What I know of farming Part 15

I preach no crusade against hucksters and middlemen. I hold them, in the actual state of things, benefactors to both producers and consumers. In so far as they deal honestly and meet promptly their obligations, they deserve commendation rather than reproach. What I urge is, that more economical and efficient machinery of exchange and distribution ought to be devised and set at work--machinery that would do all that is required at a moderate, reasonable cost.

I would like to see one of our solvent, well-managed Railroads advertise that it would henceforth buy at any of its stations all the farmers'

produce that might be offered, and pay the highest prices that the state of the markets would justify. Let its agents purchase whatever came along--a basket of eggs, a coop of chickens, a barrel of apples, a sack of beans, a pail of currants--anything that could be sold in the city to which it runs, and which would conduce to human sustenance or comfort.

Its object should be Freight--the rapid and vast increase of its transportations, not extra profit on the articles transported. But let its agents be ready to buy at fair prices whatever was offered, paying cash down, and pushing everything purchased directly into market, so as to have the money back to buy more with directly. The Railroad Company, thus owning nearly everything edible it brought into market, would buy and sell at uniform prices, and not bid against itself, as a crowd of hucksters and middlemen will often do. I am confident that a Railroad that would inaugurate this system on a right basis, saying to every farmer living near it, "Grow whatever your soil is best adapted to, and bring it to our station: there, you shall have cash down for it, at the highest price we can afford to give," would rapidly double and quadruple its freights, and would thus build up a business which has no parallel under the present system.

It is urged, in opposition to this proposal, that a Railroad so managed would monopolize markets, and deal on its own terms with the producer and consumer. If there were but one railroad entering a great city, and no other mode of reaching it, this objection would be plausible, but not in the actual case. Whoever chose would be at liberty to start an opposition, and to use the railroad or dispense with it as he found advisable.

LI.

WINTER WORK.

THE dearth of employment in Winter for farm laborers is a great and growing evil. Thousands, being dismissed from work on the farms in November, drift away to some city, under a vague, mistaken impression that there must be work at some rate where so much is being done and so many require service, and squander their means and damage their morals in fruitless quest of what is not there to be had. When Spring at length arrives, they sneak back to the rural districts, ragged, penniless, debauched, often diseased, and every way deteriorated, by their Winter plunge. For their sakes not only, but for the sakes also of those who will employ and those who must work with them hereafter, this drifting to the cities should be stopped.

In its present magnitude, it is a very modern evil. Far within my recollection, there was timber to cut and haul to the saw-mill, wood to cut, draw, and prepare for the year's fuel, with forest-land to be cleared and fitted for future cultivation, even in New-England. Those who chose to work with ax or team were seldom idle in Winter. Now, there is little timber to cut, little land to clear, and coal is rapidly supplanting wood as fuel. So a larger and larger number of farm laborers is annually turned off when the ground freezes to live as they may for the next three or four months.

I recognize the right of the farmer, who has given twelve or more hours per day to the tillage of his acres and the saving of his crops throughout the genial months, to take the world more easily in Winter.

He should now have leisure to return visits, to post and balance his books, and to improve his mind by study and reflection. Having worked hard when he must, he ought to rest and recuperate when he can. But he gravely errs who supposes that, the ground being frozen, there is no longer work to be done on the farm until the ground is fit to plow again. On the contrary, he who realizes that the farmer is a manufacturer of food and fibrous substances from raw materials of far inferior value must see that, so soon as one harvest has been secured, the cultivator should devote his attention to the collection and utilization of the elements wherefrom a larger crop may be obtained from the same acres next season.

And first as to Muck. No one who has not valued and sought it is likely to know how generally abundant and accessible this material is. I have found it in inexhaustible supply on the land of a pretty good cultivator who, after working a fair farm ten years, sold it because (as he supposed) it was dest.i.tute of this basis of extensive fertilization.

"Seek, and ye shall find," implies that those who do not seek will rarely find; and such is the fact. Where rock abounds, Muck is rarely wanting. It covers many thousand acres of Jersey sands, where rock is unknown; but show me a region ridged or ribbed with rock, and I shall confidently expect to find Muck on it, though none has been known or supposed to exist there. And he who either has or can buy a bed of Muck within half a mile of his barn, his sty, his hen-house, may dig and draw from it all Winter with a moral certainty that it will generously reward his outlay. Begin as soon after haying as you can spare the time, and cut an outlet so deep that you may thereafter work dryshod; thenceforth, dig and pile on the nearest accessible spot of dry ground, to be drawn away to the barn-yard and out-houses as opportunity presents itself.

But, even though you have done nothing till the ground freezes, do not say it is now too late, but set to work. You can often team in Winter where you could not at any other season; and, in digging Muck from a swamp or bog well frozen over, you are not apt to be troubled with water. Draw all you can; but dig much more; for no money at lawful interest pays so well as Muck left to dry and cure for months before you draw it. I think I do not over-estimate the average value of a cubic yard of Muck, well cured and mixed with warmer fertilizers before application to the soil, at one dollar; and I think there are few farmers in the Old Thirteen States who cannot obtain it for less than that.

Where Muck is not to be had, I believe the tiller of a sandy or gravelly farm who can get access to a bed or bank of clay may profitably dig and draw this, to be used as he would use Muck if he had it, and even for direct application to the soil. I do not think this method the most advisable; yet I feel sure that clay spread over a sandy or gravelly field that has been laid down to gra.s.s is worth fifty cents per cubic yard wherever Hay is worth $12 per tun; but I would wish to apply it not later than December.

He who has fit places of deposit should draw all his Lime, Plaster, and other commercial fertilizers, in Winter, so as to be ready for use when required. Mix your Lime while fresh from the kiln with Muck, at the rate of a bushel of the former to a cubic yard of the latter, and the Muck will be ready for use far sooner than it otherwise would be. Be careful _not_ to mix Lime with animal manures in any case, since it expels Ammonia, whereas the sulphur of Plaster combines with that volatile element and fixes it. There are some farmers who do, but twenty times as many who do not, use Plaster enough about their stables and pig-pens.

They ought to realize that a bad smell implies a waste of Ammonia, which a farmer, unless very rich, can hardly afford.

Fences should all be scrutinized as Winter goes off, and put into thorough condition for next season's service.

Fruit-trees should be relieved of all dead or dying branches, all suckers, and cut back where towering to high, or spreading too wide. It may be better for the trees to do all pruning in May or June; but the farmer who defers it to that season is very likely to be hurried into postponing it to another year--and another.

There is scarcely a forest of second or later growth which would not pay for thinning and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, if well done. That which is out may be turned to good account as bean-poles, pea-brush, Summer fuel, etc., while that which is left will grow faster, taller, and more shapely, to reward you doubly for your pains.

--These are but suggestions. Any farmer can add to or improve upon them if he will give an hour's thought to the subject. The best laborers can be hired for a full year at a price not very much exceeding that which will secure their services for eight or nine months. In the interest alike of good crops and good morals, I urge every one who can to resolve that he will henceforth hire by the year, or in some way manage to employ his laborers in Winter as well as in Summer.

LII.

SUMMING UP.

In the foregoing essays, I have set forth, as clearly as I could, the facts within my knowledge which seem calculated to cast light upon the farmer's vocation, and the principles or rules of action which they have suggested to my mind. I have been careful not to throw any false, delusive halo over this indispensable calling, and by no means to induce the belief that the farmer's lot is necessarily and uniformly a happy one. I know that his is not the royal road to rapid acquisition, and that few men are likely to ama.s.s great wealth by quietly tilling the soil. I know, moreover, that what pa.s.ses for farming among us is not so n.o.ble, so intellectual, so attractive, a pursuit as it might and should be--that most farmers might farm better and live to better purpose than they do. Of all the false teaching, I most condemn that which flatters farmers as though they were demiG.o.ds and their calling the grandest and the happiest ever followed by mortals, when the hearer, unless very green, must feel that the speaker doesn't believe one word of all be utters; for, if he did, he would be farming, instead of living by some profession, and talking as though his auditors did not know wheat from chaff. I regard the Agriculture of this country as very far below the standard which, it should ere this have reached: I hold that the great ma.s.s of our cultivators might and should farm better than they do, and that better farming would render their sons better citizens and better men. If a single line of this little work should seem calculated to cajole its readers into self-complacency rather than instruct them, I beg them to believe that their impression wrongs my purpose.

I am fully aware that others have treated my theme with fuller knowledge and far greater ability than I brought to its discussion. "Then why not leave them the field?" Simply because, when all have written who can elucidate my theme, at least three-fourths of those who ought to study and ponder it will not have read any treatise whatever upon Agriculture--will hardly have yet regarded it as a theme whereon books should be written and read. And, since there may be some who will read this treatise for its writer's sake--will read it when they could not be persuaded to do like honor to a more elaborate and erudite work--I have written in the hope of arousing in some b.r.e.a.s.t.s a spirit of inquiry with regard to Agriculture as an art based on Science--a spirit which, having been awakened, will not fall again into torpor, but which will lead on to the perusal and study of profounder and better books.

In the foregoing essays, I have sought to establish the following propositions:

1. That _good_ farming is and must ever be a paying business, subject, like all others, to mischances and pull-backs, and to the general law that the struggle up from nothing to something is ever an arduous and almost always a slow process. In the few instances where wealth and distinction have been swiftly won, they have rarely proved abiding.

There are pursuits wherein success is more envied and dazzling than in Agriculture; but there is none wherein efficiency and frugality are more certain to secure comfort and competence.

2. Though the poor man must often go slowly, where wealth may attain perfection at a bound, and though he may sometimes seem compelled to till fields not half so amply fertilized as they should be, it is nevertheless inflexibly true that bounteous crops are grown at a profit, while half and quarter crops are produced at a loss. A rich man may afford to grow poor crops, because he can afford to lose by his year's farming, while the poor man cannot. He ought, therefore, to till no more acres than he can bring into good condition--to sow no seed, plow no field, where he is not justified in expecting a good crop. Better five acres amply fertilized and thoroughly tilled than twenty acres which can at best make but a meager return, and which a dry or a wet season must doom to partial if not absolute failure.

3. In choosing a location, the farmer should resolve to choose once for all. Roaming from State to State, from section to section, is a sad and far too common mistake. Not merely is it true that "The rolling stone gathers no moss," but the farmer who wanders from place to place never acquires that intimate knowledge of soil and climate which is essential to excellence in his vocation. He cannot read the clouds and learn when to expect rain, when he may look for days of sunshine, as he could if he had lived twenty years on the same place. Choose your home in the East, the South, the Center, the West, if you will (and each section has its peculiar advantages); but choose once for all, and, having chosen, regard that choice as final.

4. Our young men are apt to plunge into responsibilities too hastily.

They buy farms while they lack at once experience and means, incur losses and debts by consequent miscalculations, and drag through life a weary load, which sours them against their pursuit, when the fault is entirely their own. No youth should undertake to manage a farm until after several years of training for that task under the eye of a capable master of the art of tilling the soil. If he has enjoyed the requisite advantages on his father's homestead, he may possibly be qualified to manage a farm at twenty-one; but there are few who might not profitably wait and learn, in the pay of some successful cultivator, for several years longer; while I cannot recall an instance of a youth rushing out of school or a city counting-house to show old farmers how their work ought to be done, that did not result in disaster. It is very well to know what Science teaches with regard to farming; but no man was ever a thoroughly good farmer who had not spent some years in actual contact with the soil.

5. While every one says of his neighbor, "He farms too much land," the greed of acquisition does not seem at all chastened. Men stagger under loads of debt to-day, who might relieve themselves by selling off so much of their land as they cannot profitably use; but every one seems intent on holding all he can, as if in expectation of a great advance in its market value. And yet you can buy farms in every old State in the Union as cheaply per acre as they could have been bought in like condition sixty years ago; and I doubt their selling higher sixty years hence than they do now. No doubt, there _are_ lands, in the vicinage of growing cities or villages, that have greatly advanced in value; but these are exceptions: and I counsel every young farmer, every poor farmer, to buy no more land than he can cultivate thoroughly, save such as he needs for timber. Never fear that there will not be more land for sale when you shall have the money wherewith to buy it; but shun debt as you would the plague, and prefer forty acres all your own to a square mile heavily mortgaged. I never lifted a mill-stone; but I have undertaken to carry debts, and they are fearfully heavy.

6. I know that most American farms east of the Roanoke and the Wabash have too many fields and fences, and that the too prevalent custom of allowing cattle to prowl over meadow, tillage and forest, from September to May, picking up a precarious and inadequate subsistence by browsing and foraging at large, is slovenly, unthrifty, and hardly consistent with the requirements of good neighborhood. It is at best a miseducation of your cattle into lawless habits. I do not know just where and when _all_ pasturing becomes wasteful and improvident; but I do know that pasturing fosters thistles, briers, and every noxious weed, and so is inconsistent with cleanly and thorough tillage. I know that the same acres will feed far more stock, and keep them in better condition, if their food be cut and fed to them, than if they are sent out to gather it for themselves. I know that the cost of cutting their gra.s.s and other fodder with modern machinery need not greatly exceed that of driving them to remote pastures in the morning and hunting them up at nightfall.

I know that penning them ten hours of each twenty-four in a filthy yard, where they have neither food nor drink, is unwise; and I feel confident that it is already high time, wherever good gra.s.s-land is worth $100 per acre, to limit pasturage to one small field, as near the center of the farm as may be, wherein shade and good water abound, into which green rye, clover, timothy, oats, sowed corn, stalks, etc., etc., may successively be thrown from every side, and where shelter from a cold, driving storm, is provided; and that, if cows could be milked here and left through night as well as day, it would be found good economy.

7. I know that most of us are slashing down our trees most improvidently, and thus compelling our children to buy timber at thrice the cost at which we might and should have grown it. I know that it is wasteful to let White Birch, Hemlock, Scrub Oak, Pitch Pine, Dogwood, etc., start up and grow on lands which might be cheaply sown with the seeds of Locust, White Oak, Hickory, Sugar Maple, Chestnut, Black Walnut, and White Pine. I know that no farm in a settled region is so large that its owner can really afford to surrender a considerable portion of it to growing indifferent cord-wood when it would as freely grow choice timber if seeded therefor; and I feel sure that there are few farms so small that a portion of each might not be profitably devoted to the growing of valuable trees. I know that the common presumption that land so devoted will yield no return for a life-time is wrong--know that, if thickly and properly seeded, it will begin to yield bean-poles, hoop-poles, etc., the fifth or sixth year from planting, and thenceforth will yield more and more abundantly forever. I know that _good_ timber, in any well-peopled region, should not be _cut off_, but _cut out_--thinned judiciously but moderately and trimmed up, so that it shall grow tall and run to trunk instead of branches; and I know that there are all about us millions of acres of rocky crests and acclivities, steep ravines and sterile sands, that ought to be seeded to timber forthwith, kept clear of cattle, and devoted to tree-growing evermore.

8. I do not know that all lands may be profitably underdrained. Wooded uplands, I know, could not be. Fields which slope considerably, and so regularly that water never stagnates upon or near their surface, do very well without. Light, leachy sands, like those of Long Island, Southern Jersey, Eastern Maryland, and the Carolinas, seem to do fairly without.

Yet my conviction is strong that _nearly all land which is to be persistently cultivated will in time be underdrained_. I would urge no farmer to plunge up to his neck into debt in order to underdrain his farm. But I _would_ press every one who has no experience on this head to select his wettest field, or the wettest part of such field, and, having carefully read and digested Waring's, French's, or some other approved work on the subject, procure file and proceed next Fall to drain that field or part of a field thoroughly, taking especial precautions against back-water, and watch the effect until satisfied that it will or will not pay to drain further. I think few, have drained one acre thoroughly, and at no unnecessary cost, without being impelled by the result to drain more and faster until they had tiled at least half their respective farms.

9. As to irrigation, I doubt that there is a farm in the United States where _something_ might not be profitably done forthwith to secure advantage from the artificial retention and application of water.

Wherever a brook or runnel crosses or skirts a farm, the question--"Can the water here running uselessly by be retained, and in due season equably diffused over some portion of this land?"--at once presents itself. One who has never looked with this now will be astonished at the facility with which some acres of nearly every farm may be irrigated.

Often, a dam that need not cost $20 will suffice to hold back ten thousand barrels of water, so that it may be led off along the upper edge of a slope or glade, falling off just enough to maintain a gentle, steady current, and so providing for the application of two or three inches of water to several acres of tillage or gra.s.s just when the exigencies of crop and season most urgently require such irrigation. Any farmer east of the Hudson can tell where such an application would have doubled the crop of 1870, and precluded the hard necessity of selling or killing cattle not easily replaced.

Of course, this is but a rude beginning. In time, we shall dam very considerable streams mainly to this end, and irrigate hundreds and thousands of acres from a single pond or reservoir. Wells will be sunk on plains and gentle swells now comparatively arid and sterile, and wind or steam employed to raise water into reservoirs whence wide areas of surrounding or subjacent land will be refreshed at the critical moment, and thus rendered bounteously productive. On the vast, bleak, treeless Plains of the wild West, even Artesian wells will be sunk for this purpose; and the water thus obtained will prove a source of fertility as well as refreshment, enriching the soil by the minerals which it holds in solution, and insuring bounteous crops from wide stretches of now barren and worthless desert. Immigration will yet thickly dot the great Sahara with oases of verdure and plenty; but it will, long ere that, have covered the valleys of our Great Basin and those which skirt the affluents of the savage and desolate Colorado with a beauty and thrift surpa.s.sing the dreams of poets. And yet, its easiest and readiest triumphs are to be won right here--in the valleys of the Connecticut, the Hudson, the Susquehanna, and the Potomac.

10. As to Commercial Fertilizers, I think I have been well paid for the application of Gypsum (Plaster of Paris) to my upland gra.s.s at the rate of one bushel per acre per annum, while my tillage has been supplied with it by dusting my stables with it after each cleaning, and so applying it mingled with barn-yard manures. Lime (unslaked) from burned oyster-sh.e.l.ls, costing me from 25 to 30 cents per bushel delivered, I have applied liberally, and I judge, with profit. Bones, ground, (the finer the better) I have largely and I think advantageously used; but my land had been mainly pastured for nearly two centuries before I bought it, and thus continually drained of Phosphates, yet never replenished: so my experience does not prove that the farmers of newer lands ought to buy bones, though I advise them to apply all they can save or pick up at small cost. Pound them very fine with a beetle or ax-head on a flat stone, and give them to your fowls: if they refuse a part of them, your soil will prove less dainty. I am not sure that it pays to buy any manufactured Phosphate when you can get Raw Bone; though I doubt not that, for instant effect, the Phosphate is far superior. As to Guano, it has not paid me; but that may be the fault of careless or unskillful application. I judge that any one who has to deal with sterile sands that will not bring Clover, may wisely apply 400 pounds of Guano per acre, provided he has nothing else that will answer the purpose. After he has produced one good stand of Clover, I doubt that he can afford to buy more Guano, unless he can apply it to better purpose than I have yet done.

I have a strong impression that most farmers can do better at making and saving fertilizers than by buying them. Lime and Sulphur (Gypsum), if your soil lacks them, you must buy; but a good farmer who keeps even a span of horses, three or four cows, as many pigs, and a score of fowls, can make for $100 fertilizers which I would rather have than two tuns of Guano, costing him $180 to $200. If he has a patch of bog or a miry pond on his farm--any place where frogs will live--he can dig thence, in the dryest time next Fall, two or three hundred loads of Muck, which, having been left to dry on the nearest high ground till November or later, and then drawn up and dumped into his barn-yard, pig-pen, and fowl-house, will be ready to come out next Spring in season for corn-planting, and, being liberally applied, will do as much for his crop as two tons of Guano would, and will strengthen his land far more. If he has no Muck, and no neighbor who can spare it as well as not, let him at midsummer cut all the weeds growing on and around his farm, and in the Fall gather all the leaves that can be impounded, using these as litter for his cattle and beds for his pigs, and he will be agreeably surprised at the bulk of his heap next Spring.

I am an intense believer in Home Production. We send ten thousand miles for Guano, and suffer the equally valuable excretions of our cities to run to waste in rivers and bays, poisoning or driving away the fish, and filling the air with stench and pestilence. No farmer ever yet intelligently _tried_ to enrich his land and was defeated by lack of material. He may not be able to do all he would like to at first; but persistent effort cannot be baffled.

11. Shallow culture is the most crying defect of our average farming.

Poverty may sometimes excuse it; but the excuse is stretched quite too far. If a farmer has but a poor span of horses, or a light yoke of thin steers, he cannot plow land as it should be plowed; but let him double teams with his neighbor, and plow alternate clays on either farm; or, if this may not be, let him buy or borrow a sub-soil plow, and go once around with his surface plow, then hitch on to the sub-soil, and run another furrow in the bottom of the former. There are a few intervales of rich, mellow soil, deposited by the inundations of countless ages, where shallow culture will answer, because the roots of the plants run freely through fertile earth never yet disturbed by the plow; but these marked and meagre exceptions do not invalidate the truth that nine-tenths of our tillage is neither so deep nor so thorough as it should be. As a rule, the feeding-roots of plants do not run below the bottom of the furrows, though in some instances they do; and he who fancies that five or six inches of soil will, under our fervid suns, with our Summers often rainless for weeks, produce as bounteous and as sure a crop as twelve to eighteen inches, is impervious to fact or reason. He might as sensibly maintain that you could draw as long and as heavily against a deposit in bank of $500 as against one of $1,500.

12. Finally, and as the sum of my convictions, we need more thought, more study, more intellect, infused into our Agriculture, with less blind devotion to a routine which, if ever judicious, has long since ceased to be so. The tillage which a pioneer, fighting single-handed and all but empty-handed with a dense forest of giant trees, which he can do no better than to cut down and burn, found indispensable among their stumps and roots, is not adapted to the altered circ.u.mstances of his grandchildren. If our most energetic farmers would abstract ten hours each per week from their incessant drudgery, and devote them to reading and reflection with regard to their n.o.ble calling, they would live longer, live to better purpose, and bequeath a better example, with more property, to their children.

My self-imposed task is done. I undertook to tell What I Know of Farming through one brief essay for each week in 1870; and, in the face of multifarious and pressing duties, and in despite of a severe, protracted illness, the work has been prosecuted to completion. Had I not kept ahead of it while in health, there were weeks when I must have left it unaccomplished, as I was too ill to write or even stand.

I close with the avowal of my joyful trust that these essays, slight and imperfect as they are, will incite thousands of young farmers to feel a loftier pride in their calling and take a livelier interest in its improvement, and that many will be induced by them to read abler and better works on Agriculture and the sciences which minister to its efficiency and impel its progress toward a perfection which few as yet have even faintly foreseen.

THE END.