S28 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[NOVEMBER, 
now appears to promise for the future better 
than at any time before. 
I have twice since treated some of my com 
lands in the same way, obtaining each time 
superabundant crops, even greater the first time 
of mowing than I formerly got after two grain 
crops. One of our most practical farmers in an 
adjoining town, about the same time, yet unbe- 
Known to me, commenced the same process of 
tillage on a large lot of humid soil, in every re¬ 
spect like mine, which had nearly become non¬ 
productive. He is getting extra large crops 
of hay annually; and he now considers that lot 
as one of his best, which had long been his 
poorest, having been least productive. 
Susquehanna Co., Pa. S. A. NEWTON. 
Tim Bunker at the Farmers’ Club. 
HOW TO GET BICH BY FARMING. 
[Perhaps it might be more modest to omit the following 
letter from the’Squire, but it contains ?ome good hints. 
And here allow us to remark, that these letters, which 
have been continued so long, and we expect will be con¬ 
tinued hereafter, are none of them 1 got up ’ in our office, 
as some have supposed, but they are veritable letters, sent 
to us from Connecticut. We are happy to know, that 
the plain, homespun truths here told, have been of great 
value to thousands who have read them not only in 
this journal, but in many others, into which ttiey iiave 
been copied.— Ed.] 
Mr. Editor: I have not had much to say late¬ 
ly about our fanners’ club, that our minister, Mr. 
Spooner, and a few of us started in Hookertown, 
a few years ago. Well you see, at first, the 
thing didn’t take very well. It looked kind of 
bookish, and men accustomed to the plow han¬ 
dle didn’t exactly like to come to the school- 
house where we generally hold our meetings in 
the Winter, to learn farming. Some of them 
called it Mr. Spooner’s school, and some Tim 
Bunker’s pew. Jake Frink who has never for¬ 
given me for buying that horse-pond lot, and 
draining it, called it the Horse Pond Conven¬ 
tion. In the Summer time we meet around at 
the farmers’ houses, generally once a month, 
some Saturday afternoon, so as to look at the 
crops and stock, as well as to discuss questions. 
Well, by a little coaxing and management, we 
have got most of the young farmers in the neigh¬ 
borhood of the village interested, so that we 
frequently have twenty at the meeting, and that 
makes about as large a company as a plain 
farmer cares to talk to. My immediate circle of 
friends are among the most punctual members. 
Mr. Spooner and Deacon Smith are always on 
hand to keep things straight; Seth Twiggs conies 
up to see what he can through his clouds of 
smoke; Uncle Jotham Sparrowgrass limps 
around with his invaluable scraps of experience 
from Long Island, and Tucker, Jones, and Jake 
Frink drop in to see what new exercise is going 
on in T-im Bunker’s pew. 
The club is getting to be a good deal of an 
institution, if not a great one, in Hookertown. 
The last topic talked up -was “ How to make 
Farming Profitable.” We had a stranger into 
the meeting from Massachusetts, Mr. Pinkham; 
and he took the ground that it was not profita¬ 
ble, and for his part he did not believe it could 
be made to pay. He said “ he had got a little 
property together, but he did not make it by 
cultivating the soil, though he had worked at it 
thirty years steady. He had a farm given to him 
to start with, and if he had done nothing else but 
faiun it, he believed he should have run in debt 
every year. He had worked in the Winter and 
on rainy days at shoe making, and all that he 
was worth over and above what he inherited, 
was owing to his trade.” 
Uncle Jotham guessed Mr. Pinkham was 
about right if men managed their farms in the 
old way. He had known a hundred farmers or 
more, on the Island, and there want a half doz¬ 
en of them that got ahead any, until they be¬ 
gun to catch bony fish. This made manure 
mighty cheap, and plenty, and a man must be 
a fool that couldn’t get big crops with manure 
a plenty. But to have nothing but barn yard 
manure, and next to none of that, he didn’t 
think a farmer could more’n make the ends of 
the year meet. 
“ I dont believe he can du that,” said Jake 
Frink, “ unless he has better luck than I have 
had.—I’ve worked hard as an Injun on my land, 
for well nigh forty year, and I liain’t got so 
much land as when I started. I liev ben allers 
comin short at the eend of the year, and every 
now and then, have had to sell off a chunk of 
land to some lucky naber. And it aL’ers hap¬ 
pened, that I sold jest the best lot I had, but 
didn’t see it till arter it was gone. That horse 
pond lot that didn’t use to raise any thing but 
sour grass, bull rushes, and hard hack, now 
bears three tun to the acre of first rate herds- 
grass. Some folks make farming pay, but I 
never could. Some how it don’t run in the 
blood.” 
Mr. Spooner said farmers did not have capi¬ 
tal enough to carry on their farming profitably. 
Ho man can be successful in*business without 
capital. The merchant has his years of disci¬ 
pline as a clerk, and earns a small capital before 
he sets up for himself. But the farmer often 
runs in debt for his farm, and .lias hardly mon¬ 
ey enough to buy his stock and tools. This 
keeps him troubled all the time. He is afraid to 
hire help, to purchase such new machines as he 
needs, and to make those improvements in his 
land which are essential to profitable husbandry. 
George Washington Tucker thought there 
was a good deal of truth in Mr. Spooner’s doc¬ 
trine. .“ I don’t know zactly what the parson 
means by capital, but if he means money, he’s 
jest right. I never had a red cent tu begin with, 
and that’s the reason I haint got along no better. 
As they used to say in sifering, 0 from 0, and 0 
remains. It’s jest so in farming.” 
“ Them’s my sentiments,” said Jonas. Now 
the fact is, both Tucker and Jones are lazy, 
and never did a good day’s work in one day, in 
their whole lives. The cipher lies in the per¬ 
sons of those two individuals, and not in their 
purses.—I didn’t say that in the club. If I had, 
I guess I should have spoke in meeting. 
I did have to say, however, that I thought the 
trouble about bad farming lay a leetle deeper 
than the want of capital or the want of labor. 
“ The want of brains I guess lies at the bottom 
of all the unprofitable farming. What is the 
use of a man’s having money, if he does not 
know how to apply it to his business ? What 
is the use of a man’s having labor, if lie does 
not know how to direct it, so as to make it pay ? 
Farmers do not read enough about their busi¬ 
ness, and reflect upon it. I know of a d ozen 
farmers; who have from one to five thousand 
dollars in the bank, and they have occasion for 
the use of twice that sum in order to make their 
farms productive. Capital in the bank only 
pays six or seven per cent. In the bank of 
earth, if wisely invested, it will pay ten per 
cent. I have got fifteen per cent on what I have 
laid out on the horse-pond lot.” 
“Above all expenses?” asked Mr. Spooner. 
“Yes above all expenses, and I expect to 
get it for years to come. I do not find it diffi¬ 
cult to make land pay the interest on three hun¬ 
dred dollars an acre, and any man who will 
read and digest the American Agriculturist can do 
the same thing.” 
“ Where is that paper printed,” inquired Pink¬ 
ham. “ I’ve heard tell so much about that pa¬ 
per, and about improvements Squire Bunker has 
made since he began reading it, that I’ve a no¬ 
tion to take it myself a year, and see what it is, 
any way.” 
“At 41 Park Row, N. Y., by 0. Judd, and it 
only costs a dollar a year, and often you get a dol¬ 
lar’s worth of seeds thrown into the bargain.” 
“ You say that ’cause you rite for it Squire,” 
said Seth Twiggs, to poke fun at me. 
“ It’s true I write some about Hookertown, 
but what I get out of it that I dont write, is 
worth about five hundred dollars a year to me; 
and I guess this town is worth ten thousand dol¬ 
lars more in solid cash for the ideas they have 
got out of the Agriculturist. 
“Judd’s a hull team!” ejaculated Twiggs, as 
he knocked his pipe on the round of his chair, 
with an emphasis that sent the bowl spinning 
half way across the room, “ and if that paper 
hasn’t got a half a dozen big horses hitched on 
on to it, as strong as Pennsylvania roadsters, 
and as fast as yer Morgans, then I’m no judge 
of what’s in it. You’r a bennyfacter, Squire 
Bunker, forgetting me and so many to read that 
paper.” 
Well, I guess they’ll all find it out by and by. 
Just look of Dea. Smith’s new underdrained 
ten acre field, where he harvested forty bushels 
of wheat to the acre this Summer. Look of 
Seth Twiggs garden with the tile in, and sub¬ 
soiled. He raises a hundred dollars worth of 
stuff where he used to raise less than twenty. 
Look of Jake Frink’s new watering trough in 
his yard, and Uncle Jotham’s drained musk-rat 
swamp, and new barn cellar; and, to cap all, my 
reclaimed salt marsh cutting three tun of hay to 
the acre. I made two thousand dollars by that 
operation and I might have thunk, and thunk 
my brains out, and I never should have thought 
of that, if it had not been for the paper. Im¬ 
provements are going on all over the town, and 
it is because they read the Agriculturist. All tlia 
way up to Shadtown, I can tell just what fann¬ 
ers read it by the looks of the farms and build¬ 
ings. You see then, my recipe for getting rich 
by farming is, to take the paper, read and digest 
inwardly, and apply outwardly. 
Yours to command, 
Timothy Bunker Esq. 
Hookertown, Oct., 1860. 
Deep Plowing—Opposite Results. 
Wm. D. Shelden, of Wayne Co., gives in the 
Rural New-Yorker the result of two experi¬ 
ments in subsoiling. He purchased a farm a 
few years ago, that had been worn out by shal¬ 
low plowing. The first year he sowed five acres 
to oats, upon a ridge which had a gravelly hard 
pan some six inches below the surface; he plow¬ 
ed shallow and the crop was hardly worth cut¬ 
ting. The next year he used the Michigan 
Double Subsoil Plow, running it ten inches deep, 
which brought up some four inches of hard 
pan. The oats on an average were four and a 
half feet high—a very large growth. Another 
lot on the same place, on a flat, he plowed about 
a foot deep. The soil was a black sand. The 
result was the reverse of the above—it nearly 
spoiled the land. 
There is goodness, like wild honey, hived in 
many strange nooks and corners of the earth. 
