516 
AMERICAN tXGRICTJLTURIST. 
[November, 
An English Farm-Stead. 
Save all Corn Fodder Everywhere. 
The profits of farming, as in other business, is 
the margin between receipts and expenditures. 
The receipts are largely augmented by saving 
wastes; these wastes in farming are enormous in the 
aggregate. The losses in this direction, that might 
be saved, would make the business very profitable, 
where it is now barely paying, or not doing that. 
Take corn stalks for example. The leaves and a 
portion of the stems that produce each bushel of 
corn have a certain amount of nutriment that 
would support and increase the weight and growth 
of animals. Yet of our great corn crop, seventeen 
hundred to two thousand million bushels annually, 
only a very small part of the fodder is turned to 
much account. At the very lowest estimate, the 
The farm-buildings upon a large estate in Eng¬ 
land, together form a considerable village. The 
farmer’s house, the cottages for the laborers, the 
barns, stables, and other out-buildings, together 
with the stack-yard, form an assemblage with a 
truly rural aspect. Formerly these buildings were 
added as the needs of the estate required, and not 
disposed in any regular order. Of late, architects 
who have given special 
study to farm-steadings, 
are employed, and upon 
the best managed es¬ 
tates the buildings are 
erected on a general 
plan and disposed with 
a view to the most el¬ 
ective work. In these, 
the farm is regarded as 
a manufacturing estab¬ 
lishment for the con¬ 
version of the grass, 
grain and root crops 
into finished products, 
which may be butter 
and cheese, or beef, 
mutton, and pork. The 
arrangements for stor¬ 
ing the crude material, 
the crops, and employ¬ 
ing them in the manu¬ 
facture, the feeding, are 
often most complete. 
These modern farm¬ 
steads, while they may 
be more profitable to 
the proprietor, have a 
formal air and are vastly 
less pleasing to the eye 
than the older style, 
built without definite plan, and which may still 
be seen in all parts of England. 
One characteristic of these buildings is, their 
appropriateness. One is never liable to mistake 
them for anything other than farm-houses. Square 
wooden boxes with flat roofs, or those abortions 
which the village carpenter “ decorates ” with 
sawn scroll work, too often seen on farms in this 
country, are there never met with. 
The English farm-house or cottage, old or new, 
never lacks that most expressive feature, which 
more than any other conveys the idea of a home— 
the roof. Whenever a farm building is seen, 
whether it may be picturesquely covered with 
thatch, with slate, or as is common in some locali¬ 
ties, with shingles painted a dull red, the roof, 
with its ample, overhanging eaves, is always con¬ 
spicuous, and suggests that home comfort is to be 
found beneath it. In the older establishments the 
out-buildings are nearer the dwellings than we 
should consider proper—indeed it is not rare that 
the door most used by the family is entered from 
the cow-house. There are other points which in a 
sanitary view might be improved; still, with all 
their defects these farm-steads well answer their 
purpose and form a most picturesque feature in 
English rural life. 
stalks yielding one bushel of corn are on the aver¬ 
age worth ten cents for feed, even including the 
great corn regions—a total of two hundred million 
dollars. At the South, generally, little value is 
attached to corn stalks as fodder. At the West, 
many farmers let their cattle roam in the fields and 
pick off some leaves, eat a little of the stalk, tram¬ 
ple the rest down ; they pack the earth so much in 
trampling on it, that the damage thus done to many 
fields surpasses the value of the food obtained. 
Nearly the whole of a corn stalk, except a very 
the last one over the bend in the first, and tuck it 
under the binder into a loop, into which insert a 
stalk stub, pushing it into the shock to hold the 
loop. All this is more quickly done than described. 
AY' 
k dr*** 
little of the thin hard outside coating 
affords nutritious fodder, if it is cut at 
the proper time, is well cured and ju¬ 
diciously fed. It needs to be cut when 
not so green as to mould in the shock, 
but not so ripe as to lose all its succu¬ 
lence and become woody. Experience 
and observation will generally indicate 
to every one the proper time of cutting it. 
In shocking com the stalks should be kept 
straight and parallel. The shocks should be large 
enough to not have too many stalks exposed to 
the weather, yet small enough to dry and cure 
through. For somewhat heavy corn, twelve hills 
square (one hundred and forty-four hills), is abund¬ 
ant for one shock. A good mode of shocking is 
this: When the shocks are set nearly perpen¬ 
dicular, draw the tops together very firmly with a 
rope, and tie temporarily—two men working to¬ 
gether. Bind with straw or with stalks. For the 
latter choose tough, nearly ripe, long, slender 
stalks. “Bend-break” the top with the thumb 
and finger every two or three inches. Thrust the 
butt end into the shock and towards the centre 
nearly two feet, and carefully bend-break it at the 
surface to a right angle. Insert a similar top- 
broken stalk two feet distant; bring the top of the 
first one firmly around the shock, bend it around 
the second stalk close to the shock, and then bend 
the second stalk around and over a third one ; 
and so on, using as many stalks as required by size 
of shock and length of binders. Bring the end of 
Lesson from Two Contrasted Fields. 
We recently crossed two fields, separated by a line 
fence only. They are on a gentle slope at the base 
of a hill, and both alike in level or inclination, in 
composition, in receiving the wash from the higher 
land, and in the water in the dark, springy subsoil. 
A purchaser, standing at a distance, would let the 
flip of a copper decide the choice between the two 
fields, acre for acre. Going on them revealed a 
very great difference in the present value of these 
two fields, which we will call A and B. 
On field A, the herbage is mainly a coarse, wiry 
grass, often in tussocks with small barren spaces 
between. In spots the ground is spongy and miry, 
except after a severe drouth. When mown, it 
yields a ton or so of poor hay, worth for feeding 
hardly half as much as the same weight of timo¬ 
thy. When pastured, the cattle nibble merely the 
ends of the grass, except in a few of the best por¬ 
tions of the field. 
In field B we found a smooth surface, a compact, 
firm soil, and a luxuriant growth of the best grass, 
mainly timothy. It aver¬ 
ages fully two tons per 
acre of first quality hay, 
and abundant, excel¬ 
lent autumn pasturage. 
Hay here averages about 
twelve dollars a ton, 
and the pasturage is 
worth at least one-third 
as much as the hay cut. 
At these rates the hay 
and pasturage from field 
A, is worth eight dollars 
an acre, less three dol¬ 
lars per ton for cutting 
and handling the hay, 
or, net, five dollars per 
acre. From field B, hay 
and pasturage thirty- 
two dollars, less six dol¬ 
lars for handling hay, 
or, net, twenty-six dol¬ 
lars per acre. Note that 
both fields are a rich 
soil, irrigated from the 
high land. Whence this 
difference of twenty- 
one dollars per acre, 
equal to six per cent 
interest on three hun¬ 
dred and fifty dollars 
per acre, or ten per cent 
on two hundred and ten 
dollars per acre ? The 
result of careful inquiry turned out as we expected. 
About twenty-two years ago, the owner of field B, 
now deceased, though having limited means, 
bought some tiles, hauling them twenty miles in 
winter. With these, and in part with stones from 
the hill, he made a deep drain across the upper 
side of the field to cut off the deeper springs, but 
left the surface over them level, to admit irrigating 
waters to flow down on the field. Then, every 
twenty to twenty-five feet, he ran drains down the 
slope, three to four feet deep, their lower ends 
emptying into a blind ditch. As soon as the drains 
settled, the field was plowed and harrowed, the 
tussocks gathered and carried off, a crop of grain 
put on and well seeded with timothy and clover, 
the latter not doing much. It has since been 
plowed two or three times, and sown or planted, 
and re-seeded to grass. It now looks as if in a sod 
that would last for a century. 
No record of the cost remains, except a memo¬ 
randum of tiles purchased at thirty to sixty dol¬ 
lars per thousand, the latter for large drains. The 
owner was not yet forehanded, did much of the 
work himself at odd spells during two years, the 
