AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
FOR THE 
UTarm, Garden, and. HomseliolcL 
“AftKICULTUKE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, AN II MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN, W Washington. 
ORANGE A.M., 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. 
Office, 41 Park Row, “ Times Buildings.” 
VOLUME XXI—No. 5. 
Entered according to act of Congress in. tlie year 1862, by 
Orange Judd, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of 
the United States for the Southern District of New-York. 
HW Other Journals are invited to copy desirable articles 
freely, i/each article be credited to American Agriculturist. 
“ The most unfurnished with the means of life, 
And they that never pass their brick wall bounds, 
To range the fields, and treat their lungs with air, 
Yet feel the burning instinct.”— 
The passion for rural life comes as near to be¬ 
ing universal, as any sentiment that rules the 
human heart. It is universal, notwithstanding 
the very large population congregated in cities, 
and that never expect to live elsewhere. The 
poor and thriftless live there not as a matter of 
choice, but of necessity. They find themselves 
in the city without any volition of their own, 
and they have not force of character enough to 
get out into the country, where land is cheap, 
and thus strike for independence. If they labor 
at all, they are accustomed to labor for others, to 
spend as fast as they earn, and to suffer when 
they can find no employment. They have no 
faculty to set themselves at work, and have 
never tried to make money earn money by 
trade, or mechanical employments. With all 
their longings for fresh air, and sunlight, they ex¬ 
pect to live and die in the miserable tenements 
poverty compels them to occupy. The laboring 
thriving class in the cities, mechanics, clerks, 
and small tradesmen, have visions of rural bliss, 
which they expect to realize, but they are so far 
in the future that they have not yet taken defi¬ 
nite form. They do not earn enough to admit 
of their living in the country while they do 
business in the city, or then’ business does not 
admit of such an arrangement. Country life is 
an expensive luxury, in which they hope they 
shall one day be able to indulge. Multitudes 
who have attained this felicity, do not know ex¬ 
actly how to afford it. The rent is cheaper, but 
the rides they find cost quite as much as in the 
ESTABLISHED IN 1842, 
Published both in English and German. 
NEW-YORK, MAY, 1862. 
city, and the markets are as dear. Vegetables 
and fruits do not come so early, and they are 
generally sold higher than in the city. Country 
life is very delightful, but it uses up a salary of 
$2,000 just as effectually as life in the city. The 
children enjoy it, are fat and happy, and are 
learning a multitude of clever things, that they 
could not know in the city; the wife is pleased, 
the society is good, and the schools are as a gen¬ 
eral thing, quite as good as in the city; but it 
all costs too much—ii can’t be afforded. 
“How to make rural life pay?” that is the 
question with all classes who ever expect to en¬ 
joy a home of their own in the country. There 
can be no doubt that multitudes, perhaps a ma¬ 
jority who go into the country spend from a 
quarter to a third more than they need to, be¬ 
cause they do not avail themselves of the ad¬ 
vantages of the country. The theory of living 
is different in the county. Here a man pro¬ 
duces every thing he can economically. In the 
city he buys everything, paying for it with his 
skill, labor, or capital, sold in the market. The 
citizen has no time to study the art of “ making 
one hand wash the other.” In the country, this 
is the great secret of economical living. You go 
into the country to have room, a house, and a 
few acres of land, delightful rides over the coun¬ 
try with wife and children, to entertain your 
cousins and family friends with strawberries and 
cream, fresh laid eggs, and broiled chickens, in 
their season. Now if you buy all these nice 
things at your rural home, you will find the bills 
quite as large as in the city, and possibly larger. 
It is the easiest thing in the world for a family 
to run up a bill of three or four hundred dollars 
at the village stable, and then feel that they have 
not had half riding enough; two hundred dol¬ 
lars at the butcher’s, feeling that they have had 
to stint themselves in poultry; fifty dollars with 
the milk man, with but half a supply of milk, 
and no cream at all; four hundred dollars at the 
grocer’s, with eggs only once a week, and lean 
pickings at dessert. 
Now we shall manage these things very much 
more economically, if we adapt ourselves to the 
conditions of rural life. You have two objects 
in view in a rural home, economy, and the bet¬ 
ter education of your children, meaning by that, 
what they get outside of the schools. It is 
worth a good deal to a family of children, to 
have them familiar with all the details of coun¬ 
try life, the care of domestic animals, the man¬ 
agement of a flower and vegetable garden, fa¬ 
miliar with the trees of the wood, and plants of 
the field. Things move in a circle in such a 
home, and every link in the chain must be com¬ 
plete to make the rural home a paying concern. 
If you have land it must be worked to make it 
bear crops. To do this economically, you must 
have labor and manure. To have these in the 
most economical form, you must keep a man, 
and domestic animals. You have to pay out 
money for your help, and for your provender, 
f $1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE, 
•j SINGLE NUMBER, 10 CENTS. 
( For Contents, Terms, etc., see page 160. 
NEW SERIES—No. 184. 
but you get for it cheap rides, and all you want, 
cheap eggs, poultry, milk, cream, cheap fruits 
and vegetables, and the rural schooling for the 
children, which is a matter of prime importance. 
Your man will cost you not far from $120 a 
year and his board, the keeping of the family 
horse, with the interest of money invested, and 
the wear and tear of vehicles, harnesses, etc., 
about $100, and the cow from $40 to $75, ac¬ 
cording to size, skill in management, and other 
considerations. You will want two pigs and 
thirty hens to complete the circle. These gather 
up the fragments, and turn the last particle of 
refuse matter to profitable account. 
You want Patrick the year round, to attend 
to the horse and the cow, and with a little man¬ 
agement, he need not have an idle hour. In the 
Summer he takes care of the garden, teaches the 
boys to hoe and spade, to harness the horse, and 
ride him, to hunt hen’s nests, and feed the chick¬ 
ens. In the Winter, when the horse is not in 
demand for rides, he is busy drawing muck and 
manure. In such an establishment 40 or 50 
cords of manure may be made, which will keep 
the land in a high state of productiveness. Pat¬ 
rick pays his way in garden products, a full sup¬ 
ply for the family, with a small surplus for the 
village market, and a few hundred bushels of 
beets and carrots for the cow and horse. The 
horse pays his way in drives, and in aiding Pat¬ 
rick in his winter work. The cow pays her 
way in milk and cream, and if a very good one, 
in butter for three months in the year. The 
skim-milk goes to the pigs, and to mixing meal 
for the hens. The market value of her products 
will be from $50 to $100, according to the ex¬ 
cellence of the animal, amount of feed, etc. The 
hens will pay their way in eggs and poultry. 
We have kept accounts for several. years, and 
found the profits to average about $1 for each 
fowl kept through the year. The expense of 
keeping where all the food is purchased, is also 
about $1 each. The pigs are economical as co¬ 
workers with Patrick, in manufacturing fertili¬ 
zers, and for furnishing about 600 pounds of 
pork and hams, of much better quality than you 
can buy in the market. There is nothing like 
the pork packed in your own cellar, for the 
weekly dish of baked beans, and that other dish 
known in its glory only in the country, succo¬ 
tash. There are no hams -like those cured after 
your wife’s recipe, as good a year old as when 
first cured, but always failing to keep a year, for 
the best of all reasons—they are eaten. 
With us, rural life pays, and we can neadily 
see that others can make it pay very much bet¬ 
ter than we do. But the art of living in the 
country, and indeed of living at all has always 
to be learned, and it is quite easy to see that 
the learning may be somewhat expensive. We 
offer these brief hints for those who are taking 
their first lessons this Spring, assuring them that 
with economy it will pay, and warning them 
not to anticipate too much the first season. 
