14 
ECONOMY IN HUMAN FOOD. 
good tools—yes use them—plow deep—pulver¬ 
ise the soil—fit it to produce a harvest, and it 
will never disappoint you, except in an occasion¬ 
al visitation of some unavoidable circumstance 
that Providence may inflict upon you. 
Neglecting to set out fruit trees, is another ev¬ 
idence of bad farming, which pains the eye of 
every observing traveller in America. With 
the best fruit country in the world for the most 
substantial and important kinds, we have thou¬ 
sands of farms as destitute of a good apple, 
pear, peach, quince, plum, cherry, or currant, as 
though God had forbidden them to grow and 
gladden the hearts of men in this fertile land. 
Another evidence of bad farming is, the neg¬ 
lect of that great source of comfort and luxury 
to every farmer’s family—the kitchen garden. 
But where shall we stop with our evidence ? 
We will do it here and submit the case to the 
judgment of an improving community. 
ECONOMY INHUMAN FOOD. 
Many persons are unaware of the great 
difference of nutritious matter contained in 
different articles of food in daily use. One 
might distend his stomach like a bladder, upon 
turnips and yet have very little to sustain life 
or give him strength to labor. Potatoes contain 
much more nutriment than turnips, but noth¬ 
ing like the proportion, according to bulk or 
cost, that is contained in many other substan¬ 
ces used as human food. The figures annexed 
to the substances named below will show the 
relation they bear to each other and the pro¬ 
portion of nutritive matter that each contains 
in 1,000 lbs. of the raw material. For instance, 
1,000 lbs., of winter wheat contain 955 lbs. of 
human food; spring wheat, 940 lbs; blighted 
wheat, 210 lbs. to 650 lbs.; barley, 940 lbs.; oats, 
743 lbs.; rye, 792 lbs.; beans, 570 lbs.; dry peas, 
514 lbs.; potatoes, 230 lbs.; red beets, 148 lbs.; 
white do., 136 lbs.; carrots and parsnips, 98 lbs.; 
common turnips, 44 lbs.; Swedish do., 64 lbs.; 
cabbage, 73 lbs. 
By this, it will be seen that it is poor econo¬ 
my to purchase many of the coarse kinds of 
food in common use. Potatoes must be consid¬ 
ered articles of luxury rather than cheap diet, 
when they bear a price per pound almost equal to 
wheat, rye, beans, and peas, to say nothing of 
Indian corn, the relative proportion of nutriment 
of which we are not able at this moment to 
give; but at the average price it bears among 
us, we are convinced it is the cheapest food 
grown in America. 
There is a great want of tact in many house¬ 
keepers about economising food. At present pri¬ 
ces, sugar is an economical as well as a healthy 
article; but when properly combined with flour, 
meal, or fruit, which are more economical than 
bacon and cabbage, it is generally accepta¬ 
ble to all palates. We have just read an article 
in the Cincinnati Atlas, of the tact of a poor 
woman who found herself entirely destitute of 
food or means to procure it to feed herself and 
seven children, with the exception of eight lay¬ 
ing hens. One egg a-day would not fit the 
human frame for labor if it would sustain life. 
Here was a case for the exercise of tact. Six 
eggs would exchange for half a peck of beans 
each day, and these made into soup, with a little 
piece of cheap meat, obtained with the other 
two eggs, served to feed the family very com¬ 
fortably until Providence, who always helps 
those who help themselves, should provide some¬ 
thing better. 
This woman in working her way through the 
difficulties, has taught her children a lesson of 
economy and manner of providing for themselv.es 
out of small means, well worthy the attention 
of thousands who may be now well-to-do-in-the 
world, and perhaps think they have no need of 
learning such severe lessons of economy. We 
hope that maybe the case, yet who shall say? 
Let the lesson be learned and practised, if cir¬ 
cumstances ever require. 
A FACT IN DEEP PLOWING-. 
Having been for a long time an attentive 
reader of the Newspaper, especially the farm¬ 
ers’ department, and having seen many articles 
on the cultivation of corn, I have concluded to 
give you my experience for the last two years. 
Previous to that, I had followed the old plan of 
shallow plowing and high hilling. Now for the 
other way. In the spring of 1849, I took five 
acres of ground that had wheat on it the year 
before, and had for a number of years been 
rather hard run by sowing in wheat one year 
and planted to corn the next, until the surface 
soil was worn so low, that twelve bushels of 
wheat and forty or fifty of corn were an average 
crop. On the five acres, I put eighty-seven loads 
of barnyard manure, the greater part of it straw, 
only partially rotted, and plowed it as follows: 
—Taking two teams and two plows, I began by 
a furrow seven inches deep with the first plow, 
then followed in the same furrow with the other 
plow, turning another furrow six inches deep, 
making thirteen filches of soil turned. I then 
harrowed and marked it making the rows 
four feet apart both ways, and planted on the 
22d of May. As soon as the corn was large 
enough to follow the rows, I cultivated it out 
