I 860 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Q67 
in the field. Dan Baker takes the papers and is 
a close calculator, and I think he is about right. 
By this thorough mode of cultivation and high 
manuring, he gets his hay very cheap. The corn 
and wheat crops not only pay for the manure and 
labor but leave a handsome profit, so that the 
land has no charges against it when it comes into 
mowing. He gets three tuns of hay worth, 
this year, thirty six dollars standing. Besides 
this he gets eight weeks’ pasturage for a cow, 
worth four dollars more, or forty dollars income 
from an acre of land above all expenses. Dan 
Baker never sells hay, says he would just as soon 
sell his Morgan mare, or his South Down buck. 
If there is any profit in the use of hay, and he 
guesses there must be, he wants to make it. So 
he buys stock enough every year to eat up all 
the hay and grain he raises upon the farm. 
With these he makes manure, more manure, most 
manure, every year. This is the Alpha and 
Omega of cheap hay, and of all profitable farming. 
Feed the soil and the blades of grass will spring 
up, not only two to one, but sixty and a hundred 
fold. Light increases and I am beginning to see 
in dim outline a farmer. 
Tim Bunker on Irrigation and Invisible 
Toll Gates. 
“ What next 1” exclaimed my neighbor Tuck¬ 
er one morning, as he poked his head over the 
wall of the lot where the horse pond used to be, 
and which is now known in all Hookertown, as 
the Horse Pond lot. 
“ What are you turnin up that furrow for 1” 
asked Jones with his mouth agape, as if he saw 
an elephant. 
“ You ain’t a gwine to plow this field, be you 
Squire 1” asked Seth Twigs, as he blew an extra 
long whiff out of his mouth, and leaned his elbow 
on the wall. 
“ Plow it, you fool!” exclaimed Jake Frink, 
“ that are field cut four tun of hay to the acre 
this season, and you don’t think Tim Bunker is 
gwine to take up such a sod as that do you! 
“ ’Tarnally tinkering with the land,” added 
uncle Jotham Sparrowgrass, as he looked in as¬ 
tonishment at a new adventure upon a piece of 
land, that he thought was finished. 
“You don’t expect to get any more grass off 
of this lot than you cut this year do you!” in¬ 
quired Mr. Spooner as he came to join that por¬ 
tion of his flock who keep a sharp look out on 
all my movements. 
The Horse Pond lot is admitted to be a great 
success, and Jake Frink grits his teeth every 
time he goes by it, and wonders he was such a 
fool as to sell it, though it would have laid there 
unimproved to this day, if he had kept it. A 
part of it I have in sugar beets and mangolds, 
and though I have seen some beets in my day, I 
must say these are the beaters of all that tribe of 
plants. You see I fell in with a lot of old lime 
plaster from a house they took down in the vil¬ 
lage this spring, and carted on perhaps a dozen 
loads. The lime was just what the soil needed 
to decompose its excess of vegetable matter, and 
judging from the growth of these beets, they have 
had about as much plant-food as they could take 
care of. They have three months to grow yet, 
and they already cover the ground though they 
are planted two feet apart. The crop will not be 
short of two thousand bushels to the acre. 
But the larger part of the lot has been in grass, 
and according to the estimate of my neighbors, 
the yield was four tuns to the acre, though I guess 
they overstate the matter a little. It was tall 
herds-grass and lodged in spots, but it takes a 
great deal of hay to make four tuns to the acre. 
But good as it was, I am not quite satisfied with 
it. You know it is not in human nature to let 
well enough alone, or to think that we are on top 
of the ladder, while there is a single round above 
us. 
I was just laying out the ground for watering 
it, when my neighbors gave me a call yesterday. 
You see the land slopes away from the road, and 
water can be run all over it by making shallow 
channels upon the surface with a plow, and mend¬ 
ing them a little with the hoe and spade. I have 
a first rate chance to turn water on, and as the 
ground is now all drained, I claim that the more 
water on top, the better, as long as it can get out 
at the bottom. 
Almost all water has more or less sediment in 
it, even when it seems to be clear, and the land is 
just like a strainer to take all this floating matter 
out. There is a good deal of nourishment for 
plants in this sediment. The soup is rather 
thin I admit, but I suppose some things may suit 
plants, that would be rather spare diet for man or 
beast. When I get my channels properly con¬ 
structed, I can irrigate this lot from two sources, 
the wash of the road, and a brook that I can 
turn from its course at a cost of not over 
twenty dollars. You see the lot lies right 
in a hollow between my house and Jake 
Frink’s, and can now be made to catch all the 
water from the two hills, a distance of at least a 
mile, which used to go into the pond before it 
was drained. The wash of a road is good any 
where, I suppose partly from the manure that 
drops from passing animals, and partly from the 
soil which is ground up very fine by the contin¬ 
ual tramping of iron shod feet, and the crushing 
of wheels. I have noticed that wherever any of 
this dirt is run on to a mowing field, even where 
there is hardly a trace of manure, it makes the 
grass much stouter, and you will see the effects of 
it for several rods from the fence. I have some¬ 
times thought it would pay to have a machine for 
grinding up soil very fine for top dressing. At 
any rate, there can be no doubt that all the wash 
of roads ought to be saved wherever it can be 
turned on to grass land. 
In the roads that lead into villages and cities 
this wash is particularly valuable, because there 
is more travel to grind up the soil, and more ma¬ 
nure dropped. Hookertown is a place of consid¬ 
erable trade, and I suppose on an average there 
are fifty carriages and teams that go by this lot 
every day. I calculate to make them all pay 
toll, and contribute to the growth of my grass 
without knowing it. Suppose I get from each 
passing team only five mills, this amounts to 
twenty five cents a day, or over ninety dollars a 
year. I think the wash that comes into this hol¬ 
low, when spread over five acres, will make more 
than ninety dollars difference in the yield of the 
hay. Every farmer who owns a lot similarly lo¬ 
cated, can erect an invisible toll gate, and collect 
the tolls without robbing his neighbors. 
The water from the brook I can turn on, in dry 
times in the Fall or Summer, after the hay is 
taken off. This brook comes from a swamp cov¬ 
ered with timber and brush, principally maple 
and huckleberry and other hard woods, and 
every Fall brings down a great quantity of leaves 
and vegetable matter. It also flows through 
meadows and cultivated fields, and after heavy 
rains carries a good deal of mud and sediment. 
This I think can not fail to benefit vegetation, 
though it is not so rich as the road wash. 
The arrangement of the channels is a matter 
of considerable importance. It is found fromex- 
periment that the grass gets all the more valua¬ 
ble parts of the water and sediment in running 
six or eight rods, so that the main channels should 
be about that distance apart over the whole field. 
If the lot lies like mine in the form of a parallel¬ 
ogram, sloping to the south, the channels may 
be arranged as in the cut. The road runs par¬ 
allel with the north side of the lot. The water 
comes in through the wall at A, and follows the 
main channel until it discharges at B. This chan¬ 
nel is made about eighteen inches broad at the 
top, and about a foot deep. It is kept nearly level 
where it runs east and west, so that small notch¬ 
es in the brim will pass the water off in nearly 
equal streams. These small streams are partly 
absorbed by the soil, in running eight rods to the 
channel below, where they are caught and mingled 
with the muddy water again, and again passed 
off through small cuts in the brim, and so on until 
the whole field is irrigated. The fall is about 
two feet in the eight rods, but the channels could 
be easily worked with much more fall, as the wa¬ 
ter would only run a little faster from C to D 
and in the parallel courses. 
“Irritation of the land!” exclaimed Kier Frink 
as he looked out of his coal cart where he has 
stopped to hear what was said by the company. 
“ What does he mean by that 1 I never heern of 
that even in the Whiteoaks, where they irritate 
almost every thing from cats up to old hosses.” 
“ He is gwine to turn a brook on here and git 
six tun of hay to the acre,” answered Tucker. 
“ If he can,” added Jones. 
“ And blame him, he’ll du it neow ye see, for 
he’s a master hand to carry his pint,” said Seth 
Twigs. 
“ Neow du tell,” responded Kier, hitting his 
horse a smart lick, “Tim Bunker waterin a swamp ! 
git up old boss, this aint a safe place for yew.” 
And the old coal cart vanished up the hill as if 
the driver had seen a ghost. But I am not quite 
crazy yet, though some of my neighbors think I 
am leaning that way. I shall keep you posted on 
“ the irritation of the soil.” 
Yours to command, 
Hookertown, Ct., Aug. I860 ] Timothy Bunker, Esq. 
--—«*»■©-£=——-- 
Progressive Bees.— On the 23d of July one 
of my hives sent out its first swarm, which was 
properly cared for,and appears to be doing well,and 
nothin 0 ” occurred to call particular attention to 
the old hive until the evening of the 26th, when 
to my surprise the shrill notes of the young as¬ 
pirants were very clearly and distinctly heard 
from three different parts of the hive, each hav¬ 
ing a peculiarity of sound ; and making the im¬ 
pression on my own mind that there were three 
queens within. Well, sure enough on the 27th 
(only 4 days after the 1st) another swarm issued 
from the same hive. It will be gratifying to me 
and perhaps useful to others it some one ot your 
correspondents of long experience will give us 
information on this state of things. B. 
Essex Co., N. J. 
