334 
AMEEIOAI^ AGRIOULTUEIST. 
[August, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm. 
New Series.—No. 2 . 
JOSEPH UAKUIS, M. S. 
“ Did you see that article in the papers about 
eighty-cent wheat?” asked the Deacon, as lie sat 
in the shade of a maple tree in the corner of his 
clover field. “ It looks as though this country was 
going to see hard times. We can make notliing in 
growing wheat at present prices, and I do not see 
how the farmers at the West can either.”—“Well, 
Deacon,” I said, “ you and I have lived long enough 
to know that dark forebodings of evil arc usually 
exaggerated. I have seen good wheat sold for 
‘three York shillings’ a bushel, and 1 believe you 
once sold some for twenty-five cents a bushel. 
Look round. Deacon, and see what has been done 
since you first bought this farm. Where we now 
sit, and for miles around, nothing but forest. The 
first time I came from Rochester, in several places 
along the road, so-called, I had to crawl on 
the fence to keep out of the mud. Now we 
liavea really good gravel road. AVe have churches, 
school houses, substantial homes, fine orchards, 
good gardens, handsome lawns, with bright, intelli¬ 
gent, well-dressed children playing croquet, etc. 
Do not interrupt me, I know what you would say. 
These changes, whatever evils may come with 
them, are for the better. Forgetting the things that 
are behind, let us press forward. Courage, hope, 
self-denial and work, have hitherto sustained us, and 
depend upon it, the world will not come to an end 
till the end comes—even though we have ‘ eighty- 
cent wheat.’ But we shall not have eighty-cent 
wheat—at any rate, not for long. It cannot be. 
Writers on this subject overlook one fact. They say 
a man has but one stomach, and that not a large one. 
It is soon tilled, and no matter how cheap wheat may 
be, he can not eat more than he can. Improved 
implements, they say', and cheap transportation, 
and the clearing up of new' lands, and the use of 
fertilizers on the old farm, have so increased the 
production of w heat, that there is an actual surplus 
which the world cannot nse. There are not stom¬ 
achs enough. How short-sighted this is. It is 
true that a man cannot eat more than a certain 
amount of bread. It is also true that he can do 
more work in a given time, than at any former 
period. People arc better educated. They have 
the best of tools, implements, and machinery.” 
“Yes,” said the Deacon, “and on the cheap, 
new lands of tlie West, they can produce wheat 
and send it here at a price that will ruin us.” 
“Wait a moment. Deacon,” 1 replied, “you 
think I am vvandering from the subject. Perhaps 
1 am, perhaps not. AVliat I am trying to get at is 
this: The world, as a world, is better educated, 
more skillful, and possesses wonderful appliances of 
all kinds, and ought to be, and is able to do a given 
amount of work in half the time, or quarter the 
time than it could fifty or twenty-five years ago, and 
consequently the world is twice as rich, or four 
times as rich as it was. Now, wdiat will the world 
do with its surplus wealth ? It cannot eat more 
wheat, you say, it can wear better clothes, and live 
in better houses, and have more comforts and lux¬ 
uries, but it cannot eat more bread. And conse¬ 
quently the farmer, with his improved facilities, 
can very easily overstock the market, and leave him¬ 
self no profit, and no adequate compensation for 
his skill and labor. 
“There is no truth in this idea. An intelligent 
man does not want to live on bread alone. We 
think more, work harder, and want better, more 
nutritious, and more easily digested food. We 
want more beef, mutton, lamb, veal, pork, butter, 
cheese and milk. AVe are .searching the world over 
for these products of the farm. There is no article 
of commerce, trade, or manufacture, that is more 
needed, or is in greater demand than good meat. 
And the more intelligent, skillful, industrious and 
wealthy the world becomes, the moi-e meat will it 
want, I was going to say, need, and I believe it, but 
will not insist on this point. It is certain, how¬ 
ever, that the demand for meat is steadily increas¬ 
ing, and the price advancing. It is a costly article. 
Ten pounds of gluten in bread, or legumin in peas 
and beans, or vegetable albumen in grass, will rarely 
give us over one pound of fibrine or albumen in 
beef or mutton. Animals are expensive machines 
wdiich have to be kept running night and day, and 
it will require all our skill, experience and science 
in breeding and feeding, to produce the meat which 
the world will eat. A densely settled country like 
China, is necessarily tilled with a vegetable-eating, 
and not a meat-eating people. If India, Russia, 
Australia, California, and our new lands in the 
Northwest, furnish the world with cheap bread, the 
world will have more money to expend in meat, 
and will be able and willing to pay good prices for it. 
“ A year ago, the Queen of England, owing to 
the scarcity and high price of mutton, thought she 
would do all she could to stop the killing of sheep 
before they had got their full growth, and ordered 
that no lamb be eaten in her household. Poor 
Queen, her intentions were good ; but it is not the 
scarcity of sheep that is the trouble, but the 
scarcity and cost of food that is required to raise 
and fatten them. Then why talk about over-pro¬ 
duction ? If grass, hay, corn, oats, barley and 
wheat are too cheap, sooner or later they will be 
converted into beef, and mutton, and pork, and the 
good Queen can have her roast leg of lamb, and mint 
sauce, without hypothecating the crown jewels. 
“ Our old friend, the Doctor, once remarked : ‘if 
you want to make money, aim to produce the lux¬ 
uries, rather than the necessities of life.’ The fact 
is, the so-called luxuries soon become necessaries. 
It is certainly true of meat, eggs, milk and butter. 
And this reminds me. Deacon,” I said, “that instead 
of cabbages, you had better grow cauliflowers, and 
still better, celery. Celery is now somewhat of a 
luxury. It will soon be considered as necessaiy as 
any other vegetable. And we shall soon have thou¬ 
sands of acres of our mucky, swamp lands, occu¬ 
pied with the crop, and it will be boxed up and 
sent all over the world. 
“My own plan of growing it involves very little 
labor. It is planted on land so low and so wet, 
early in the season, that it cannot be plowed before 
the middle of June. It is light sand and muck, not 
naturally rich, at any rate, it produces only a mod¬ 
erate crop of grass or hay. AA’e plow the land as 
soon as it will work properly, and harrow and roll. 
Then ivith a common corn-marker, we mark off 
rows five feet ajjart, and scatter along these 
rows a mixture of half superpho.sphate, and half 
nitrate of soda, say a good handful to each yard or 
two paces of the row. AVe do not sow it broad¬ 
cast, but drop it along the row. AVe then take a 
horse-hoe or cultivator, remove all but three teeth, 
and set the cultivator as nari-ow as possible—say 
at fifteen to eighteen inches wide, and let.the horse 
walk along the mark, and set the cultivator to run 
as deep as we can get it to work jiroperly. AVe 
sometimes go twice in the row. The object is to 
make tbe soil as loose, and deep, and mellow as 
possible, and to mix the superphosphate and niti ate 
with the soil. Set out the plants in the rows eight 
or nine inches apart. You will be astonished at 
the good effect of the cultivator. It makes the 
soil so loose that the plants can be set out with the 
greatest ease. Of course, it would be just as well 
to cultivate the whole of the land, but this plan 
saves time, and the land between the rows will be 
thoroughly cultivated afterwards, i;i order to keep 
down the weeds. 
“ If the laud is rich enough, it is not necessary to 
use the superphosphate and nitrate; but on my 
farm, I find great advantage from its use on celery, 
strawberries and asparagus.” 
“ How late will it do set out the celery plants? ” 
asked the Deacon. “In this section they can be 
set out as late as the first' week in August, and 
later as you go South.” 
“ Are you going to get a liinder ? ”—“ No, not as 
long as I can hire two. There are enteiprising 
young men in every neighborhood, or ought to be, 
who will keep one or two or three binders, and go 
round cutting wheat by the acre, just as they keep 
steam threshing machines, to thresh grain by the 
busiiel. It is cheaper to hire than to buy. 
“ I hired two binders last year, and hope to do the 
same thing this year. All we had to do was to 
stick up the sheaves in stocks. Harvest time is 
now about our most leisure season. I thresh in the 
field where the wheat grew, with a steam thresher. 
Make the straw-stack in the field, and draw the 
straw home in the w'intei-.” 
“But suppose it rains?”—“We stop. If we 
were drawing to the barn we should have to stop 
also. And we can draw faster to a machine in the 
field, than we can to the barn—at any rate we can 
unload faster, because the man on the load has 
merely to throw the sheaves on to the platform of 
the machine, whereas in the barn, or at a stack, to¬ 
wards the top, he has to lift them up above his head. 
“ Our mowing machines, reapers and binders, 
and steam threshers, are all that we can desire, 
with one exception ; the straw carrier is not long- 
enough. The manufacturer who will double the 
length of the longest carrier we now have, will re¬ 
ceive the hearty thanks of every man who has ever 
had to take the straw away from one on the top of 
a stack. It is only a question of a few pounds 
more coal. In this section, straw is valuable as 
fodder for sheep and horses, and we all want good, 
high stacks, well topped off to shed the rain,” 
“ My sheep all through the winter months get no 
hay; nothing but straw and mali-sijrouts. After 
lambing, we give the ewes clover hay, and a few 
mangles, malt-sprouts or roots. I can winter twice 
as many sheep as 1 can summer, and such is the 
ease on most of the farms in the wheat-grow¬ 
ing sections. You w’ill say that this means too 
much grain, and too little grass and clover. 
“Meal and water is good for man and beast, 
easily made, and it is surprising that ever}' farmer 
docs not nse it. Oat-meal is better, but for horses, 
cows and sheep, we use corn-meal. All W'e do is 
to stir in some meal in the water in the trough 
w'here the horses drink. If it gets sour, empty the 
trough and let the pigs have it. At first the horses 
do not like it, and it is better to give them a little 
in a pail, until they get used to it, when they will 
drink it as readily as pure water. AVhen the 
horses come home tired and thirsty, at noon or 
night, nothing can be better for them. Or at any 
time when they have to work longer than usual, a 
drink of meal and water puts new life and vigor 
into them. By stirring up the meal from the bot¬ 
tom just before the horse drinks, or even while he 
is drinking, he will get more meal.” 
For some time the Deacon had not been listening. 
This is an old story to him.—“ There he is, the vil- 
lian,” he exclaimed, and started for the barn. 
There has been a crow in the neighborhood, prob¬ 
ably an escaped tame one, that carries off eggs and 
chickens. It makes the Deacon very mad. AVhile 
I w'as talking, he caught sight of him, and ran for 
the gun. 1 have not heard the report, but sooner 
or later, I hav'e no doubt the Deacon w'ill get him. 
Do Toads do Harm? 
Strange as it may appear, all do not recognize a 
friend in the toad, for w'e are asked, “ if they do any 
harm in the garden?” Under the writer’s front 
stoop there is a shelter for several toads, and it is 
great amusement to watch them as they come out 
tow'ards nigiit for their evening meal. An insect is 
seen, and then ho is not. One can not, at first 
sight, follow the rapid motion of the tongue of the 
toad, as it whips up the insect with the rapidity of 
a wink. The ancient belief that the toad’s head 
contained a “ jewel,” must have had reference to 
that tongue of his, which is indeed “a jewel” in 
the way of an insect destroyer. Harris, the ento¬ 
mologist, states that he fed a toad with some black 
caterpillars, about three-fourths of an inch long. 
\Yhen he had fed a hundred he was tired, but the 
toad was not, but was ready for more. Toads are 
welcomed in our garden, but snakes, which some¬ 
times come in from the woods near by, are not, but 
only because they prey upon toads. By all means 
encourage the toads, and discourage the snakes. 
