crops, which can ouiy 
be grown on the richest and cleanest of land. Dur¬ 
ing the last eight years, I have greatly extended 
the area of land devoted to these crops. I can not 
compete with the Rochester nurserymen in buying 
manure from the city stables. It is too far to draw 
it and they take all there is. I am obliged to make 
my own. What I make is far richer in plant-food 
and more valuable than any I conld buy. During 
the last eight years the price of superphosphate 
has been reduced and the quality improved. I use 
it freely and with great advantage. 
The Deacon and I are eight years older. Twenty 
years ago this spring, I set out about a hundred 
Norway spruces. They are now over forty feet 
high. They are beautiful, healthy, and vigorous. 
When 1 think how small they were when I set 
them out, and what magnificent trees they are now, 
I feel that the years are steadily advancing and 
that I must be getting older. So of my Northern 
Spy apple orchard. The trees have grown until the 
branches almost meet, and what is better, they bear 
fruit abundantly every year. There has been no 
change in the management of the orchard during 
the last seventeen years, during whieh time it has 
been in grass. The trees were set out in 1857, and 
for the first ten years the land was planted with 
corn, potatoes, etc. Since the trees commenced to 
bear, the land has been kept as a pasture for sheep 
and pigs. It has been repeatedly top-dressed with 
manure. And whenever we have any weeds or 
rubbish of any kind, it is drawn into the orchard 
and spread over the land. It is eonvenient to have 
such a place. We are never at a loss where to 
put weed-seeds, coal-ashes, refuse lime, turnip, 
beet, and cabbage leaves, carrot and parsnip tops. 
Anything that will make manure or mulch the 
land, anything that the pigs will eat in whole or 
in part is taken to the orchard. In this way the 
land has become exceedingly rich. In the spring, 
the moment the snow is off the land, the grass be¬ 
gins to start and we soon have a fine bite for the 
ewes and lambs. And all through the season, no 
matter how dry it is, we are always sure of a little 
good pasture in the orchard. I am so well satisfied 
with the advantages of this metliod of managing 
an orchard, that I have set out several acres of 
apple trees near the barn-yard, with the ultimate 
intention of seeding it down to grass and keeping 
it as a permanent pasture. In the meantime I 
keep the land between the rows of trees under cul¬ 
tivation. In fact, I am using the land as a Field- 
Garden. It is heavily manured, carefully and re¬ 
peatedly plowed late in the autumn and early in 
the spring, and worked into the finest condition 
for hoed crops, drilled in wide enough apart to 
admit the use of a cultivator. We onlj- cultivate 
one way ; and between the rows of apple trees, 
running in the direction in which we cultivate, we 
set out currant bushes which now bear large crops. 
It takes a good many years to make our dry, sandy 
upland rich enough for permanent pasture. But I 
think the above method will accomplish the object, 
and in the meantime much more than pay its own 
way. I do not say that this is the best method of 
preparing land for a permanent pasture. It de¬ 
pends on circumstances. 
Five years ago I w'as at Rothamsted, after an ab¬ 
sence of thirty years. Mr. Lawes, or Sir John Ben¬ 
nett Lawes, as he now is called, in recognition of 
his pre-eminent services in the field of agricultural 
research, has converted many acres of the land for¬ 
merly under tillage into permanent pasture. A fine 
herd of Hereford steers were grazing on the land. 
It was stocked heavy enough to keep the grass 
well cropped,-and the steers were fed every day all 
the American cotton-seed cake they would eat. 
Of all vegetable substances, there is nothing whieh 
makes such rich manure as cotton-seed cake. It 
may not be as nutritious as linseed cake, but it is 
richer in nitrogen, phosphates and potash. And as 
Dr. Vceleker well remarked, it has this practical 
advantage : You can feed fatting cattle or sheep 
all they will eat. They will not eat too much. 
With linseed-oil cake, corn and other grain, as w'e 
all know, we have to be careful every day to meas¬ 
ure out the proper allowance. It is necessary to 
have a reliable man do the feeding, or some days the 
animals will get too much and some days too little, 
and their digestive organs are soon out of order. 
In process of time any pasture land stocked with 
cattle or sheep having an unlimited supply of 
cotton-seed cake, must get very rich, and there are 
many piaces in this country where the plan could 
be adopted to advantage. Such, for instance, as 
the so-called barrens of Long Island, and hundreds 
of thousands of acres on the Atlantic slope. There 
is also much hilly land which is now comparatively 
unproductive, and on which it would be an expen¬ 
sive operation, even if we had it, to draw manure. 
This poor land may be slowly and surely reclaimed 
by stocking it with sheep or cattle, and feeding 
them all the cotton-seed cake they would eat. 
Since we last wrote these Walks and Talks on 
the Farm, the subject of ensilage has attracted 
much attention. Its success is mainly due to the 
fact that corn fodder is one of the most profitable 
crops wliich can be grown for feeding cattle. 
horses and sheep. The advocates of ensilage have 
done much good by calling attention to tlie great 
value of corn fodder. Whether it is better to cure 
the fodder or to preserve it in the green state, is a 
question of cost. One fact should not be over¬ 
looked ; our dry, hot climate is admirably adapted, 
not only for growing the corn-fodder, but also for 
curing it. I cut my corn-fodder with a self-raking 
reaper, tie it into bundles, stand it up in small 
shocks, and afterwards put nine of these shocks 
into one large central shock, carefully made and 
tied at the top with willow' or rye-straw bands. 
If properly made, the corn-fodder keeps perfectly 
in these large shocks, and can be drawn in from 
time to time during the winter—drawing, of course, 
as much at one time as can be properly stored away. 
One of the most remarkable changes which has 
taken place in our agriculture during the past eight 
years is the general nse of superphosphate for 
winter wheat. That it pays the farmers to use it, 
there can be lio doubt. Farmers are not inclined 
to make accurate experiments; but they do not 
continue to pay out money year after year for an 
article the use of which is unprofitable. How long 
the nse of phosphates will continue profitable, will 
depend on the amount of organic matter existing 
in the soil, and upon the use which is made of the 
increased crops obtained from the use of the phos¬ 
phates. If all the crops are sold off the farm, we 
should soon, except in rare cases, so far impov¬ 
erish the soil that profitable crops could not be 
grown. On the other hand, if we use the money 
obtained from the increased crops of wheat, barley, 
potatoes, vegetables, etc., to buy a small amount 
of bran, cotton-seed cake, malt-sprouts, etc., to 
feed out in connection with our straw, corn-fod¬ 
der, clover hay, etc., the use of phosphates will 
enrich rather than impoverish the land. 
Tear before last the wheat crop in this section 
was the best I have known for thirty-two years. 
The Deacon has lived here much longer than this, 
and he says he has never before known so good a 
crop. And farmers who cleared up the land from 
the original forest say the same thing. One of 
them told me—and he is a reliable man—that he 
got fifteen hundred bushels of wheat from thirty 
acres. It was not phosphates in this case; he 
drilled in ashes and plaster; but it was not ashes 
and plaster that produced the crop. Whatever the 
cause, it is evident that our soils are still capable 
of producing good crops of wheat. 
One thing is certain, our farmers as a rule are 
working their land better than formerly. We have 
better plows, better cultivators, better harrows, 
better rollers, and better horse-hoes, though the 
latter are not half as good as they ought to be. 
We do more fall-plowing. Even the Deacon har¬ 
rowed his corn-stubble last fall, and got it ready 
to drill in oats this spring. We are getting more 
and more in the habit of preparing our land in the 
autumn. The Deacon is not here to-day, or per¬ 
haps he might dispute some of these statements. 
“Hard times’’—I should say so. But the Ameri¬ 
can farmer is not a gi'umbler—certainly not when 
he has good cause to grumble. He is one of the 
most hopeful and energetic of men. Last year, he 
had no wheat, no beans, no fruit. He had good 
potatoes, but the price was so low that they hardly 
paid for digging and marketing. He had a great 
crop of oats, and a fair crop of hay, but the crops 
he depended on to bring in the money were essen¬ 
tially a failure. My own wheat crop was the 
poorest I have known for thirty-four years. But 
we have lived through it. And to-day (June 2), 
the country never looked more beautiful, or the 
prospects brighter. Some farmers say the dry 
weather in April gave the wheat a set-back. But, 
as a rule, our wheat never looked better. We feel 
decidedly encouraged, and look for better times. 
I was in New York last week, and called at the 
American Agriculturist office. They seemed pleased 
to see me. The truth is, the editors look more like 
farmers than city people. The managing editor 
was in his shirt-sleeves, and w'orks as hard as any 
