1870 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
15 
through the year. The first step is to employ 
all the men now and in the spring who are will¬ 
ing to work at. reasonable rates, and then to re¬ 
duce, unflinchingly, the area of our plowed land. 
“This is much easier said than done,” remarks 
the owner of a farm of 150 acres of naturally 
good land that he and his son and eight months 
hired men,with an occasional day-hand, manages 
to work in such a manner as to secure a tolerable 
living. In fact, he more than intimates that his 
style of farming pays better than mine, a remark 
which, though unpleasantly personal, I would 
rather let pass than undertake to controvert! 
This 150 .acres consists of 10 acres of wood¬ 
land, 20 acres of rather wet permanent pasture, 
10 acres of permanent meadow, cutting perhaps 
three-fourths to one ton of hay per acre, and 
about ten acres in orchard, garden, etc. On the 
other hundred acres the crops last year were: 
12 acres corn, 22 bushels per acre, 
3 “ potatoes, 85 “ “ “ 
15 “ of wheat, 13^ “ “ “ 
15 “ of barley, 21 “ “ “ 
5 “ of oats, 58 “ “ “ 
15 acres of clover for hay, and afterwards cut 
for seed not yet threshed, one bushel per acre. 
15 acres two-year-old clover and timothy cut 
for hay. 
20 acres three-year-old clover and timothy, 
pastured. 
There is now 15 acres of wheat on the ground, 
after barley, and he proposes to sow 15 acres of 
barley in the spring on the corn and potato 
ground, to be followed with wheat. The twenty 
acres of timothy sod are to be plowed in spring 
and planted with corn. The five acres of oat 
stubble are to be planted with beans, to be fol¬ 
lowed with wheat. 
He asks how I could better this rotation ? I 
have no particular objection to it, except that 
it does not keep the land clean and does not 
produce a single crop, with the exception cjf the 
oats, that pays expenses. And unless there is a 
change, the land will become no richer or cleaner. 
We must have very cheap labor and high prices 
for produce before such crops can be profit¬ 
able. Now, what I would do would be to divide 
the 20 acres into two fields. Plant one to corn 
this year and pasture the other, planting it to 
corn the year following. Put as much labor on 
the 10 acres in cultivating com as would have 
been expended on the twenty. The five acres 
of oat stubble, instead of planting beans I would 
summer-fallow for wheat. Although the oats 
were a fair crop, the thistles were so numerous 
that only a portion of the field could be bound 
into sheaves. If planted to beans, a great deal 
of labor would be required in hoeing, or else 
the thistles and other weeds would lessen the 
crop one half, and render it a difficult and un¬ 
pleasant task to pull the beans. In either case, 
there is little chance of the crop paying expenses 
on such land. The fifteen-acre field of two- 
year-old clover sod I would pasture till the first 
week in June; then plow up five acres and 
drill in beans immediately after the plow. The 
other ten acres I would plow up and summer- 
fallow, and then sow the whole 15 acres to 
wheat in the fall. The 15 acres of com and po¬ 
tato land I would sow to barley, and, seed it 
down heavily with clover, and give up sowing 
it to wheat next fall. The 15 acres of clover 
mown for hay and seed I would pasture lightly 
till July, and then break it up and give it a good 
“fall-fallowing” and sow it to barley in the 
spring of 1871, and sow it to wheat afterwards, 
seeding it down with clover. You would thus 
have, in 1870, 
15 acres wheat, now on the ground, seeded 
down, 
10 acres of corn, 
5 acres of beans, 
15 acres of barley, seeded down. 
In 1871—10 acres summer-fallowed wheat, 
5 acres wheat after beans, 
15 acres barley after fall-fallow, 
10 acres barley in oats after corn, seed¬ 
ed down, 
10 acres of corn on old sod. 
“But you are making me plow more instead 
of less.” At any rate you will have less com to 
hoe and fewer “ nubbins” to pack. The sum¬ 
mer and fall-fallowing is work that can be done 
with the teams, and if you do it thoroughly it 
will make the land clean and mellow, and you 
may reasonably expect good crops of wheat and 
barley and splendid crops of clover afterwards. 
Raise only what potatoes you want for a year 
or two till your land gets clean and full of clover 
roots. When it is rich enough to produce 200 
bushels per acre, you can plant potatoes with 
considerable profit. 
The increased yield of corn, barley and wheat 
is only one of the benefits resulting from this 
thorough working of the land. It will give us 
splendid crops of clover and rich grass, and this 
will enable us to keep more and better stock. 
Many farmers say it does not pay to keep stock, 
and in point of fact, they are very often in the 
right. I can hardly see how it pays to keep a 
wether sheep three years and six months, getting 
say $7 for the three fleeces, and then selling him 
for $3. But I think it must be quite as profit¬ 
able as to keep a steer the same length of time 
and then sell him for $50. Such a steer will eat 
as much as eight or ten Merino sheep. But the 
truth is, w r e cannot expect to make anything by 
keeping stock of any kind unless we keep it 
well; it must be gaining all the time. If we 
let a machine lie idle all that we lose is the in¬ 
terest on the money which it cost. But an 
animal cannot be kept idle. It must eat every 
day ; and if it gains nothing we lose all the food 
and the interest on the value of the animal ma¬ 
chine besides. But many farmers not only keep 
them for weeks and months together without 
their gaining anything, but it not unfrequently 
happens that the animals actually decrease in 
weight. It has to live on its own flesh and fat— 
which is certainly a very expensive food. Even 
in the case of well-fed pigs, which store up more 
flesh and fat for the food consumed than any 
other domestic animal; for every pound of flesh 
and fat we get in the animal, they eat about five 
pounds of food. They use four pounds to live 
on and give us one pound. And when we have 
got this one pound, how excessively wasteful it 
is to feed it to the animal and have it worked 
over again; and yet this is precisely what thou¬ 
sands of fanners are doing to-day with cows, 
sheep and pigs. No wonder that “ keeping stock 
does not pay.” But good stock, fed liberally 
and with care and judgment, will pay better, 
all things considered, than any other branch of 
farming. Good meat brings a good price, and 
is always in demand. It is the “scallawags” 
that are hard to dispose of, and always at a loss 
—a loss to the producer and a loss to the con¬ 
sumer. Those who buy such meat get little 
besides bones and water. The poor animals 
have had to live on their own fat and their 
nutritious juices. 
The first step in keeping good stock is to 
make the land dry and clean. The next is to 
feed liberally, and this will insure good manure, 
and that in its turn insures good crops. 
It is all very well to say that a “ peck of clo* 
ver seed to the acre is the cheapest fertilizer,” 
and that by its free use we can dispense with 
manure. I do not dispute the truth of this prop¬ 
osition. No one thinks more highly of clover 
than I do. But it only tells half the story. 
Clover makes good food and good manure too. 
An animal will take out the food, convert it 
into valuable products, and leave the manure 
behind. Our aim should be dry, clean land, 
more clover and rich grass, more and better 
stock and more and better manure. 
It cannot be too often repeated, however, that 
the value of manure depends on the food and not 
on the animals. A raw-boned steer, if it has the 
same food, will make as rich manure as the best 
Shorthorn in the Herd-book; and the drop¬ 
pings from a Merino sheep living on clover-hay 
and oilcake are just as valuable as those from a 
Cotswold. But this is the point: We cannot 
feed clover-hay and oil-cake to a Merino with 
half the profit that we can to a Cotswold. The 
former is adapted to live on comparatively poor 
food and grow slowly; the Cotswold has been 
bred with especial reference to rapid growth on 
rich food. So when we advocate keeping 
well-bred stock, in order to make rich manure, 
we do so for the simple reason that we cannot 
afford to feed rich food to poor stock, and with¬ 
out rich food we cannot have t ick manure. 
Use of the Plow in Digging Ditches. 
No ditch-digging machine has yet been in¬ 
troduced. There are some for which great, 
claims are put forth, but we must wait before 
they become common articles upon the farm. 
Meanwhile ditch digging must go on by spade 
and mattock, pick and scoop. We may, how¬ 
ever, great'y facilitate the operation by employ¬ 
ing the labor of horses or oxen with plows. 
There are several difficulties to be obviated. 
It is hard to plow a furrow on a sufficiently 
straight line; this may be accomplished by 
stretchinga cord and turning over a narrow line 
of sods with a spade, exactly where the ditch 
should be. The cattle will follow this line of 
themselves, when they cotdd hardly be driven 
exactly along a line of stakes. To use the plow 
economically, one needs a pretty strong force 
of diggers and pickers, and to have them well 
scattered throughout the line plowed. Two 
pairs of oxen make the best team, probably. 
Two furrows are turned out, 12 inches wide, and 
9 inches deep. Then if the sods are cleared 
away, the plow may lift another furrow-slice 
out on each side, but probably it will only 
loosen the dirt and make it easy shoveling. 
This will stir the soil down some 4 to 6 inches, 
and when it is cleared out the ditch will be 13 
to 15 inches deep, with ridges of earth and 
stones along both sides. The oxen will not 
easily be made to walk longer in the furrow, 
and without very long yokes they will not go 
one on each side of it. These are sometimes 
used, but we are informed that another plan is 
practised in some places with great success. 
The two yokes of oxen are attached abreast to 
the pole of a cart, the body being removed. 
They draw by chains made fast to the axle, and 
the tongue is supported by a light ash or hickory 
pole, lashed firmly to the yokes of each pair of 
oxen. The earth is thrown out from the ditch 
on each side, and the length of this pole is such 
that the inside ox of each pair walks on the 
inner side of the ridge. The plow is attached 
to the axle-tree. The chain may be fastened to 
the axle-tree itself, but it is fir better to use an 
oak knee, as shown, which is lashed forward to 
