VOL. XLIX. NO. 2 i 1 9. NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 6, i89o. 
PRICE, FIVE CENTS 
$2.00 PER YEAR. 
CHARLES S. RICE. 
NEW YORK FARMING 50 YEARS AGO. 
OR a number of years past our readers have, from 
time to time, read articles signed “C. S. Rice.” 
These were evidently written by a practical and 
earnest man who gave facts from his own personal experi¬ 
ence. Quite a large number of our friends have expressed 
a desire to see what Mr. Rice looks like. After consider¬ 
able urging on our part, the desired photograph, shown at 
Figure 237, was obtained, with the following note : 
“ Yielding to the solicitation of The Rural, and to the 
judgment of several of my friends, I send my picture. 
That it is no better looking is no fault of the artist. I hope 
The Rural will be able to obtain pictures of many of its 
contributors for publication. The names of many of them 
are as familiar to me as those of my own family, and I 
should highly prize a sight of their faces. I see no im¬ 
propriety in such publication so long as it is not 
sought by the subjects. I send some account of 
the farm and early farm-life, labor, implements, 
etc., that will, I think, interest readers of the 
paper as much as anything that I could prepare 
to accompany the picture.” 
The R. N.-Y. therefore omits the usual bio 
graphical sketch and prints the following reflec¬ 
tions on New Y r ork agriculture : 
“ The farm on which I live was taken by my 
grandfather from the unbroken Black River 
wilderness 85 years ago. The house in which I 
reside and in which I was born was built by my 
father about 75 years ago. It was built of brick, 
and although not a modern house, is still a com¬ 
fortable family residence. Representatives of 
three generations have usually been sheltered 
under its roof at the same time. At an early day 
the products sold from the farm were potash, 
wheat, corn, pork and wool. Some of these were 
delivered in Albany, nearly 150 miles distant, 
that being the principal market at that time. 
Father often made the trip with his own team 
and wagon. In my boyhood a flock of sheep was 
kept on the farm. Father owned a carding mill 
where he carded his own wool and also that 
grown throughout a large region of surrounding 
country. There was very little money in circula- 
tion and all kinds of farm produce were taken in 
payment. Mother spun the wool on a machine 
that would form 10 threads at a time. She also 
wove the yarn into cloth. The cloth was colored 
and dressed at a mill owned by a neighbor. 
Hired men were expected to take flannel and 
“fulled cloth” in part-payment for labor. My 
first experience in farm work was in riding a 
horse to plow out corn. It was before the advent 
of cultivators. About that time, however, father 
got a blacksmith to hammer out some cultivator 
teeth. They were of iron faced with steel, and 
were shaped much like the cultivator teeth of a 
later day. Plows were made at a foundry not 
far off; but there were no agricultural imple¬ 
ments designed for use with horse power, on sale 
in Northern New York. The great busiuess of 
manufacturing and selling such implements has 
grown up since that day. A home-made horse- 
rake was first used on the farm in 1834. It con¬ 
sisted of a hard-wood scantling three by four 
inches in size and eight feet long with teeth on 
one side. Long rope traces were used and when the wind¬ 
row was reached the horse was stopped, the rake was 
turned forward and lifted above the hay and then placed 
on the ground in front of the row ready for work again. 
It was a wonderful labor-saviug machine. A few years 
later came the revolving wooden rake which was in use 
for a long time. 
Until 1837, the grain was pounded out with a flail or 
trodden out with horses on the barn floor. The first 
thrashing machine used in the county was bought by a 
company of farmers and father was part owner. It had 
neither separator nor cleaner. Two or three men by raking 
and kicking the straw separated it from the grain which 
was afterwards cleaned with a fanning mill. The first steel 
springs tor light wagons aud carriages were used about 
this time, having been first introduced in 1830. From 1840 
to 1852, I, with two or three other hands, cut more than 
100 acres of grass each year, using the hand scythe. An 
acre a day for each hand to cut, cure, rake aud store in the 
barn was the rule. The Ketchem mowing machine bought 
in 1852, was the second machine brought into our town. 
It would weigh 700 or 800 pounds, had no hinge or joint at 
the head of the cut-bar, no lever for raising the bar and 
no way of throwing it out of gear. A team had to walk 
very fast or the machine would clog. My team often cut 
10 acres in a day with it, doing better work than the aver¬ 
age hand mowing. It was truly a horse-killing device. 
The horse-fork for unloading was first used in my barn in 
1858, and the hay loader was purchased in 1874. Formerly 
I loaded and pitched off about 100 tons of hay in a season 
with my own hands. The horse-fork and the hay loader 
have saved a large amount of hard hand labor. 
My age is not great, but I have witnessed the origin and 
growth of the dairy business to its present large dimen¬ 
sions. In 1836 the first cheeses for sale were made on the 
farm. No bandages were used, and they were of all sizes 
and of varied thickness. They were delivered to the pur¬ 
chaser without casks or boxes. Soon afterwards casks 
were used that would hold six or seven cheeses each. A 
regular market was soon established and the cheeses were 
delivered at Rome, 42 miles away. The price obtained in 
the fall of 1S42 was 84.62,'a per 100 pounds delivered in Rome 
by wagon over a road on which the mud was ofteu a foot 
deep. The farm cultivated at the present time consists of 
130 acres. It is made up of low, flat land with a clay sub¬ 
soil, dry kuolls, sand hills and limestone ridges. Consider¬ 
able under-draining has been done aud more is needed in a 
wet spring like the last. Mixed farming is practiced. 
Sales are made of butter, calves, heifers and cows for milk, 
beef, pigs, pork, colts, potatoes, honey and sometimes hay. 
The amount of sales varies from 82,000 to §2,600 in a year. 
The best paying products have been young pigs, potatoes 
and honey. An abuudaut supply of apples, currants, goose¬ 
berries, raspberries and strawberries is raised on the farm. 
The only paper taken by my father in my boyhood was 
the Christian Advocate. It is still the paper of the family. 
For about 40 years The Rural New-Yorker has been its 
worthy companion and the Albany Cultivator for a some¬ 
what longer period. In my case the habit of reading was 
formed when quite young. A share in the town library 
was purchased and books were bought and borrowed. At 
the age of 12 years I thought that if I could have a news¬ 
paper to read every day in the week I would be perfectly 
satisfied with my condition in life. Now the daily paper, 
a large number of weeklies and plenty of other reading 
matter are always at hand. 
The intelligent boy who signs the total-abstinence pledge 
and cultivates a taste for reading of the right kind until it 
is a fixed habit, if he has fairly honest blood in his veins, 
is well fortified against saloon temptation and its attendant 
curse of intemperance. The Rural New- Yorker is worthy 
of all praise not only as the leading agricultural paper of 
the country, but for the pure moral influence 
that it exerts in all home circles where it is 
read. May its success be commensurate with 
its merits ! ” 
FARM AND GARDEN DRAINAGE. 
In this section we have had an unusually wet 
time and there has been no season for a number 
of years, when both my surface and underdrains 
have been of so much benefit to me. In fact, 
upon much of my land there would have been no 
crops worth naming without them. When wife 
and I go out riding, or go on a journey, I am 
often surprised to see land that I know at a 
glance is capable of producing large crops, which 
does not pay for cultivating, simply from lack of 
drainage. Now, my brother cultivators, do not 
get frightened and think I am trying to drive 
you into bankruptcy, because I advise you to 
spend some money upon your land, even if we 
have hard times upon the farm. This is a time 
when poor crops will not, and cannot be made to 
pay. Which will you do : keep along in the old 
way and continue to harvest very indifferent, if 
not very poor crops that leave no profit, and only 
small pay for your labor, with the inevitable 
result of but very little money for spending upon 
either the good wife, yourself or the children 
whom you both love so well, or will you go for¬ 
ward and make such improvements as will 
enable you to care for the faithful wife as she 
deserves, and give to your children the advantages 
of education and culture, that in this land of 
books, papers, and free schools are their birth¬ 
right ? 
How can you so increase the income ? I can 
pick out thousands upon thousands of farms, 
both East and West, upon which the incomes 
might be doubled or trebled by a good system of 
drainage. What kind of land needs draining ? 
First, all lands on which water stands for any 
length of time, either in summer or winter; 
second, all flat lands unless the soil is very light 
and sandy; third, all wet and springy lands; 
fourth, all heavy clay soils which are most bene¬ 
fited by draining, unless they are very rolling. 
J I am not making these statements by guess. 
They are the results of many years’ observation 
at my father’s place with my own added experi¬ 
ence aud observations for many years past. My 
father put in (as I firmly believe) the first underdrains used 
in the United States. It was, I think, in 1827 or 182S. 
He had never seen one, and knew nothing about them ex¬ 
cept what he had read of their value in some portions of 
the British Islands. There were no tiles in this country 
at that time, and his drains were filled with small stones 
gathered on the farm and thrown in loosely to the depth 
of nearly or quite two feet; they were then filled up with 
earth and sodded over. His effort was a splendid success 
from the first. It converted a disagreeable quagmire and 
nuisance into a valuable piece of land. Father is dead, 
but his work remains and is as good to day as when he 
finished it more than 60 years ago, and there is no better 
land upon that valuable farm than those acres thus im¬ 
proved. 
My own personal experience upon my own land for 
many years past is no less convincing. Upon my 40-acie 
garden there are a number of miles of underdrains, in ad¬ 
dition to means of thorough surface drainage. I am a 
CHARLES S. RICE. Fig. 237. 
