1868, 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
55 
the result ? “ The sins of the fathers are visited 
upon the children.” The cow lives, but the calt 
dies. This result happens so frequently as to 
threaten the destruction of the dairy interest of 
the State. I do not say that this is the only 
cause of the prevailing epidemic, but I have 
little doubt that this practice of keeping cows 
till they are used up; feeding them with special 
reference to the production of large quantities 
of milk; and rearing calves from cows whose 
constitution is undermined, is probably one 
of the principal causes of this alarming disease. 
Of course the effect may not show itself at once, 
and when it is seen it may not be easy to trace 
it back to its cause. At all events, the practice 
of keeping cows till there is little left except the 
hide and bones, is not in accordance with sound 
economy, and Nature, sooner or later, always 
punishes those who waste her products. 
“ What system would you adopt ? On our 
high-priced land we cannot afford to raise grain 
and hay to fatten cows in the winter.” 
“ What are your farms worth?” 
“ One hundred and fifty to two hundred dol¬ 
lars an acre.” 
The more your farms cost, the better will it 
pay to adopt high farming. In fact, I do not 
see how any other system can be profitable. If 
a man pays $10,000 rent for a store on Broad¬ 
way, he must do more business than the man 
who pays only $500 for a similar store in a 
country village. So in farming; high-priced 
land must be worked up to its maximum capac¬ 
ity. You can afford to pay much more for ma¬ 
nure that will double the crops on land worth 
$150 an acre, than on land worth only $50. 
Mr. Willard says that the farmers in Cheshire, 
by boning their land every dozen years, are en¬ 
abled to keep one-third more stock. On cheap 
land, this might not pay, but on land costing 
$150 per acre, (the simple interest on which, in 
a dozen years, comes to $126,) it would be high¬ 
ly profitable. And it must be observed that the 
increase of the grass does not represent the 
whole benefit. The probabilities are that the 
grass itself is of far higher quality, and would 
produce much more cheese. 
I did not know it, but it seems that one rea¬ 
son of the superiority of Herkimer County pas¬ 
tures, is their tendency to grow clovers. The 
more white clover the dairymen can get in their 
pastures, the more highly they esteem them. I 
can readily see why this is so. The clovers all 
contain about twice as much nitrogen as the 
grasses, and it Is equally certain that milch cows 
require more nitrogen in their food than fatten¬ 
ing animals. And it must be quite an object to 
increase the proportion of clover in their pas¬ 
tures. I think I told you of a remark the Dea¬ 
con made last summer. On the west side of 
my house is a poor sandy slope. It is so light 
that the west winds drive the sand in clouds 
into, and almost over, the house. At the bot¬ 
tom of the slope was a quagmire. A couple of 
underdrains running up the slope, remedied 
this. They tapped several springs, and carry 
off large quantities of water. The land was 
very foul, and poorer than poverty. I cultivat¬ 
ed it for two years with root crops, for the pur¬ 
pose of killing the weeds. Having no manure, 
I dressed the land liberally with raw-bone 
superphosphate and phosphatic guanos. A finer 
crop of turnips than this land produced, I have 
rarely seen. I then sowed it with barley, and 
seeded it down with red-top, Kentucky blue 
grass, and Timothy. The barley was a light 
crop, and the grass did not “ catch,” except on 
the low land. Last spring, I sowed more grass 
seed, but the season was so dry, it did not thrive. 
But there was an occasional root of white clover, 
say two or three feet apart. By the middle of 
summer, it had nearly covered the ground, and 
I am satisfied that by next year the whole slope 
will be covered by a thick sward. “ Well,” said 
the Deacon, as he rode past, “I would like to 
know what you have done to that land. It’s the 
first time I’ve seen white clover there for thirty 
years.” “I have killed the weeds, and put on 
plenty of phosphates.” Now, the Deacon has 
no faith in artificial manures, though he believes 
in plaster, ashes, and hen-dung, and spends as 
much time in gathering, pounding them up, 
mixing them together, and dropping them on 
the hills of corn, as would pay for a full equiva¬ 
lent of a good artificial manure, and so it would 
not do to let the matter remain in this shape. 
“There seems to be a good deal of white clover 
everywhere this season,” he said, as he touched 
up old Prince with the whip, and drove off. 
There can be no doubt that enriching the 
land, either by hoeing or by manuring, causes it 
to grow richer grass. And it would be well for 
the dairymen, as well as the rest of us, to en¬ 
quire whether our pastures might not be great¬ 
ly improved by top-dressing; and that not so 
much in the yield per acre as in the quality of 
the grass. We have a clear apprehension of 
the importance of getting a good bite of grass, 
but many of us seem to forget that a hundred 
weight of one grass may be worth for keeping 
up the flow of milk and the vigor of the cow, as 
much again as a hundred weight of other grass. 
“ But you have not told us what system you 
would adopt.” 
I have no intention of doing so, except so far 
as to say that “high farming” would prove a 
remedy for most of our agricultural troubles. 
The details must be governed by circumstances. 
I will tell you what I would not do: I would not 
keep a two hundred acre farm, worth $30,000, 
and have on it a good stock, worth $5,000 more, 
and then not employ more than a thousand or 
fifteen hundred dollars capital to work it with. 
I would not let a stream of water rush uselessly 
down a side hill, when a little labor would dis¬ 
tribute it over acres of parched pasture land, and 
make it produce threefold more grass than at 
present—the consumption of which would fur¬ 
nish an extra quantity of manure. I would try 
hard not to have weeds starve out the nutritious 
clovers and grasses. I would not exercise years 
of intelligent care and effort in selecting and 
breeding cows that are capable of turning large 
quantities of nutritious food into butter and 
cheese, and then let them get so poor, by the 
end of the season, that a high wind would blow 
them over. 
The fact is that these “high priced lands ” do 
not keep half the stock they ought to keep. On 
Mr. Horsfall’s farm of sixty acres, there were 
kept, when Mr. L. H. Tucker visited it, 20 milch 
cows, 21 heifers and bullocks, 64 large mutton 
sheep, 106 lambs, 4 pigs, 2 horses and a pony, 
or 218 head in all. 
Forty-three acres of the land was in grass; 
2 j | 2 acres wheat; 4% acres root crops; S 1 ^ oats; 
and 3 acres beans. The secret of his success is 
in the large quantity of rich manure that he 
makes and applies as top-dressing to his grass 
land. He makes this rich manure by feeding 
his cows and other stock in the most liberal 
manner. His hay and grass is of the richest 
quality, and besides this, he feeds oil-cakes and 
other purchased food. “ The whole of my mead¬ 
ow land,” he says, (in the Journal of the Royal 
Agricultural Society, Vol. 18, page 181,) “re¬ 
ceives a dressing of manure once a year. * * * 
In addition to this yearly dressing with excre¬ 
ment, I apply guano at the rate of 2 cwt. to 
each acre.” “ But will such a system pay here ?” 
Why not? “Labor and taxes are so high.” That 
is precisely why we must adopt high farming. 
It requires far less labor, per ton, to raise three 
tons of hay per acre than one ton. Recollect, 
we are getting high prices. 
“ Mutton is cheap.” 
True, but what mutton ? Mr. Judd, who has 
just returned from an extended tour iu Europe, 
remarked to me last week: “ Give us such mut¬ 
ton chops as I ate in England and, (to my sur¬ 
prise,) in Russia, and I will insure you 20 cents 
per pound.” In fact, choice South-down mut¬ 
ton now brings 18c., 20c., and 25c. per pound 
by the carcass in New York, while half-starved, 
common sheep are slow of sale at 3c., 4c., and 
5c. per pound. And, in fact, thousands are being 
slaughtered in this section, and boiled up for 
the tallow. The legs are saved for food; the 
rest, after being pressed, is fed to hogs. 
We are making a great mistake, however, in 
killing the sheep. The prospects for profitable 
wool growing were never better than at present. 
I did all I could to stop my friends from going 
into “gas-tar merinos” during the late excite¬ 
ment. I foresaw the result, as did many others. 
But it is not too late to correct the mistakes that 
have been made. The American merinos, so 
called, have some admirable qualities that can 
be turned to good account. A sheep that has 
the power of secreting 10, 15, and 20 pounds of 
yolk in a year, and 5 or 6 pounds of such a high¬ 
ly organized product as fine wool, must possess 
great vigor, a magnificent constitution, and 
splendid digestion—qualities too rare and too 
valuable to be sacrificed. In the hands of such 
a man as Hammond, animal life is as plastic as 
the potter’s clay, and there is a fine field for the 
hundreds of young American Bakewells, and 
Ellmans, and Webbs, and Hammonds, to enter 
at the present time, and win fame and fortune. 
Broom-corn. 
Every one whose memory goes back to the 
Age of Homespun, recalls broom-making as one 
of the brightest scenes by the farmer’s winter 
fireside. The chief operator was not uncom¬ 
monly a negro, who made this his main business 
during the fall and winter. With his bundle of 
white oak splints, bodkin, knife, and cord, he 
went from house to house, manufacturing the 
annual stock of brooms. Every farmer raised 
his patch of broom-corn with as much regulari¬ 
ty as his corn and potatoes. There were no 
brooms in the market, and the sole reliance for 
this indispensable article of housekeeping was 
the home-grown article. The broom-maker 
followed the cobbler in his annual round, and 
stocked the garret or kitchen loft with a goodly 
pile of brooms. The old-style broom was not 
the broad, flat article, now in the market, but 
one larger and more clumsy, invariably round, 
and bound together with narrow strips of wood. 
The handle end was left untrimmed, to be fin¬ 
ished off after the handle was inserted. This 
was a round stick, usually of chestnut or ash, 
made square, and pointed at one end; it did duty 
for many generations of brooms. The use of 
turned handles, and of threads and wires, and 
the flattening of the brush to give a wider 
sweep, are modern devices that came later. 
But the age of homespun has past, and we 
have to draw upon memory for the old style of 
