1858 , 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
77 
Unprofitable Farming, 
In a recent paper we spoke of some of the causes of 
unprofitable farming,—unprofitable, not from lack of 
knowledge of the right way, but from neglect of well- 
known axioms in agriculture,—and promised to give a 
few more instances illustrating the subject. 
Manure is a necessary application, in order to bring 
an impoverished soil into a productive state. Nothing 
is more certain, all agree. And yet, how much of the 
unprofitable farming of the country results from the 
attempt to grow crops on worn-out soils without ma¬ 
nure. Plant corn on such land—the crop is a meagre 
one, both from want of strength in the soil to grow it, 
and length of the season to mature it. A rich or well- 
manured soil will ripen this crop weeks earlier than a 
poor one. An acre of land, rich, deeply tilled, planted 
in good season, and thoroughly and cleanly cultivated, 
will produce more corn than five acres poor, shallow- 
plowed, late planted and half cultivated, and at per¬ 
haps one-half the expense of the latter. 
Stagnant water , either in or upon the soil, is another 
cause of unprofitable farming. A soil which has no es¬ 
cape or outlet for the water which falls upon it save 
evaporation, cannot be made to produce a paying crop. 
In a dry season it is baked and hard—in a wet one it 
is often flooded with stagnant water, and. is never in a 
condition very favorable to the growth of cultivated 
crops, however well suited it may be to the production 
of wild grass, flag and rushes. And partially drained 
land of this character is little better. Flooded in spring, 
the water passes off but slowly; nothing can be done 
upon it until the “subsiding of the waters,” which, as 
they must in great part go cloudward, is a tedious pro¬ 
cess. 
Poor manure —made so by exposure and leaching 
while yet in the yard—is another source of loss to the 
farmer. The contents of the barn-yard are generally 
dignified with the name of manure, even if they con¬ 
sist of little more than a leached mass of straw and 
excrement, the real strength of which has long ago 
passed off into some stream, or floated down the road¬ 
side ditch, and into some provident neighbor’s field—it 
is still “ manure,” and is carted to the field and offered 
to the crop with the expectation that it will find therein 
nutriment, and the material for large productiveness. 
One thought will show how futile this expectation. 
How does manure benefit a plant 1 By its soluble con¬ 
stituents—they receive only liquid food. This leached 
manure has lost the greater share of the soluble ele¬ 
ments of fertility, and acts in great part only mechani¬ 
cally upon the soil. 
Attempting too muck is another great cause of loss 
to the farmer. “Much labor on little land,” is the se¬ 
cret of success—enough labor, at least, to do everything 
in the best manner. Look at it,—is it good policy to 
expend the labor of putting in a crop over six acres, 
when, at the same cost , a like result may be realised 
from three or four? Will you be content with thirty 
bushels of corn per acre, at an expense of, say $12, 
when by adding $3 in manure and better culture, you 
may realize sixty or one hundred bushels ? Will you 
grow inferior stock with the same amount of food, when 
by a larger outlay at first, you may have the best— 
those always saleable at good prices—while the unim¬ 
proved scarcely find purchasers at any price 1 Is it 
not best, either to concentrate your labor on less land, 
or increase your expenditure so as to embrace the whole 
farm in a thorough system of cultivation ? 
The acknowledged causes of unprofitable farming 
are not exhausted, and it is a proper subject for the 
examination of the farmer. Let him look into the 
matter, and see where and why he has failed. 
Cutting and Feeding Cut Fodder. 
Country Gentleman— -In vol. 11, no. 2, Norman 
Bottum makes inquiry as to a profitable machine for 
cutting cornstalks, and perhaps our experience may 
not be uninteresting to a class of your readers. That 
there is not only propriety in cutting up cornstalks, 
coarse clover hay, coarse straw, and the like, for fod¬ 
der, but also economy in it, and necessity for it, no one 
who has ever fed stalks in the bundle, and whole coarse 
straw, and witnessed the extravagant waste of cattle, 
and their unwillingness to consume these articles in 
that state, and their consequent want of thrift upon 
them, will question. To say nothing of the waste in 
littering a barn-yard with whole cornstalks, the per¬ 
plexity of having them in the manure to handle in 
their undecayed state is enough to make one look anx¬ 
iously for some machine to relieve himself from the 
“ nuisance.” 
The avidity with which cattle entirely consume these 
kinds of fodder when properly cut, even without grain, 
is enough to satisfy us as to its utility. Much care, 
however, are required in feeding when cut stalks and 
straw are fed. He who has not been accustomed to 
feeding cut fodder will almost invariably feed a double 
dose , until he learns from experience that he is over¬ 
feeding. “Little and often” we find to be the better 
plan, and feed only what each animal will consume 
entirely. Should any of the hard coarse joints of the 
stalks remain in the manger, they should be well mix¬ 
ed with the fresh stalks at the next feeding, and with 
some animals this course will always have to be pur¬ 
sued. 
Our practice is to arrange cattle, either in stalls or 
stanchions, with separate bunks, and to give each ani- 
mal a rounded half bushel of stalks, without grain, 
four times per day, viz.: 1st, at a very early hour in 
the morning—2d, three or four hours after, or just be¬ 
fore turning out—3d, on putting up for the night— 
4th, three or four hours after, or just before bed-time. 
In the middle of the day we feed in bunks, in the 
yard, fine barley or oat straw whole, which is eaten 
with avidity. 
' Our stock is made up of grade Short-Horns, grade 
Devons, and pure Short-Horns, we having, about a 
year since, discarded the very last of a large stock of 
native cattle, as costing too much for anything but a 
very wealthy farmer, who has money to throw away, 
to keep. He who has native cattle to feed, will allow 
50 per cent, in quantity more than we have given 
above, as a proper mess for Short-Horns or Devons. 
Variety of food, for instance, cut stalks, cut straw, 
good hay, whole fine straw, roots, and occasionally 
grain, will be found far better and cheaper fodder for 
animals than all coarse stuff, as they relish the change 
of food as much as the human being appreciates it. 
That there is economy in cutting good fine hay, ex¬ 
cept for a change of food, or upon which to feed grain, 
remains a question with us, which we design to deter¬ 
mine by experiment at some convenient opportunity. 
