216 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
young clover and grass a good start. Finally, 
give the land a chance to recover, and the grass¬ 
es time to become well established. They will 
seed abundantly, and the whole ground will be¬ 
come well stocked with all the varieties that 
you have sown, and others will fast work in. 
Then in the following years car - e should be 
taken not to overstock. Short grass is damaged 
both by drouth and freezing. Give ample 
time in the fall for a covering to grow and pro¬ 
tect the roots. Pastures for cows and grow¬ 
ing cattle need occasional top-dressings of yard 
manure, bones, and ashes, to keep up their fer¬ 
tility, while those fed by bullocks or sheep, and 
occasionally plastered, will grow better from 
year to year. In milk, and in the frames of cat¬ 
tle raised upon the land, large quantities of the 
material of which bones chiefly consist are re¬ 
moved—while in the production of fat and wool 
no such exhausting tax is laid upon the soil. 
Walks and Talks on the Farm.—Mo. 54. 
“Nineteen acres of potatoes, 200 bushels per 
acre, and $1.25 per bushel, would bring $4,750.” 
This is a very simple sum in arithmetic. Had I 
made such a calculation last summer and acted 
upon it, I might have had to pay an income tax ! 
I had nineteen acres of potatoes, and I sold them 
this spring for $1.25 per bushel. The only 
trouble is, I did not have 200 bushels per acre. 
“Why?” The common answer would be, 
“owing to the dry weather.” The true an¬ 
swer would be, “poor farming,”—and this 
arises in a good degree from want of faith in 
manure and good culture. I have no doubt 
that $500 judiciously spent would have put 
$2,000 in my pocket. It costs little more to 
plant and dig a crop of potatoes that yields 200 
bushels per acre than one that yields only 75 
bushels. There is no other country in the 
world where good farming, as compared with 
poor farming, will pay so well as in the United 
States at the present time. How long this state 
of things will last,.it is not safe to predict. I do 
not wish to see the price of wheat, barley, oats, 
corn, beans, and potatoes, as high as at present. 
It is not healthy. What farmers want is rea¬ 
sonable compensation for their labor, and capi¬ 
tal, and skill. Doubtless we shall have a change, 
sooner or later; and prices may go as much be¬ 
low the true standard as they are now above it. 
But, on the whole, the indications are that we 
shall never see as low a range of prices for 
farm produce as before the war. At all events, 
I am confident that those farmers who make an 
effort to clean and enrich their land will in the 
end make the most money. And the prospects 
are that they will not have as long to wait for 
returns as is generally .supposed. 
An unwillingness to wait is one cause of poor 
farming. I know a young man whose father 
has 640 acres of land in Iowa, that he offers to 
give him if he will work it. He proposes to go 
out there this summer, and “ put in 200 acres of 
wheat, and then return and spend the winter in 
Rochester.” If he does, he will know more 
about farming in a year or two than he does 
now. A few days since I asked a gentleman 
who commenced life poor and who is now 
reputed to be worth several millions, how he 
made his money: “ I looked ten years ahead,” 
lie replied. This same man has a beautiful 
farm, and one of the best herds of Short-horns 
in the State. With a bank account good for a 
million, most men when they commenced fann¬ 
ing would put up a grand house and a “ model 
barn.” Not so Mr. Farseeing. He looked “ten 
years ahead,” and commenced at once to im¬ 
prove his land and lay the foundation for a 
splendid herd of cattle. I know another gen¬ 
tleman who has a fine farm, an elegant house, 
and splendid buildings, and takes great pleasure 
therein; but, said he, mournfully, “ I have not a 
son or a daughter that will stay at home. They 
all leave me, and it is rare that one of them 
spends a night in the house. They care nothing 
for farming.” On the other hand, Mr. Farsee- 
ing’s son takes charge of the farm and attends 
personally to the cattle, and is as enthusiastic 
about farming as the father himself. And as 
we were going to look at the cattle, young 
Ezra, the grandson, left his swing in the grove 
to come too, and his father lifted him on the 
broad back of as fine a Short-horn cow as is to 
be found in the world, and there he sat as proud 
and as happy as one could wish even a child to 
be. And grandpa, too, was as happy for the 
moment as though he was as poor as mysel f. I 
do not respect a man merely for his wealth, but 
I cannot but admire the man who, like the one 
referred to, habitually iooks ten years ahead, 
and lives and acts for the good of his race. 
This same man, having an acre or two of waste 
land on the farm, has set it out with oaks, white 
ash, English elm, and other valuable trees. His 
pear orchard contains a few dwarf trees, but 
nine-tenths of them are standards. He was 
willing to wait; and he has not waited in vain, 
for already one of his standard Seckel trees 
bears ten bushels of pears a year. 
I believe the time is fast approaching when 
we shall turn our attention to tree planting on 
hilly land. We have swamps enough growing 
up with second-growth soft wood, but that is 
not what we want. Such land, if drained, 
would be more profitable in grass, and thus add 
greatly to the beauty of the landscape and the 
healthiness of the country. But in many sec¬ 
tions there is considerable dry land too poor or 
too hilly toplowor pasture with advantage, that 
it would pay to fence and plant with forest 
trees. The late Duke of Atholl planted over 
ten thousand acres of such land in Scotland, 
with larches, besides many acres of firs and other 
trees. And it is said that the timber from these 
trees, if now brought to the hammer, would sell 
for the enormous sum of fifty millions of dollars ! 
You should not speak so disrespectfully of 
our path-masters. They are useful men. We 
have too few holidays. Farmers, it is said, live 
isolated lives, and any opportunity should be 
improved that calls them together. Working 
on the road once a year is asocial reunion. The 
young men perform feats of strength and skill, 
and the old men talk of the deeds of other days. 
And, on the whole, these gatherings do very 
little harm. The road, such is our splendid cli¬ 
mate, is injured far less than one would expect. 
Tiie holes they scrape out on the sides fill up 
again in a few years, and I never knew of any 
one being drowned in them. The cows, too, I 
have observed, seem to prefer to wade through 
the water rather than travel on the road. These 
holes are generally scraped down to the clay, 
and the bottom is consequently tolerably firm. 
This advantage would be lost if the ditch was 
cut level so as to carry off the water. These 
firm, clay spots would have to be thrown out. 
The water, too, would pass off so quickly that 
instead of standing on the sides of the road it 
would flood the fields and make it necessary to 
clean out the ditches and water-courses. Is it 
not a great deal better to let the water soak 
[June, 
away gradually? In our dry, hot climate it will 
all disappear, except in a few spots, by the 4th 
of July. It will not do to have firm, dry roads 
in the country. It would ruin the Doctors. 
The women would walk out every day and 
soon know more about what was doing, and 
what was not done, on the farm, and in the 
neighborhood, than their husbands. Even now, 
some of them want the grass mown in front of 
the house, and the weeds pulled out of the 
walks, and they want to send to Vick for posy 
seeds, and a liot-bed must be made, and they 
talk about asparagus and cauliflowers. Now, 
Sir, if they can get about in the spring of the 
year without having to crawl on the fences, I 
would like to know where this thing is going to 
end ? Let your wife see a bed of hyacinths in 
flower, and she’ll want just such a bed herself 
next spring—and what’s more, she’ll have it. 
Then the women will be changing seeds and 
plants, and at night it will be, “ John, after you 
have smoked your pipe, instead of going to the 
corners, wont you just dig a place for some flow¬ 
ers I got to-day ? They will spoil unless they 
arc set out at once.” And you’ll have to stay 
at home and do it. You think you wont, but 
you will. Better nip the thing in the bud. Be 
careful who you elect path-master. If he should 
only take it into his head that instead of scrap¬ 
ing dirt on to the low, wet places on the road, 
it would be cheaper to drain off the water from 
underneath, the evils I have spoken of will 
come upon us. And it is not improbable, even, 
that farmers’ sons would polish their boots. 
And then the next proposition would be to have 
the buildings all spouted and drains cut to carry 
off the water, so that the young gentlemen could 
feed the pigs and do other chores about the farm 
without turning up the legs of their pantaloons. 
I received a letter from a farmer in Ohio to- 
daj*, asking for advice, which, as I am not ac¬ 
quainted with all the circumstances of the case, 
it is not safe to give. He says: “ I was a farm¬ 
er’s son and had the good fortune to be born 
poor. T stayed on the farm until I was 17 years 
old, and then went to a trade. My first earn¬ 
ings were scrupulously laid aside to purchase 
the farm where I now reside. It contains 103 
acres. I am in my fiftieth year, and failing 
health and the impossibility of hiring skilled 
labor make things go quite slipshod. Have 
two sons, the eldest in college, the other too 
weakly to labor. My wife’s health is too poor 
to have the family increased by work hands. 
I do not like the idea of selling out, but how 
shall we manage ?” 
A man is just in his prime at fifty, and should 
have as good health on a farm as in a city or 
village. If he has property enough to live on 
without work, and if he understands farming 
and likes it, I do not see why he should sell and 
move into the city ; and if he has not, the ques¬ 
tion for him to decide is, whether he can do bet¬ 
ter at some other business. If he has doubts 
on this point, better stay on the farm. Put up 
a small tenant house. This is far cheaper and 
better than boarding men in the family. Take 
the general direction of the farm, keep things in 
order, do light work, attend to the stock. In 
this way a man who understands farming can 
often earn or save more money than he could by- 
going into the field to plow. Farmers do not 
realize how much they get in the shape of house 
rent, fuel, fruit, vegetables, pork, lard, milk, but¬ 
ter, eggs, etc. Everything is now so high that 
people of moderate means have hard work to 
get along in the cities. If a man is on a farm 
