THE CUL nVATOR, 
81 
A FARM HOUSE. 
Messr!?. Editors —With 
this I send you a design for 
a farm house, or cottage, in 
what is known as the Tudor 
style of architecture, with 
some modifications indeed, 
which I think are required 
to adapt it to our climate. 
The Tudor style is essen¬ 
tially English, and in its se¬ 
verest features is no doubt 
well adapted to that climate; 
but instead of the porch, 
which is alwa 3 '^^s found in 
connexion with a building 
of this description in Eng¬ 
land, I have attempted to 
Americanize it by throwing 
a veranda or piazza in front, 
as well as one in the rear; 
although I have endeavored 
to give them an «appearance 
which should harmonize 
with the whole. How far 
I have succeeded, your read¬ 
ers must judge. The style 
itself, if in a favorable situ¬ 
ation, is extremely pictures¬ 
que and beautiful, calculated 
to convey to the mind the idea of snugness and comfort. 
This plan iS of a building of humble pretensions. It 
furnishes (see fig. 39,) a parlor, (A.) a dining room or 
sitting room, (B.) and a kitchen, (K.) on the main floor, 
and four sleeping apartments each about 9 by 10 feet,on the 
chamber floor,besides 2 servant’s sleeping apartments over 
the kitchen, each about 7^ feet by 14 feet, with a cellar un¬ 
der the whole. The sitting room I would heat by a stove, 
(S.) carrying the pipe to a drum (as it is called,) in the rear 
chamber above, and thence into the chimney, by which 
means one sleeping apartment is warm from the heat be¬ 
low. The cost of this building, of brick, stuccoed in imita¬ 
tion of stone, or laid up plain, would be about $1,600, 
if in a favorable location for getting the materials. A 
house of this style should never be built of wood. 
Newburgh, March 10, 1843. T. M. Niven, Architect. 
LATE PLOAVING. 
Messrs. Gaylord & Tucker —Having on former oc¬ 
casions given my successful experiments with clover, to¬ 
bacco, and wheat, in the three field plan, and having 
since failed, it may be but justice, and therefore proper, 
that I sould tell my brother farmers how I have failed in 
cropping. My course has been to haul out all the ma¬ 
nure I had upon the lot which had, been in clover two 
years, once and sometimes twice plastered, half bushel to 
the acre. I have always put off plowing as long as I 
could venture, late in April, that I might benefit the lot 
itself with additional green manures, and spare my young 
clover by grazing this. The consequence has been, in 
grasping after so much, I failed to get my ground in pro¬ 
per order, and the sequel is, I have raised but two good 
crops out of six. So I have clearly learned that the 
chance of success of late plowing, is as two to six. My 
thoughts now are turned upon the importance of early 
plowing and a thorough preparation of turf land for corn 
or tobacco, especially when well covered with old clo¬ 
ver. I have been, this, the third week in January, the 
thermometer ranging from 50® to 65°, plowing a few 
lands of clover lay, to compare the effect of January, 
March and April plowing. In weather not oppressive, 
I love to direct a good plow, and walk behind a span of 
well broken and well fed horses; it is no mean occupa¬ 
tion; in my humble estimation, it is pleasant and healthy, 
the exercise promoting digestion and circulation, giving 
the mind ample scope for its full and free operations, yet 
how ignoble is the employment viewed by many whose 
effeminate vocations it throws in the shade. While be¬ 
ing engaged on this occasion, my faith was exercised as 
my meditations ran thus:—I shall lose the use of the lot 
to graze, as well as a little green clover to turn under; 
but I shall put under a vast quantity of unrotted rubbage, 
turn up and expose not a few of the hatching eggs, and I 
do hope among them the eggs of the cut worm, our 
greatest enemy to corn and tobacco, and should the pul¬ 
verising effect of the frost be found advantageous, I shall 
be convinced the least risk is in too soon rather than too 
late plowing. Respectfully yours, D. G. Weems. 
Tracey’s Landing, Anne Arundel co. Md., 1843. 
Note— Commentator, who in his reviews, (and in 
many instances witty and judicious criticisms,) has guess¬ 
ed me to be a doctor, from some medical quotations in 
their peculiar technical terms, and rather unintelligible 
withal. Mr. C. may be desirous of knowing with what 
precision he made his guessing shot. I will say to him, 
I bleed; and if a cart and four being driven to my door 
with a patiint for venesection, be a proof of skill, he will 
admit I should know at least a vein from an artery: and 
when I inform him I was this morning consulted upon a 
case of impeded labor, he may be satisfied he is a good 
southern guesser; but not so, sir: I have no diploma, 
neither Thompsonian steamer, and therefore not entitled 
to his appellation of M. D. to the end of my name, and 
hence not a part of my signature, as that of our cotton 
correspondent of Alabama. I acknowledge my quota¬ 
tions savored a pretence to reading, but it was English, 
and I thought it was in place, I agree with Commenta¬ 
tor, that farmers generally are “ not high larnt,” but to 
this general rule, there is one excejition at least, and that 
must be the reviewer of words of the old domains, 
whose “half century’s experience” I revere and vene¬ 
rate. I have a little book, and have read in substance as 
follows, about the beam and the mote in the eye of the 
preacher, whose fears were, while teaching and instruct¬ 
ing others in the right road, he might be lost himself; 
and again, where he who speaks in an unknown tongue 
talks foolishness unless it be interpreted. Quere, father 
Commentator, wherefore and wherefrom those strange 
sounds for the ‘‘unlarnt farmer,” “Credat judmus,” 
“Occupet extremum scabies,” “Ipse dixit?” Did they ooze 
unobserved from your finger ends, and are they the names 
of some new grasses, grains, implements, or animals? 
“ Esprit du corps,” exotic, I guess monsieur, imported 
from Paris. Pentagonal, hexagonal, I find is really 
English. I would ask the reader, does not this Latin, 
French, and redundant English, savor a touch of the sub¬ 
lime, a tincture of pedantry, and a little of the verbosity. 
I would now repeat to father Commentator, his own ad¬ 
vice somewhat, that in his future reviews for the Culti¬ 
vator, when he cannot possibly refrain from using such 
outlandish expressions, he will for the edification of the 
farmers who are “ not high larnt,-” accompany all such 
dead phrases with a translation or a duplication, as he 
did in the two English words. D. G. W. 
WESTERN FARMING. 
To my friend of Richmond Co. N. Y. —Your letter in the 
March No. of the Cultivator, has been near three weeks 
on hand. I would have made more haste to answer it, 
but since it was written, you must have seen my article 
in the February No., in which I have anticipated some 
of your inquiries. And I hope you have also seen the 
American Agriculturist, published in New-York city, in 
which you will find some more information upon the 
subject of farming in the west. 
I am now writing upon the 2lstof March; a clear sun¬ 
ny day, and the thermometer in the shade, 25° below the 
freezing point; the latitude 4l° 30'. [By the by, there 
is an error of 9° in the statement of your latitude.*] The 
ground covered with snow, and I should now be gliding 
over it after a load of pine timber near the beach of the 
* This was a typographical error. It should have read “Lat. 
40°, 30', N.”— Eds. 
lake, only that I was taken 
slightly unwell after I had 
got my horses harnessed for 
a start—to that you owe my 
present occupation. This is 
a very unusual hard winter, 
and the people are learning 
a lesson of dear bought ex¬ 
perience. For notwithstand¬ 
ing the fact that hay of a 
most excellent quality, equal 
to timothy, may be made in 
any desired quantity, as fast 
as a man can cut it upon 
smooth clean ground, at the 
rate of two or three tons to 
the acre, they did not pro¬ 
vide enough for this very 
severe winter, and the cat¬ 
tle are actually starving to 
death at this time. Even 
the ashes of ten thousand 
tons of burnt straw won’t 
save them; neither will the 
cornstalks that have been 
safely preserved for spring 
feed, any more than keep 
them alive. 
“ What, do you say that 
cornstalks are not good rich 
feed ?” 
“Oh no! I said no such thing. I said they had been 
eaiefully preserved, and would have told you where, but 
you interrupted me.” 
“ Pray then, tell us how you preserve cornstalks in the 
west.” 
“ Yes, I will—-that is, how thousands of acres are pre¬ 
served—by letting the corn stand just where it grew. 
And such fields as are not gathered by the hogs in the 
process of fatting, are gathered as wanted through the 
winter, and thus are the stalks preserved for the cattle in 
the spring. ‘ Rich feed,’ ain’t it?” 
And now if I tell you how corn is planted sometimes, 
your skeptical neighbor can reduce his figures. 
And firstly, of the first crop on the prairie. The sod is 
very tough, and is generally broken from 3 to 6 inches 
deep, and 16 to 24 wide, turned over flat by a plow drawn 
by 4 or 5 yoke of oxen, IJ to 2 acres a day. In every 
second or third furrow the corn is dropped near the 
shoulder, and the next slice turned over upon it. This 
produces a middling crop with no after culture whatever. 
Again, in old land, the ground being furrowed out for 
the rows sometimes one and sometimes both ways, the 
seed dropped in the furrow is covered by passing along 
another light plow, and as soon as planting is done, then 
commences the after culture, or rather, I should say, the 
plowing of the ground, and which culture is almost en¬ 
tirely completed with the plow. No manuring, no hoe¬ 
ing, or but very slight, no harvesting in many cases, 
that being attended to by the hogs, no saving of stalks for 
fodder, and as the land is as mellow as your garden, and 
as free from all obstruction to the plow, is it to be won¬ 
dered at even by your unbelieving neighbor, that corn 
can be raised by the hundred of acres, upon such a sys¬ 
tem, upon such land, without “a regiment of men and 
boys.” 
And in regard to wheat, it does not require a regiment 
of men or teams, to put in 800 acres of wheat, upon land 
as mellow as an ash heap, where the plowed lands are a 
mile or iqpre long without turning; and as the seed time 
runs through a space of near two months, so the harvest 
runs about half that length of time; and as to when it is 
houseVl, I would answer that during the last fall, thou¬ 
sands of acres of wheat were thrashed by a kind of ma¬ 
chine that is fitted upon wheels and drawn about the field 
by 4 or 6 horses, tended by three men, one of whom takes 
the sheaves from the ground or the shocks, and pitches 
them up to the feeder while passing along, and the straw 
and a great portion of the chaff is blowm upon the ground, 
while the clean wheat is deposited in a reservoir, which 
when full, is expeditiously emptied upon a sheet of can¬ 
vass, and from thence is taken by a wagon to the bam; 
so that the barns instead of having to hold the sheaves, 
are only required to store the grain. And thousands in 
this new country, who farm on a large scale, have not 
even a barn for that purpose, but depend upon a rail pen 
with the cracks corked with straw, or some other equally 
primitive mode of storage. 
And those who do not thresh their wheat immediately 
after cutting, stack it in the field or some convenient spot 
for threshing, where, if it is well put up, it will keep far 
better than in any barn. And the way the straw is dis¬ 
posed of, I have hinted at in the first part of this letter; 
and many contend that it is the best way, as it is not 
wanted for manure, and cannot be consumed by cattle in 
ordinary seasons, and certainly not as quick as by fire. 
That this is the best system of farming, or that all these 
things are universally practiced in the west, I shall not 
assert, but that they are to a great extent is true. 
It would seem to you wonderful to see so much good 
soil lying waste—and wicked to see so much good soil 
'wickedly cultivated—extravagant to see so much grain 
grown for no other apparent purpose but for the pleasure 
of seeing it grow, without deriving any profit from the 
growth. 
The question is sometimes asked, if land is so cheap 
and good and easy to cultivate, why don’t the western 
farmers all get rich ? 
I have already answered this, but I will repeat; it is 
