1873.] ~ 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
take the Germaii papers also, if I could read 
them. There is scarcely a direction in any one 
of these papers that I can adopt on my own 
farm, but yet I read them with interest and pro¬ 
fit. I get new ideas or have old ones confirmed. 
Then I read regularly the Country Gentleman, 
the New Euglaud Farmer, the Weekly Tribune, 
the Journal of the N. Y. State Agricultural So¬ 
ciety, the Practical Farmer, the Western Rural, 
the National Live-Stock Journal, and the 
Prairie Farmer, and I get something good out 
of all of them. But after all, a farmer must do 
his own thinking and his own work. Papers 
will help him in proportion as they help him to 
think correctly and stimulate him to exertion. 
Another farmer at Decoral), Iowa, writes : “ I 
have been a reader of the American Agricultur¬ 
ist for many years, and am delighted with your 
Walks and Talks. You seem to complain of 
hard times down there, but if I was to write my 
Walks and Talks on the farm you would won¬ 
der how we live out here. Hired help and imple¬ 
ments cost you no more than ours, and yet you 
get double the price for your produce. You get 
from 6 to 7 cents for your beef, and here we get 
from 2c. to 2£—and it must be very fat to bring 
2b cents per lb. Our corn is worth from 15 to 
20 cents per bushel, and we had to pay 5 cents 
per bushel for husking. Oats 15 cents per 
bushel, and we paid 5 cents for thrashing, be¬ 
sides a dollar a day and board for all hands. 
Last harvest many farmers had to pay $4 per 
day for men to bind their wheat. Wheat is now 
worth 85 to 95 cents per bushel. I killed a nice 
lot of chickens for Thanksgiving, and all I could 
get was 15 cents apiece for them dressed—and 
most of them weighed over 4 lbs. each. Butter 
10 to 12i cents per lb. Wild hay $6 to $8, and 
tame hay $8 to $10 per ton. Straw $1.50 per 
load after hauling it 6 miles. And yet the 
towns-people in Decorah think that we are get¬ 
ting rich ! And I think myself that taking them 
as a body, farmers here are doing better than 
we have done for the last two or three years.” 
I am very glad to hear it. I suppose the land 
is rich and the crops easily raised, and if a 
farmer can get 95 cents a bushel for wheat and 
has a good crop he can afford to eat his four-lb. 
chickens for his own Thanksgiving dinner, and 
can have them liberally basted with 10-cent 
butter. If such a man is out of debt he has little 
to fear. He can live pretty much on the pro¬ 
ducts of his own labor and can afford to wait. 
In the mean time, any improvement he can 
make upon his farm is money safely invested 
—money that he earns day by day, and which 
will pay a big interest by and by. 
This is the true policy in times like these. 
Improve your land. Live economically—that 
is, live well and work hard. Wait and work. 
Keep up your courage. Things soon find their 
level. A man that can work need not fear hard 
times. To him times will soon be better. To 
the lazy and shiftless times are always hard— 
always will be and always should be. When I 
see a man who has good health, good appetite, 
good digestion, and no inclination to work, I 
feel as though I would like to shake him, or 
serve him as you would a lazy horse—put him 
on a tread-power and then take the brake off. 
There are a good many people who seem to 
think that the bottom has tumbled out of farm¬ 
ing. They forget that forty millions of active, 
industrious, well-to-do people must have and 
will have plenty to eat. And as long as people 
eat there will be a demand for everything the 
farmer can raise. 
What I have to consider individually 'as a 
farmer is, How can I best compete with my 
brother farmer ? How can I raise wheat, corn, 
potatoes, beef, pork, mutton, cheese, butter, 
wool, etc., etc., as cheap as he can ? Or 
how can I raise a better article ? I think 
we are talking too much about speculators, 
and middlemen, and combinations. We had 
better devote more thought to the improvement 
of our farms and stock. Before the papers 
have got through discussing the best means of 
getting ten-cent corn to market, we may have 
a poor crop, and there will be no more ten-cent 
corn for many years. It may be worth 50c., 
75c., or a dollar a bushel where it is now worth 
ten cents. And then what will you wish you 
had done ? Hoarded the corn ? Not necessarily. 
That might have been impossible. But you 
will wish that you had improved your land— 
that you had made it cleaner and richer, and 
got it into high condition. When prices are 
high, it is the good farmers who make money. 
Those who have poor crops and little to sell are 
benefited but little, if any, by the high prices. 
Thousands of farmers went through the high- 
priced war-times without making anything. 
What they sold brought double the money, but 
they had to pay double for what they bought, 
and they bought as much as they sold. It was 
the farmer who had a surplus over his wants 
that made money. The same thing will happen 
again. And he is the wise man who gets ready 
for it. Farming is slow work. You can not 
make your land rich and clean in a year. And 
recollect that until this is done there is no pos¬ 
sible chance for making much money by farm¬ 
ing. It would be a sad thing for the country 
should a farmer be able to make money by 
raising crops of wheat that were half weeds, 
and that did not yield 10 bushels per acre. I 
should be very sorry to see the time when a 
crop of 50 bushels of potatoes per acre paid a 
handsome profit, or when half-starved, ne¬ 
glected scrub animals p.ay for their keep. No 
country prospers when good farmers are losing 
money, and it prospers even still less when 
poor farmers can extort prices high enough to 
support their wretched system of agriculture. 
“Wliat would you have farmers do?” asked 
the Deacon in a tone that said, “I rather think 
I have got you there.” 
I can tell what I would do in your case, 
Deacon, I replied, with your farm and your 
well-fil'led purse: 
1 st. I would drain the low land. 
2 d. I would kill the weeds. I would make a 
business of it. I would raise crops in the 
meantime, but the real aim of all my operations 
for three or four years should be to kill weeds. 
3d. Draining and killing weeds would develop 
much plant-food now lying latent in the soil. 
These means alone would nearly double the 
crops. These double crops would double the 
size of the manure heap, even though you sold 
double what you do now. But I would, for a 
few years at least, sell nothing but wheat, 
clover-seed, apples, and other fruit, and possibly, 
when the price was high, timothy hay and bar¬ 
ley, and buy bran and oil-cake with the money 
when these articles were cheap. 
4th. I would raise as much clover as possible 
on the upland, and occasionally a crop of oats 
and peas on the drained lowland. 
This plan carried out for a few years would 
make the farm rich. I say nothing about feed¬ 
65 
ing stock, for the reason that there is a sad con¬ 
fusion of ideas on this subject. So far as en¬ 
riching the land is concerned, it will make no 
practical difference what you do with the 
clover, corn, corn-stalks, oats and peas, straw, 
hay, etc., 'provided they are all retained on the 
farm, and returned without loss to the land. 
Feeding animals is a mere question of using 
these crops to the best advantage. 
Of course I should, in the Deacon’s case, 
keep a large stock—all that I could raise food 
enough to feed well, and I would rarely let a 
team come back empty from the city. I would 
bring back a load of bran. 
But will it pay? Perhaps not at present 
prices. But even now the profits would be much 
larger than to raise, as we do at present, a full 
crop of weeds and half a crop of grain. The 
present system does not pay at all. If there is an 
apparent profit, it is obtained at the expense of 
“ condition ” in the land. It is merely getting 
interest at the expense of the principal. The 
plan I propose would pay a fair interest, and 
add materially every year to the principal. 
F. R. Adams, of Wisconsin, sends me the 
weight of some of his grade Essex pigs. They 
are all good. One at 4b months old weighs 80 
lbs. He has 32 of these grade pigs from four 
sows, all with their first litter. Twelve of these 
he is fattening, that were born in August, and in 
January “they will dress sure 80 lbs. each." 
He asks, “How is this for pigs that do not get 
cooked food?” Good enough, and I am glad 
the attention of farmers is turned to this matter. 
I think it will pay to raise pigs in August and 
September, and sell them in December and 
January for fresh pork. I have advocated this 
course for some time, but I feared that at first 
there would not be a demand for such small 
pigs. In England, immense numbers of pigs 
that dress from 40 to 60 lbs. are sold at high 
prices for “jointers.” I think the same will be 
true here when the article is better known. 
Last week I took to the city a load of heavy 
dressed hogs, and got 5^ cents per lb. for them. 
At the same time, I took down half-a-dozen little 
pigs that dressed about 35 lbs. each, to distribute 
as presents to some friends. We drove on to 
Front street, for the purpose of selling the large 
hogs, and as soon as these little pigs were seen, 
the wagon was surrounded with people wanting 
to buy them. I could, apparently, have dis¬ 
posed of them at almost any price I might have 
asked. Here we can not afford to fatten large 
pigs at 5-J- cents per pound, but I feel certain 
that we could make a fair profit in raising these 
little ones. We want good-sized common oi 
grade sows that are good breeders and sucklers B 
and cross them with a small-boned, high-bred 
boar of a breed that matures early. A few such 
sows can be kept on a farm at small cost, living 
principally on what they pick up. The little 
ones would eat very little except what they got 
from the sow until two months old, and for the 
next six weeks would gain more rapidly, in 
proportion to the food consumed, than at any 
older age. If we can get what such pigs are 
worth, there is money in the business. 
Stock Ponds. 
The time when farmers could grow wheat 
and corn year after year, and the keeping of 
stock was but a secondary affair, has gone, never 
to return. Now and henceforth stock must be 
the first consideration of the American farmer. 
Not only is it a social necessity that beef and 
