What I know of farming:

PREFACE

Men have written wisely and usefully, in illustration and aid of Agriculture, from the platform of pure science. Acquainted with the laws of vegetable growth and life, they so expounded and elucidated those laws that farmers apprehended and profitably obeyed them. Others have written, to equally good purpose, who knew little of science, but were adepts in practical agriculture, according to the maxims and usages of those who have successfully followed and dignified the farmer's calling. I rank with neither of these honored classes. My practical knowledge of agriculture is meager, and mainly acquired in a childhood long bygone; while, of science, I have but a smattering, if even that. They are right, therefore, who urge that my qualifications for writing on agriculture are slender indeed.

I only lay claim to an invincible willingness to be made wiser to-day than I was yesterday, and a lively faith in the possibility – nay, the feasibility, the urgent necessity, the imminence – of very great improvements in our ordinary dealings with the soil. I know that a majority of those who would live by its tillage feed it too sparingly and stir it too slightly and grudgingly. I know that we do too little for it, and expect it, thereupon, to do too much for us. I know that, in other pursuits, it is only work thoroughly well done that is liberally compensated; and I see no reason why farming should prove an exception to this stern but salutary law. I may be, indeed, deficient in knowledge of what constitutes good farming, but not in faith that the very best farming is that which is morally sure of the largest and most certain reward.

I hope to be generally accorded the merit of having set forth the little I pretend to know in language that few can fail to understand. I have avoided, so far as I could, the use of terms and distinctions unfamiliar to the general ear. The little I know of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, &c., I have kept to myself; since whatever I might say of them would be useless to those already acquainted with the elementary truths of Chemistry, and only perplexing to others. If there is a paragraph in the following pages which will not be readily and fully understood by an average school-boy of fifteen years, then I have failed to make that paragraph as simple and lucid as I intended.

Many farmers are dissuaded from following the suggestions of writers on agriculture by the consideration of expense. They urge that, though men of large wealth may (perhaps) profitably do what is recommended, their means are utterly inadequate: they might as well be urged to work their oxen in a silver yoke with gold bows. I have aimed to commend mainly, if not uniformly, such improvements only on our grandfathers' husbandry as a farmer worth $1,000, or over, may adopt – not all at once, but gradually, and from year to year. I hope I shall thus convince some farmers that draining, irrigation, deep plowing, heavy fertilizing, &c., are not beyond their power, as so many have too readily presumed and pronounced them.

That I should say very little, and that little vaguely, of the breeding and raising of animals, the proper time to sow or plant, &c., &c., can need no explanation. By far the larger number of those whose days have mainly been given to farming, know more than I do of these details, and are better authority than I am with regard to them. On the other hand, I have traveled extensively, and not heedlessly, and have seen and pondered certain broader features of the earth's improvement and tillage which many stay-at-home cultivators have had little or no opportunity to study or even observe. By restricting the topics with which I deal, the probability of treating some of them to the average farmer's profit is increased.

And, whatever may be his judgment on this slight work, I know that, if I could have perused one of like tenor half a century ago, when I was a patient worker and an eager reader in my father's humble home, my subsequent career would have been less anxious and my labors less exhausting than they have been. Could I then have caught but a glimpse of the beneficent possibilities of a farmer's life – could I have realized that he is habitually (even though blindly) dealing with problems which require and reward the amplest knowledge of Nature's laws, the fullest command of science, the noblest efforts of the human intellect, I should have since pursued the peaceful, unobtrusive round of an enthusiastic and devoted, even though not an eminent or fortunate, tiller of the soil. Even the little that is unfolded in the ensuing pages would have sufficed to give me a far larger, truer, nobler conception of what the farmer of moderate means might and should be, than I then attained. I needed to realize that observation and reflection, study and mental acquisition, are as essential and as serviceable in his pursuit as in others, and that no man can have acquired so much general knowledge that a farmer's exigencies will not afford scope and use for it all. I abandoned the farm, because I fancied that I had already perceived, if I had not as yet clearly comprehended, all there was in the farmer's calling; whereas, I had not really learned much more of it than a good plow-horse ought to understand. And, though great progress has been made since then, there are still thousands of boys, in this enlightened age and conceited generation, who have scarcely a more adequate and just conception of agriculture than I then had. If I could hope to reach even one in every hundred of this class, and induce him to ponder, impartially, the contents of this slight volume, I know that I shall not have written it in vain.

We need to mingle more thought with our work. Some think till their heads ache intensely; others work till their backs are crooked to the semblance of half an iron hoop; but the workers and the thinkers are apt to be distinct classes; whereas, they should be the same. Admit that it has always been thus, it by no means follows that it always should or shall be. In an age when every laborer's son may be fairly educated if he will, there should be more fruit gathered from the tree of knowledge to justify the magnificent promise of its foliage and its bloom. I rejoice in the belief that the graduates of our common schools are better ditch-diggers, when they can no otherwise employ themselves to better advantage, than though they knew not how to read; but that is not enough. If the untaught peasantry of Russia or Hungary grow more wheat per acre than the comparatively educated farmers of the United States, our education is found wanting. That is a vicious and defective if not radically false mental training which leaves its subject no better qualified for any useful calling than though he were unlettered. But I forbear to pursue this ever-fruitful theme.

I look back, on this day completing my sixtieth year, over a life, which must now be near its close, of constant effort to achieve ends whereof many seem in the long retrospect to have been transitory and unimportant, however they may have loomed upon my vision when in their immediate presence. One achievement only of our age and country – the banishment of human chattelhood from our soil – seems now to have been worth all the requisite efforts, the agony and bloody sweat, through which it was accomplished. But another reform, not so palpably demanded by justice and humanity, yet equally conducive to the well-being of our race, presses hard on its heels, and insists that we shall accord it instant and earnest consideration. It is the elevation of Labor from the plane of drudgery and servility to one of self-respect, self-guidance, and genuine independence, so as to render the human worker no mere cog in a vast, revolving wheel, whose motion he can neither modify nor arrest, but a partner in the enterprise which his toil is freely contributed to promote, a sharer in the outlay, the risk, the loss and gain, which it involves. This end can be attained through the training of the generation who are to succeed us to observe and reflect, to live for other and higher ends than those of present sensual gratification, and to feel that no achievement is beyond the reach of their wisely combined and ably self-directed efforts. To that part of the generation of farmers just coming upon the stage of responsible action, who have intelligently resolved that the future of American agriculture shall evince decided and continuous improvement on its past, this little book is respectfully commended.

New York, Feb. 3, 1871.

I.

WILL FARMING PAY?

I commence my essays with this question, because, when I urge the superior advantages of a rural life, I am often met by the objection that Farming doesn't pay. That, if true, is a serious matter. Let us consider:

I do not understand it to be urged that the farmer who owns a large, fertile estate, well-fenced, well-stocked, with good store of effective implements, cannot live and thrive by farming. What is meant is, that he who has little but two brown hands to depend upon cannot make money, or can make very little, by farming.

I think those who urge this point have a very inadequate conception of the difficulty encountered by every poor young man in securing a good start in life, no matter in what pursuit. I came to New-York when not quite of age, with a good constitution, a fair common-school education, good health, good habits, and a pretty fair trade – (that of printer.) I think my outfit for a campaign against adverse fortune was decidedly better than the average; yet ten long years elapsed before it was settled that I could remain here and make any decided headway. Meantime, I drank no liquors, used no tobacco, attended no balls or other expensive entertainments, worked hard and long whenever I could find work to do, lost less than a month altogether by sickness, and did very little in the way of helping others. I judge that quite as many did worse than I as did better; and that, of the young lawyers and doctors who try to establish themselves here in their professions, quite as many earn less as earn more than their bare board during the first ten years of their struggle.

John Jacob Astor, near the close of a long, diligent, prosperous career, wherein he amassed a large fortune, is said to have remarked that, if he were to begin life again, and had to choose between making his first thousand dollars with nothing to start on, or with that thousand making all that he had actually accumulated, he would deem the latter the easier task. Depend upon it, young men, it is and must be hard work to earn honestly your first thousand dollars. The burglar, the forger, the blackleg (whether he play with cards, with dice, or with stocks), may seem to have a quick and easy way of making a thousand dollars; but whoever makes that sum honestly, with nothing but his own capacities and energies as capital, does a very good five-years' work, and may deem himself fortunate if he finishes it so soon.

I have known men do better, even at farming. I recollect one who, with no capital but a good wife and four or five hundred dollars, bought (near Boston) a farm of two hundred mainly rough acres, for $2,500, and paid for it out of its products within the next five years, during which he had nearly doubled its value. I lost sight of him then; but I have not a doubt that, if he lived fifteen years longer and had no very bad luck, he was worth, as the net result of twenty years' effort, at least $100,000. But this man would rise at four o'clock of a winter morning, harness his span of horses and hitch them to his large market-wagon (loaded over night), drive ten miles into Boston, unload and load back again, be home at fair breakfast-time, and, hastily swallowing his meal, be fresh as a daisy for his day's work, in which he would lead his hired men, keeping them clear of the least danger of falling asleep. Such men are rare, but they still exist, proving scarcely anything impossible to an indomitable will. I would not advise any to work so unmercifully; I seek only to enforce the truth that great achievements are within the reach of whoever will pay their price.

An energetic farmer bought, some twenty-five years ago, a large grazing farm in Northern Vermont, consisting of some 150 acres, and costing him about $3,000. He had a small stock of cattle, which was all his land would carry; but he resolved to increase that stock by at least ten per cent. per annum, and to so improve his land by cultivation, fertilizing, clover, &c., that it would amply carry that increase. Fifteen years later, he sold out farm and stock for $45,000, and migrated to the West. I did not understand that he was a specially hard worker, but only a good manager, who kept his eyes wide open, let nothing go to waste, and steadily devoted his energies and means to the improvement of his stock and his farm.

Walking one day over the farm of the late Prof. Mapes, he showed me a field of rather less than ten acres, and said, "I bought that field for $2,400, a year ago last September. There was then a light crop of corn on it, which the seller reserved and took away. I underdrained the field that Fall, plowed and sub-soiled it, fertilized it liberally, and planted it with cabbage; and, when these matured, I sold them for enough to pay for land, labor, and fertilizers, altogether." The field was now worth far more than when he bought it, and he had cleared it within fifteen months from the date of its purchase. I consider that a good operation. Another year, the crop might have been poor, or might have sold much lower, so as hardly to pay for the labor; but there are risks in other pursuits as well as in farming.

A fruit-farmer, on the Hudson above Newburg, showed me, three years since, a field of eight or ten acres which he had nicely set with Grapes, in rows ten feet apart, with beds of Strawberries between the rows, from which he assured me that his sales per acre exceeded $700 per annum. I presume his outlay for labor, including picking, was less than $300 per annum; but it had cost something, to make this field what it then was. Say that he had spent $1,000 per acre in underdraining, enriching and tilling this field, to bring it to this condition, including the cost of his plants, and still there must have been a clear profit here of at least $300 per acre.

I might multiply illustrations; but let the foregoing suffice. I readily admit that shiftless farming doesn't pay – that poor crops don't pay – that it is hard work to make money by farming without some capital – that frost, or hail, or drouth, or floods, or insects, may blast the farmer's hopes, after he has done his best to deserve and achieve success; but I insist that, as a general proposition, Good Farming DOES pay– that few pursuits afford as good a prospect, as full an assurance, of reward for intelligent, energetic, persistent effort, as this does.

I am not arguing that every man should be a farmer. Other vocations are useful and necessary, and many pursue them with advantage to themselves and to others. But those pursuits are apt to be modified by time, and some of them may yet be entirely dispensed with, which Farming never can be. It is the first and most essential of human pursuits; it is every one's interest that this calling should be honored and prosperous. If not adequately recompensed, I judge that is because it is not wisely and energetically followed. My aim is to show how it may be pursued with satisfaction and profit.

II.

GOOD AND BAD HUSBANDRY

Necessity is the master of us all. A farmer may be as strenuous for deep plowing as I am – may firmly believe that the soil should be thoroughly broken up and pulverized to a depth of fifteen to thirty inches, according to the crop; but, if all the team he can muster is a yoke of thin, light steers, or a span of old, spavined horses, which have not even a speaking acquaintance with grain, what shall he do? So he may heartily wish he had a thousand loads of barn-yard manure, and know how to make a good use of every ounce of it; but, if he has it not, and is not able to buy it, he can't always afford to forbear sowing and planting, and so, because he cannot secure great crops, do without any crops at all. If he does the best he can, what better can he do?

Again: Many farmers have fields that must await the pleasure of Nature to fit them for thorough cultivation. Here is a field – sometimes a whole farm – which, if partially divested of the primitive forest, is still thickly dotted with obstinate stumps and filled with green, tenacious roots, which could only be removed at a heavy, perhaps ruinous, cost. A rich man might order them all dug out in a month, and see his order fully obeyed; but, except to clear a spot for a garden or under very peculiar circumstances, it would not pay; and a poor man cannot afford to incur a heavy expense merely for appearance's sake, or to make a theatrical display of energy. In the great majority of cases, he who farms for a living can't afford to pull green stumps, but must put his newly-cleared land into grass at the earliest day, mow the smoother, pasture the rougher portions of it, and wait for rain and drouth, heat and frost, to rot his stumps until they can easily be pulled or burned out as they stand.

So with regard to a process I detest, known as Pasturing. I do firmly believe that the time is at hand when nearly all the food of cattle will, in our Eastern and Middle States, be cut and fed to them – that we can't afford much longer, even if we can at present, to let than roam at will over hill and dale, through meadow and forest, biting off the better plants and letting the worse go to seed; often poaching up the soft, wet soil, especially in Spring, so that their hoofs destroy as much as they eat; nipping and often killing in their infancy the finest trees, such as the Sugar Maple, and leaving only such as Hemlock, Red Oak, Beech, &c., to attain maturity. Our race generally emerged from savageism and squalor into industry, comfort and thrift, through the Pastoral condition – the herding, taming, rearing and training of animals being that department of husbandry to which barbarians are most easily attracted: hence, we cling to Pasturing long after the reason for it has vanished. The radical, incurable vice of Pasturing – that of devouring the better plants and leaving the worse to ripen and diffuse seed – can never be wholly obviated; and I deem it safe to estimate that almost any farm will carry twice as much stock if their food be mainly cut and fed to them as it will if they are required to pick it up where and as it grows or grew. I am sure that the general adoption of Soiling instead of Pasturing will add immensely to the annual product, to the wealth, and to the population, of our older States. And yet, I know right well that many farms are now so rough and otherwise so unsuited to Soiling as to preclude its adoption thereon for many years to come.

Let me indicate what I mean by Good Farming, through an illustration drawn from the Great West:

All over the settled portions of the Valley of the Upper Mississippi and the Missouri, there are large and small herds of cattle that are provided with little or no shelter. The lee of a fence or stack, the partial protection of a young and leafless wood, they may chance to enjoy; but that it is a ruinous waste to leave than a prey to biting frosts and piercing north-westers, their owners seem not to comprehend. Many farmers far above want will this Winter feed out fields of Corn and stacks of Hay to herds of cattle that will not be one pound heavier on the 1st of next May than they were on the 1st of last December – who will have required that fodder merely to preserve their vitality and escape freezing to death. It has mainly been employed as fuel rather than as nourishment, and has served, not to put on flesh, but to keep out frost.

Now I am familiar with the excuses for this waste; but they do not satisfy me. The poorest pioneer might have built for his one cow a rude shelter of stakes, and poles, and straw or prairie-grass, if he had realized its importance, simply in the light of economy. He who has many cattle is rarely without both straw and timber, and might shelter his stock abundantly if he only would. Nay, he could not have neglected or omitted it if he had clearly understood that his beasts must somehow be supplied with heat, and that he can far cheaper warm them from without than from within.

The broad, general, unquestionable truths, on which I insist in behalf of Good Farming are these; and I do not admit that they are subject to exception:

I. It is very rarely impracticable to grow good crops, if you are willing to work for them. If your land is too poor to grow Wheat or Corn, and you are not yet able to enrich it, sow Rye or Buckwheat; if you cannot coax it to grow a good crop of anything, let it alone; and, if you cannot run away from it, work out by the day or month for your more fortunate neighbors. The time and means squandered in trying to grow crops, where only half or quarter crops can be made, constitute the heaviest item on the wrong side of our farmers' balance-sheets; taxing them more than their National, State, and local governments together do.

II. Good crops rarely fail to yield a profit to the grower. I know there are exceptions, but they are very few. Keep your eye on the farmer who almost uniformly has great Grass, good Wheat, heavy Corn, &c., and, unless he drinks, or has some other bad habit, you will find him growing rich. I am confident that white blackbirds are nearly as abundant as farmers who have become poor while usually growing good crops.

III. The fairest single test of good farming is the increasing productiveness of the soil. That farm which averaged twenty bushels of grain to the acre twenty years ago, twenty-five bushels ten years ago, and will measure up thirty bushels to the acre from this year's crop, has been and is in good hands. I know no other touchstone of Farming so unerring as that of the increase or decrease from year to year of its aggregate product. If you would convince me that X. is a good farmer, do not tell me of some great crop he has just grown, but show me that his crop has regularly increased from year to year, and I am satisfied.

– I shall have more to say on these points as I proceed. It suffices for the present if I have clearly indicated what I mean by Good and what by Bad Farming.

III.

WHERE TO FARM

When my father was over sixty years old, and had lived some twenty years in Erie County, Pennsylvania, he said to me: "I have several times removed, and always toward the West; I shall never remove again; but, were I to do so, it would be toward the East. Experience has taught me that the advantages of every section are counterbalanced by disadvantages, and that, where any crop is easily produced, there it sells low, and sometimes cannot be sold at all. I shall live and die right here; but, were I to remove again, it would not be toward the West."

This is but one side of a truth, and I give it for whatever it may be worth. Had my father plunged into the primitive forest in his twenty-fifth rather than his forty-fifth year, he would doubtless have become more reconciled to pioneer life than he ever did. I would advise no one over forty years of age to undertake, with scanty means, to dig a farm out of the dense forest, where great trees must be cut down and cut up, rolled into log-heaps, and hurried to ashes where they grew. Where half the timber can be sold for enough to pay the cost of cutting, the case is different; but I know right well that digging a farm out of the high woods is, to any but a man of wealth, a slow, hard task. Making one out of naked prairie, five to ten miles from timber, is less difficult, but not much. He who can locate where he has good timber on one side and rich prairie on the other is fortunate, and may hope, if his health be spared, to surround himself with every needed comfort within ten years. Still, the pioneer's life is a rugged one, especially for women and children; and I should advise any man who is worth $2,000 and has a family, to buy out an "improvement" (which, in most cases, badly needs improving) on the outskirt of civilization, rather than plunge into the pathless forest or push out upon the unbroken prairie. I rejoice that our Public Lands are free to actual settlers; I believe that many are thereby enabled to make for themselves homes who otherwise would have nothing to leave their children; yet I much prefer a home within the boundaries of civilization to one clearly beyond them. There is a class of drinking, hunting, frolicking, rarely working, frontiersmen, who seem to have been created on purpose to erect log cabins and break paths in advance of a different class of settlers, who regularly come in to buy them out and start them along after a few years. I should here prefer to follow rather than lead. If Co-operation shall ever be successfully applied to the improvement of wild lands, I trust it may be otherwise.