374: 
AMERICAN AGriHGULTURIST. 
[October, 
pays much better tlian stock so long as the land 
is new. But the time is come when we will 
have to pay more attention to stock-raising. 
Notwithstanding our severe winters stock does 
remarkably well. Although cold, the winter 
weather is remarkably steady and dry. Barn¬ 
yard manure applied directly to wheat does not 
work well here; it produces too much straw. 
The only crop that will do on manured land is 
corn. Wheat does not do well after corn, man¬ 
ured or not. Would not the better way be to 
apply our barn-yard manure to the grass land 
and afterwards break up for wheat?”—We 
think so. But we have had comparatively little 
experience in raising spring wheat. More 
clover and more stock is the true method of 
keeping up the fertility of the soil. If the 
manure was richer, as it would be if more clover 
and grain were fed to the animals, and if it was 
well rotted, it would be less likely to produce 
too much straw. In the meantime it can not 
be a bad practice to spread the barn-yard 
manure on grass land. This will do much to 
get rid of the excessive amount of carbonaceous 
matter which poor, strawy manure contains, 
and the following grain crop will be less liable 
to lodge. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm.—No. 118. 
The Deacon had a splendid crop of oats this 
year. He plowed the land early in the spring, 
but afterwards the weather was so wet that he 
could not sow the oats. A severe drouth then 
set In, and as soon as the field was dry he 
plowed the land again and sowed the oats. 
They grew rapidly from the start and continued 
to grow. They stood up and filled well. He 
cut them on the 21st of August. This was two 
weeks later than I cut my oats which were 
sown early. 
As a rule, it is better to sow oats as early in 
the spring as the land can be got into good con¬ 
dition. More depends on the condition of the 
land and on the season than on the time of 
sowing. That second plowing which the Dea¬ 
con gave his land had something to do with 
his big crop. 
My oats and peas turned out well. We call 
the piece 12b acres, but I think it is nearer 13 
acres. We thrashed out 805 bushels, and I 
think left at least 30 bushels on the ground and 
in rakings that we did not thrash. I have so 
many pigs that it is not worth while being very 
particular about getting every bushel of grain 
into the granary. The pigs are good scaven¬ 
gers. The oats and peas weighed 43 lbs. per 
bushel. Reckoned as oats, at 32 lbs. per bushel, 
the crop represents 1,081 bushels, or 84 bushels 
per acre. I call that an encouraging crop for a 
run-down farm. 
Our hay crop is exceedingly light, and this 
crop of oats and peas is all that saves me from 
being obliged to sell more or less stock before 
winter sets in. As it is I think I shall have 
fodder enough to carry me through. This oat 
and pea straw is nearly if not quite as good 
fodder as a carelessly harvested crop of clover 
or timothy hay. 
“But how do you harvest the oats and 
peas?” asks a practical friend; “are they not 
difficult to cut and cure and thrash?” 
The thrashers have a kind of notion that 
peas will hurt them or tlieir machine—one or 
both—I do not exactly know how or why. I 
have learned to pay very little attention to 
notions of this kind. All I know is that I have 
no trouble in getting the crop thrashed. We 
had a ten-liorse machine, and it seemed to be 
not a difficult matter to thrash two bushels a 
minute. One bushel, while I stood by, watch 
in hand, came through in 22 seconds. Where 
the peas and oats were somewhat green it was 
slower work, and two or three times, when they 
were quite green, they “ wound round the cylin¬ 
der,” and delayed matters a little. But this 
amounts to nothing. The crop is as easily 
thrashed as any other. 
In regard to cutting the crop I may say that if 
done with the scythe the work is bard, slow, and 
expensive. My crop, owing to heavy rains, was 
in many places badly laid—in fact beat Into the 
ground. Still, by cutting only in one direction, 
we had little or no trouble in cutting the crop 
with a Johnston reaper. This machine has a 
movable cutter bar, and the “fingers” can be 
depressed so low that the points of them will 
just scratch the ground and rake up the lodged 
grain. This part of the work if the ground is 
smooth the machine will do far better than it 
can be done with a scythe—at any rate, far bet¬ 
ter than it was done by the men who “ cut 
round” the field before the reaper. The only 
difficulty we had was in cutting a part of the 
field on a reclaimed swamp, where the crop 
was exceedingly heavy and the oats and peas 
quite green and tangled every way. It seemed 
asking too much to expect that any machine 
could be made that would cut it. Yet, so far 
as the mere cutting was concerned, this machine 
did the work with perfect ease. The only 
trouble we had, and it was very slight, was in 
dividing these green and lodged peas from the 
uncut crop. They gathered in a bunch on the 
point of the divider, and the rakes were not 
strong enough to tear them off. At any rate I 
was afraid to try. We had to pull them off by 
hand. This, however, was a small matter, and 
I am sure that this machine will cut a heavy 
crop of peas and oats much better than I have 
ever had them cut with scythes. 
As to curing, all that we did or needed to do 
was to turn them once or twice, throw them 
into windrows, with just space enough for a 
wagon to go between. We put on two pitchers, 
one on each side of the wagon, and let them 
pitch out of the windrows without cocking. 
There is no nicer crop to harvest. And I may 
add that for the labor involved it pays as well 
as any ordinary farm crop. In fact, taking the 
high quality of the straw into consideration, I 
think there are few crops that pay so well, 
provided your land is rich enough to produce a 
large growth. 
I have a dozen or more letters from farmers 
in different sections of the country asking a 
great many questions. I am always glad to 
hear from any one interested in agricultural 
matters, but I am sorry to say that I am rather 
a tardy correspondent, and my space in the 
Agriculturist is so limited that I am obliged to 
give short and I fear very unsatisfactory 
answers. 
“ How would you like,” writes' an Iowa far¬ 
mer, “to live where corn brings only.ten cents 
a bushel ?” I should not like it at all if I was 
obliged to sell the corn. But as I keep more 
pigs than I can raise corn enough to feed, and 
have to buy a good many tons of corn-meal at 
from $22 to $25 per ton, I do not think I should 
particularly object to live in a cheap corn¬ 
growing section. But I don’t think I would 
sell much corn. I can not conceive it possible 
for pork ever to be so low that it will not pay 
a very handsome profit to turn ten-cent corn 
into pork. 
A Pennsylvania correspondent says he wishes 
to make his own superphosphate, and has been 
furnished with the following recipe: “ 600 lbs. 
bone dust; 200 lbs. oil of vitriol; 150 lbs. sul¬ 
phate of soda; 10 lbs. nitrate of soda; 50 lbs. 
muriate of soda (common sail); 300 lbs. sul¬ 
phate of lime (plaster); 7 bushels earth or sand.” 
He “ has been assured,” he writes, “ that this 
mixture will not cost over $30 per ton.” I 
should not like to pay $20 per ton for such a 
manure. 
“I am,” continues this same correspondent, 
“the owner of a 300-acre farm that has been 
nearly ruined by the abominable ‘ two-thirds ’ 
system of leasing which is so extensively prac¬ 
ticed in this part of the Slate, and I am de¬ 
cidedly in need of some means of bringing it up 
to a producing point more rapidly than can be 
done by lime, clover, and fallow. While I have 
great faith in this method, I am anxious to sup¬ 
plement it with some chemical manure.” It is 
a great shame that we can not be certain of get¬ 
ting an artificial manure worth what we have 
to pay for it. Until we can there is nothing to 
be done but to make all the manure we can oh 
the farm. Keep sheep, and buy bran enough 
to give each sheep from one to two pounds per 
day in addition to straw and clover hay. There 
is no cheaper way of getting manure. The 
cheapest artificial manures are guano and 
nitrate of soda, provided the latter can be got 
for $80 or $85 per ton. 
“I intend sowing,” continues the same Penn¬ 
sylvania farmer, “a few acres of timothy grass 
this fall without winter grain. My neighbors 
•are all laughing and shrugging their shoulders 
and calling me a ‘Jack for my pains;’ but if I 
can cut one ton of hay per acre next summer 
it will pay me better than the best wheat crop 
raised in this valley for the last three years.” 
I hope you will get it; but if not let the neigh¬ 
bors laugh. It amuses them and does not 
hurt you. 
“I had an old meadow of 14 acres,” he con¬ 
tinues, “ that I undertook to renovate by har¬ 
rowing, manuring, liming, and reseeding. The 
season before I did this the yield of hay from 
the 14 acres was 10 tons. The year afler (1872) 
the crop was 20 tons, and this season it yielded 
29 tons.” That will do. This 19 tons of extra 
hay in two years will pay a pretty large interest 
on the cost of renovating. 
[Walks and Talks are unusually brief this 
month on account of illness in the family of 
the author.— Ed.] 
A Mountain Home in Colorado. 
Hill’s Ranch is on Beaver Creek, one of the 
feeders of the South Platte, about 26 miles 
west of Denver, just over the first ridge of the 
Rocky Mountains. It is on the old turnpike 
from Denver to Idaho City, and before the 
railroad up Clear Creek Valley was built was 
used as a hotel for the accommodation of team¬ 
sters and travelers going to the mining districts. 
Hill is from Jefferson County, New York, and 
located here a few years ago upon what is 
called a wedge. This is a triangular piece of 
land left by the surveyors between one meridi¬ 
onal line and another, after all the square sec¬ 
tions have been located. Hill preempted 320 
acres of land, and will get title as soon as the 
