AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
ADAPTED TO THE 
Farm, Grarden, and. Udonseliold. 
AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, THE MOST USEFUL, AND THE MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN — WASHINGTON. 
©RAWGE JUDO, A. HI., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
ESTABLISHED IN 1848. 
$1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE. 
SINGLE NUMBERS 10 CENTS. 
VOL.XIX.—N 0 . 11 . NEW-YORK, NOVEMBER, 1860. [new series— No. m 
Office at 41 Park-Row, (Times Building.) 
Contents, Terms, Ac., on pages 348-52. 
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1860, 
by Oranqk Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District 
Court of the United States for the Southern District of 
New-York. jgp’BT. B.—Every Journal is invited freely 
to copy any and all desirable articles, if each article or 
illustration copied, be duly accredited to the American 
Agriculturist. ORANGE JUDD, Proprietor. 
Slutcvicnn Slflvicultimft tit ©crnmtt. 
The AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST is published in 
both the English and German Languages. Both Editions 
■are of the same size, and contain, as nearly as possible, 
'the same Articles and Illustrations. The German Edition 
is furnished at the same rates as the English, singly or in 
•clubs. A club may be part English, and part German. 
November. 
“ ’Tis easy to resign a toilsome place, 
But not to manage leisure with a grace ; 
Absence of occupation is not rest, 
A mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. 
The veteran steed, his task excused at length, 
In kind compassion of his failing strength, 
And turned into the park or mead to graze, 
Exempt from future service all his days, 
There feeis a pleasure perfect in its kind. 
•Ranges at liberty, and snuffs the wind , 
But when his lord would quit the busy road, 
To taste a joy like that he had bestowed 
He proves, less happy than his favored brute, 
A life of ease a difficult pursuit.”— Cowper. 
The only period of rest in the circle of the 
farmer’s year is now at hand; a period of en¬ 
joyment, but also one of peril. The business of 
•cultivation—the appropriate occupation of the 
■husbandman—is done. He has passed through 
the pressing cares of seed time and tillage, the 
joys of the early and latter harvests; and lias wel¬ 
comed the last of his crops to the barn and the 
granary. His store houses are full, and the 
flocks and herds now live upon the accumulated 
provisions of the Summer. The last of the flow¬ 
ers has faded, and.the frosts have turned field 
and forest to a russet brown. The leaves that 
put on such gorgeous coloring in October, are 
now either changed to a somber hue, or fallen, 
leaving the forest hare and desolate. The skies 
have lost the roseate hue of Summer, and begin 
to look chill and wintery. The weather is fit¬ 
ful, and every sunny day is succeeded by cloud 
and storm. 
In the olden time farmers accomplished very 
little after the potatoes and turnips were gath¬ 
ered and the cider was made, until the ope nin g 
of the Spring. At hom<* the cider barrel had 
its potent temptations, and abroad, the village 
tavern and grocery held out their allurements 
to drinking and dissipation. The countiy was 
new, the soil fertile, and the farmer did not feel 
the necessity of those improvements which pre¬ 
pare the way for successful cultivation. Drain¬ 
ing had hardly been heard of, and the muck 
mines were not opened. He fed his cattle, pre¬ 
pared his fuel for the Winter flre, marketed his 
crops, and the rest of his time ran to waste. 
At this season he visited his friends, enjoyed 
their hospitalities, and too often contracted their 
drinking habits and prepared the way for de¬ 
bauchery and ruin. It was the most perilous 
period of the year, because be had not learned 
how to improve its leisure. 
AYe are so constituted that we can not enjoy 
idleness. This may satisfy the toil-worn brute, 
as he quits the yoke or the cart and regales him¬ 
self in fat pastures. He knows nothing better 
than the gratification of his appetite for food. 
But man can not be satisfied while the best part 
of him, that which constitutes his manhood, lies 
waste. The mind must have occupation of some 
kind, and the release from the more pressing 
cares of cultivation at this season, should only 
induce a higher activity of the mind. 
It is indeed well to employ a portion of this 
leisure in visiting friends and relatives, and in 
keeping alive the sympathies and associations 
of earlier years. Some are so situated in their 
business, that this is the only time when they 
can return to the old homestead, to look again 
upon the familiar scenes of childhood, and to 
receive words of blessing from father and mot h¬ 
er. These social reunions at the annual Thanks¬ 
giving, are worth all they cost, and more. There 
is a reviving influence in going back again to 
the old hearth-stone of childhood’s home; the 
old well and its oaken bucket, the ancestral 
trees gathering new glory with their increasing 
years, the garden, the orchard, the fields, the 
forests where our eyes first opened upon the 
world. The farmer is made a better citizen and 
a better man by thus cultivating his social na¬ 
ture, and keeping alive the ties that hind him 
to his kindred. 
These annual visits are also profitable for his 
business, as they afford opportunities for observ¬ 
ation. Farming is no longer a stereotpyed 
business. One can hardly visit the most limited 
and obscure rural district without seeing abun¬ 
dant evidence that the leaven of new ideas is at 
work. The tillers of the soil are getting out of 
the old tracks of the fathers, and are beginning 
to use mind in their husbandry. The barn is 
no more a mere depository of the harvests of 
the field. It is a manufactory of fertilizers, the 
one thing needful in profitable tillage. It is the 
great hinge on which every tiling in the opera¬ 
tions of the year turns. Barns are now a profit¬ 
able study, to learn how practical farmers con¬ 
trive to shelter all their cattle, and to make the 
most of their manure. The plow has become a 
tool constructed upon scientific principles, turn¬ 
ing the furrow with the least expenditure of 
strength, and making it broad or narrow, deep 
or shallow, and laying the slice flat, or at a sharp 
angle with the surface of the field, at the will of 
the plowman. Tools have become a prime ne¬ 
cessity of economical cultivation,and the strength 
of the ox and the horse is more and more tail¬ 
ing the place of human sinews. No one can 
observe the different methods of farmers in their 
business, without learning something profitable. 
He will return with new ideas and a new zest 
to the cultivation of his own acres. 
Nor need the season upon which we are en¬ 
tering, be wholly lost to the fann. In many parts 
of tlie North, plowing can still be done for the 
first half of the month, and the surface of the 
fields be left in that rough, broken condition, in 
which the freezings and thawings of Winter will 
most benefit them. There is no human inven¬ 
tion that will break down rough clods and pul¬ 
verize them like the frost. Farmers are using 
tins season for labor, much more than they did 
in the olden time. Trenches are dug for walls, 
and stone fences are built. Some keep their full 
laboring force at work—an arrangement much 
better for the laborer, than four months of idle¬ 
ness, or occasional work by the day. Many have 
muck deposits so situated that they can be 
worked at this season. Muck thrown up in 
Summer, can he carted, and the deposits in the 
barn cellars can he composted with manure 
from the stables and the sties. Many improve 
the leisure to top dress their meadows with com¬ 
post from the yards, and where the land lies 
level and is not subject to washing, this is a 
good practice. It is found by shrewd calcula¬ 
tors, that the labors of the next four months, 
spent mainly in handling muck, digging, com¬ 
posting, spreading, and laying up stores for 
Summer use, are the most profitable of the year. 
Whatever labors are attended to or neglected 
out of doors, reading and reflection should be 
carried on vigorously within. The most suc¬ 
cessful farmer now, is the man who applies 
most of thought to his business. The days of 
routine fanning are numbered, and the man 
who plods on in the ways of his fathers, is cer¬ 
tain to be distanced. The problem to be solved 
is, not liow to grow crops—not even great crops 
—but how to get them economically. We want 
to get rich by farming, without selling off all the 
fertility of the soil under our feet. A rich fann, 
giving a generous yield to toil, makes a rich 
farmer, whether lie have much or little stock in 
the hank or railroad. He may he sure of divi¬ 
dends when banks fail. We want to study not 
only to get great crops of corn and grass, but to 
make the crops pay for the labor and manure, 
and leave the soil richer. There are manifold 
details of husbandry that require forecast and 
reflection. Now is the time to lay plans for the 
coming year, and for the distant future. It is a 
great work to bring up a long used soil to its 
primitive fertility, and to manage the old home¬ 
stead so that every acre shall do its best, mak¬ 
ing us richer while it enriches itself. To solve 
this problem will tax the invention and quicker) 
the intellect. He who does this, will “ manage 
leisure with a grace ” and grow a wiser 
better man, and also increase ft is wealth. 
