50 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[FEBBtTARY, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 62. 
“Wliy don’t you come West,” writes an eminent 
lawyer and farmer of Ohio, “ and not wear 
yourself out among those stones ? Suppose the 
stones have, been placed in the ground on pur¬ 
pose to be taken out, does it follow that a good 
fellow who has brains and intelligence enough 
to do something better should be the man to 
take them out ?” I will tell my friend why I 
do not go West. First.—Because I am here. 
Second.—Because there is a very general disposi¬ 
tion to change, and, as a rule, it is better not to 
do what everybody else is doing ; and conse¬ 
quently those who stay where they are will be 
likely to do better than those who are anxious 
to sell their farms and go West. Third.—Be¬ 
cause I do not believe all the good things of 
this life are confined to one particular place. 
Fourth.—Because, so far as I have seen, taking 
everything into consideration, farms are cheaper 
here than in the West. Fifth.—Because there 
is abundant opportunity here to improve our 
farms, and there is great pleasure and profit in 
increasing the productiveness of land. Sixth.— 
Because I have stood in a two-hundred-acre 
field of corn in the vicinity where my friend 
lives,—land, rich, mellow, clean, no stones, and 
few weeds; nothing to do but plow, harrow, 
plant, cultivate,and harvest; and repeat the 
same thing year after year,—and I did not 
think I should like that kind of farming. It is 
too monotonous. To tell the truth I would 
much rather strike a stone occasionlly and have 
the pleasure of getting it out. “ But all the 
land in Ohio is not of this character.” Very 
true; but if you take high, rolling upland, you 
meet with just the same difficulties we have 
here, and there is no use in selling one farm and 
buying another merely for the love of change. 
Here, in Western New York, we have just as 
good land, all things considered, as there is in 
Ohio. We may have to pay more attention to 
making manure; we may have to underdrain 
more; we may have to work the land more thor¬ 
oughly, in order to kill weeds and develop the 
latent plant-food in the soil; we may have more 
stones to get out; but what of all this? There 
is great pleasure in underdraining; it is real fun 
to get out stones; and the good crops which re¬ 
sult from killing weeds and manuring the land 
afford a kind and degree of satisfaction that can 
be obtained in no other way. 
It is a mistake, however, to suppose that the 
West raises large crops without cultivation or 
manuring. The recently published prize essay 
on the Farming of Delaware Co., Ohio, by 
Judge Jones, shows that even the farmers in 
this celebrated district need to exert themselves 
in order to raise large crops. He says : “ The 
crop of wheat in I860 was a failure, being killed 
outright by hard freezing and high winds while 
the ground was bare. In 1867 the crop was 
very superior in quality and fair in quantity.” 
1-Ie tells us, however, that owing to these occa¬ 
sional failures and the high price of labor, farm¬ 
ers have “greatly reduced the quantity of 
land devoted to this important crop.” He fur¬ 
ther states: “The idea that wheat can no 
longer be grown with profit prevails to some 
extent all over the State.” And let me say, the 
idea will prevail so long as it is thought that 
men, with “ brains and intelligence,” should be 
engaged with something better than getting out 
stojaes and improving the land. 
“ The average yield of wheat in Delaware Co. 
from 1850 to 1864 was a little over 11 bushels per 
acre.” This county averages 33 bushels of corn 
per acre, which is about equal to the average in 
the Scioto Valley. I do not think I will go West, 
and “ wear out” my life in growing such crops. 
We can do better here, though it must be con¬ 
fessed that our average yield of corn is no higher. 
But our land can be made to produce 80 bushels. 
All it needs is “ brains and intelligence.” The 
crop of oats in this county in 1865 did not aver¬ 
age 27 bushels per acre, and barley only 11 
bushels; potatoes not 80 bushels per acre; rye 
not 13 bushels per acre. These are small crops 
for one of the finest counties in Ohio. And the 
pastures are no better. Judge Jones thinks it 
requires “ about two acres to graze a full-grown 
cow or ox, which,” he adds, “is but little more 
than half the grass our lands ought to produce.” 
No doubt about that. One of my fields the 
past summer supported stock equal to at least 
two cows per acre until after hay harvest, when I 
plowed it up, and summer-fallowed it for spring 
barley. And it was out of a knoll in this 
very field that we got the stones which seem to 
have excited the pity of my Ohio friend. Now 
if I can make such land carry double the stock 
it does in the Scioto Valley, and have the pleas¬ 
ure of getting out the stones besides, why 
should I go West ? 
Mr. Lawes used to say that in England the 
best farmers were found on the poorest land, 
and the poorest farmers on the best land. Thus 
Norfolk has the poorest laud and the worst cli¬ 
mate in England, while nowhere in the world 
can be found larger crops, cleaner land, or more 
intelligent, enterprising, and wealthy farmers. 
Devonsfiire has the best climate and the best soil 
in England, and, with some exceptions, the poor¬ 
est farmers. Hitherto this rule did not prove 
good with us. We have the best farmers on the 
best and richest land. It will not always be so. 
I am mistaken if New England will not produce 
some of the most enterprising, intelligent, and 
successful farmers on the continent. 
It seems I have been criticised in some of your 
papers for advocating large farms. I did noth¬ 
ing of the kind. All I said was that there was 
a manifest tendency towards larger farms, and 
that, argue against it and deplore it as we may, 
we could not stop it. The Deacon and I talked 
this matter over, and we came to the conclusion 
that the small farmers could spare but little prod¬ 
uce for the support of the rapidly increasing 
population in our cities and villages. They may 
have neater farms and better gardens, but they 
raise little more wheat, and pork, and beef, than 
is necessary for home consumption. A good share 
of their income is derived from the orchard, and 
from the sale of small fruits and vegetables. 
We find as much intelligence, refinement, and 
real comfort and enjoyment, among this class as 
in any other. But, strictly speaking, this is not 
farming. A farmer is a manufacturer. He dif¬ 
fers from other manufacturers merely in this, that 
while they generally buy a great many articles 
that they use, the farmer makes nearly all of 
his himself. Thus a farmer manufactures and 
sells wheat, barley, clover seed, beef, wool, mut¬ 
ton, pork, and butter; but in order to turn out 
these articles it is necessary to manufacture 
grass, hay, corn, oats, peas, and other articles 
needed for supplying the factory. It is a great 
establishment, and it cannot be profitably con¬ 
ducted on a small scale. To talk of ten acres 
being enough for a farm is simply an absurdity. 
It is difficult to manage even a fifty-acre farm 
in such a manner that there shall not be a great 
waste of hours, implements, fences, &c. It takes 
as long to get one cow from the field as a dozen. 
In a little country like England there is some 
excuse for small farms, but here we have so 
much land that the Government gives It away to 
any one who will agree to cultivate it. The 
fact is, however, that in England the farms are 
much larger, as a general rule, than with us, and 
they are becoming larger rather than smaller. 
But enough of this. The rule should be to have 
as large a farm as one has capital, energy, and 
experience, to manage to the best advantage, 
and no larger. A young farmer should begin 
on a small scale, and enlarge his farm as he ac¬ 
quires capital and experience. It is easier to buy 
more land than to sell a part of a large farm. 
The report of the trial of plows, &c., by the 
N. Y. State Agricultural Society, at Utica, in 
1867, has just been published. It is a remark¬ 
able document. The report is longer than the 
trial, and smells more of the closet than the field. 
The trial consisted essentially in testing several 
plows constructed on a new principle, invented 
by -Gov. Holbrook, of Vt. It is claimed for these 
plows that they break the furrow slice in turning 
it over more completely than anything we have 
had before. Judging from the report it is doubt¬ 
ful how far this elaborate and costly trial throws 
much light on the subject. The trial was to 
have been made in May, but owing to excessive 
rains, “which made the land like a mortar- 
bed,” it was postponed until September, when, in 
the language of the committee, the soil, satu¬ 
rated with water in the spring, “had been 
baked by the fierce summer sun, until it w r as 
almost as hard as a brickbat.” No farmer would 
attempt to plow such land during a severe 
drouth, and it is not easy to see how such a trial 
affords any satisfactory tests of the merits of a 
plow to be used in ordinary plowing. Then, 
•again, there was scarcely any competition. 
Five gold medals were awarded in five different 
classes of plowing. In three of these there was 
but one entry, and in one of them a prize was 
awarded without any trial, there being no land 
suitable for the purpose. 
The report, which occupies nearly 300 pages, 
gives us an account of Way’s experiments on the 
absorptive powers of soils and the formation of 
double silicates, and tells us that “ the success of 
the practical farmer depends almost entirely 
upon a knowledge of their principles.” I pub¬ 
lished these experiments a dozen years ago, and 
studied them thoroughly, and consequently 
ought to be a very successful farmer; but I have 
been so busy of late years, trying to kill weeds 
and get the land dry and mellow, that I have 
thought very little about double silicates, except 
that I believed that if I could get manure into 
the soil it would not be apt to run away, espe¬ 
cially if the land was underdrained. 
The report further tells us that “ soil in a 
finely divided state radiates heat much more 
rapidly than when its surface is hard and 
baked.” One of my men, who knows more 
about digging drains than about chemistry, 
after the idea was explained to him, said he did 
not know about the heat, but he knew the cold 
could not get into loose‘soil as easily as into 
hard; and in digging ditches in wiuter he is 
careful to leave the “ crumbs” of loose dirt on the 
bottom of the ditch, to keep the frost out. And 
I find that in the field which we summer-fal¬ 
lowed for barley, and a part of which was cul¬ 
tivated six or eight inches deep in December, 
the land is scarcely frozen at all, while un¬ 
plowed soil near it is as hard as a rock. On 
land thoroughly cultivated in this way, a man 
could dig ditches nearly all winter. 
There is one fact brought out by this trial 
that interests me very much, and that is, that 
