302 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Farming in Missouri, &c. 
Eds. Cultivator —Time and inclination at length 
concurring, I proceed to comply with your request, 
made more than a year ago; and undertake the task 
of giving you an impartial account of our section of the 
country, its advantages and disadvantages, location, 
soil, products, mode of farming, See. 
Cooper county, of which Boonville, a village of some 
2,000 inhabitants, is the county seat, is situated very 
near the centre of the state, about 160 miles by land, 
and 200 by water, west of St. Louis, on the southern 
bank of the Missouri river. 
That river, though one of the muddiest and most 
turbulent streams in the known world, filled with snags 
and sand-bars, rendering its navigation difficult and 
dangerous, is, notwithstanding, of incalculable benefit 
to the farmers in its vicinity, in conveying their produce 
to market. 
We are all on the tip-toe of expectation at present, 
in looking out for the great Pacific rail-road, which we 
calculate will run somewheres near here, if it ever 
runs at all. It is expected to give a great impetus to 
the business of farming, when it does come. How 
that may be I am unable to say, but we certainly need 
something to stir us up. 
The timber and prairie are more equally divided in 
this county than in almost any other in the state,— 
decidedly more so than in any other possessing the same 
advantages of productive soil and convenience to market.. 
When I say convenience to market, understand me as 
speaking comparatively. Our market here, at best, is 
very inconvenient, unless we avail ourselves of the 
home market, and that is limited, besides being very 
uncertain and fluctuating. The soil in this county is 
not so deep as in some of the other counties above, on 
and near the river, nor is it so well adapted to the 
growth of hemp and tobacco as some of them, but for 
Indian corn, oats, red and white clover, timothy, orchard 
and blue-grass, melons, pumpkins and squashes, sweet 
and Irish potatoes, turnips and beets, it is not excelled 
by any section I have seen, and my observation has 
extended over more than half the states in the union, 
and particularly over the west. 
Particular localities may beat it in the production of 
some particular article named above, as the Wabash 
and Sciota valleys in Indian corn, some parts of Illinois 
in oats, and some of the southern states in sweet pota¬ 
toes, but taken in the mass I believe we can compete 
with any portion of the continent. Wheat is a very 
uncertain crop here, on account of winter-killing, 
though when it escapes, we get good crops. 
Buckwheat, barley and rye, do pretty well, though 
they qre not cultivated to a very great extent. All 
kinds of fruits suited to our climate, such as apples, 
pears, peaches, plums, grapes, strawberries, Sec., suc¬ 
ceed admirably. Qur prairies are covered with the 
wild strawberry, while our forests abound with wild 
plums, grapes and paw-paws, black-berries, raspberries, 
persimmons, &c., besides a variety of nuts, such as the 
hazel, hickory, black and white walnut, &c. 
The principal articles of export from this section of 
the state, are hemp, tobacco, mules and horses, beef 
cattle, pork and wheat. The articles of hemp, tobacco 
and wheat, and most of the pork, is shipped to St. 
Louis. Our principal market for mules and horses is 
Louisiana, and for a few years past, Texas—a distance 
of from 400 to 600 miles, the nearest point, when taken 
by land, and 1500 or 2000 when carried by water. 
Last spring, however, the California emigration created 
a market for most of our surplus mules and oxen nearer 
home. The annual caravans leaving for California, 
together with the constantly increasing trade from this 
State across the plains to Santa Fe, will be very apt to 
Oct, 
cause an increased demand for mules and oxen for many 
years to come. Our stall-fed cattle are principally 
driven to St. Louis and slaughtered. But immense 
droves of 3, 4 and 5 year old steers, are annually 
bought up in this section and driven to Illinois, Indiana, 
Ohio and Virginia, there fattened, and then driven to 
Baltimore and other eastern markets. Our prairies 
afford fine grazing, and when they are eat out, the 
prairie grass is replaced by blue grass and white clover. 
Farming here is conducted on the regular skinning 
system—taking everything and returning nothing, and 
new as the country is, numbers of farms are beginning 
to feel and show the effects of it. Crops on land that 
has been in cultivation from 10 to 15 and 20 years, are 
beginning to grow “ small by degrees, and beautifully 
less.” There seems to be a continual straggle with 
each farmer to have longer strings of fence, bigger 
fields, and more ground in corn than his neighbor. 
The result of which struggle, in conjunction with the 
ease with which land is brought into cultivation in the 
prairie convenient to timber,.is that most of the farmers 
in this country scratch over a, great deal of ground but 
cultivate none. Instead, however, of endeavoring to 
extricate themselves from their difficulties in the most 
reasonable way possible, that of ceasing to enlarge 
their farms and sowing grass seed until they are 
reduced to a manageable size, the ery is still more 
land, more eorn. It is corn, corn, corn,—nothing but 
corn. 
I know numbers of farmers who cultivate from 50 to 
150 acres of land, who have not exceeded 5 acres of 
grass on their farms, and many of them not a spire 
except what nature has sown for them. This, too, m= 
one of the best grass countries in the world, and where 
the same labor expended in the cultivation and sowing 
of timothy and clover hay, will feed fully double the 
stock that it would in raising corn. It is true that we 
have some honorable exceptions to this rule, but I am 
sorry to say not many more than one sufficient to prove 
the rule. 
We have some excellent stock, but, as a general rule 
the stock here is exceedingly scrubby. The generally 
received opinion amongst the sovereigns here, is, that 
a big corn-crib, well filled, makes fine stock, and con¬ 
sequently they are indifferent about improving it by- 
procuring the improved breeds of cattle, hogs and 
sheep, to breed from. There has been more done in 
improving the breed of hogs than anything else, but 
there is great room for improvement yet, even with 
them. 
The wheat crop has generally been very light here 
this season,—the rust destroying thousands of acres 
that had escaped the winter. I didn't cut a head of 
mine, which, but for the rust, would have made a 
tolerably fair crop. 
Oats and timothy were fine. Owing to the long- 
continued wet weather and backwardness of the spring, 
the corn crop is rather backward, and in some parts of 
the state the prospect is very gloomy,—-the wet weather 
preventing the planting of thousands of acres, as well 
as the cultivation of a great deal after it was planted. 
The prospect in this county bids fair for an average 
crop, and considering the unfavorableness of the season 
it looks very well, but being more backward, and 
much more foul than usual, a drought now would cut 
it short. 
As to manuring, the idea is looked on as preposterous ■? 
u What ! manure our rich virgin soil that only requires 
planting, and a plowing or two to produce ten barrels 
of corn to the acre ! Absurd. That was not what we 
left our old worn out lands for—away back in old 
Virginia, old Kentucky, or Tennessee, as the case may 
be, where we had to tug and toil, scratch and scrape, 
haul manure all winter, and plough all summer, and 
