532 
AMERIOAI^ j\aRIOULTUEIST. 
[Decembbe, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm. 
New Series.—No. 6. 
Yesterday I had a visit from a young gentleman 
who is going to Nebraska to engage in raising pigs 
on a large scale. He has been there and thinks 
the business is not conducted on scientific princi¬ 
ples, and yet it pays as well as any other branch of 
farming. If properly managed, he believes large 
profits can be realized. There need be no fears on 
that point. The only question is in regard to 
“ proper management.” 
I have also been favored with another visit from 
a pig and pork-producer in this State—an intelli¬ 
gent, educated lady. She keeps pure-bred Berk- 
shires, and gives them the best of care, and yet she 
said the profits were very small. She did not lose 
anything, but she made nothing. She kept the 
pigs solely for pork, and sold young pigs to her 
neighbors, but got no more for them than if they 
were not pure bred. She had no ambition to be a 
breeder. I told her that was a mistake. As long 
as she raised thorougbred pigs, and raised good 
ones, she should sell the best of them for breeders, 
and dispose of the others as she is now doing. She 
should have two strings to her bow. 
After she was gone, tlie Deacon and I talked the 
matter over.—“It is very evident,” I said, “that 
pigs are attracting more attention than for some 
years past.”—“I had rather raise potatoes,” said 
the Deacon.—“You want to do both,” said the 
Doctor. “Buy mill-feed for the pigs, and make a 
lot of rich manure, and use the manure to grow 
potatoes.”—“It don’t pay,” said the Deacon, “and 
this lady has found it out, and the young gentle¬ 
man who is going West will find it out too. lam 
sorry for him. It is you agricultural writers who 
induce these young men to leave the cities. They 
expect to hunt and fish, and live like gentlemen, 
and make a fortune in farming.” 
“ The Deacon is getting worse and worse,” said 
the Doctor, “he needs a blue pill and a dose of 
quinine. What harm do these young men do ? 
The cities get young men from the farm; why 
should not the farm get young men from the 
cities?”—“Oh, well,” said the Deacon, with a 
smile, “ I suppose I am an old fogy. Let the young 
men come if they want to and welcome, all I say is 
that farming is a poor business, and they will soon 
find it out and be back in the cities. Wheat at 
eighty cents a bushel, here in the State of New 
York, means hard times for farmers everywhere.” 
—“ But this young man,” said the Doctor, “ is not 
going West to raise wheat, he is going to raise 
hogs, and I believe he will make it pay. But even 
if he does not, money is not the only thing in the 
world worth living for, and a few years on the 
western prairies will make a man of him.” 
“ Have it your own way,” said the Deacon, “ but 
I tell you farming is a poor business. There are 
no prizes and lots of blanks. This young man will 
put his money in hogs, and cattle, and sheep. 
After he has got fairly going, the grasshoppers or 
drouth, or frost, will ruin his crops; cholera will 
kill half his hogs, and leave the other half weak 
and worthless ; his sheep will perish in the winter, 
and have foot-rot and scab in summer. Lung 
disease may break out in his herd of fancy cows.” 
—“Yes,” said the Doctor, interrupting, “or a 
cyclone may strike him, or his horses be stolen, 
and his house burn up and he be obliged to live in a 
dug-out, but if he keeps up his courage he is less 
to be pitied than the man who, surrounded with 
comforts, worries himself over imaginary evils. I 
have great faith in these young men who go West. 
They will meet with no greater difiSeulties than the 
men who came here when this country was a 
wilderness.”—“ I hope not,” said the Deacon, “if 
they have half the trials we endured, they will 
wish themselves back at home again.” 
“We are forgetting the pigs,” I said, “and I 
have never known a time when they were more 
worthy of attention. Many young people are 
interested in their improvement. I get more let¬ 
ters asking questions about hogs than about any 
other subject. Here is one from a farmer at 
Lincoln, Nebraska. He says the Poland-China 
hogs are all the rage, but he thinks they do not 
mature early enough, and he wants to know what 
breed he can keep that will give him pigs weighing 
two hundred and eighty pounds at eight months 
old. Now the truth of this matter is that any of 
our breeds will do this—Polaud-Chinas, Berkshires, 
Cheshires, Chester Whites, Jersey Beds,Yorkshires, 
Suffolks or Essex. The modern Suffolks and 
Yorkshires are a comparatively small white breed 
that fatten easily and mature early. The Essex 
are a black breed, with similar characteristics. The 
other breeds mentioned are larger. If I should say 
that they do not fatten as easily or mature as early 
as the smaller breeds, the matter would be dis¬ 
puted. I have always said that where hogs ai-e 
kept with no reference to selling any of them for 
breeders at high prices, in other words, where 
hogs are kept solely to make pork, I can see no 
advantage in keeping pure-bred stock, and the 
-same is true of cattle and sheep. Where beef only 
is the object, it does not pay to keep pure-bred 
Shorthorns or Herefords. It is like using mahogany 
for fuel. The breeders may dispute the assertion, 
but I am confident that it does not pay to keep 
high-bred American Merinoes merely for their wool 
and mutton. Their value consists in their power of 
impressing their characteristics on their offspring, 
and in improving ordinary Hocks. For this purpose 
they are of great value. But it is absurd to sup¬ 
pose that a sheep which gives you a fleece weighing 
thirty pounds—six pounds of which is wool, and 
twenty-four pounds yolk, is in himself, as a mere 
wool-producer, a profitable animal. That twenty- 
four pounds of yolk can be produced only by the 
highest feeding, and it is worth nothing when you 
get it. But such a ram can be used on flocks of 
ewes that have dry, light fleeces, with great advan¬ 
tage. A single cross may double the annual weight 
of wool, and still more the weight of fleece. 
I am well aware that this kind of reasoning ap¬ 
plies with less force to hogs than to cattle and 
sheep, because they are so much more prolific. It 
takes but a short time to get a herd of pure-bred 
pigs, and if the pure breds are as hardy, as easily 
raised, as prolific, as good mothers, and as easily 
fattened as good grade pigs, then the slightly 
higher prices asked for the pure breds ac the start, 
is no particular objection. I believe, however, that 
as pigs are ordinarily fed and managed, pork can 
be produced with less care and labor from good 
grades than from pure breds. And I so advised 
my young friend who is going to start a herd in 
Nebraska. Let him buy the best common sows he 
can find and breed them to a pure-bred boar. If 
he selects his boar with good judgment, he can 
raise “extra Philadelphias” from the start, and 
such pigs command the highest prices in the 
Chicago market.” 
“But,” said the Doctor, “why cannot he pro¬ 
duce such pigs from some established herd ?”— 
“ Perhaps he can ; though I do not happen to know 
the breed. The pure breds will either be too big 
or too small. The small breeds fatten so easily 
that they are deficient in vigor, and lack appetite 
and digestion. Select a sow from the large breeds, 
and cross her with a smaU-breed boar, and you get 
the desirable qualities of both. Such at any rate 
is my opinion.” 
A gentleman in Maryland sent the American, 
Agriculturist thirty-two new subscribers for 1885, 
“and now,” said he, “I want you to do me a 
favor. Ask Mr. Harris to give us something new, 
and not merely his old talks of ’65 and ’66, and tell 
him not to praise his own methods too much.” 
When I showed the letter to the Deacon, a smile 
of amusement and satisfaction passed over his 
face, but he said not a word. He kept smiling and 
smiling ; then put on his glasses, and read the 
letter again, names of subscribers and all. I looked 
at him, but he said nothing, merely smiled. I could 
get no comfort out of the Deacon. 
It would not be true to say that this letter pleased 
me. I have thought of it a good deal. It i.s a 
genuine letter. It is not made up by some of my 
brother editors to take the starch out of me. It is 
no joke. It comes from a good friend of the 
paper. It doubtless represents his honest views 
and wishes, and deserves respectful consideration. 
One thing I can say, and that is, I am not re¬ 
publishing my old talks. Every line I write for 
the American Agriculturist is written out new. 1 
never copy my old articles—never preach old ser¬ 
mons. The truth of the matter is this ; These 
“ Walks and Talks on the Farm” are just what 
they purpose to be. I live on the farm, carry it on 
myself, walk about it and talk about it. I wrote 
my first article for the papers on this farm in 1850. 
I live a quiet, and what some people would call an 
isolated life. If there is nothing new in these 
“ Walks and Talks,” it is because there is nothing 
new on the farm. I talk about what actually hap¬ 
pens, what we are doing, and what we propose to 
do. Such talks are necessarily egotistical. The 
Deacon does not praise my doings. If they are to 
be praised at all, I have to do it myself ! 1 am get¬ 
ting old, and I am asked to give something new. 
It has set me to thinking. And the conclusion I 
have come to is that my Maryland friend is right, 
1 have fallen into a rut, and it is time I got out of 
it, and so to-morrow, Oct. 15, I propose to start 
on a trip West, and see other farms besides my own 
and the Deacon’s. 
“ There are plenty of interesting things for us to 
talk about on your own farm,” said the Doctor, “if 
you only knew it. Your plan of growing celery is 
new. Your method of keeping onions in malt 
sprouts is new. Your suggestion to raise beet-sets 
as we now raise onion sets is new. Your proposi¬ 
tion to induce the Lima bean to assume a dwarf 
habit is new. Your extensive use of nitrate of soda 
on garden crops is new to me. Your method of 
driving a wagon and hay-rack under the trees, and 
gathering all the apples you can reach from the 
wagon,l havenot seen practised elsewhere.”—“Nor 
you never will,” said the Deacon, “the horses 
tread on the windfalls.”—“But we go over the 
orchard and pick them up before we commence,” 
said Charley, “ and by having two or three boys on 
the wagon, with a careful man to ‘ boss the job,’ 
threeffourths of the apples can be picked without 
using a ladder. The boys get up into the tree, and 
stand on the limbs, and hand their baskets to the 
man on the wagon.” 
“ Good for you, Charley,” said I, “ the plan is a 
good one if properly managed; but the Doctor 
cannot flatter me out of my resolution to take a 
trip West, and you shall go with me, and take your 
dog and gun, and perhaps we can find something 
to shoot.”—“ But,” said he, “you have no gun.”— 
“ I will see what can be done,” and telegraphed 
Mr. Judd, “I am going West to-morrow. Can you 
send me a breech-loading gun No. 10 bore, weigh¬ 
ing about nine pounds ?”—In an hour the answer 
came back from New York, “ Gun shipped. Don’t 
shoot yourself. Write us daily.”—“That’s busi¬ 
ness,” said Charley.—“ Yes,” said 1, “ and there is 
now nothing to stop us. We will have a good time.” 
“ We shall be through digging potatoes to-mor¬ 
row,” said Willie, “ and the corn is all husked.”— 
“ Whatever you do,” said 1, “be careful in storing 
sweet corn so that it will not mould in the crib, and 
draw in the stalks the moment they are diy. There 
is nothing to be gained by delay. Gather the ap¬ 
ples. Make only one grade this season. It will not 
pay this year to put second quality apples into 
barrels. Draw them to the dry-house. When you 
cannot work at the apples, harvest the beets and 
mangolds. Pit them in the field on the highest and 
driest knolls. Plow out the pits, and do not be 
afraid to plow too wide a strip, and plow it three 
or four times over, until you have a great, wide 
dead-furrow, and, what is more important, until 
the land on each side is a mass of loose, mellow 
earth, a foot or eighteen inches deep.”—“I know,”' 
said Willie, “and you want us to mix plenty of 
soil among the roots in the pit.”—“ Yes,” said I, 
“ and do not make too wide a pit—three to four 
feet is wide enough, and build up the roots until 
you have a slanting roof, that will shed water, and 
then cover with straw and do not spare it.”—“ We 
will do it right,” said Willie, and he will. He 
knows the importance of these little details, even 
