14r 
[January, 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 85. 
We have heard people complain of our long 
and severe winters. In fact there are some people 
who complain about every thing—about the 
spring, summer, autumn and winter; about the 
frost, the snow, the rain, the sunshine, the wind, 
the fog; of the evening and the morning, of long 
days and short days; the clouds cast a gloom 
over their spirits and the sunshine brings no 
joy. They are constitutional grumblers. To 
“ feel grumble” is not very bad. Such a dis¬ 
position is often associated with great energy 
and when rightly directed brings about great 
things. The other day I noticed a locomotive, 
with steam all up waiting to take the Express 
train to Buffalo. The steam was escaping 
through the safety-valve; the fireman with a 
kind of “shut your mouth” gesture lifted a cover 
that pressed the valve down again and stopped 
the escaping steam. In a minute or two, how¬ 
ever, the pressure lifted the valve and out came 
the steam again with a hissing, grumbling noise. 
This was repeated again and again; the damper 
was closed, but as long as the engine remained 
stationary on the track, it kept on screaking. 
By and by a little bell sounded, the conductor 
called “all abroad,” the engineer opened the 
throttle-valve and turned the steam on to the 
piston. The wheels began to move and then 
the steam came with a grand, heavy puff through 
the smoke-pipe; it had lost all its complaining, 
snarling sound, and came out with a kind of 
good-natured grumble that springs from honest 
effort. As it settled down fairly to the work 
the puffs came thicker and faster and soon lost 
all trace of even the shadow of a grumble. 
Discontent that escapes in idle grumbling is 
wholly bad; discontent that leads to honest 
efforts to improve our condition is good. To 
grumble at the weather is simply silly; but dis¬ 
content with muddy roads, if it leads a man to 
take a hoe and let off the water, is worthy of all 
honor. If such a man should ever be nominated 
for Congress I would vote for him, whether he 
was a Democrat or Republican, black or white. 
I never knew but one road master that did it. 
After every rain he and his man took a horse 
and buggy and wherever they found a hole with 
water standing in it they let it off. We had 
then six miles of as good a gravel road as one 
could desire. But the poor man died; and his 
fate, and the character of his successors in office 
remind me of an epitaph I once saw on an 
English tombstone: 
“God takes the Good, 
Too j;ood on Earth to stay, 
And leaves the Bad, 
Too bad to take away.” . 
For my part I like our long winters. I like to 
feed stock, like to see them eat; and do not object 
to hear the wind howl about the barn when the 
animals inside are warm and comfortable. It is 
the pleasantest part of farm life. The days are 
short and we must work lively; and all who 
have tried it know that there is a great pleasure 
in intense activity—and the rest, afterwards, is 
equally enjoyable. It is said that farm occupa¬ 
tions are dull and monotonous. Certainly this 
i3 not necessarily so, though it must be confessed 
that some farmers and many farm men are 
rather slow in their motions. There is no excuse 
for this in winter. The atmosphere is cold and 
bracing and six or seven hours of energetic, 
systematic labor will usually accomplish all that 
there is to do. If any one doubts it, let him 
take a card and write down every thing that he 
has done to-day. If he has the same work to do 
to-morrow, let him think it all over and see 
what is the best order of doing the work, and 
how he can do it with the fewest steps and in 
the shortest lime and with the least labor. Write 
it down, and the next morning, card in hand, go 
to work with energy. Run a little if need be; 
carry two pails instead of one; do not lose a 
moment; and if you do not do all the work in 
half the time, and do it better than you did the 
day before, you are in the habit of working to 
much better advantage than two-thirds of my 
farmer friends, and better than ninety-nine- 
hundreds of ordinary farmer men. 
I have had a man of more than average in¬ 
telligence who would, month after month, come 
empty-handed from the barn up to the house 
to get the milk-pails, and then after he had 
brought in the milk, walk empty-handed back 
to the barns to get his swill-pails, to carry the 
slop to the pigs. It never occurred to him that 
by bringing the swill-pails when he came up for 
the milk-pails he might have saved just half the 
time. The same man would carry hay from the 
cow-barn past the stack of corn-stalks to feed 
sheep, and then after he was through feeding 
the sheep would go an equal number of jour¬ 
neys to get stalks and carry them back to the 
barn for the cows. And this want of forethought 
and system characterized the entire day’s work. 
He was an industrious, faithful man, but when 
a gate sagged he “ had not time”—as he honestly 
thought—to straighten up the post or put a 
nail in a loose board. No time to sweep out 
the tool-shop nor sharpen the tools and keep 
them in their proper place; no lime to tighten a 
hoop on a barrel nor w T edge a fork that was loose 
in the socket; no time to pick up a piece of 
board that he walked past a dozen times a day; 
and so with a hundred little things that make all 
the difference between profit or loss in farming. 
As a rule, no excuse is so utterly without 
foundation as the common one of “ want of 
time.” A man may have more work than he 
can do, but the reason is not a want of time but 
a want of physical or mental strength and nerv¬ 
ous energy. We think too much, perhaps, of 
economizing time, and too little of economizing 
strength. What we do we should do with our 
might—and then rest. And we can rest by 
using other muscles or faculties, as a tailor that 
has been sitting on the board all day, takes rest 
by walking or standing. After writing sharply 
for three or four hours, nothing rests me more 
than an hour’s tinkering in the barn or tool-shop. 
One of the pleasant things to me about the 
winter season is the increased number of in¬ 
teresting letters I get from farmers in different 
parts of the country. Here is one from a gentle¬ 
man in Maryland: “ One of your correspondents 
in the October‘Walks and Talks,’” he writes, 
“asks for information with regard to the use of 
straw. There is now in view from the window at 
which I am writing a ■wonderful evidence of its 
efficacy as a top-dressing on grass. We endeavor 
to work all the straw through the barn-yard, 
ricking it so as to aid in sheltering the cattle, 
and to give them something to pick at between 
feeding times. One rick was only partially con¬ 
sumed and was hauled out in August and spread 
on an old sod. The effect was striking. The 
grass has grown with rapidity and vigor, and 
although the rest of the field is fertile, the green 
line can be seen as far as the field is visible.” 
I suppose the effect is due to the efficacy of 
straw as a mulch , rather than to its supplying 
available plant-food. 
lu reference to my remarks about fall-fallow¬ 
ing, Mr. J. A. Clark of Jefferson Co., Wis., 
writes: “In this section fall-fallowing is as old 
as spring grain. We calculate to do all our 
plowing as soon as may be after harvest, qnd 
we can see a difference of every month’s delay 
on the following crop; and if by bad luck a 
piece is left over until spring before plowing, we 
get only two-thirds of a crop of wheat. AVith 
oats and barley is does not make so great a 
difference, but is nevertheless of considerable 
advantage to them.” 
“My wheat,” he adds, “does not do well after 
clover, and such is the experience of others in 
this section. Last year I raised a crop of the 
big or pea vine clover for seed. It did not 
fill well and I got only half a bushel of seed per 
acre—thus not running the land any—and yet 
this year I got only half a crop of wheat after it.” 
This is not improbable. The land was in 
clover only one year, and the whole growth was 
cut and carried off the land. Had it been 
plowed under, or eaten off by sheep on the laud, 
the result would probably have been very dif¬ 
ferent. My plan would be to let the field lie in 
clover two years. Cut it for hay the first year, 
and then pasture it the remainder of the season 
until the next July or first of August. Then 
break it up and “ fall-fallow,” and sow it to 
wheat or barley the next spring. So much is 
said about clover enriching the land that many 
farmers have got, what I regard, a wrong im¬ 
pression respecting it. Mr. Clark evidently 
supposed that his field would be richer after it 
had grown a crop of clover than it was before; 
while, what we mean is, that the/arwi becomes 
richer through the practice of growing and feed¬ 
ing out clover—not necessarily and immedi¬ 
ately the actual field on which the clover grew. 
I know Dr. Yoeleker has advanced the idea 
that the actual growth of clover, even when it 
is cut for hay, and the second crop for seed, 
leaves the land richer in nitrogen than if, was 
before, and he gives experiments that lie thinks 
comfirms this view; but, while I regard Dr. 
Yoeleker as one of the ablest agricultural chem¬ 
ists of the age, I must be allowed to say that 
these experiments prove altogether too much— 
and consequently prove nothing. 
Mr. C. adds: “We can raise here nearly as 
many bushels of barley per acre as we can of 
oats; and if, as some say, barley is worth T 2 J a 
to 2 times as much as oats for feeding horses, 
had we not better raise barley ?” I think 100 
lbs. of good heavy oats contain as much nutri¬ 
ment as 100 lbs. of barley. But good barley 
usually sells for more than oats, weight for 
weight, and is supposed not to impoverish the 
soil so much, and is a better crop to seed with. 
A considerable quantity ol Canadian barley is 
sent to Chicago and Milwaukee for malting 
purposes. I suppose the fact is that Western 
farmers do jiot take as much pains to produce 
barley of the best quality as the Canadian far¬ 
mers, and consequently cannot get nearly as 
good prices. In proportion to the labor, a good 
crop of barley usually pays us here as well as 
any other crop we raise. 
A farmer in Holt Co., Missouri, favors me 
wjth a description of his piggery and his mode 
of feeding hogs. He is } r oung in the busi¬ 
ness, but seems to have embarked in it with 
much spirit and energy. He says : “ In 1860, 
I bought and tried to fatten 300 hogs. Gave 
them all the corn they would eat, board wal¬ 
lowing pool, and free access to clear water. 
I sold them at 5'| 4 c. per lb., net. I bought 
them too fat. The oorn fed to them netted me 
