1904. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
923 
THE RISE IN NEW ENGLAND FARMING. 
What Is Responsible for If ? 
I am pleased to notice the awakened Interest in New 
England farming manifested in your columns. The de¬ 
cline of land values and of rural population here are nat¬ 
urally regarded as sure indices of industrial agricul¬ 
tural decay by those of the West and South. Conditions 
here have Largely justified this view, yet such decay was 
not an economic necessity, though a natural result of 
passing events. Pre-railroad days invited complete close 
settlement of New England lands to meet the heavy 
demands of local markets. Industries were then scat¬ 
tered throughout the towns, and a heavy non-agricultural 
population was everywhere found owning some land 
and in sympathy with the paramount industry. Rail¬ 
roads came, and were the magnets that for a half cen¬ 
tury pulled non-farming population and incidental 
farmers to new centers. Over these railroads came the 
crops of the virgin West that forced out those farmers 
settled on land incapable of economic use save when 
demand exceeds possible supply. This period has closed, 
and the readjustment is practically complete. The 
farms now in use could have been used very successfully 
through all this period but for two overshadowing events, 
the settlement by the agency of the iron horse of the 
vast West, where fortune and fame surely waited on 
any half-zealous wooer, a free rich farm to all, and the 
rapid marshalling in the East of industries new to the 
world and the reconstruction of old industries on the 
foundations laid by the applied sciences. The rugged 
climate and soil fitted our farm boys for these works. 
For these prizes a tremendous 
exodus of men and money set in 
from our lands, and the agricul¬ 
tural spirit died out with the de¬ 
parture of young vigor and cap¬ 
ital from these sections. 
Farming drew fn and became 
as near nature farming as possi¬ 
ble or grass farming requiring 
little of capital and of men. 
This era has passed, and we 
face hopefully and buoyantly the 
future. Why not? Ours is the 
cheapest lands held by a civilized 
community in the world, in the 
midst of the best markets of this 
or of any other age. Our lands 
are not sterile, for witness the 
fact that they average above 
those of any section of America. 
While stubborn to handle they 
are capable of the highest ideals 
of yield, and none equal, cer¬ 
tainly none surpass, their endur¬ 
ance or their hold on applied fer¬ 
tility and general improvement. 
Once under momentum they 
move on stoutly. Eastern agri¬ 
culture enters without fear 
friendly rivalry with that of the 
West. It takes 25 cents per 
bushel to move corn from Ne¬ 
braska or Kansas to Boston 
points. Less than this sum will 
buy the fertility to grow it, and increase the power of 
our own lands, while the selling farm is moving towards 
sunset. Our butter makers and milk producers save 
over their competitors on the tariff of distance $10 per 
cow. This in grain or chemicals to raise it bridges the 
chasm of disadvantage, if any, under which we labor. 
We rarely consider this in counting our advantages. 
Tt will take $7 to ship a steer from the above States 
here, and for this we can more than make good for 
disadvantage of reluctant soil. At the gateway of mar¬ 
ket means much. My neighbors, Carr, Fowle, Osgood, 
Kelly and others, take more profit from an acre of pota¬ 
toes than the gross receipts of an acre remote from good 
markets. The trouble here is not in nature so much as in 
ourselves. The successful establishment of chemical fer¬ 
tilization and of the application of machinery to our land 
is giving wings to our operations. The narrowness 
that hedged us in when the pile of yard manure and 
our muscles bounded the whole width of our horizon 
is rapidly giving place to far wider visions. The in¬ 
herited system of narrow operations piously followed 
for a half century is being elbowed out, and something 
of the breadth of purpose that marks the twentieth cen¬ 
tury is inspiring a new life on our farms. I find more 
hopefulness everywhere on land in New England. Our 
farming is certainly on the return swing. The slowly 
upward move of land values, the markedly increasing 
respect for agriculture seen in country and town, the 
utter cessation of migration to western farms of our 
farm boys, and the slowly returning movement of farm¬ 
ers’ sons to New England lands marks the opening of 
a new epoch for our agriculture. It should be said that 
the world at large has much under-estimated the culture 
and comfort in the past that was found on our farms. 
As before indicated, what we have lacked is faith in our 
farms and its resultant breadth of operations. Nothing 
in our situation discourages either. I have farmed East 
and West, and believe the balance favors the East at 
present price of land and condition of markets. 
New Hampshire. j. w. sanbokn. 
HEARD ON THE ROAD. 
“I do wish somebody would make up a grain mixture 
for cows that is strictly honest, and that we could get 
right along, so that we wouldn’t have to be bothered 
with so many kinds of grain and that when 1 go to the 
millers I could always be sure of getting what I wanted. 
1 feed three kinds of grain usually, but often the miller 
is out of one or the other of them, and I can’t keep 
things even. I’ve tried some of these so-called complete 
foods, but there were too many oat hulls and too much 
refuse in them. I want a feed that analyzes well and 
stays right there,, not one that grows cheaper in content 
as soon as a good trade is started.” Are there any hon¬ 
est manufacturing millers? Here is an opportunity for 
them. 
“I am milking eight cows, and four of them are new 
milch, yet I only got 22 quarts of milk last night. 1 am 
feeding about 10 quarts of good grain a day, and I ought 
to get more milk. My cows don’t do anything. I. used 
to make lots of milk, but then I raised my own cows. 
But for the last three or four years I haven't raised any, 
but have bought all my cows, and I’m sick of it. I’m 
going back to raising cows, and see if I can't get some 
good ones again.” It is a good thing to know when you 
have made a mistake and retrace your steps. There are 
a good many men who are finding out that the good 
cows are not for sale. 
“He said he had some good hay to sell, and I told him 
to bring down a load, and if it looked right T would take 
it, as I wanted hay. He brought a load. It did look 
good, as he had dressed up the outside. After it was 
in the barn I found I had been badly stuck. I paid for 
the hay and didn’t say anything, but I don’t buy anything 
more from that man. I use lots of hay, and for the 
sake of skinning me out of two or three dollars he 
lost a good customer.” There are a good many farmers 
who seem to go on the plan that if they can only sell 
this, this time, and get their money, well and good. 
Every business transaction ought to be an advertisement, 
and a good one for another sale. See to it that you sell 
honest goods for an honest price. 
We had a runt heifer that we offered the “Jew” for 
$13, but $10 was his highest bid, so we butchered her 
ourselves and she brought $17, besides liver, heart and 
tongue. Another four-year-old didn’t pay for milk; 
$22.50 was the best offer we could get, so we killed ber 
also and she came to $28. Now that hides are so high 
it doesn’t pay to sacrifice even the cheaper cows, and 
we have found that unless we could get an attractive 
offer we got well paid for our time to do our own butch¬ 
ering. Some people dislike to do this kind of work, but 
there is clean money in it. 
“I like wheat bran as a basis for all grain mixtures 
for cows. Last year when bran was so high I thought 
we could not afford to feed it, and so we dropped it 
out for awhile and tried various other feeds, but we 
began to have trouble as soon as our bran was gone. 
Cows off their feed, udders caked, teats bad and a fall¬ 
ing off in milk. Some people say they would just as 
soon feed sawdust to cows as coarse bran, but we have 
been unable to find a substitute for bran, and were 
mighty glad when we got more in. We found they 
increased in milk as soon as that formed a good part of 
the ration. I do all our feeding for the 70 cows in our 
herd and we weigh every cow’s milk and keep a careful 
record of her work, so that I know there isn’t any guess¬ 
work about it.” I bis was told us by a live, hustling 
dairyman, who is making things go, and our own expe¬ 
rience bears out his point that bran is the best basis for 
a ration, and one that we cannot afford to go without. 
We have been bothered more than ever this year to 
keep a regular supply of grain on hand, and have had 
to make a number of changes, and we find that changes 
are expensive even when a better grain is fed. The 
cows certainly do better when fed the same ration right 
straight along, provided it is a properly balanced, well- 
made ration. h. g. Manchester. 
ALFALFA WORTH WORKING FOR. 
Noting what H. B. N. says on page 87f> about Alfalfa, 
I would like to make a suggestion based on several 
years’ experience in Virginia with inoculation. Any 
man who knows what a plant Alfalfa is, I take it, is 
willing to do all in his power to make it succeed. Fail¬ 
ure may come from any one of 20 things, but it oftenest 
comes from want of inoculation, and therefore we should 
make sure of that first of all. I used the Department 
of Agriculture cultures before anything was said of them 
for the public. I have used them repeatedly since. 
They are all right. I used soil' from the Illinois Exper¬ 
iment Station, where they got 
soil from the Kansas Station to 
start their Alfalfa. That worked 
all right. Yet the want of lime, 
the heaving by frost in the 
Spring, the llusTi growth of 
weeds, and similar other causes 
have prevented my getting al¬ 
ways and everywhere just the 
stand I would like to secure/ I 
think it is worth while to inocu¬ 
late with soil from old fields of 
Alfalfa; to wet the seed with the 
Department cultures; to trans¬ 
plant Alfalfa plants from an 
older piece; to use Sweet clover 
in with the Alfalfa seed and 
along roadsides and in waste 
ground for the sake of the conse¬ 
quent inoculation, and I shall 
also, in connection with all these 
means and methods, take up Gov. 
Hoard’s plan of sprinkling new¬ 
ly-seeded Alfalfa with a cart 
tank containing the Department 
cultures developed in a large 
quantity of water until the whole 
is milky. Alfalfa likes irriga¬ 
tion, and must have inoculation 
either naturally or artifically. 
This latter way of sprinkling 
seems to come near meeting both 
demands. I do not think it costs 
too much to use all the methods 
I have mentioned to get a good stand of Alfalfa. I have 
cut a fair crop for two Summers now, and it is the best 
feed I ever saw. All that is necessary where trouble is 
met in getting it established is to set your teeth hard and 
keep everlastingly at it. I met a Kansas man four years 
ago who lives in a region where Alfalfa is a common 
crop now, but for many years was given up as hopeless. 
He advised me to keep sowing and trying, no matter 
how I failed nor how many times. He said he sowed it 
nine years straight on one field before he got it, and then 
he went on and got a hundred acres of it, and had made 
his fortune by it. That was good, honest advice, worth 
any farmer’s while to follow. j . a. t. 
MOVING LARGE GRAPEVINES. 
On page 862 Dr. Van Fleet tells of moving an old 
grapevine, and intimates that the Stringfellow method 
of close root-pruning will not be a success with the 
grape. Let me give an experience of mine: Four years 
ago this month (December) I had occasion to move 
two bearing vines of the Regal that had stood in one 
place for eight years, and had fruited abundantly nearly 
all that time. 1 dug them up without any effort to save 
roots more than a foot away from the stem. I cut away 
all the wood except the cane nearest the root, and short¬ 
ened it to less than two feet. All the roots were cut 
off close except the lower ones, and they were shortened 
to less than four inches. These stubs of roots were nine 
years old. I planted the vines quite a little deeper than 
they stood before, so that the lower part of the cane 
was below the surface. A h^avy mulch was put on that 
probably kept the frost from reaching the roots all 
Winter. Both vines grew the next year, and one ripened 
a cluster of fruit. Digging up the vines, pruning, plant¬ 
ing and mulching occupied about 10 or 15 minutes, 
Many years ago T moved a bearing vine of about the 
same size and spent over a quarter of a day on the job 
with no better success. The Stringfellow theory is 
bound to stand because it is sound, and it is no less 
sound in Nova Scotia than in Texas. Its popularity is 
another question. • si. cbawfokd. 
