1872 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
95 
cording to the time and condition of the land. 
If the ground was very foul, I would mark it 
off in rows forty inches apart with a two-horse 
marker. Then plant in hills with a check- 
planter. But if the land was clean I would 
drill in the corn; as I believe more corn can be 
raised per acre in drills than in hills, provided 
it is well worked and kept clean. If the ground 
is rich and in good heart, it will raise a stalk of 
eight-rowed corn every seven inches by forty 
inches. After the field was planted, if not done 
before, I would thoroughly harrow the ground, 
and if I had time I would do it in any case and 
also roll it. This may be done before the plants 
are up, or when they are two inches high, and 
until they get too large. Then I would plow 
with the best two-horse plow to be had, with 
which I could keep the ground clear of weeds 
until it was so large that the corn would break 
down—and no ordinary weeds would grow 
after that. I think you have a drill, but I doubt 
your having a good corn plow, as they have 
not been introduced in your State.” 
I have a check corn-planter—and a very good 
one of its kind—that plants two rows at a time. 
But I have never yet seen a check-planter that 
drops the corn so accurately that the rows are 
perfectly straight, both ways; and for this rea¬ 
son I plant in drills and cultivate only one way. 
I have a two-horse corn cultivator, which I sup¬ 
pose is the same thing as a two-horse corn- 
plow. But I have no man skillful enough to run 
it as close to the corn as we run our one-horse 
cultivators. It can be used to advantage, in 
connection with a single cultivator, for stirring 
the ground in the center of the rows, and then 
use the one-horse cultivator for killing the 
weeds close to the plants. If of the right sort, 
and the rows are absolutely straight, a cultivator 
may be run within one inch of the plants, and 
thus leave little for the hand-hoes to do. 
Doubtless great improvements are yet to be 
made in our methods of planting and cultivating 
corn, and more especially in our modes of har¬ 
vesting and husking it; but it seems to me that 
our chief aim at present should be to so enrich 
the land that we may have a reasonable pros¬ 
pect of getting 80 bushels of shelled corn per 
acre. In oilier words, we must aim rather to 
reduce the labor per bushel than the labor per 
acre. And this is true of all our crops. 
People who let out and those who work 
farms “ on shares ” seldom understand this mat¬ 
ter clearly. Last year I know a farmer who let 
out a field of good land that had been in corn 
the previous year to a man to sow it to barley, 
and afterwards to wheat on “ the halves.” An¬ 
other part of tire farm was taken by a man to 
plant corn and potatoes on similar terms, and 
another man put in several acres of cabbage, 
beets, carrots, and onions on halves. It never 
seemed to occur to either of them that the 
conditions were unequal. The expense of dig¬ 
ging and harvesting the potato crop alone was 
greater than the whole cost of the barley crop; 
while, after the barley was off, the land was 
plowed once, harrowed, and sowed to winter 
wheat; and nothing more.has to be done to it 
until next harvest. With the garden crops the 
difference is even still more striking. The labor 
expended on one acre of onions or carrots 
would put in and harvest a ten-acre field of 
barley. If the tenant gets pay for his labor, 
the landlord would get say $5 an acre for his 
barley land and $50 for his carrot and onion 
land. I am pretty sure the tenants did not see 
the matter in this light, nor the farmer either. 
Crops which require a large amount of labor 
can only be grown on very rich land. Our suc¬ 
cessful market-gardeners, seed-growers, and 
nurserymen understand this matter. They 
must get great crops or they can not pay their 
labor bill. And the principle is applicable to 
ordinary farm crops. Some of- them require 
much more labor than others, and should never 
be grown unless the land is capable of produc¬ 
ing a maximum yield per acre, or a close ap¬ 
proximation to it. As a rule, the least-paying 
crops are those which require the least labor 
per acre. Farmers are afraid to expend the 
labor. They are wise in this, unless all the 
conditions are favorable. But when they have 
land in a high state of cultivation—drained, 
clean, mellow, and rich—it would usually pay 
them well to grow crops which require the 
most labor. 
And it should never be forgotten that, as com¬ 
pared with nearly all other countries, our labor 
is expensive. No matter how cheap our land 
may be, we can not afford to waste our labor. 
It is too costly. If men would work for 
nothing, and board themselves, there are local¬ 
ities where we could perhaps afford to keep 
sheep that shear two pounds of wool a year; or 
cows that make 75 lbs. of butter. We might 
make a profit out of a wheat crop of 8 bush¬ 
els per acre, or a corn crop of 15 bushels, 
or a potato crop of 50 bushels. But it can not 
be done with labor costing from $1.25 to $2.50 
per day. And I do not believe labor will cost 
much less in our day. The only thing we can 
do is to employ it to the best advantage. Ma¬ 
chinery will help us to some extent, but I can 
see no real escape from our difficulties in this 
matter except to raise larger crops per acre. 
I see nothing in the Western plan of raising 
corn, as described by my correspondent, that 
differs essentially from my own practice. I 
plant with a drill, and do nearly all the work of 
cleaning the crop with the cultivator. The 
reason the Western farmers can raise corn 
cheaper than we can is because their land is 
cheaper, richer, cleaner, and more easily worked. 
But I imagine that even they find very little 
profit in growing a crop of corn that does not 
average 30 bushels per acre. They, like us, 
must aim to grow larger crops. 
In ordinary farming, “ larger crops per acre ” 
means fewer acres planted or sown with grain. 
It means more summer fallow, more grass, 
clover, peas, mustard, coleseed, roots, and other 
crops that are consumed on the farm. It means 
more thorough cultivation. It means clean and 
rich land. It means husbanding the ammonia 
and nitric acid, 'which is brought to the soil, as 
well as that which is developed from the soil, 
or which the soil attracts from the atmosphere, 
and using it to grow a crop every second, third, 
or fourth year, instead of every year. If a piece 
of land will grow 25 bushels of corn every 
year,[we should aim to so manage it, that it will 
grow 50 every other year, or 75 every third 
year, or, if the climate is capable of doing it, of 
raising 100 bushels per acre every fourth year. 
Theoretically this can be done, and in one of 
Mr. Lawes’s experiments he did it practically in 
the case of a summer-fallow for wheat, the one 
crop in two years giving a little more than two 
crops sown in succession. But on sandy land 
we should probably lose a portion of the liber¬ 
ated plant-food, unless we grew a crop of some 
kind every 3 'ear. And the matter organized in 
the renovating crop could not be rendered com¬ 
pletely available for the next crop. In the end , 
lioAvever, we ought to be able to get it with 
little or no loss. How best to accomplish this 
result, is one of the most interesting and import¬ 
ant fields for scientific investigation and practical 
experiment. We know enough, however, to be 
sure that there is a great advantage in waiting un¬ 
til there is a sufficient accumulation of available 
plant-food in the soil, to produce a large yield 
before sowing a crop that requires much labor. 
The rape or coleseed alluded to is a new crop 
with me. I sowed six or seven acres of it at 
the same time we sowed the mustard, say in 
Jul}'. It is a very common crop on the fen 
lands in England, and on other soils that are 
not adapted to turnips. It is a winter crop, and 
is fed off on the land by sheep. The severest 
frost does not hurt it. My Cotswold sheep are 
kept in the yards and sheds at night, but in the 
morning, after feeding, we open the doors, and, 
except during a severe storm, the sheep march 
off to the field of rape and come back again of 
their own accord in the afternoon, with their 
stomachs full of sucsulent food. The Deacon 
seems much interested in the experiment. The 
field is near his house, and he says it is curious 
to see the sheep march to the field so regularly 
every day, iii single file, and then disperse over 
the field, and pick up the green leaves or stalks 
from under the snow. After they have got then- 
fill, a few of them will start on their homeward 
journey, but will wait at the gate (which is left 
open) until the whole flock is ready to return, 
when they slowly and in a dignified manner 
march home in single file along the beaten trade 
The crop is now (January 24th) nearly all 
eaten up, and the winter has been so remark¬ 
ably free from heavy snows, that I have had no 
opportunity of judging of the value of the crop 
for ordinary seasons. At any rate, however, I 
propose to sow a few acres every year, and run 
my chance of feeding it off at times when the 
snow is not too deep for the sheep to walk about 
the field. Any green crop that will stand our 
winters is certainly worth trying. It has one 
great advantage over the turnip, in our climate 
—it costs very little to grow it, and nothing to 
gather it and feed it out. The only expense 
about the crop is in preparing the ground. The 
soil must be made as fine and mellow as for tur¬ 
nips. The plant closely resembles the Swede tur¬ 
nip or ruta-baga, except that it has no bulb. It is 
grown for its leaves and stalk. Several farmers 
who were looking at my farm last fall, thought 
it was a crop of ruta-bagas, sown very thick, 
and not hood — and they were disposed to 
criticise my method of turnip-growing! 
We are feeding our cows nothing but corn¬ 
stalks and a little corn-meal; no carrots, no 
mangolds, no steamed food, and no blooded 
cows, and yet the butter is as yellow, firm, and 
fine-flavored as one can desire. We have no 
trouble about the “ butter not coming.” It came 
yesterday in twenty minutes. The farrow cows 
that I am fattening and milking at the same 
time, give the richest of milk, and I suppose the 
yellow butter is due to the corn-meal. It seems 
to me that if I lived at the West, where corn is 
cheap, I should engage in winter butter-making. 
As I understand the matter, good winter butter 
would sell readily and at good prices in the cities. 
How to make Concrete Building's. 
A very substantial and cheap building may 
be put up with concrete, which is a mixture of 
hydraulic lime, sand, and coarse gravel or 
broken stone. Common lime may be used for 
common farm buildings, or even for dwellings, 
but as it is not nearly so durable when exposed 
