1872 .] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
339 
teams in use incur neighborhood, one of horses 
and one of oxen, bolli engaged in similar work 
(mainly on the road), and we have come to the 
conclusion, against our preconceived notions, 
that “slow and steady wins the race.” The 
oxen seem to do more work in a week than the 
horses. They are three pairs of young cattle, 
growing thriftily, and so paying a profit on 
their keep when not overworked—costing less 
to buy and less to feed than the single pair of 
horses. When they are needed for work, they 
are taken up and fed enough grain to keep them 
hearty. When their work is finished, they are 
turned out to “eat, sleep, and grow fat.” When 
each pair have got their growth, they are sold 
to the butcher, and a part of their price replaces 
them with younger ones. 
Starting our farming life with a prejudice 
against the use of ox-teams, we have been in¬ 
duced gradually to substitute them for horses, 
until now we have only enough of the latter for 
our regular road-work, and depend on oxen for 
all emergencies. In work and in flesh we get a 
full equivalent for all the food they consume, 
and we save the heavy cost of keeping idle 
horses, the risk of a total loss of value by acci¬ 
dent or death, and the certainty of depreciation 
by reason of old age. 
Hints about Wheat. 
It is a mistake to suppose that wheat is not a 
paying crop. Very often it is not profitably 
grown, but it is looked upon as a necessary evil, 
hardly to be avoided, for the reason that there 
is no other crop to be substituted for it in the 
rotation. Yet wheat is absolutely necessary for 
us, and it would be strange if a crop which the 
world can not do without could not be grown 
to a profit anywhere and everywhere. The 
competition with the easily cultivated and pro¬ 
ductive new lands at the extreme West need not 
necessarily be overwhelming to the more east¬ 
ern cultivator, who on his side has an advantage 
in nearness to market, and cheaper tools and 
implements, and less waste and cost in harvest¬ 
ing. But the trouble lies in the small yield with 
which the Eastern farmers are contented, con¬ 
sequent on the generally careless and insufficient 
methods of preparing for and sowing the crop. 
Very rarely is the oat-stubble, which the wheat 
crop generally follows, plowed more than once, 
and very often the corn-stubble prepared in the 
most hurried manner by a simple harrowing is 
made to bear this crop, which is more than all 
others dependent for success on a well-prepared 
seed-bed. The consequence is, that the young 
wheat is smothered by the more vigorous oats 
which spring up thickly on the newly-plowed 
ground, and thus weakened is unable to stand 
the first heavy frost of the fall or winter, and is 
killed out. So on the harrowed corn-stubble 
there is no depth of root to sustain the plant in 
the hard-beaten soil, and it is in a worse condi¬ 
tion in this case even than on the plowed oat- 
stubble. At present there is not sufficient 
vigor in the soil to enable the plant to make 
head against the difficulties it has to contend 
with, and it succumbs, and the crop either fails 
completely or is very unprofitable in its results. 
We must work on a different system. Old 
things have passed away, and if this crop is to 
succeed a new system must be adopted. The 
wheat crop must be the pivot on which our 
farming must hinge both in the East and West. 
The West, as we used to understand the term a 
few years ago, is now the East, and is in exactly 
the same circumstances as to condition of soil 
and needs of cultivation as that part of the 
country we used to call the East. “ Thorns 
and thistles” have taken possession of the soil, 
and the “virtue has gone out of it” by which 
it used to grow crops by merely scratching the 
surface. No fair wheat crop can now r be got 
by merely harrowing a corn-stubble, or once 
plowing an oat-stubble; nor can w r e lay our 
fields down to grass with a poorly-grown wheat 
crop and hope to have a good catch or a good 
crop of clover or grass. Grass is often called 
our “pivotal crop,” that on which the wfiiole 
rotation depends; but wheat is the precursor of 
grass, and as it succeeds or fails, so will our 
clover and grass flourish or fail. Then it will- 
no longer do to hurry it into the ground as we 
have done. A difference of ten bushels per acre 
depends on this alone, and this is sufficient to 
make a crop profitable or otherwise. Two 
plowings at least should be given, and unless a 
very fair allowance of fairly good manure can 
be afforded, some of the purchasable manures 
should be applied, and those rich in nitrogen or 
ammonia are preferable to the phosphates, or 
at least have shown themselves to be more effec¬ 
tual as a fall application. Then, again, there is 
much in the sowing. It is plain, as the rapidly 
accumulating result of experience of late, as 
the attention of farmers lias been more closely 
drawn to this matter, that broadcast sowing 
must be abandoned as no longer profitable. It 
is too costly a method. Especially lias the late 
hard winter shown this. Drill-sown wheat has 
escaped the evil effects of drouth, frost, and ex¬ 
cess of wet, while broadcast-sown has been 
seen dead and cast upon the surface, with its 
roots all drawn from the soil, and no resource 
left to the farmer in the spring but to replant 
his bare fields with other crops. The difference 
here in the yield of the crop will be from five 
bushels per acre to the whole crop lost, so that, 
should farmers generally adopt this and the 
previously mentioned plans, it is probably safe 
to say that the yield of wheat would be doubled. 
Certainly, we have often seen, in fact we have 
grown, crops of wheat of twenty-five or thirty 
bushels per acre, which have been carefully put 
into the ground, which we are satisfied would 
not have yielded ten bushels had the old-fash¬ 
ioned system here pointed out been followed. 
In the one case, at least expenses were paid, if 
no great profit was made, and a good hay crop 
followed; in the other case, there would have 
been a serious loss both on the wheat and hay 
crop. Further, in selecting seed, it will pay to 
exercise care and judgment. None but the 
plumpest grain should be chosen. The wheat 
should be cleaned two or three times, and our 
experience has been that it will pay to steep the 
seed in a solution of copperas, which destroys 
smut, and helps to separate the light grains from 
those which are fit for seed. A crop sown in 
good season is to be preferred, but it is far better 
to delay a week to complete the preparation, 
and get the soil into the best condition, than to 
hurry over it and make more haste but less 
speed in the end. 
♦* 
How to Kill and Hang a Beef. 
A farmer should of right be one of the most 
independent of men. When the need arises, he 
ought to know how to do himself everything 
that he may want done on the farm. Amongst 
other things which lie will sometimes find it 
necessary or convenient to do, is to slaughter and 
dress a fat cow or ox for home use or for market. 
For want of knowing how to do this, a farmer 
often sells a beast to a butcher for five cents a 
pound, and buys beef for fifteen cents, and it 
needs but little figuring to show it to be an un¬ 
profitable business. 
On every farm there should be an out-liouse, 
with a plank floor, which can be washed off 
clean, for the purpose of killing and dressing 
sheep, hogs, or a beef. There should be also 
a stout beam above, on which to hang the car¬ 
casses; the window should have a close shutter, 
Fig. 1.— RIGGING FOR HANGING A BEEF. 
to keep the house close and dark, and the door 
should fit tightly. Then, when a carcass of beef 
is to be prepared, the animal is brought into the 
house. A rope around the horns should bring 
its head to a strong ring-bolt in the floor, and 
a well-dealt blow with an ax, delivered on 
the forehead, just above the eyes, will fell 
the beast to the floor, and render it insensible. 
The throat should then be cut and the blood 
drawn as rapidly as possible. As soon as life is 
extinct, the skin should be slit along the belly 
Fig. 2.— BEEF WHEN HUNG. 
and brisket up to the chin, also from hie fore¬ 
knees down the inside of the forelegs to the 
brisket up to the first slit. In the same manner 
down the back of the hindlegs and thighs to the 
rump. It should then be stripped off the legs, 
brisket, and belly, and the carcass opened and 
the inside taken out and removed at once. 
The carcass may then be turned over and the 
hide stripped off completely, the head and feet 
cut off, a strong gambrel stick placed through 
the hindlegs at the gambrel-joint, and the car¬ 
cass hung up. This is generally the most diffi¬ 
cult part of the work, but by using such a con¬ 
trivance as is shown in fig. 1, it may easily be 
done. A rope is thrown around the beam as 
shown in the figure, with the ends of equal 
length hanging down; a short, stout bar is passed 
