What I know of farming Part 10

It seems to me that a farmer thus despoiled is perfectly justifiable in placing poisoned food where these cut-throats will be apt to find it while making their next raid on his Sheep. I should have no scruple in so doing, provided I could guard effectually against the poisoning of any other than the culprits.

In a well-settled, thrifty region, where ample barns are provided, I judge that the losses of Sheep by dogs may be reduced to a minimum by proper precautions. Elsewhere than in wild, new frontier settlements, every flock of Sheep should have a place of refuge beneath the hay-floor of a good barn, and be trained to spend every night there, as well as to seek this shelter against every pelting storm. Even if sent some distance to pasture, an unbarred lane should connect such pasture with their fold; and they should be driven home for a few nights, if necessary, until they had acquired the habit of coming home at nightfall; and I am a.s.sured that Sheep thus lodged will very rarely be attacked by dogs or wolves.

As yet, our farmers have not generally realized that enhancement of the value of Mutton, whereby their British rivals have profited so largely.

Their fathers began to breed Sheep when a fleece sold for much more than a carcase, and when fineness and abundance of Wool were the main consideration. But such is no longer the fact, at least in the Eastern and Middle States. To-day, large and long-wooled Sheep of the Cotswold and similar breeds are grown with far greater profit in this section than the fine-wooled Merino and Saxony, except where choice specimens of the latter can be sold at high prices for removal to Texas and the Far West. The growing of these high-priced animals must necessarily be confined to few hands. The average farmer cannot expect to sell bucks at $1,000, and even at $5,000, as some have been sold, or at least reported. He must calculate that his Sheep are to be sold, when sold at all, at prices ranging from $10 down to $5, if not lower, so that mechanics and merchants may buy and eat them without absolute ruin; and he must realize that 100 pounds of Mutton at 10 cents, with 6 pounds of Wool at 30 cents, amount to more than 60 pounds of Mutton at 8 cents, and 10 pounds of Wool at 60 cents. Farmers who grow Sheep for Mutton in this vicinity, and manage to have lambs of good size for sale in June or July, a.s.sure me that their profit on these is greater than on almost anything else their farms will produce; and they say what they know.

The satisfactory experience of this cla.s.s may be repeated to-day in the neighborhood of any considerable city in the Union. Sheep-growing is no experiment; it is an a.s.sured and gratifying success with all who understand and are fitly placed for its prosecution. Wool may never again be so high as we have known it, since the Far West and Texas can grow it very cheaply, while its transportation costs less than five per cent. of its value, where that of Grain would be 75 per cent.; but Mutton is a wholesome and generally acceptable meat, whereof the use and popularity, are daily increasing; so that its market value will doubtless be greater in the future than it has been in the past. I would gladly incite the farmers of our country to comprehend this fact, and act so as to profit by it.

But the new region opened to Sheep-growing by the pioneers of Colorado, and other Territories, is destined to play a great part in the satisfaction of our need of Wool. The elevated Plains and Valleys which enfold and embrace the Rocky Mountains are exceedingly favorable to the cheap production of Wool. Their pure, dry, bracing atmosphere; the rarity of their drenching storms; the fact that their soil is seldom or never sodden with water; and the excellence of their short, thin gra.s.ses, even in Winter, render them admirably adapted to the wants of the shepherd and his flocks. I do not believe in the wisdom or humanity, while I admit the possibility, of keeping Sheep without cured fodder on the Plains or elsewhere; on the contrary, I would have ample and effective shelter against cold and wet provided for every flock, with Hay, or Grain, or Roots, or somewhat of each of them, for at least two months of each year; but, even thus, I judge that fine Wool can be grown in Colorado or Wyoming far cheaper than in New England or even Minnesota, and of better quality than in Texas or South America. And I am grievously mistaken if Sheep husbandry is not about to be developed on the Plains with a rapidity and success which have no American precedent.

x.x.xV.

ACCOUNTS IN FARMING.

Farmers, it is urged, sometimes fail; and this is unfortunately true of them, as of all others. Some fail in integrity; others in sobriety; many in capacity; most in diligence; but not a few in method or system. Quite a number fail because they undertake too much at the outset; that is, they run into debt for more land than they have capital to stock or means to fertilize, and are forced into bankruptcy by the interest ever-accruing upon land which they are unable to cultivate. If they should get ahead a little by active exertion throughout the day, the interest would overtake and pa.s.s them during the ensuing night.

Few of the unsuccessful realize the extent to which their ill fortune is fairly attributable to their own waste of time. Men not naturally lazy squander hours weekly in the village, or at the railroad station, without a suspicion that they are thus destroying their chances of success in life. To-day is given up to a monkey-show; half of to-morrow is lost in attendance on an auction; part of next day is spent at a caucus or a jury trial; and so on until one-third of the year is virtually wasted.

Now, the men who have achieved eminent success, within my observation, have all been rigid economists of time. They managed to transact their business at the county-seat while serving there as grand or pet.i.t jurors, or detained under subpoena as witnesses; they never attended an auction unless they really needed something which was there to be sold, and then they began their day's work earlier and ended it later in order to redeem the time which they borrowed for the sale. I do not believe that any American farmer who could count up three hundred full days' work in every year between his twenty-first and his thirtieth ever yet failed, except as a result of speculation, or endorsing, or inordinate running into debt.

I would, therefore, urge every farmer to keep a rigid account current of the disposal of his time, so as to be able to see at the year's end exactly how many days thereof he had given to productive labor; how many to such abiding improvements as fencing and draining; and how many to objects which neither increased his crop nor improved his farm. I am sure many would be amazed at the extent of this last category.

If every youth who expects to live by farming would buy a cheap pocket-book or wallet which contains a diary wherein a page is allotted to each day of the year, and would, at the close of that day, or at least while its incidents were still fresh in his mind, set down under its proper head whatever incidents were most noteworthy--as, for instance, a soaking rain; a light or heavy shower; a slight or killing frost; a fall of snow; a hurricane; a hail-storm; a gale; a decidedly hot or notably cold temperature; the turning out of cattle to pasture or sheltering them against the severity of Winter; also the planting or sowing of each crop or field, and whether harm was done to it by frost in its infancy or when it approached maturity--he would thus provide himself with annual volumes of fact which would prove instructive and valuable throughout his maturer years.

The good farmer will of course keep accounts with such of his neighbors as he sees fit to deal with; and he ought to charge a lent or credit a borrowed plow, harrow, reaper, log-chain, or other implement, precisely as though it were meal or meat of an equal value. I judge that borrowed implements, if regularly charged at cost, and credited at their actual value when returned, would generally come home sooner and in better condition.

But the farmer, like every one else, should be most careful to keep debt and credit with himself and his farm. If a dollar is spent or lent, his books should show it; and let items and sum total stare him in the face when he strikes a balance at the close of the year. If there has been no leakage either of dimes or of hours, he will seldom be poorer on the 31st of December than he was on the 1st of the preceding January.

Most farmers fail to keep accounts with their several fields and crops; yet what could be more instructive than these? Here are ten acres of Corn, with a yield of 20 to 40 bushels per acre--a like area and like yield of Oats; a smaller or larger of Rye, Buckwheat, or Beans, as the case may be. If the produce is sold, most farmers know how much it brings; but how many know how much it cost? Say the Corn brings 75 cents per bushel, and the Oats 50 cents: was either or both produced at a profit? If so, at what profit? Here is a farmer who has grown from 100 to 800 bushels of Corn per annum for the last 20 years; ought he not to know by this time what Corn costs him in the average, and whether it could or could not with profit give place to something else? Most farmers grow some crops at a profit, others at a loss; ought they not to know, after an experience of five or ten years, what crops have put money into their pockets, and what have made them poorer for the growing?

Of course, there is complication and some degree of uncertainty in all such account-keeping; for every one is aware that some crops take more from the soil than others, and so leave it in a worse condition for those that are to follow, and that some exact large reenforcements of fertilizers, whereof a part only is fairly chargeable to the first ensuing product, while a large share inures to the subsequent harvests.

Each must judge for himself how much is to be credited for such improvement, and how much charged against other crops for deterioration. He, for example, whose meadows will cut from two to three tuns per acre of good English Hay may generally sell that Hay for twice if not thrice the immediate cost of its production, and so seem to be realizing a large profit; but, if he gives nothing to the soil in return for the heavy draft thus made upon it, his crop will dwindle year by year, until it will hardly pay for cutting; and the diminution in value of his meadows will nearly or quite balance the seeming profit accruing from his Hay. But account-keeping in every business involves essentially identical calculations; and the merchant who this year makes no net profit on his goods, but doubles the number of his customers and the extent of his trade, has thriven precisely as has the farmer whose profit on his crops has all been invested in drains permeating his bogs, and in Lime, Plaster, and other fertilizers, applied to and permanently enriching his dryer fields.

"To make each day a critic on the last," was the aspiration of a wise man, if not a great poet. So the farmer who will keep careful and candid accounts With himself, annually correcting his estimates by the light of experience, will soon learn what crops he may reasonably expect to grow at a profit, and to reject such as are likely to involve him in loss; and he who, having done this, shall blend common sense with industry, will have no reason to complain thereafter that there is no profit in farming, and no chance of achieving wealth by pursuing it.

x.x.xVI.

STONE ON A FARM.

This earth, geologists say, was once an immense expanse of heated vapor, which, gradually cooling at its surface, as it whirled and sped through s.p.a.ce, contracted and formed a crust, which we know as Rock or Stone.

This crust has since been broken through, and tilted up into ranges of mountains and hills, by the action of internal fires, by the trans.m.u.tation of solid bodies into more expansive gases; and the fragments torn away from the sharper edges of upheaved ma.s.ses of granite, quartz, or sandstone, having been frozen into iceberg, floating, or soon to be so, have been carried all over the surface of our planet, and dropped upon the greater part, as those icebergs were ultimately resolved, by a milder temperature, into flowing water. When the seas were afterward reduced nearly or quite to their present limits, and the icebergs restricted to the frigid zones and their vicinity, streams had to make their way down the sides of the mountains and hills to the subjacent valleys and plains, sweeping along not merely sand and gravel, but bowlders also, of every size and form, and sometimes great rocks as well, by the force of their impetuous currents. And, as a very large, if not the larger portion of our earth's surface bears testimony to the existence and powerful action through ages, of larger and smaller water-courses, a wide and general diffusion of stones, not in place, but more or less triturated, smoothed, and rounded, by the action of water, was among the inevitable results.

These stones are sometimes a facility, but oftener an impediment, to efficiency in agriculture. When heated by fervid suns.h.i.+ne throughout the day, they retain a portion of that heat through a part of the succeeding night, thereby raising the temperature of the soil, and increasing the deposit of dew on the plants there growing. When generally broken so finely as to offer no impediment to cultivation, they not merely absorb heat by day, to be given off by night, but, by rendering the soil open and porous, secure a much more extensive diffusion of air through it than would otherwise be possible. Thus do slaty soils achieve and maintain a warmth unique in their respective lat.i.tudes, so as to ripen grapes further North, and at higher elevations, than would otherwise be possible.

The great Prairies of the West, with a considerable portion of the valleys and plains of the Atlantic slope, expose no rock at their surfaces, and little beneath them, until the soil has been traversed, and the vicinity of the underlying rock in place fairly attained. To farmers inured to the perpetual stone-picking of New-England, and other hilly regions, this is a most welcome change; but when the pioneer comes to look about him for stone to wall his cellar and his well, to underpin his barn, and form the foundations of his dwelling, he realizes that the bowlders he had exulted in leaving behind him were not wholly and absolutely a nuisance; glad as he was to be rid of them forever, he would like now to call some of them back again.

Yet, the Eastern farmer of to-day has fewer uses for stone than his grandfather had. He does not want his farm cut up into two or three-acre patches, by broad-based, unsightly walls, which frost is apt to heave year after year into greater deformity and less efficiency; nor does he care longer to use them in draining, since he must excavate and replace thrice as much earth in making a stone as in making a tile drain; while the former affords shelter and impunity to rats, mice, and other mischievous, predatory animals, whose burrowing therein tends constantly to stimulate its natural tendency to become choked with sand and earth.

Of the stone drains, constructed through parts of my farm by foremen whose wills proved stronger than my own, but two remain in partial operation, and I shall rejoice when these shall have filled themselves up and been counted out evermore. Happily, they were sunk so low that the subsoil plow will never disturb them.

Still, my confidence that nothing was made in vain is scarcely shaken by the prevalence and abundance of stone on our Eastern farms. We may not have present use for them all; but our grandsons will be wiser than we, and have uses for them which we hardly suspect. I reinsist that land which is very stony was mainly created with an eye to timber-growing, and that millions of acres of such ought forthwith to be planted with Hickory, White Oak, Locust, Chestnut, White Pine, and other valuable forest-trees. Every acre of thoroughly dry land, lying near a railroad, in the Eastern or Middle States, may be made to pay a good interest on from $50 up to $100, provided there be soil enough above its rocks to afford a decent foothold for trees; and how little will answer this purpose none can imagine who have not seen the experiment tried. Sow thickly, that you may begin to cut out poles six to ten feet long within three or four years, and _keep_ cutting out (but never cutting off) thenceforward, until time shall be no more, and your rocky crests, steep hillsides and ravines, will take rank with the most productive portions of your farm.

In the edges of these woods, you may deposit the surplus stones of the adjacent cultivated fields, in full a.s.surance that moth and rust will not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal, but that you and your sons and grandsons will find them there whenever they shall be needed, as well as those you found there when you came into possession of the farm.

I am further confident that we shall build more and more with rough, unshapen stone, as we grow older and wiser. In our harsh, capricious climate, walls of stone-concrete afford the cheapest and best protection alike against heat and frost, for our animals certainly, and, I think, also for ourselves. Let the farmer begin his barn by making of stone, laid in thin mortar, a substantial bas.e.m.e.nt story; let into a hillside, for his manure and his root-cellar; let him build upon this a second story of like materials for the stalls of his cattle; and now he may add a third story and roof of wood for his bay and grain, if he sees fit.

His son or grandson will, probably, take this off, and replace it with concrete walls and a slate roof; or this may be postponed until the original wooden structure has rotted off; but I feel sure that, ultimately, the dwellings as well as barns of thrifty farmers, in stony districts, will mainly be built of rough stone, thrown into a box and firmly cemented by a thin mortar composed of much sand and little lime; and that thus at least ten thousand tuns of stone to each farm will be disposed of. It may be somewhat later still before our barn-yards, fowl inclosures, gardens, pig-pens, etc., will be shut in by cemented walls; but the other sort affords such ample and perpetual lurking places for rats, minks, weasels, and all manner of destructive vermin, that they are certain to go out of fas.h.i.+on before the close of the next century.

As to blasting out Stone, too large or too firmly fixed to be otherwise handled, I would solve the problem by asking, "Do you mean to keep this lot in cultivation?" If you do, clear it of stone from the surface upward, and for at least two feet downward, though they be as large as hayc.o.c.ks, and as fixed as the everlasting hills. Clear your field of every stone bigger than a goose egg, that the Plow or the Mower may strike in doing its work, or give it up to timber, plant it thoroughly, and leave its stones unmolested until you or your descendants shall have a paying use for them.

A friend deeply engaged in lumbering gives me a hint, which I think some owners of stony farms will find useful. He is obliged to run his logs down shallow, stony creeks, from the bottom of which large rocks often protrude, arresting the downward progress of his lumber. When the beds of these creeks are nearly dry in Summer, he goes in, with two or three stout, strong a.s.sistants, armed with crowbars and levers, and rolls the stones to this side and that, so as to leave a clear pa.s.sage for his logs. Occasionally, he is confronted by a big fellow, which defies his utmost force; when, instead of drilling and blasting, he gathers dead tree-tops, and other dry wood of no value, from the banks, and builds a hot fire on the top of each giant bowlder. When the fire has burned out, and the rock has cooled, he finds it softened, and, as it were, rotten, on the top, often split, and every way so demoralized that he can deal with it as though it were chalk or cheese. He estimates his saving by this process, as compared with drilling and blasting as much more than fifty per cent. I trust farmers with whom wood is abundant, and big stones superabundant, will give this simple device a trial. Powder and drilling cost money, part of which may be saved by this expedient.

I have built some stone walls--at first, not very well; but for the last ten years my rule has been: Very little fence on a farm, but that little of a kind that asks no forbearance of the wildest bull that ever wore a horn. The last wall I built cost me at least $5 per rod; and it is worth the money. Beginning by plowing its bed and turning the two furrows together, so as to raise the ground a foot, and make a shallow ditch on either side, I built a wall thereon which will outlast my younger child.

An ordinary wall dividing a wood on the north from an open field of sunny, gravelly loam on the south, would have been partly thrown down and wholly twisted out of shape in a few years, by the thawing of the earth under its sunny side, while it remained firm as a rock on the north; but the ground is always dry under my entire wall; so nothing freezes there, and there is consequently nothing to thaw and let down my wall. I shall be sorely disappointed if that wall does not outlast my memory, and be known as a thorough barrier to roving cattle long after the name of its original owner shall have been forgotten.

x.x.xVII.

FENCES AND FENCING.

Though I have already indicated, incidentally, my decided objections to our prevalent system of Fencing, I deem the subject of such importance that I choose to discuss it directly. Excessive Fencing is peculiarly an American abuse, which urgently cries for reform.

Solon Robinson says the fence-tax is the heaviest of our farmer's taxes.

I add, that it is the most needless and indefensible.

Highways we must have, and people must traverse them; but this gives them no right to trample down or otherwise injure the crops growing on either side. In France, and other parts of Europe, you see gra.s.s and grain growing luxuriantly up to the very edge of the beaten tracks, with nothing like a fence between them. Yet those crops are nowise injured or disturbed by wayfarers. Whoever chooses to impel animals along these roads must take care to have them completely under subjection, and must see that they do no harm to whatever grows by the wayside.

In this country, cattle-driving, except on a small scale, and for short distances, has nearly been superceded by railroads. The great droves formerly reaching the Atlantic seaboard on foot, from Ohio or further West, are now huddled into cars and hurried through in far less time, and with less waste of flesh; but they reach us fevered, bruised, and every way unwholesome. Every animal should be turned out to gra.s.s, after a railroad journey of more than twelve hours, and left there a full month before he is taken to the slaughter-pen. We must have many more deaths per annum in this city than if the animals on which we subsist were killed in a condition which rendered them fit for human food.

Ultimately, our fresh Beef, Mutton and Pork, will come to us from the Prairies in refrigerating cars: each animal having been killed while in perfect health, unfevered and untortured by days of cramped, galled, and thirsty suffering, on the cars. This will leave their offal, including a large portion of their bones, to enrich the fields whence their sustenance was drawn and from which they should never be taken. The cost of transporting the meat, hides, and tallow, in such cars, would be less than that of bringing through the animals on their legs; while the danger of putrefaction might be utterly precluded.

But to return to Fencing:

Our growing plants must be preserved from animal ravage; but it is most unjust to impose the cost of this protection on the growers. Whoever chooses to rear or buy animals must take care that they do not infest and despoil his neighbors. Whoever sees fit to turn animals into the street, should send some one with them who will be sure to keep them out of mischief, which browsing young trees in a forest clearly is.

If the inhabitants of a settlement or village surrounded by open prairie, see fit to pasture their cattle thereon, they should send them out each morning in the charge of a well-mounted herdsmen, whose duty should be summed up in keeping them from evildoing by day and bringing them safely back to their yard or yards at nightfall.

Fencing bears with special severity on the pioneer cla.s.s, who are least able to afford the outlay. The "clearing" of the pioneer's first year in the wilderness, being enlarged by ax and fire, needs a new and far longer environment next year; and so through subsequent years until clearing is at an end. Many a pioneer is thus impelled to devote a large share of his time to Fencing; and yet his crops often come to grief through the depredations of his own or his neighbor's breachy cattle.

Fences produce nothing but unwelcome bushes, briers and weeds. So far as they may be necessary, they are a deplorable necessity. When constructed where they are not really needed, they evince costly folly. I think I could point out farms which would not sell to-day for the cost of rebuilding their present fences.