1872 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
295 
draining. When I have plenty of other neces¬ 
sary work I put ail the men at it, but if I have 
a man to spare he goes to the drains. Thus my 
underdraining is often performed when the men 
would have nothing else to do. A man too 
many is very useful. If one gets sick or quits 
work, his team does not then lie idle. He is also 
very useful at harvest-time.” 
This is all very true, and it is the plan I have 
always advocated. Hiring extra men for a few 
days to do extra work that must be done, 
no matter what wages the men ask, is a bad 
practice. It lias a demoralizing effect. The 
extra hands boast of how much they are get¬ 
ting, while they say nothing of how many days 
they lie idle. It is certain that as a rule the 
men who engage by the year save the most 
money. The days when a man is not earning 
money he is very apt to be spending it. 
As a rule, however, ordinary farm hands 
make very poor ditches. They do not like the 
work. I have had many ditches cut on the plan 
practiced by Mr. Bowles, but am satisfied that 
they have cost me a good deal more than those 
I had cut by the rod. I am inclined to think 
that we might adopt both plans. We might 
hire the men by the season at so much a day, 
and when there is much ditching to be done let 
out the work to them by the rod. If they were 
skillful and industrious they would earn more 
money, while we should get the work done 
cheaper. With married men who have boys to 
help them, there is a good deal of work on the 
farm that they could take with advantage to 
themselves and their employers, such as hoeing, 
pulling beans, digging potatoes, husking corn, 
etc. In fact, I do not see why the plan might 
not be extended to nearly all the operations on 
the farm. 
“My swamp land,” says Mr. B., “used to 
grow only smart-weed. The first year after it 
was underdrained it grew about So bushels 
(68 lbs. of ears) of corn per acre. The next 
year it grew 80 bushels of corn per acre. The 
next year (1871) 85 bushels per acre. It is now 
in corn again.” Is not that better than letting 
it produce smart-weed and fever and ague ? 
I have harrowed my corn three times with 
Thomas’s Smoothing Harrow. I went over it 
the first time a few days after the plants made 
their appearance, and then at intervals of four 
or five days. We are now (June 18tli) cultivating 
it, and I propose to go over it again in a day or 
two with the harrow. There are a good many 
thistles in the field, and it will be necessary to 
hoe these out of the rows where the cultivator 
will not reach them. But for this, I would not 
put a hoe in the field, as there are few things 
that annoy me more than to see men during this 
hurrying season wasting their time dressing up 
a hill of corn with a hoe. I have never yet 
been able to convince a man that I want him to 
lioe the weeds. He says and thinks that he is 
engaged to “ hoe the corn." And it is curious 
how tenaciously this idea clings to the mind of 
even intelligent farm men. The very boys seem 
to inherit the same tendency. If a hill of corn 
has missed, it requires a special training to in¬ 
duce the boys to cut out the weeds. If there is 
not a weed to be seen they will hoe all round 
the corn, but if there is no corn they will not 
hoe the land, no matter how mauy weeds there 
may be in the hill. Thomas’s harrow has cer¬ 
tainly killed thousands of weeds, and greatly 
lessened the necessity for hoeing. In fact, an 
active man, if he could get rid of the idea that 
he was hoeing corn, and would merely cut out 
the weeds, could go over two, three, or four acres 
a day and do all that was necessary. 
So far as my observation extends, there is no 
branch of farming in which such a marked im¬ 
provement has taken place during the last 
twenty years as in the cultivation of corn. The 
old plan in this section was to run a cultivator 
through the rows each way, and then hoe. 
Then in two or three weeks run the cultivator 
through again both ways, and hill up the corn, 
and dress off the hills with a hoe. That was 
all the cultivation it received. How, our culti¬ 
vators are not only far more effective implements, 
but we use them more frequently. Farmers are 
fully convinced of the advantage of keeping 
the land constantly stirred and free from weeds. 
I know of no crop, unless it is cotton, that 
affords such a splendid opportunity of cleaning 
land as our magnificent cereal, Indian corn. And 
I have no little pleasure in witnessing the avid¬ 
ity with which all good farmers avail themselves 
of this chance to kill the weeds. I have always 
said that it will not be many years before the 
best farming in the world will be found on this 
continent, and the more thorough cultivation of 
the land while in com will do much to hasten 
the time. 
My English friend smiles at this remark. He 
thinks it will be a good many years before our 
farming will compare favorably with that in 
Norfolk and Lincolnshire or Scotland. I am 
well aware that much of our farming at the 
present time is about as bad as it well can be. 
I know farms where every well-established 
principle of agricultural science and practice is 
daily violated. But the American agricultural 
press, which is sending its sheets broadcast over 
the land by the million, has become a prodigious 
power for good, and is having a mighty influ¬ 
ence on the minds of men. Farmers are con¬ 
stitutionally cautious and slow to change. But 
when they get hold of a good idea they digest 
it thoroughly and make it their own. By and 
by you see the effect. All improvements in 
agriculture are slow. It is often a life-work to 
bring up a farm to the highest state of cultiva¬ 
tion and productiveness. Bearing these facts in 
mind, and admitting, as I must, that much of 
our farming is now wretched in the extreme, I 
can see beneath the surface most cheering indi¬ 
cations of great and far-reaching improvement 
in our general agriculture. Recollect that we 
own the land. We are not tenants liable to be 
turned off our farms if we express political or 
religious views different from those of the land¬ 
lord. If we plant a tree, dig a drain, or get out 
a stone, we can feel that it is our own land that 
we are improving. And this thought does have 
au influence. We must look out, however, and 
not let the great railroad corporations virtually 
become our landlords. For my part, I have no 
fear. They oppress us sorely at times, but, on 
the whole, it must be confessed that the condi¬ 
tion and prospects of the American farmer will 
compare favorably with those of any industrial 
class in the world. 
Let us take a cheerful view of things, and go 
ahead with our improvements. Farm products 
will always be in demand, and will, taking one 
year with another, always bring what they are 
worth. Our aim must be to produce them as 
cheaply as possible. And the first thing to be 
done is to stop growing weeds. 
I have said that we are cultivating our corn 
better. Such is the case. Our cornfields are 
much cleaner than formerly. But our wheat 
and spring grain crops are too frequently full 
of weeds. Such is the case on my own farm, 
though I am making encouraging headway 
against them. With rare exceptions, it is gene¬ 
rally the case in this section. The Deacon’s 
oats, sown after corn, are a mass of thistles. 
And the reason of this weedy condition of our 
spring grain and wheat crops is mainly due to 
the fact that the great aim of the Deacon and 
of the majority of farmers i3 to plant corn in 
such a way as to “save hoeing.” They do not 
want the weeds to grow. They fail to take ad¬ 
vantage of the splendid opportunity which a 
corn crop affords for killing weeds. The weeds 
and weed-seeds are lying dormant beneath a 
tough sod, where the cultivator does not reach 
them. Next spring the laud is plowed, and all 
these weeds spring up in the oats, barley, or 
wheat, where we have no chance to kill them. 
It is a great error. We must either plant corn 
two years in succession, or we must break up 
our sod land early the fall previous, and plow it 
again in the spring before planting the corn. 
In other words, we must adopt some method of 
making the weeds grow in the corn, where we 
can get at them with the cultivator. I know I 
have said the same thing again and again. It is 
one of my pet ideas. And I am trying to carry it 
out in my own practice. I have planted my 
corn this year on land purposely treated in the 
best way I could think of to make the weeds 
grow. ' It looks like rough and slovenly work, 
but I think I shall have pretty good corn, and! 
know the land will be cleaner for years to- come. 
I plowed a clover sod last fall with one of Hol¬ 
brook’s side-hill plows. I put on three horses, 
and turned a furrow twenty inches wide. The 
plow is designed to break the furrow as much 
as possible. The land was very dry and hard, 
and being a two-horse plow the three-horse 
evener made it run a little wider than it is cal¬ 
culated for. It made rough work, but that was 
precisely what I wanted. At tiny rate, I ivanted 
to try the experiment. I plowed part of the 
field with an ordinary plow, turning over a neat, 
smooth furrow. This spring I harrowed the 
land and then cross-plowed it, and I think 
the rough-plowed land was in the best condition, 
though owing to the great drouth the sod had 
not rotted on any of it as much as I expected. 
If I was going to do it again I would plow earlier, 
say in August or September, and then cross-plow 
the last of November in such a way as to let 
the land lie up rough for the winter. A thor¬ 
ough harrowing in the spring, with the free use 
of a two-horse cultivator, and then plowing it 
up just before planting the corn, would give the 
weeds a good chance to start, and we could 
then kill them by the million with Thomas’s 
harrow and cultivator. At any rate, until I get 
my land clean, or unless some one will tell me 
a better plan, I think I shall adopt this method 
of growing corn. As soon as my land is clean 
I shall then probably plant on a freshly-in¬ 
verted clover sod. 
But as long as our farms are as weedy as they 
are at present, I am satisfied that the plan of 
“fall-fallowing” which I have advocated is the 
true plan in this section. We only lose the use 
of the land for about two months in the fall, 
and at a season when grass is usually abundant, 
while the soil is exposed to the ameliorating 
influences of the atmosphere for a period'of 
about nine months, or say from August to May. 
The work can be done at odd times when there 
is little else for the teams to do. You are not 
obliged to break up the whole field at once; as 
is the case when you intend to sow a crop. 
Part may be left in grass, and pastured until 
