Q48 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[July, 
of sowing wheat, I should have sow'ii rye, and ma¬ 
nured it. Then this sirring it could have been fed 
off with sheep, or cut for the milch cows, and the 
land then plowed and planted with corn or beans. 
Red root, it is said, only grows among winter 
wheat; but if you wdll prepare the laud precisely 
as you would were yon going to sow wheat, and 
then let it lie bare, or sow rye, the red root will be 
cheated ! It will germinate in the fall, and you can 
plow’ it lip in the spring. Red root is easily des¬ 
troyed. IVliat renders it formidable is, the fact, 
that it only germinates iuaut\imn and gets into our 
winter wlieat, where we have no chance of dcstro}'- 
iug it. If we prepare our laud for wheat, and then 
sow rye instead, and cat this off or mow it in the 
spring, and tlien plow’ the laud and plant beans, we 
should destroy large quantities of it—and as W'e 
could .sow wheat after the beans, it is only delaying 
the wheat crop one year. The rye, if sown early, 
and manured, would give ns a great crop of suc¬ 
culent food early in the spring, and w’ould be just 
what we need for milch cows, or for ewes and 
lambs. For the latter purpose, rye is frequently, 
grown on light lands in England. Where lambs are, 
raised early for the butcher, I do not ceo why it 
would not be very valuable. You think it would 
make the land too rich for beans. If so, give up 
the plan of sowing w’hcat the next fall, and plant 
corn instead of the beans ; or, w'hat is usually done 
in England, sow turnips or some other root crop. 
But I do not believe the manure would hurt the 
beans. I think it is a mistake that beans require 
such poor land. If well culti\ated, they will ma¬ 
ture quite as early on rich land as on poor, and give 
a far better crop. But they must be kept clean.. 
My beans last year paid me better than any other 
crop I raised, and I have put in ten acres this sea¬ 
son. If the price is low, it wilt still pay to raise 
them to feed to sheep and milch cows. No grain 
makes such rich manure, and nothing is bettor for 
milch COW’S than corn and bean meal mixed to¬ 
gether. Then there is this advantage about beans, 
they need not be planted until you are through the 
hurry of spring woilv, and they are off in time to 
sow .wheat in the fall, and as they are drilled in 
rows tw’o and a half feet apart, the land can be 
cultivated w’ith the horse-hoe and can be made as 
clean as if summer fallowed. I say can bo, because 
this is seldom the case. Harvest work comes on, 
and the cultivators are thrown aside, and before 
you know it, tlie beans are full of weeds, and you 
lose one of tlic chief advantages of the crop. Then 
W’hat a jffc.asant work it is to pull beaus among 
thistles! I Iiave kuow’ii fanners “go into beans ” 
w'ith great enlhusiasm, thinking to make their for¬ 
tune, who soon gave them up in disgust simply be¬ 
cause they neglected to keep them clean. I saw’ a 
crop last year that was completely smothered w’ith 
weeds, and was not woi'th pnlling. 
Beans are an excellent crop), but must have clean 
culture. They should not be w’orked amongst 
while the dew is on, as it is said to rust the leaves, 
but otherwise you cannot cultivate them too fre¬ 
quently. “ What do I suppose is the reason there 
is so much red root in the wheat after beans-"’ 
Simply because thd land had been so frequently 
plowedand cultivated,that all the seed in tlieground 
germinated. It was just what was needed to des¬ 
troy the red root, pn-ovided it could have been 
plowed under this spring. As it is, it will trouble 
me for years to come. I believe it w’ould havep^aid 
to have plowed up the wheat and sown it to barlej’. 
As the seed that was in the ground doubtless all 
germinated from the repeated plowing and harrow¬ 
ing it received, this would have rid me of the pest. 
I have just been sawing wood with a machine and 
three horses and four men. I believe I could have 
got it sawed cheaper by hand. That is not a 
“ progressive ” idea, but I am inclined to think it is 
a fict nevertheless. I know if you have everything 
just right you can do work cheaper with machinery 
than by hand, but the trouble is to get everything 
just right. If a man made a business of sawing 
wood, he could saw it cheaper with a good machine 
than by hand, because lie could keep liis machine 
in order. But when you have only a little wood to 
saw, it takes half the time to get fairly started and 
everything working right. The saw pjerhapis is a 
little rusted, or it is not sharp, or is not set quite 
true; or if the saw prerchance should be all right, 
something may be wrong with the horse-power. It 
-is not set right, and the belt rubs or comes off, or 
there is a screw loose, or a little casting breaks— 
and you have to stopr all h.ands and send a hundred 
miles for a new one. Those who depiict so eloquent¬ 
ly the pilcasures of modern farming by machineiw, 
draw more on their imagination than their ex- 
prerience. I have tried it, and while I do not 
desprair, I am often discouraged. I have a machine 
with which I can, and do, turn the grindstone, cut 
fodder, thrash, grind the grain, drive the cider mill, 
saw wood in the log with a drag saw, or cord wood 
with a circular saw. This it will do, and do well, 
but oh, the care of kecpringall these things in order 
and getting them to work well. I have a piotato 
planter, that at one operation marks out the rows, 
cuts the potatoes, drops the sets, covers them up, 
and rolls the ground. Also one that drills twelve 
acres of corn and beans in a day, and does the work 
well. We have cultivators that leave very little to 
be done with hand-hoes. We have mowing ma¬ 
chines and reapers that leave little to bo desired in 
this direction. The tedding machine shakes out 
the hay as well as it can be done by hand and five 
times as fast, the wooden revolving rake pulls it in¬ 
to wind-rows, a piitching machine attached to the 
back end of a wagon will carry the hay on to the 
load, and a steel toothed sulky rake makes all clean. 
Then at the barn we unload with a horse fork, and 
the farmer can sit in the shade smoking the piipe of 
contentment as he witnesses the operation. Then 
we have a machine for milking cows, and another 
to work the butter, while, if you make cheese, the 
American vats and presses make the labor more 
child’s pilay, comprared with the old Cheshire system. 
I have not tried these last named maehines, but I 
have little doubt that they work as well as some of 
the others I have named. The grain binder, too, I 
have faith enough to believe'will soon be attached 
to every reaprer, and then with a steam pilow and a 
good protato digger, won’t farmers have an easy 
time? Not'a bit of it. If these things would run 
themselves; if they never got out of i-epair; if 
they had no disprositiou to lie round loose, but 
■would p>ut themselves upr, then indeed we should 
be “gentlemen of leisure.” But this will never 
be. We can change our work, but we can never 
get rid of it. If we do not work with our muscles, 
we must with our brains. And the encouraging 
feature of this age of invention is not that these 
“labor saving machines” do the work so much 
cheaper, as that they change the character of the 
labor i-cquired in agriculture. They lessen back¬ 
breaking druggery, and increase mental activity. A 
farmer who uses a good deal of machinery cannot 
be dull and stupid. It will make a man of him. 
I exprect great things from the young farmers of 
America. There is everything to encourage them : 
soil, climate, social prosition, piolitical influence. 
The destiny of the country is in their hands. But 
they must not expect to live lives of ease .and 
luxury. Brains rather than muscles 'svill be re¬ 
quired in the new condition of our agriculture. 
Machinery will stimulate mental activity’, and en¬ 
courage the growth of that rare grace, pratieuce! 
I look forw’ard with much interest to the trial of 
implements at Auburn on the lOth of July'. Great 
pjains have been taken to secure reliable results. I 
think, however, from the Programme on IIor.se 
Powers, the only one I h.ave seen, tluat too much 
importauee is given to “ effective force,” as a test 
of merit. Of course, other things being equal, 
effective force—or e.ase of dj-aught in accompffishing 
a given amount of work—should secure tlie award. 
But unless the “ other things ” are taken into con¬ 
sideration, ■we may get a decision that will be an 
injury to agriculture rather than a benelit. I can 
imagine a horse pmwer that runs very easy, and 
which might take the prize, that would prove a 
nuisance on any ordinary farm. The one great de¬ 
fect of American .agricultural machines is, their 
liability to breakage, and to get out of repair. No 
matter how effective a machine may- be when it is 
properly set and run by an experienced machinist, 
if from an inherent defect in the pu’inciple of its 
construction, or of workmaushipr, it is A'ery liable 
to break Avhcu not set exactly true; or if its ar- 
r.angements are comprlicated, so that ordinary farm 
men cannot run it. I should greatly prrefer some 
less effective but simpler machine, that is strong 
enough to stand the .abuse that it Avill be sure to 
meet with in ordinary farm pjractice. On a farm 
large enough to use a sweep) p 30 wer to advantage, a 
extra horse at a seasen when it is most used is of 
little consequence. In the avinter season, for in¬ 
stance, in chafling fodder, or grinding feed, or saw-- 
ing Avood, I AvouUl about as soon put on three 
horses as two, or five as four—that is if there is 
anything gained by it. I am not arguing in favor 
of keepring more horses than Ave need. I think this 
a great mistake. All I Avishtoshow is, that an extra 
horse, during a leisure season, or at a time Avheu all 
the men on the farm are employed in attending the. 
machine, is nothing compared Avith the loss of time 
.and annoyance caused by a machine that is forever 
getting out of order. In the hands of a careless 
man an ordinary AA-atch, for his pnirposes, would 
prove more useful than a delicate chronometer. 
Hoav wretchedly poor most farmers keep) their 
store hogs. Having more milk than my’ p)igs Avould 
eat, I rode round to see if I could buy a Icaa’. I 
called oil a dozen farmers or more, and did not see 
three that keep their hogs decently’. In tivo or 
three cases the p)ens Averc filthy'in the extreme. 
There is no excuse for it. If short of straAv, the 
horse litter might bethroAvn into the pen. It Avould 
keep the pigs dry and comfortable, smother that 
horrible stench, and make a great quantity of rich 
m.anure. The p)ig is naturally the cleanest animal 
on the farm, Avhy compel him to be the dirtiest? 
“ Breeding sows should not be kept too fat,” is 
one of those pop)nlar notions, half true and half 
false, that leads to grave misman.agement and loss. 
Most of the SOAVS I saAV Avere ravenously hungry, 
and some of them appeared to have b.arely strength 
enough to Avalk, let alone suckling the little ones. 
Such treatment is cruel—and monstrously absurd. 
“Pigs are very scarce this spring,” said one who 
asked me four dollars a p)iece for a litter five Aveeks 
old. “Mr. Blank, at the Corner's, has six breeding 
SOAVS, and only raised tAvo p)igs.” I p)resume. if he 
had tAvelve he Avould not have raised one. I bought 
one litter six Aveeks old, of a man Avho was OA;er- 
stocked, for .?3 a p)iece. Had they been fed as pigs 
should be, I Avould h.ave given him §-l, and they 
Avould have been better worth it, for an animal 
starved Avhen young never fully recovers. 
High feeding .and high farming must, as a general 
rule, go together. We cannot farm high Avithout 
good manure, and Ave cannot get good manure 
Avithout high feeding. This little French book of 
Prof. Ville advocates Avhat he calls a iicav system of 
“high forming Avithout manure.” There is much 
in the book that is both new and true ; “ but Avhat 
is true is not ncAV, and Avhat is ncAv is not true.” 
The Professor has been making some exp)criments 
on the Imperi.al farm at Vincennes, and found th.at 
by’ using nitrogen for Avheat, p)hosphates for roots,- 
and p)otash for leguminous p)lants, he could get 
large crop)s. This is not new. Mr. LaAves p)ublished 
the same thing sixteen years .ago, as the result of 
his experiments, and thousands of farmers in Eng¬ 
land have acted upon it ever since. But Avill the 
use of these artificial in.anures enable us to dispense 
AA’ith ordinary manure, and Avill they pay? They 
.are of great A’alue Avhen used in addition to ma¬ 
nure; but, as a general rule, it is neither safe nor 
prrolitable to depend up)on them alone. The real 
value of these experiments in France is their strik¬ 
ing confirmation of'Mr. LaAves’ experiments in Eng¬ 
land. Ammonia for Avheat, bones for turnips, and 
p)otash for clover, peas and beans. The practical 
difllculty is to get the former. Itc.annot be pur¬ 
chased except at a high figure, and in ordiu.ary 
practice any system that Avill give us ammonia, will 
at the same time give us phosphates and potash.- 
We get the Avhole in l ich manure. 
