94 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 75. 
Lust spring the Commissioner of Agriculture 
sent me two bushels of “ Anautka spring wheat 
from Russia.” I mentioned the fact at our 
Farmers’ Club, and some of the members inti¬ 
mated that they would like to be “ connected 
with the Press,” and be in the way of receiving 
such favors. I told them that if any member of 
the Club would take the wheat, sow it and re¬ 
port the result, they were welcome to it. But 
not a man accepted the offer. I like to receive 
and try new implements, seeds, etc., but so far 
as the profit is concerned, any man shall have 
it who will supply me with postage stamps. 
I have no sort of interest in the matter, but I 
often think our old, established, agricultural im¬ 
plement manufacturers and seedsmen make a 
great mistake in not availing themselves of the 
agricultural papers, to let farmers know where 
they can get good, thoroughly tried implements 
and machines. They too often abandon the 
field to the enterprising advertisers of some new 
invention—and it is a great evil under the sun. 
Sometime since, the President of an Agricul¬ 
tural College, who was going to deliver an ad¬ 
dress, asked me to furnish him a few facts in re¬ 
gard to some of the most striking discoveries in 
agricultural science and invention. “ I do not 
think of any for the moment,” I replied, “ and, 
in fact, I have ceased to look for them.” He 
seemed slightly disgusted. “ There is one new 
thing,” said a prominent agricultural gentlemen, 
“that is destined to accomplish great results, and 
that is the-Ditching Machine. You 
ought to see it,” he said, turning to me, “ it is a 
really capital thing.” “Yes,” I said, “ the in¬ 
ventor came to see me about it.” I was digging 
ditches at the time, and he said “ I could save 
half the expense by using one of his machines.” 
“,I think it is a good thing,” I replied, “ and will 
make you the following offer: These ditches 
cost me 25 cents a rod. Now, I will furnish the 
horses for the machine and will give you 20 cts. 
a rod for cutting the ditches and making them 
ready for the tiles.” He did not accept the offer. 
The truth is, no farmer will ever get rich 
simply by using machinery. It is not the prin¬ 
cipal point to aim at. And the same is true of 
new varieties of seeds and fruit. As a rule, the 
less we have to do with them the better. Our 
great object, at the present time, must be to get 
the land in the best condition to raise large 
crops and then to find out how to convert them 
into the best beef, mutton, wool, cheese, butter, 
and pork, at the least cost. 
“But how did your spring wheat turn out?” 
I got 23 bushels. On one side of this acre of 
wheat, I had barley that yielded 35 bushels per 
acre, and on the other side, oats that'yielded 75 
bushels per acre. Now, I do not say that this 
is not good spring wheat. I presume it is. And, 
if I were a spring wheat grower, I would give it 
a farther trial, on land in better condition. De¬ 
pend upon it, however, that the one thing which 
American agriculture wants to day, is not im¬ 
proved varieties of seeds, but improved cultiva¬ 
tion of the soil. And it is so with improved 
breeds of cattle and sheep. Col. Waring pro¬ 
poses to renovate Ogden Farm by putting on it 
a heavy stock of the best animals. I have no 
sort of doubt but that he will succeed in his ob¬ 
ject. He will make large quantities of rich ma¬ 
nure, and this in the end will make his land rich 
enough to support all his stock with little extra 
food. But in order to do this, he must for some 
years purchase food for his present stock. In 
)iis circumstances, I think he has adopted the 
right course. And there are thousands of farms 
where the same plan would prove very profita¬ 
ble. But he must get good prices for his stock, 
butter, etc. And then, again, it should not be 
forgotton that the first thing he did was to thor¬ 
oughly underdrain his land. I presume, too, 
he is taxing all his energies to make it clean. 
In point of fact, therefore, his practice does not 
essentially differ from the one I advocate. I 
urge the necessity of improving the land before 
you get improved varieties of plants and ani¬ 
mals. He puts the animals on at once and buys 
food for them in order to make manure, and 
thus bring up the fertility of the land to the 
self-supporting point. As his land is thoroughly 
drained, the plan is an excellent one. It is 
simply buying food to make manure, instead of 
buying the manure. I knew a nurseryman who 
drew clover hay to the city and sold it for $10 per 
ton, and drew back fresh stable manure which 
cost him $1.00 a ton. Waring knows better 
than to do this. He feeds his clover hay to 
Alderney cows, sells the butter for 75 cents a 
lb., and has manure left worth $10 for every ton 
of clover hay he feeds out; and I presume he 
feeds oil-cake besides, the manure from a ton of 
which is worth $20. 
Most farmers cannot adopt this system. We 
have not capital enough. We must use time 
as a substitute for capital. We must first bring 
up our land, and then put on improved stock. 
How best to do this depends on the soil and 
location. But in all cases the first thing is to 
underdrain all land that needs it. The next is 
to kill the weeds and make the land mellow. 
These two things must be done no matter what 
the character of the soil may be. On light, sandy 
land we can best clean the land by growing 
hoed crops, such as corn, beaus, and roots, that 
admit the use of the cultivator; on heavy, clay 
loams it will, at first, generally be best to sum¬ 
mer-fallow, or “ fall-fallow,” or both. Then, 
never sow a grain crop without seeding it down 
in the spring with clover. Do anything you 
like with the clover except to remove it from 
the farm. Plow it under, or pasture it with 
sheep, or make it into hay, and return the ma¬ 
nure obtained from it to the land. I will not 
say which is the best plan. It depends on cir¬ 
cumstances. With butter at 40 cents a lb., and 
pood sheep worth 8 cents per lb., live weight, I 
think it a pity to plow under clover, because 
the manure from the sheep eating the clover, is 
worth as much, within five per cent, as the clover 
would be if plowed under. And in fact, on 
wheat land, I would rather have the manure 
from clover than the clover itself, because the 
clover gives us too much carbonaceous matter, 
which produces an excessive growth of straw, 
and probably retards the ripening of the wheat. 
Still, this effect would not be produced until 
the practice of plowing under clover had been 
continued for some years. 
Where a farmer lias not sufficient, capital to 
buy manure or to purchase oil-cake, or other 
food to feed his animals for the purpose of in¬ 
creasing his manure heap in quantity and qual¬ 
ity, he must be content, with raising compara¬ 
tively few grain crops. He must aim to get 40 
bushels of wheat per acre on ten acres, instead 
of 20 bushels per acre on 20 acres. And he 
must aim to get 80 bushels of corn per acre on 
5 acres, instead of 40 bushels per acre on 10 
acres. In this case he will not have a bushel 
more to sell than he now has, and will impover¬ 
ish his land no more. In a recent conversation 
with Mr. Geddcs, the able advocate for plowing 
under clover, he remarked, “You recommend 
summer-fallowing; but it will in the end, cer¬ 
tainly impoverish the land. I have seen nu¬ 
merous instances where it has had this effect.” 
No doubt about it; and plowing under clover 
will, theoretically, do the same thing. Practi¬ 
cally it does not have this effect, because the 
land as it becomes impoverished, will gradu¬ 
ally cease to grow clover. What I advocate, is 
the use of fallows to bring up and clean neglect¬ 
ed land, especially that of a heavy character. 
When the land is clean and in good order, I 
would not summer-fallow. I would grow 
_ clover and feed it out to stock. To grow clover 
and plow it under has the same effect as sum¬ 
mer-fallowing. Both processes owe their value 
mainly to this one effect: They combine in one 
crop (say wheat) the atmospheric and soil ca¬ 
pacities of two seasons of growth, instead of one. 
If the soil and atmosphere are capable of giving 
us 15 bushels of wheat every year, fallowing or 
plowing under a years’ growth of clover, should 
give us 30 bushels per acre every other year. 
We get no more wheat in the one case than in 
the other. Where, then, does the profit come 
in? It costs no more for seed, and little more 
for harvesting a crop of 30 bushels, than a crop 
of 15 bushels. And consequently we save the 
seed and nearly all the labor of one crop. The 
only advantage which the clover has over the 
fallow, is, that the roots may go deeper than the 
wheat, and bring up plant-food from the subsoil 
which is turned under for the use of the wheat. 
It may be, too, that the cost of working the 
land in clover is not as great as in fallowing. 
On the other hand, fallowing makes the land 
cleaner and develops more plant-food in the soil. 
Now, mark you, I am not advocating fallow¬ 
ing instead of clover. I am only contending 
that the clover system will impoverish the soil 
just as much as the fallowing system, provided 
that the clover is all plowed under, and wheat 
is raised every other year. And the same is 
true if we substitute oats, or barley, or corn in 
the place of wheat. 
No one holds clover in greater esteem as a 
renovating crop than I do. What I contend 
for is, that we should use it as a renovating plant 
and for food at the same time. Instead of plow¬ 
ing under clover the first year and sowing the 
land again to wheat, I would let it lie two years, 
and either make the crops into hay and draw 
back the manure, or pasture the field with sheep. 
Then after two years, I would plow it in the 
fall and sow it to barley in the spring, and seed 
down with clover again. Now I pasture for two 
years more and then plow up and sow to wheat, 
and seed down again with cl-over in the spring. 
In this way we get a crop of grain every three 
years, and might expect three times as much to 
the acre as if we sowed a grain crop every year. 
In other words, we might get as much grain 
and have the use of the clover for the mainte¬ 
nance of horses, or for the production of mutton, 
wool, butter and cheese, into the bargain. The 
amount of plant-food removed from the clover 
by the animals is of little practical account. 
If this system does not make the land rich 
enough, I would go a step farther. Instead of 
plowing up the clover the second year, let it lie 
until the third year, and then plant it to com 
or sow it to peas, and let the whole crop b® fed 
out on the farm. If peas are sown, sow wheat 
in the fall; aud if corn, sow it to barley the fol¬ 
lowing spring; and in either case, seed down 
again with clover. In this way we get for one 
grain crop sold from the farm, three years’ 
growth of clover, and one years’ growth of peas 
or corn, all of which are returned to the soil. 
We shall have nearly or quite as much wheat 
and barley to sell, as iff we sowed these crops 
