1368.J 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
253 
functions of the body.” If the yard be ex¬ 
posed to get the wash of the eaves, it will make 
vastly more difference in the composition of 
the manure than the animals possibly can. 
My cows appeared in capital order up to the 
time of calving, but fell off rapidly in flesh after¬ 
wards. I have never had them go out to grass 
in such poor condition, and never had such poor 
milk. The reason, I think, is this. Butter 
brought a high price, and we tried to make as 
much as possible. I had an abundance of capi¬ 
tal corn-fodder, with considerable small ears of 
corn on it. The cows had all they would eat, 
and not only gave rich milk, but kept in high 
condition. Some of them, in fact, were fat 
enough for beef. It was difficult to dry off some 
of the best milkers, and we milked them until 
within a month or six weeks of calving. About 
the first of April we had fed out all the corn- 
fodder, and after that they had clover hay, all 
they would eat, but no grain. It was just the 
time when they needed good feeding, and I pre¬ 
sume they missed the corn. The corn-fodder 
stimulated the secretion of milk, and when we 
dried them off the calves required it. In fact, 
though we stopped milking them, they doubt¬ 
less secreted as much milk as before, and the 
clover hay did not afford as much nutriment as 
the corn-fodder. Hence the cows got thin. It 
w T as bad management. I am now slopping them 
with two quarts of corn meal a day, in hopes of 
correcting the mistake. 
It is evident to any thoughtful man that we 
have entered a new epoch in American agricul¬ 
ture. Our population increases rapidly, and the 
production of food does not keep pace with it. 
“ I have just sold a two-year-old heifer for $00,” 
said an old farmer. “ I had no idea of selling 
her. She had run in the yard all winter, and I 
never fed her a handful of grain, but a butcher 
saw her and offered me $60 for her.” He 
thought it a great price. I told him that a well- 
bred animal, with liberal feeding could easily be 
made worth $100 at two years old. It seems diffi¬ 
cult for an old farmer to realize the changed con¬ 
dition of things. He is apt to think that a thing 
which did not pay when the country was new 
will not pay now. “Fifteen dollars for a calf!” 
exclaimed a city friend the other day. “ I 
thought calves were not worth more than a dol¬ 
lar apiece. My father used to sell them for 
that.” Some years ago I read a paper on the 
“ Four Course System of British Agriculture,” 
before the Provincial Agricultural Society of 
Canada West. Robert Russell was here at the 
time and attended the meeting. There was a 
ball given by the Mayor the same evening, and 
nearly all the prominent members of the society 
attended it. Russell was disgusted. They did 
things very differently in Scotland. He thought 
agriculture -was not appreciated. How could it be, 
with calves a dollar apiece and wheat seventy- 
five cents a bushel ? We have now high prices— 
perhaps a little too high—but they were neces¬ 
sary to place agriculture on its true foundation. 
Farming will now be as respectable in fact as it 
has hitherto been in theory. Let young farm¬ 
ers take a calm view of the situation. We are 
going to have a very different system of farm¬ 
ing from what we have had. Mark you, I am 
not finding fault with the old farmers. No man 
can respect them more than I do. They have done 
an immense amount of work and done it well. 
Their system was the best in the circumstances. 
But the “stump period” has passed,andisfollow- 
ed by the mowing machine, with the steam plow 
appearing in the distance. Virginia fences and 
bad roads are still found, but they, too, will soon I 
belong to the past. Underdraining will improve 
the latter, and the high price of wood will ban¬ 
ish the former. Labor is more abundant, and 
wages are paid in wheat less than formerly. The 
American-born or American-trained German 
makes a splendid farm man, and takes more 
readily to new plans than the English or the 
Irish. The district school has a prodigious 
influence. Now let our young farmers bestir 
themselves. They must be “men of thought and 
men of action.” In the older settled sections 
we have blacksmiths, and wheelwrights, and 
carpenters, and brick-layers, and saddlers, at no 
great distance, and it is no longer necessary for a 
farmer to be a “Jack of all Trades.” His busi¬ 
ness is to cultivate the land; to look well to the 
state of his flocks and his herds; to attend to 
the thousand little details of his establishment. 
He must have a trained mind and skilful hands 
—must be able to work himself and direct 
others. He must plan work for all kinds of 
weather, and not do in summer what should be 
done in winter—should not work in the barn 
when the sun shines and make hay when it 
rains. He requires great energy, promptness, 
and perseverance. Much of his success will de¬ 
pend on getting his land in good order and 
sowing in proper season, and it requires no little 
forethought and good judgment to accomplish 
even this. It is a good deal easier to “ work” 
than it is to think. The best general rule for a 
young farmer’s guidance is to do first what he 
likes to do least. 
Yes, I saw the article and know the writer. 
He has no acquaintance with practical agricul¬ 
ture, and of course thinks it an easy matter to 
raise large crops and “ make farming pay.” He 
does not know what he is talking about. A 
knowledge of “book-keeping” would be of 
great use to a farmer, but it does not follow that 
'a man who understands book-keeping would 
make a good farmer. An acquaintance with 
chemistry and other sciences would be of great 
benefit to a practical farmer, but it does not fol¬ 
low that the chemist can “make farming pay.” 
This subject ought to be understood. Many 
people seem to think that it is the easiest thing 
in the world to manage a farm; while in point 
of fact it requires far more brains to be a first- 
rate farmer than to be a second-rate lawyer. The 
man who thinks that because he has studied ag¬ 
ricultural chemistry he will make a good farmer 
is a goose. If he has the necessary qualities for 
success as a farmer, and likes the business, he 
will probably succeed. If he has not, all the 
chemistry in the world will not enable him to 
“ make farming pay.” Chemistry will not 
teach him how to buy and how to sell. It will 
not get him out of bed in a morning. It will 
teach him how milk is formed, and why it turns 
sour, but it will not secure regular feeding and 
steady milking. It will teach him the importance 
of having boiling water to scald themilk-pans, but 
it will not enable him to have everything ready 
just when it is wanted. If he would make a 
good farmer without chemistry, a scientific edu¬ 
cation will enable him to make a still better and 
more successful farmer; but if he would not 
succeed in some degree without it, chemistry 
will not enable him to make farming pay. 
If the tedding machines would work well in 
a heavy clover crop, and would not knock off 
the leaves, they would be of great use. Mine 
works well in meadow hay, but clogs in clover. 
Mr. Gould says it is because I have one of the 
old machines, and that now they are made 
stronger, and work well in clover. If tedded 
immediately after the mower, I do not think it 
would shake off the leaves, and would unques¬ 
tionably facilitate the curing. John Johnston 
writes me that if tedded, clover cut in the morn¬ 
ing in hot weather can be cocked in the after¬ 
noon, say by four o’clock, and by turning the 
cocks over can be got in the next day. I 
imagine the real point in hay-making is to cure 
as rapidly as possible for the first four or five hours 
after it is cut. It is while the hay is full of sap that 
injurious fermentation is most likely to occur. 
If the tedder will work it would pay to go over 
it every hour as long as there was no danger of 
breaking off the leaves. We have a splendid 
climate for making hay, and with a mowing 
machine and a good tedder we ought to be able 
to save all, or nearly all, the nutriment there 
is in the grass. There can be little doubt, how¬ 
ever, that we frequently lose nearly half of it. 
The Village Cow—Soiling. 
There are multitudes of villagers owning 
from one to three acres of land, that have given 
up the keeping of a cow, mainly on account of 
the difficulty of finding pasture for her during 
the summer. They w r ant in their families, on 
an average, four quarts of milk daily, and at 
least a pound of butter, worth at present prices 
not far from $4.00 a week, or $200 a year. A 
good cow might not supply all of this regularly 
the year round, but she w 7 ould supply half of 
it for six months in the year, and the want of 
the cow will pretty surely compel a man to pay 
nearly this sum for these two items of household 
luxury. The remedy for the loss of the sum¬ 
mer pasture is soiling. Make one acre of the 
land that lies idle, or is but half improved, rich 
enough, and it will support an average-sized 
cow through the year. It is estimated by those 
who have tried the experiment that a half acre, 
cultivated with a good succession of crops, will 
supply all the green fodder a cow can eat, with 
a large surplus of dry fodder for the winter; 
while the other half acre will furnish roots 
enough for succulent food through the winter. 
If there is no manure upon the premises, this 
indispensable article would have to be purchased 
for the first year; after that, the heap made from 
soiling, and the utilization of all the wastes of 
the family, might be relied upon to keep up the 
fertility of the land and to increase it year by 
year. The soiling crops found to be profitable, 
are winter rye, Italian rye grass, cabbage, oats, 
millet, sorghum, and Indian corn and clover. 
There are others, perhaps, equally good, or bet¬ 
ter for a more southern clime, but with these a 
man may have a good succession from early 
spring until frost. The rye is the first to start, 
then cabbage sprouts, clover, oats, and Indian 
corn, in due order. The corn will need to be 
planted in successive strips in drills, every two 
W'eeks from the middle of May until the first of 
August, and the later sowings may have strap¬ 
leaved turnips sown between the drills, after 
the corn is well started. Use these successive 
green crops as soon as they yield good cuttings, 
and what is not wanted cure for winter use. 
The other half acre should be kept in roots and 
cabbages—say ’| 8 in late cabbages, ‘| 8 in sugar 
beets, and 1 1 4 in mangels. The yield of roots ought 
to be 300 bushels of mangels, and 100 or more 
of sugar beets. This will give the cow quite as 
many roots as she can profitably eat for six 
months of the year. Probably a part of them 
could be economically exchanged for oil-cake 
or cotton-seed meal. This, of course, would 
involve a considerable labor, but many of these 
