1870.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
211 
good horse breeding lies in the resort to the high¬ 
est bred sire whose services can be obtained. 
-» « -->«•■———■—- 
Ogden Farm Papers—No. 6. 
The season for soiling has now arrived. 
Those who have intended to make it a sole 
reliance for their summer feeding, have pre¬ 
pared for it before this; but there is still time 
to put in sowed corn to help out the pastures 
during the drier weather of August and Sep¬ 
tember. No time, however, must be lost. By 
the middle of this month, at the latest, the seed 
should be in the ground. It seems to me that 
it is impossible to manage an American stock 
farm advantageously without adopting some 
such expedient. 
From the middle of May until the middle 
of July, our good pastures are luxuriant, and 
are capable of supporting a much larger stock 
than they can carry through the July and 
August drought. As a consequence, we are 
unable to consume all the provender that is 
available in June, because this would require 
us to keep more animals than could be fed in 
August. Or, if we do stock our pastures to the 
utmost of their June capacity, our animals will 
be half starved during the drought. 
Much the simplest way to regulate the ques¬ 
tion of supply and demand, is to depend en¬ 
tirely on soiling. In this case, we are sure that 
we shall always have enough, and the surplus,— 
that which the cattle do not consume,—instead of 
being scattered in irregular patches over the 
pasture, much of it overgrown, and mixed with 
weeds, is in a condition to be easily mowed, 
cured, and stored for winter use. It is not to be 
supposed, however, that in a country like this, 
any very considerable proportion of its farmers 
will be able to command sufficient labor for a 
complete system of soiling; and as we have to 
take the world as we find it, the most valuable 
advice that can be given to average American 
farmers, would be to lay down the paper at once, 
and set i mmediately to work to prepare,for sowed 
corn, enough land to allow a quarter of an acre 
for each head of full grown stock on the farm. 
By and by, when the hill-sides become brown¬ 
ed with the scorching summer sun, and the 
withered grass fails to furnish the necessary 
food, then the corn, three or four feet high and 
covering the ground with a succulent mass of 
vegetation, will give the animals such a bounti¬ 
ful supply every morning and evening, as will 
carry them back to the condition of early June. 
If the pastures are suffering more than usual, 
such an amount of fodder as this, would enable 
us to keep the stock entirely off until the early 
fall rains bring them to a better condition. 
I am perhaps not quite right in saying that 
this is the best advice to be given. It is more 
properly the advice which it will be the easiest 
to get followed. What really ought to be done 
in the case of most farms, is to sell off or to turn 
out to woodland the poorer half of the farm, 
concentrating the whole amount of labor, cap¬ 
ital, and manure on the smaller area. There is 
hardly a large town in the country near which 
some thrifty gardener is not bringing up a fami¬ 
ly and growing rich from the proceeds of a 
small garden. Any ten acres of good land may, 
without much straining, be made to produce the 
summer and winter food of fifteen cows. What 
we want is a more resolute concentration of our 
efforts on smaller areas. I have in my mind a 
farm of 200 acres on which 30 head of stock are 
kept, and from which 50 tons of hay are an¬ 
nually sold. From what I know of the land, I 
feel confident that, if 150 acres were sold, out¬ 
right, and the money thus obtained all expend¬ 
ed in the improvement of the remaining 50, it 
could be made, within five years, to carry 50 
head of stock and to sell an equal value of roots 
or grain. What we want is High Farming; not 
$20,000 barns, fancy cattle, and fancy manage¬ 
ment, but rich food and plenty of it; copious 
manure heaps protected from the weather; fre¬ 
quent and thorough cultivation ; and the crowd¬ 
ing of each crop to the highest point that it is 
capable of. When I see a man trying to make 
five loads of manure cover an acre of land, I 
always wish that I could make him, just once, 
concentrate it upon an eighth of an acre. Up to 
a certain point (and it is a point that we very sel¬ 
dom attain), it is the manure that makes the crop. 
On ordinary land, a ton of manure will produce 
as good a result on four rods, as it would on half 
an acre. To get this result we, in one case, 
plow, sow, cultivate, and harvest, twenty times 
as much land as in the other, and it costs twen¬ 
ty times as much to do it. The more we can 
concentrate our production within small areas, 
that is, the less we spread ourselves out thin 
over big farms, the more profit we shall get for 
our own work, our supervision, and our capital. 
Very often visitors to Ogden Farm, when they 
see its narrow boundaries, point to the unculti¬ 
vated land adjoining it and say: “It is a pity 
you can’t buy 100 or 200 acres of that land and 
bring your farm up to a good size.” I usually 
tell them that that is precisely what I wish to 
avoid. Before I get through, I hope to treble 
the quantity of the land; but I hope to do it by 
fishing out the next two farms that lie immedi¬ 
ately under this one. If I can make the soil 
three times as deep or three times as rich or b\ r 
any means three times as productive as it now 
is, I shall have virtually added 120 acres to the 
farm; and I shall have the further advantage 
that the new land will be no farther from the 
barn, than what I now cultivate, and that one 
plowing will answer for all three tracts. 
The great agent in this improvement will be 
the soiling system, which I have now tried suf¬ 
ficiently long to prove its efficiency. It is a sys¬ 
tem on which I have no patent,which was invent¬ 
ed long before the improvement of Ogden Farm 
was thought of, and which is equally open to 
every farmer who chooses to “haul in his horns” 
and raise his present crops from one-quarter his 
present area. The objection that a large amount 
of labor is required, has, of course, a good deal 
of weight, but not so much as is supposed. Any 
man who will keep watch for a week, even in 
summer time, over the blacksmith’s shop, the 
grocery store, and the village, will see enough 
time idled away by the farmers themselves, to 
suffice for the soiling of all the live-stock in the 
township. And this is another point involved 
in the question of High Farming; what this 
requires is no more a larger number of men 
than the full industrial employment of every 
man’s time. Gossipping, pottering, and sheer 
idleness occupy, on an average, at least a whole 
month out of each year of every farmer’s life. 
And a month’s time, well put in, from sun to 
sun, will accomplish an amount of work that 
would surprise even the most industrious. Many 
a man dawdles away, on an average, two or 
three hours a day, poking along over the road 
at a jog trot to town to sell an amount of pro¬ 
duce that is actually not worth the time of him¬ 
self and his horse. Another requirement of 
High Farming and especially of soiling, is sys¬ 
tem. Plans must be made beforeband; tools 
must be repaired in bad weather; and every 
moment of good working t ime must be made to 
tell to the utmost. It would be enough to make 
any ordinary farmer rich, if he would employ, 
in profitable and well planned work, the time 
that lie now spends in hunting for mislaid tools; 
getting hay rakes repaired during the haying 
season; loafing along the road and spoiling two 
or three half-days every week in going to town 
on trifling errands. 
I am aware that this is not exactly the sort of 
compliment that American farmers are in the 
habit of receiving from Agricultural writers, but 
I happen to be a farmer myself; and I live in a 
community of farmers. I preach better than I 
practice, and I am not innocent of the faults 
that I have portrayed ; but I have the grace to 
be ashamed of myself, and find ample justifi¬ 
cation in my own habits and in those of most 
of my neighbors for the foregoing remarks. 
Most of us fool away time enough to make us 
much better farmers than we are. 
I confess that I am somewhat perplexed on 
the subject of plowing for corn. I have al¬ 
ways been an advocate for deep plowing un¬ 
der all circumstances, that is, as deep as the 
character of the soil will allow ; but I am satis¬ 
fied that deep plowing was one of the causes 
of the failure of my corn crop last year. This 
spring, I have laid out for an experiment in the 
other direction. I shall plow’ my corn-land, 
as nearly as possible, four inches deep, only fol¬ 
lowing in the furrow with a subsoil-plow so 
as to get the advantage of deep rooting, without 
removing the richer soil and the manure too far 
from the surface. I propose to plow with 
Collins’ cast steel plow’s; one followed by the 
ordinary subsoil-plow, and the other having 
a subsoil attachment made with it. It is claim¬ 
ed that three horses draw this combined imple¬ 
ment, when four would be required for two im¬ 
plements doing the same work. Even if four 
horses are required for it also, I shall at least 
save the labor of one man ; and as any other field 
plow has the Volkman guide, little Hinderck 
can manage that team, and the plow, which 
has no handles, will take care of itself. 
I had made up my mind, in consequence of 
the great amount of hand labor required in 
weeding, to abandon the system of drill plant¬ 
ing, and to plant in hills so as to be able to cul¬ 
tivate both ways. Having purchased Thomas’s 
smoothing harrow, I have changed my mind, 
and shall plant in drills again. It is claimed for 
this harrow’, that it almost entirely does away 
with the necessity for hand-hoeing corn. It 
takes a breadth of 9 feet, and has 120 steel teeth 
which slope backward, so that it breaks and 
crumbles the soil without tearing out any well 
rooted plants. Friend Thomas assures me that 
it may be driven broadcast over a cornfield, 
after the corn has spread its leaf, without injur¬ 
ing a single plant, and that it will kill every 
weed less than an inch high. This looks like a 
large story ; but my experiments with the har¬ 
row thus far indicate that it is true, and I shall 
not hesitate to adopt this system in cultivating 
my whole crop. If it will efficiently weed corn 
planted in drills, it is a great acquisition ; for drill 
planting has some decided advantages. Not only 
is the yield of grain and fodder materially in¬ 
creased, but the corn can be put in without de¬ 
lay and have at least a fair start wit h the weeds. 
My course will be to plow’ a land on one side 
of the field, have the harrowing finished as soon 
as the plow'ing is, and follow immediately, on 
the same day, with marking off and planting. 
