294 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[August, 
sooner yon pm on ti e compost after haying the 
belter for the roots of the grasses. If you are 
doubtful about this matter take a dozen loads 
out of your barn-yard and try it upon an acre 
of run-down meadow. You will make a new 
discovery and be converted. Then whether you 
top-dress or not, carefully guard your after-math 
against all cropping. To crop does not pay. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—Ko. 80. 
The following letter, intended for me, was 
sent to the Agriculturist office, and the editor, 
who takes as much interest in young men as I 
do, wrote on it: “ Here is a sensible boj', pray 
notice him.” 
“Nashville, Tetm., June 5,1870. 
“Dear Sir,—I have just been looking over 
your ‘ Walks and Talks’, in which I find some 
advice to a man who lias bought an overgrown 
Southern farm, and I thought it might not be 
improper to ask your advice about entering into 
a farming life. I intend going into details, so 
that you may better understand my case: 
“I am 17 years old, stout frame, and have just 
finished my course of study, and received my 
diploma in the High School of this city, and 
wish to go on to.a farm or market garden, as 
soon as possible; my idea being that the more 
time 1 spend doing nothing around home and 
town, the less I will have to get started and get 
broken into the routine of farm labors, and the 
less will be my chance of procuring a suitable 
farm. Besides this, if I intend to settle on a 
market garden, I should do so immediately; as 
manure now can be had for the hauling, and it 
will in a few years, probably, be as high as in 
Northern cities. I have a garden within the 
corporation of the city, of about one-quarter 
acre, on which I spend all my spare moments 
in raising all kinds of vegetables, and with whose 
culture I am perfectly acquainted. I have hot¬ 
beds and cold-frames at work in winter, and 
raise lettuce and other vegetables as recommend¬ 
ed by the N. Y. gardeners. I read all the works 
on gardening and think I understand it. I also 
like and understand fruit culture, and desire to 
form an orchard on the Cumberland Mts. in East 
Tennessee, on which I could raise crops to pay 
expenses until the fruit should come in bearing. 
“There arc numbers of farms in the South 
which are being rapidly bought up by northern 
men, and greatly improved. My father is agent 
for--, and desires much to move from the city 
where it is such expensive living, and settle 
on a farm in the country. He travels over the 
country, and thus has a good chance to find out 
the.desirable farms. We have thought of moving 
to the northern wheat regions of Texas, or on 
some of the new routes of railroads of the West. 
It, may be well in consideration of the ques¬ 
tion, to state that one or two thousand dollars 
is about all we can raise, except by borrowing. 
Considering all these points, what do you think 
we had bett er do; plant an orchard; commence 
a market garden; or farm in the State near or 
far from the city, or emigrate South or West?” 
This is certainly a very sensible and well- 
written, letter. But I can give no advice in re¬ 
gard to where the father had better settle. It is 
too serious a question to be decided without a 
knowledge of all the facts. So far as the young 
man is concerned, I think he would do well to 
stay where he is, and continue to raise garden 
vegetables. He seems to have a taste for this. 
I would continue to cultivate the quarter of an 
acre already occupied, Such a garden, in crops 
this year, and well cultivated and manured, will 
afford more profit next year than several acres 
of land never before used for a garden. I would 
advise him, above all things, not to get too much 
land. Make what lie has as rich and clean and 
mellow as possible. Get the crops in early, and 
spare no pains to make them grow rapidly. 
Nearly all our choicest garden vegetables are 
the product of long-continued, high culture, and 
need the richest of soil and the most careful, ar¬ 
tificial treatment. This idea must be constant¬ 
ly before the mind. Mr. Lawes found that land 
which would produce an average of 16 bushels 
of wheat eveiy year for over twenty-five years, 
without manure, and still continues to bear good 
wheat without any apparent diminution, would 
not produce turnips, after the second crop, 
much larger than radishes. It was found, too, 
that turnips to produce good bulbs, require a 
much more liberal supply of available phos¬ 
phates and carbonaceous matter in the soil than 
wheat—notwithstanding the fact, that the grain 
of wheat contains a much larger percentage of 
phosphates in its ash than the ash of turnips. 
Many explanations have been offered for this 
well-established fact. Perhaps the true one, at 
least in part, may be that the grain of wheat is 
a natural product of the plant, while the bulbs 
of turnips are an artificial product—the result 
of high culture and years of selection. Natu¬ 
rally, the turnip runs to seed the first year, like 
wheat, but we have changed its character and 
must supply food adapted to its artificial re¬ 
quirements. And it is so with cabbages, cauli¬ 
flowers, beets, carrots, parsnips, lettuce, onions, 
etc. We can use with great advantage an 
amount of manure for these crops that would 
utterly ruin wheat and barley. Of all men, there¬ 
fore, the market gardener requires rich land and 
clean culture. If this young man acts on this 
idea, confines himself at first to a small plot of 
land, makes no doubtful experiments, is not in 
haste to be rich, but confines himself to such 
crops as are in steady demand, and that afford 
sure but moderate profits, and pursues the busi¬ 
ness with steady industry, lie can hardly fail of 
success, and very likely will get rich. 
For my part I am constitutionally indisposed 
to move. I have no faith in emigrating, unless 
there is some decided cause for it. Success or 
failure depends far more on the man than on the 
locality. If I could be more energetic and less 
given to procrastination in Texas than in New 
York, I am not sure but I would “ pu.l up stakes” 
and move out there at once. The caief bat tle of 
life is with one’s self. It must be fought day by 
day, and hour by hour, wherever our lot is cast, 
and I do not need to move one inch from this 
farm for opportunities of learning patience under 
provocation, and faith under discouragement. 
A few months ago one of my neighbors brought 
a young Englishman to see me. He was a 
farmer’s son, strong, healthy, and well educated; 
an engineer by profession. He had been look¬ 
ing for employment ever since he came to the 
country, but could not find a vacancy. What 
should he do? My neighbor asked me if I did 
not know of s nne one in the city who wanted 
a coachman ? If he could get such a place as 
that lie thought he would be in the way of see¬ 
ing people and might find something better. He 
was out of money, and pretty much out of 
clothes, and wanted to be doing something. 
He thought if he should go to Canada hg might 
find work. Said I, addressing the young man, 
“You are a farmer’s son and must know some¬ 
thing of farm work. You want some one 
to use their influence to get yoq a place in the 
city. Here in the country you can get work at 
the first farm you cotne to. And it is at, any 
rate, quite as respectable to work on a farm as 
to drive a carriage, and your acquaintances will 
be at least equally intelligent and influential, 
and should any opening occur in your profes¬ 
sion you will be quite as likely to hear of it, and 
much more likely to secure the appointment.” 
He took my advice, and went to work steadily 
and faithfully on the farm. In less than three 
months it so happened that some engineering 
work had to be done, and the engineer in charge 
cotdd find no one who understood some partic¬ 
ular branch of the profession, and was anxious¬ 
ly inquiring for such a man. Our young friend’s 
name was mentioned. He was examined on 
the subject, found to be just the veiy man they 
wanted, and was at once taken from the plow 
to a desk in the engineer’s office with a salary 
of $85 per month, with a prospect of more by 
and by. Had he not gone to work he would 
probably have been still traveling from city to 
city, “waiting for something to turn up.” 
There is a general impression that farming 
requires very hard work. I do not know of any 
kind of work that is easy, but I would like to 
know where the specially hard work on a farm 
comes in. Take the corn crop; plowing the 
sod is sometimes rather hard work, but it lasts 
only a few days, and frequently, so far as mere 
strength is required, a boy will plow as well as 
a man. Harrowing, rolling, and marking are not 
very back-breaking work. Planting with a 
machine requires brains rather than muscle, 
and in planting by hand a boy fifteen years old 
will sometimes keep up with the men. He 
may not do as good work, but at any rate it 
shows that the men are not endangering their 
health with exhausting labor. And so with 
cultivating; a boy with a steady horse, provided 
you do not give him (as too frequently happens) 
the oldest, heaviest, and poorest cultivator on 
the farm, will generally keep up with the men. 
Hoeing is very hard work ; so hard that the 
men sometimes require a little cider to enable 
them to keep up with the women and boys, 
working in the same field. Cutting up the crop 
is also heavy work, but still there are few men 
who feel ashamed to have a boy keep up with 
them. Husking is such hard work that it is 
often left to the women and the boys. The same 
remarks will apply to the potato crop. Haying 
and harvesting are such hard work that the men 
must have higher wages and better fare. Rid¬ 
ing on a mowing machine is not so very labo¬ 
rious, if it was not for the fact that the knives 
have to be ground and sharpened occasionally, 
and nuts screwed up and the bearings oiled. 
When I rake up hay with a sulky, steel-toothed 
rake, one of my little children sometimes goes 
with me on the rake, and apparently enjoys 
riding up and down the field as much as any of 
her city cousins would a drive in Central Park. 
When we had only one-horse tedding machines 
a man could use them without overtaxing his 
strength, but now we have two horse tedders 
and we expect one man to drive both horses. Is 
it not hard work! Cocking, opening, spreading 
out, turning, and recocking, are not traditionally 
hard work. Pitching requires some strength, i 
but the work may be greatly lessened and facil¬ 
itated by the exercise of a little mechanical 
knowledge and common-sense. Unloading is 
down-right hard work, but we have good forks 
that do away with the necessity for it. Mowlhg 
away in a close barn is anything but agreeable, 
but in a commodious barn, with a hay fork, it 
requires a very short time to stow away a load. 
