290 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 68. 
,Tolm Johnston lias been to see me. He is 
nearly in his eightieth, year, but is as enthusiastic 
about farming as ever. “ I never expected to go 
so far from home again,” he said, “ but I wanted 
to see your farm, and how you are getting 
along.” Passing a lowland farm, that produces 
little but weeds, rushes, and coarse grass, on 
the banks of a creek on our way from the sta¬ 
tion, and on my telling him it belonged to a 
firm in New York who had a $70-an-acre mort¬ 
gage on it, that they foreclosed and bought in 
the farm, and that they would now probably be 
glad to take $35 an acre for it, he exclaimed, 
“ If I was ten years younger, I would like to 
buy it. It would make grand meadow land. I 
could make it cut three tons of hay to the acre, 
and there is nothing that pays better than hay.” 
His eyes brightened as he pointed out where he 
would put in the drains. “ Such land,” he said, 
“does not need many drains. An underdrain 
will dry this light, alluvial soil on each side a 
far greater distance than on clayey upland like 
mine.” “ The people here think it is too flat to 
drain,” I said, but his practiced eye soon de¬ 
tected this error. “ See how fast the water runs 
in places,” he exclaimed; “there is plenty of 
fall if they would only clean out the creek.” 
And he is right; for, a short time ago, the boys 
put a couple of planks across the creek, and 
dammed it up, so that they could go in swim¬ 
ming ; and I noticed that, though the dam was 
two feet high, it did not set the water back for 
more than fifteen rods, showing that there was 
two feet fall in this distance. If the creek was 
cleaned out so that the water ran on a dead 
level for thirty or forty rods, the creek would 
then be four or five feet deep, and this 
would enable us to put in the underdrains on 
each side as deep as is necessary for the most 
perfect drainage. And where this is done, there 
is no richer or more productive land. One 
man, who has a small farm a little higher up on 
this same creek, cut some surface ditches, about 
two feet deep, and threw the black muck from 
the ditches on to the land, and he has made 
himself rich by raising onions, carrots, etc. 
“ Here, on the edge of the swamp, lives an 
energetic Hollander, the happy father of a dozen 
children. He rents ninety acres of land, work¬ 
ing it on shares. He and I are great friends, 
for we both believe in thorough cultivation. I 
wish we could see him, for I want you to say a 
good word to him. He needs encouragement, 
for he has a hard row to hoe. He is poor in 
everything but health, energy, and children, and 
these, I tell him, will yet make him rich. He 
has only been on the farm two years, but he has 
accomplished wonders considering his means. 
There were a dozen acres of low, swampy laud, 
covered with decayed logs, stumps, and brush. 
The owner told him if he would clear them off 
and put in a crop, he might have all the produce 
the first season. He did so, cutting one or two 
surface ditches, and planting corn and potatoes. 
He cultivated them thoroughly, and had the 
best corn and by far the heaviest yield of pota¬ 
toes in the neighborhood.” “Is that your house 
yonder, on the right?” “No, that is the ‘Dea¬ 
con’s.’ ” His farm joins mine. He has just been 
building a new barn, and this indicates better 
farming. His wheat looks capital, but his oats, 
like mine, are full of thistles. He is a very 
shrewd, observing, intelligent man; knows how 
to give capital advice on all subjects, but does 
not always follow it himself. He believes in 
draining, but his laud is innocent of tiles. He 
was offered $140 an acre for his farm, and 
thinks it will pay the interest on more, while I 
am sure that $20 an acre, judiciously spent in 
draining, would double its productiveness, and 
quadruple the profits; and if it was any other 
farm than his own, the Deacon would persuade 
the owner to put in the ditches. He is a first- 
rate neighbor, but (this is in strict confidence, 
you know) he is a little bit of an old fogy. I 
persuaded Mr. Beman, whose farm we have just 
passed, to buy a steel plow this spring, and he 
pronounces it the best plow he ever saw; but 
the Deacon met me the other day, and said, “ I 
have just been looking at your corn and Mr. 
Beman’s, and I have come to the unanimous 
opinion that those steel plows bring in the 
weeds I” I told him that was an old story. It 
was what the English farmers, who had been in 
the habit of using wooden plows, said of the 
iron ones. And though I laughed at the idea 
at the time, it is possible there is some truth in 
it. The steel plows pulverize and mellow the 
soil more perfectly than the iron ones—j ust as 
the iron ones did the same thing better than the 
wooden ones—and, consequently, any seeds of 
weeds that were lying dormant among the clogs 
would be more likely to germinate. I have 
known subsoiling and deep plowing to “ bring 
in” thistles and wild mustard by the million. 
All this time, Mr. Johnston, who was tired 
by his journey, said little. Like all sensible and 
agreeable men, he is a good listener. But after 
dinner we got him talking about his own farm 
experience—and what a rich experience it has 
been ! When he made his first purchase, “You 
will starve on that land,” the neighbors said. 
He drew out a large quantity of manure that 
had been accumulating for years, and put it on 
to a field he was about to sow to barley. “ You 
are throwing away your time and money,” was 
all the encouragement he received; and what 
was worse than all, the barley itself seemed to 
confirm their opinion. It was a miserable crop! 
Poor Johnston 1 It must have been a bitter 
pill to swallow. But his faith was strong, and 
he kept busily at work. He mowed and got to¬ 
gether what little barley there was, and plowed 
the land twice, harrowed it thoroughly, and 
then sowed wheat. And this time he got his 
reward. It was a great crop. “No crop,” he 
remarked, “requires such good land and such 
thorough tillage as barley. Laud that is rich 
enough to produce a good crop of barley will 
be rich enough after the barley is off to grow a 
good crop of wheat without more manure.” That 
is true, I said; but to make a sure thing of it, it 
would be better to put on two hundred pounds 
of Peruvian guano per acre before sowing the 
wheat. “ That would give great wheat,” he re¬ 
plied. “ I believe in guano. I used it last 
year on my wheat, and it was capital, and this 
spring I sent for some more to put on my man¬ 
gel-wurzel. A dozen or more years ago, Mr. 
S. put guano on some poor knolls that never 
before produced anything, and he had great 
wheat, and to this day you can see the effect of 
the guano.” I can well believe that, I said ; al¬ 
though it is undoubtedly true that not a particle 
of manure remained in the soil after the second 
or third year. Nearly all the ammonia would 
be taken up by the first crop of wheat, and the 
following crop of clover would use up the phos¬ 
phates. But he probably had a big crop of 
clover, the roots of which, and probably some 
of the clover, would be plowed in for manure, 
and thus the land would grow good crops long 
after the guano had disappeared. And the 
same is true of plaster, or manure of any kind, 
or of summei'-fallowing, or of anything that we 
once do to enrich the land. It gives us good 
clover, and if the land is properly managed af¬ 
terwards, we never altogether lose the benefit. 
A good start is half the race. “ Yes,” he re¬ 
plied, “ the clover on these knolls where the 
guano was put is always so heavy that it lodges.” 
The next morning, after having been to the 
barn-yard, where the men were milking the 
cows, he asked, “ What makes your cows so 
thin? You could not have wintered them 
well.” This remark “ took me down ” consider¬ 
ably. I rather prided myself on feeding the 
cows so well in winter. And I have been for 
several weeks feeding them steamed potatoes 
and a little corn meal; and besides this, their 
pasture is capital. In fact, I have been a little 
afraid of getting my cows too fat. I feed higher 
than anybody else in this neighborhood, and 
then to be told that the cows are thin ! Well, 
if Mr. J. says so, all right. I will feed higher. 
I believe in supplying all the food a cow can 
turn into butter. And I believe, too, in making 
cows fat in winter, being satisfied that, with a 
good cow, we get all the fat back again in the 
form of butter during the summer. 
Mr. Johnston’s cows are grade Short-horns, 
and are very fat, but they give a large quantity 
of milk. He says “ there is nothing like Dur- 
hams.” He has just sold a two-year-old heifer 
to the butcher for $116. She weighed 1,300 lbs. 
or so. Except for the last few months, she had 
nothing but grass and hay. But then his grass 
is of the best quality. He believes, as I do, that 
on dry land, the more you cultivate it, and the 
more manure you use, the more nutritious will 
be the grass. Few understand what an im¬ 
mense advantage this is. Mr. J. lias to milk 
liis cows three times a day, and gets a pailful 
each time; and the cows have nothing but 
hay and grass, winter and summer. But the 
truth is, that it would take two or three quarts 
of corn meal to make twenty-five pounds of 
ordinary hay equal to that which Mr. J. gets 
from his thoroughly underdrained, clean, and 
richly manured land. Those of us who are 
trying to improve our farms should take encour¬ 
agement. The advantages to be gained are 
greater in every way than most of us understand. 
Mr. J. thought my horses were in such high 
condition that I could not work them very hard. 
I told him they were worked steadily every day. 
We feed pretty high, and it is one of my rules 
never, if it can be helped, to let a horse lie idle. 
A horse, if well fed, will do better if worked 
regularly than if he works hard occasionally, 
and then lies idle. It costs so much to keep a 
horse, that we cannot afford to have him stand¬ 
ing in the stable while we are hoeing. Better 
try to do more of our hoeing with the cultivator. 
But “fat horses and thin cows,” you will 
say, docs not indicate very good farming. Anil 
this is true. But I do not want my horses any 
thinner; and I will sec that my cows, after this, 
are fatter, at least in the spring. A cow ought 
to work “ as hard as a horse,” and should be as 
well fed. That is to say, we keep horses to 
labor, and cows to produce milk, and the source 
of both is - the food. Where horses and cows 
are cheap, it may pay to keep them on a low 
diet of cheap food; but where they are high, it 
is a great loss to allow their digestive powers to 
run to waste from not providing all the material 
that the stomach can turn into blood, which is 
the primary source of milk, as well as flesh. 
We are all of us rather inclined to feed our 
horses better than we do our cows, and it is 
