12 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
and straw shed. By paying a small sum yearly, 
he was enabled to improve immensely the breed 
of his cattle, sheep, and swine, and which he thinks 
has returned the money thus expended at least 
twenty fold. The same keen attention to his bu¬ 
siness in other points, enabled him to effect many 
additional improvements, among which we may 
briefly mention a cheap and simple horse-power 
of his own construction, consisting of a rope run¬ 
ning on. the ends of radiating arms, which enabled 
him by means of one or two horses, as necessity 
required, to thrash his grain, saw his wood, drive 
his churn, turn his grind-stone, and slit picket- 
lath. It is true, he has now throAvn this rude 
machine aside for the greatly improved endless- 
chain power, but it answered his purpose for the 
time, before the days of improved machinery. 
But among all his outlays for the sake of econo¬ 
my, there is none which he thinks has repaid him 
equal to the subscription money applied in taking 
two agricultural periodicals, costing him a dollar 
and a half yearly besides postage, and which, in 
connection with his own experience and good judg¬ 
ment, have been the chief guides in most of his 
great improvements. He has been enabled to add 
sixty more acres to his land, and the whole pre¬ 
sents a beautiful specimen of neat, finished, and 
profitable farming. 
None of this is fiction. It was gradually accom¬ 
plished by years of constant, steady, intelli¬ 
gent perseverance. 
A great loss occurs to the majority of farmers 
from too meagre an expenditure for implements— 
the effective medium for the action of all the la¬ 
bor. The eagerness to secure big farms, at the cost 
of their profitable culture, is a most fruitful source 
of bad husbandry. We observe by the last cen¬ 
sus, that the cash value of farms in the Union is 
over three thousand million dollars, and the value 
of farm implements only a hundred and fifty mil¬ 
lions; that is, each farm worth three thousand 
dollars, has, on an average, only a hundred and 
fifty dollars worth of plows, cultivators, rollers, 
carts, wagons, harrows, fanning mills, straw cut¬ 
ters, root slicers, harness, shovels, spades, forks, 
hoes, horse and hand rakes, scythes, cradles, axes, 
hammers, sleds, wood saws, hay knives, ox yokes, 
chains, See., Sec., to say nothing of reapers, grain- 
drills and threshing machines, which may possibly 
be borrowed or hired. Instead of only $150, all 
these cannot be had, of good construction and 
quality, for much less than $500, leaving a defi¬ 
ciency of about $350 to be made up by slip-shod 
cultivation and by borrowing. In England, where 
taxes, poor-rates, rents and tithes, constitute to¬ 
gether an enormous drawback on the profits of 
farming, and where, consequently, every operation 
must be performed to the best possible advantage, 
no one need hope for success who does not pos¬ 
sess an amount of capital equal to forty dollars 
per acre, for procuring animals, implements, seeds, 
manure, and labor. “ No prudent man,” says the 
Mark Lane Express, “ ought to rent more than he 
has that amount, at least, of available capital to 
go on with.” 
If, therefore, our farmers generally laid down 
at the commencement of their labors, the great 
fundamental principle that capital as well as farms 
is indispensable to success—that they might as 
well undertake to run a car on a single rail, as to 
farm with land only, or capital only—that they 
must especially lay in a heavy amount of that 
most efficient of all kinds of capital, thorough 
knowledge —they need no longer complain that 
they have a machine they cannot profitably man¬ 
age—a locomotive without fuel, or without a com¬ 
petent engineer to take charge of its levers. 
The Culture of the Hop. 
Mr. Tucker —In answer to your call in the Oct. 
Cultivator, for “ any one of your readers to give 
you, from his own experience, an article on the 
culture of the hop,” I accept the invitation, and 
proceed to give, in as concise a way as I can, the 
general method of cultivating hops. 
From considerable observation, added to seven 
years experience in the growing of this important 
crop, I may state in the first place, as one of the 
most important things necessary to the successful 
cultivation of this vine, is the selection of a suita¬ 
ble piece of ground. A very general remark in 
this hop-growing region is, that almost any land 
that will produce good corn, will also, with good 
care and high cultivation, produce good hops; 
and although this may be true to a certain extent, 
yet it is evident that soils composed of certain ele¬ 
ments, of which others are destitute, are those 
best adapted to the growing of hops. The opin¬ 
ion of the writer is, that soils of gravelly loam, 
with retentive sub-soils, are the best found in this 
section. 
The ground selected for hops should be level, or 
nearly so, as the high cultivation required will 
keep the land so mellow that it will be liable to 
wash and guiley, and thereby injure its fertility, 
if it is not nearly level. By all means avoid plant¬ 
ing hops on steep side-hills. 
The ground selected, the next thing requisite 
will be to put it in a proper state of cultivation to 
receive and nourish the roots. The most effectual 
way of doing this, is to till the ground thoroughly 
the previous year, with some hoed crop, (corn or 
potatoes, for instance.) A heavy coat of manure 
should be applied broad-cast, and well worked 
