What I know of farming Part 6

XXI.

MUCK--HOW TO UTILIZE IT.

The time will be, I cannot doubt, when chemists can tell us the exact positive or relative value of a cord of Muck--how this swamp or that pond affords a choice article, while the product of another will hardly pay for digging. There may be chemists whose judgment on these points is now worth far more than mine, since mine is worth exactly nothing. I _do_ know, however, that Muck is a valuable fertilizer, and that digging and composting it _does pay_. I judge that I have transferred at least three thousand loads of it from my swamp to my upland; and the effect had been all that I expected. Let me speak of Muck generally, in the light, of my own experience.

Wherever rocks in ridges come to the surface of a valley, plain, or gentle slope, water is apt to be collected or retained by them, forming ponds or shallower pools, which may or may not dry up in Summer, but which are seldom dry late in Autumn, when plants are dying and leaves are falling. The latter, caught in their descent by the harsh winds of the season, are swept along the bare, dry ground, till they strike the water, which arrests their progress and soon engulfs them. Thus an acre of watery surface will often collect, and retain the dead foliage of five to ten acres of forest; and next Fall will render its kindred tribute, and the next, and the next, for ever. There cannot be less than fifty millions of acres of Swamps in our old States (including Maine); whereof I presume the larger area was covered with water until the slow contributions of leaves and weeds filled them above the level at which water is no longer retained on the surface. And still, they are so moist and boggy, and their rank vegetation is so retentive, that the leaves swept in from the adjacent hills and glades are firmly retained and aid to increase the depth of their vegetable mold, which varies from a few inches to twenty and even thirty feet. In my old County of Westchester, I roughly estimate that there are at least five thousand acres of bog, whereof but a very few hundreds have yet been subdued to the uses of cultivation.

Whoever digs a quant.i.ty of Swamp Muck and applies it _directly_ to his fields or garden, will derive little or no immediate benefit therefrom.

It is green, sour, cold, and more likely to cover his farm thickly and persistently with Sorrel, Eye-smart, Rag-weed, Parsley, and other infestations, than to add a bushel per acre to his crop of Grain or Roots. And thus many have tried Muck, and, on trial, p.r.o.nounced it a pestilent humbug.

But let any farmer turn his whole force into a bog or marsh directly after finis.h.i.+ng his Summer harvest (when it is apt to be driest and warmest), and, having freed it of water to the best of his ability, dig and draw out one hundred cords of its black, oozy substance, and he will know better than to unite in that hasty judgment. If the bog be near his farm-yard, let the Muck be shoveled at once into a cart and drawn thither; but, if not, let it be simply brought out in wheel-barrows and deposited, not more than two feet deep, on the most convenient bank that is well drained and perfectly dry. Here let it dry and drain till after Fall harvest, and then begin to draw it gradually into the yards, and especially where it may be worked over by swine and scratched over for seeds and insects by fowls. a.s.suming that the farm-yard is lowest in the centre and allows no liquid to escape save by evaporation, the Muck may well be dumped on the drier sides; thence, after being worked over and trampled through and through, to be shoveled into the centre and replaced by fresh arrivals. A hundred cords may thus be so mixed and ripened as to be fit to draw out next May and used as a fertilizer for Grain or Roots, though, if not so treated, it should lie exposed to sun and wind a full year; being applied in the Fall to crops of Winter grain or spread upon the fields to be planted or sowed next Spring. All the manure made during the Winter should be spread over that which lies in the yard at least monthly; and then new Muck drawn in, to be rooted or scratched over, trampled into the underlying strata, and overspread in its turn. Thus treated, I am confident that each hundred cords of Muck will be equal in value to an equal quant.i.ty of manure, though it may not give up its fertilizing properties so freely to the first crop that follows its application. I have land that did not yield (in pasture) the equivalent of half a tun of hay pet annum when I bought it, that now yields at least three tuns of good hay per annum; and its renovation is mainly due to a free application of Swamp Muck.

To those who have a good stock of animals, with Muck convenient to their yards, I would not recommend any other treatment than the foregoing; but there are many who keep few animals, or whose muck-beds lie at the back of their farms, two or three hundred rods from their barns; while they wish to fertilize the fields in this quarter, which have been slighted in former applications, because of the distance over which manure had to be hauled. If these possess or can buy good hard-wood, house-made Ashes at twenty-five cents or less per bushel, I would say, Mix these well, at the rate of two or three bushels to the card, with your Muck as you dig it; work it over the next Spring, and apply it the ensuing Fall, so as to give it a full year to ripen and sweeten, and it will be all right.

But, if you have not and cannot get the Ashes, and _can_ procure dirty, refuse Salt from some meat-packer or wholesale grocer, apply this as you would have applied the Ashes, but in rather larger quant.i.ty; and, if you can get neither Ashes nor Salt, use quick Lime, as fresh and hot from the kiln as you can apply it. The best Lime is that from burned Oyster-Sh.e.l.ls; I consider this, if nowise slaked, nearly equal to refuse Salt; but Oyster-Sh.e.l.l Lime is too dear at most inland points; and here the refuse of the kilns--that which is not good enough for mason-work--must be used. Usually, the lime-burner has a load or more of this at the clearing out of every kiln, which he will sell quite cheap if it be taken out of his way at once; and this should be looked for and secured. Being inferior in quality (often because imperfectly burned), it should be applied in larger quant.i.ty--not less than four bushels to each cord of Muck.

I will not here describe the process of mixing Salt with Lime commended by Prof. Mapes, because it is not easy to bring these two ingredients together so as to mix them with the Muck as it is dug: and, though I have used them after Prof. Mapes's recipe, and purpose to do so hereafter, I do not feel certain that any positive advantage results from their blended application as a Chloride of Lime. If I should gain further light on this point before completing this series, I shall not fail to impart it.

XXII.

INSECTS--BIRDS.

If I were to estimate the average absolute loss of the farmers of this country from Insects at $100,000,000 per annum, I should doubtless be far below the mark. The loss of fruit alone by the devastations of insects, within a radius of fifty miles from this City, must amount in value to Millions. In my neighborhood, the Peach once flourished, but flourishes no more, and Cherries have been all but annihilated. Apples were till lately our most profitable and perhaps our most important product; but the worms take half our average crop and sadly damage what they do not utterly destroy. Plums we have ceased to grow or expect; our Pears are generally stung and often blighted; even the Currant has at last its fruit-destroying worm. We must fight our paltry adversaries more efficiently, or allow them to drive us wholly from the field.

Now, I have no doubt that our best allies in this inglorious warfare are the Birds. They would save us, if we did not destroy them. The British plowman, turning his sod with a myriad of crows, blackbirds, etc., chasing his steps and all but getting under his feet in their eager quest of grubs, bugs, etc., is a spectacle to be devoutly thankful for.

Whenever clouds of birds shall habitually darken our fields in May and (less notably) throughout the Summer months, we may reasonably hope to grow fair crops of our favorite Fruits from year to year, and realize that we owe them to the constant, and zealous, though not quite disinterested, efforts of our friends, the Birds.

But I do not regard the ravages of Insects as entirely due to the reckless destruction and consequent scarcity of our Birds. I hold that their multiplication and their devastations are largely incited by the degeneracy of our plants caused by the badness of our culture. On this point, consider a statement made to me, some fifteen or twenty years ago, by the late Gov. William F. Packer, of Pennsylvania:

"I know (said Gov. P.) the narrow valley of a stream that runs into the west branch of the Susquehanna, which was cleared of the primitive forest some forty or fifty years since, and has ever since been alternately in tillage and gra.s.s. A road ran through the middle of it, dividing it into two narrow fields. A few years ago, this road was abandoned, and the whole of this little valley, including the road-way, thrown into a single field, which was thereupon sown to Wheat. At harvest-time, this remarkable phenomenon was presented: A good crop of sound grain on the strip four or fire rods wide formerly covered by the road; while nearly every berry on either side of it was destroyed by the weevil or midge."

Now I do not infer from this fact that insect ravages are _wholly_ due to our abuse and exhaustion of the soil. I presume that Wheat and other crops would be devastated by insects if there were no slovenly, n.i.g.g.ard, exhausting tillage. But I do firmly hold that at least half our losses by insects would be precluded if our fields were habitually kept in better heart by deep culture, liberal fertilizing, and a judicious rotation of crops. I heard little of insect ravages in the wheat-fields of Western New-York throughout the first thirty years of this century; but, when crop after crop of Wheat had been taken from the same fields until they had been well nigh exhausted of their Wheat-forming elements, we began to hear of the desolation wrought by insects; and those ravages increased in magnitude until Wheat-culture had to be abandoned for years. I believe that we should have heard little of insects had Wheat been grown on those fields but one year in three since their redemption from the primal forest.

But, whatever might once have been, the Philistines are upon us. We are doomed, for at least a generation, to wage a relentless war against insects multiplied beyond reason by the neglect and short-comings of our predecessors. We are in like condition with the inhabitants of the British isles a thousand years ago, whose forefathers had so long endured and so unskillfully resisted invasion and spoliation by the Northmen that they had come to be regarded as the sea-kings' natural prey. For generations, it has been customary hereabout to slaughter without remorse the birds, and let caterpillars, worms, gra.s.shoppers, etc., multiply and ravage unresisted. We must pay for past errors by present loss and years of extra effort. And, precisely because the task is so arduous, we ought to lose no time in addressing ourselves to its execution.

The first step to be taken is very simple. Let every farmer who realizes the importance and beneficence of Birds teach his own children and hirelings that, except the Hawk, they are to be spared, protected, kindly treated, and (when necessary) fed. They are to be valued and cherished as the voluntary police of our fields and gardens, constantly employed in fighting our battles against our ruthless foes. The boy who robs a bird's nest is robbing the farmer of a part of his crops. He who traverses a farm shooting and mangling its feathered sentinels diminishes its future product of Grain and nearly destroys that of Fruit. The farmer might as well consent that any strolling ruffian should shoot his Horses or Cattle as his Birds. Begin at home to make this truth felt and respected, and it will be the easier to impress it also on your neighbors.

Next, there should be neighborhood or towns.h.i.+p a.s.sociations for the protection of insect-eating birds. We must not merely agree to let them live--we must cherish and protect them. I believe that very simple cups or bowls of cast-iron, having each a hole in its centre of suitable size, that need not cost sixpence each, and could be fastened to the side of a tree with one nail lightly driven, would in time be adopted by many birds as nesting strongholds, whence they might laugh to scorn their predacious enemies. If every harmless bird could build its nest among us in a place where its eggs would be safe from hawks, crows, cats, boys, and other robbers, the number of such birds would quickly be doubled and quadrupled.

And we must summon the law to our aid. Though law can do little or nothing against stealthy, skulking nest-plunderers, it can help us materially in our warfare with the cowardly vagabonds who traverse our fields with musket or rifle, blazing away at every unsuspecting robin or thrush that they can discover. Make it trespa.s.s, punishable with fine and imprisonment, to shoot on another's land without his express permission, and the cowardly ma.s.sacre of the farmers' humble allies would be checked at once, and, when public sentiment had been properly enlightened, might, in civilized regions, be arrested altogether.

XXIII.

ABOUT TREE-PLANTING.

I have had so little experience in Tree-Planting that I should have preferred to say no more about it; but letters that have reached me imply that the ignorance of others is even denser than mine. For the sake of those only who are conscious that they know nothing, yet are not unwilling to learn, I venture a few timid suggestions with regard to Tree-Planting.

I. Ten or twelve years ago, I bought a pound or more of Locust seed rather late in the Spring, scalded it by plunging for a moment the little cotton bag which held it into a pot of boiling water, and letting the seed steep and steam in the bag till next morning, when the seed was planted in rows in a newly broken bit of poor old pasture-land. This was a mistake; I should have given that seed the richest available spot in my garden, to say nothing of planting it as early as April 20th. My locusts came up slowly and grew feebly that year, not to speak of the many seeds that did not sprout at all. Still many came up and survived, and my place is this day the richer for them. It might have been still richer had I seasonably known more.

II. What I would now advise as to Locust and most other trees is that the best seed be procured in the Fall, or so soon as it drops from the trees; that part of it be sown in drills, two feet apart, with two inches between seeds in the drills, and that the richest of dry, warm garden-soil be devoted to this purpose. Fill a large box with rich loam, stir four ounces of seed into this, and set the box in a cool cellar where frost does not enter, and here let it remain till April; then take out the seed and earth together, and sow in drills as above. If some one who cuts Locust during the Winter or Spring will allow you to trace the smaller surface-roots from the new-made stumps and cut or dig them up, cut fifty or a hundred pieces of root the size of your finger each two feet long, and plant these, about May 1, in the places where you want Locusts to come forward most rapidly. Some of them may not grow, but I think many will; and, from all these sources, I judge that you will obtain a good supply of young trees. Let those you start from the seed get two years' growth before you take them up and set them where you want trees, whether in your present woods, in rugged, rocky pastures, on the sides of steep ravines, or around your buildings. You cannot fail to obtain _some_ trees if you follow these directions.

III. Begin early this Fall to gather Chestnuts, Hickory Nuts, Walnuts, White Oak, Acorns, etc., to plant. Select the largest and finest nuts, giving the preference to those which ripen and fall earliest. Keep them in cool, damp earth in some barn or cellar where rats and mice cannot reach them, and persist in collecting till December. Then plant a part in your garden or in any rich ground where they are not likely to be disturbed; letting the residue remain in the boxes of moist earth where you first placed them till early Spring; then plant these, like the former, in rows two feet apart, with six inches between seed and seed in each row, and give the rows careful culture for two years; after which, set them where you wish them to grow.

I venture to suggest that he who has a ragged, stony hill or other lot which he wishes to surrender to forest should plow it, if it can be plowed, next September or October; if too rocky to be even imperfectly plowed, dig up the earth with pick and spade, and sow it thickly with hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts, locust and other tree-seeds, expecting that some will be dug up and carried off by squirrels, etc., and that others will fail to germinate. Go over it with hoes the ensuing June or July, killing all weeds and other infestations; and, nearly a year later, repeat the operation, taking up young trees from your garden or nursery, and filling them in wherever there is room. Plant thickly in order to force an upward rather than a scraggy growth; and so that you may begin to cut out the superfluous saplings for bean-poles, hoop-poles, etc., three or four years thereafter. Cut late in Winter or early in Spring, so that the stumps will each throw up two or more shoots or sprouts, which usually grow much faster than the original tree did. And the process of thinning may thus be continued indefinitely, while the choicer trees are allowed to attain their stateliest proportions. And thus a rocky, sterile hill-side or knoll may be made to yield a crop annually after the first two or three years from planting, while growing trees of decided value. I judge that almost any land within fifty miles of a great city and not more than two miles from a railroad depot or from navigable water may thus be made to earn a good interest on $100 per acre, after meeting all the cost of breaking up and planting. I confidently a.s.sert that many thousands of sterile, rocky acres, which now yield less than $5 per acre annually in pasturage, would net at least double that sum to the owner if wisely devoted to forest-trees.

I have a hearty love of forests. They proffer gentle companions.h.i.+p to the thoughtful and rest to the overworked, fevered brain. Our streams will be fuller and less capricious, our gales less destructive, our climate more equable, when we shall have reclothed our rugged slopes and rocky crests with trees. Timber grows yearly scarcer and dearer, when it ought to be becoming more plentiful and accessible, and _would_ be if we devoted to trees all the land which we cultivate at a loss or fail to cultivate at all. Let our boys be incited to gather seeds and plant nurseries; let young trees be bought by the thousand where they now are by the dozen, and let us all cooperate in covering our unsightly rocks and making glad our waste places by a superabundance of choice, thrifty, healthy trees.

Many of our young men have a taste for adventure and excitement which leads them to the ocean, the mines, to Australia or some other far-off land recently and scantily peopled by civilized beings. I will not quarrel with their taste; but I judge that there are openings for their enterprise and daring within the area of our own country. Let one thousand of them resolve to devote the next five years to planting forests on the treeless plains and virtual deserts of the Great Basin and on either side of it; let them select locations where some acres may cheaply and surely be irrigated, and, having carefully provided themselves with an abundance of the best seeds, let them start patches of woodland at points the most remote from present timber, until a thousand different forests--one to each of the a.s.sociates--shall have been started and guarded till their roots have taken firm hold of the earth. I presume Congress would grant them preemptions to each section on which they thus planted at least forty acres of forest, and that most of these preemption rights could, within ten years, be sold to settlers for many times their original cost.

XXIV.

FRUIT-TREES--THE APPLE.

If I were asked to say what single aspect of our economic condition most strikingly and favorably distinguished the people of our Northern States from these of most if not all other countries which I have traversed, I would point at once to the fruit-trees which so generally diversify every little as well as larger farm throughout these States, and are quite commonly found even on the petty holdings of the poorer mechanics and workmen in every village and in the suburbs and outskirts of every city. I can recall nothing like it abroad, save in two or three of the least mountainous and most fertile districts of northern Switzerland.

Italy has some approach to it in the venerable olive-trees which surround or flank many, perhaps most, of her farm-houses, upholding grape-vines as ancient and nearly as large as themselves; but the average New-England or Middle State homestead, with its ample Apple-orchard and its cl.u.s.ter of Pear, Cherry and Plum-trees surrounding its house and dotting or belting its garden, has an air of comfort and modest thrift, which I have nowhere else seen fairly equaled. Upland Virginia and the mountainous portion of the States southward of her may in time surpa.s.s the most favored regions of the North in the abundance, variety and excellence of their fruits; for the Peach and the Grape find here a congenial climate, while they are grown with difficulty, where they can be grown at all, in the North; but, up to this hour, I judge that our country north of the Potomac is better supplied with wholesome and palatable tree-fruits than any other portion of the earth's surface of equal or nearly equal area.

On the whole, I deem it a misfortune that our Northern States were so admirably adapted to the Apple and kindred fruit-trees that our pioneer forefathers had little more to do than bury the seeds in the ground and wait a few years for the resulting fruit. The soil, formed of decayed trees and their foliage, thickly covered with the ashes of the primitive forest, was as genial as soil could be; while the remaining woods, which still covered seven-eighths of the country, shut out or softened the cold winds of Winter and Spring, rendering it less difficult, a century ago, to grow fine peaches in southern New-Hamps.h.i.+re than it now is in southern New-York. Devastating insects were precluded by those great, dense woods from diffusing themselves from orchard to orchard as they now do. Snows fell more heavily and lay longer then than now, protecting the roots from heavy frosts, and keeping back buds and blossoms in Spring, to the signal advantage of the husbandman. I estimate that my apple-trees would bear at least one-third more fruit if I could r.e.t.a.r.d their blossoming a fortnight, so as to avoid the cold rains and cutting winds, often succeeded by frosts, which are apt to pay their unwelcome farewell visits just when my trees are in bloom or when the fruit is forming directly thereafter. Hence, I say to every one who shall hereafter set an orchard, Give it the northward slope of a hill if that be possible. Other things being equal, the orchard which blossoms latest will, in a series of years, yield most fruit, and will be most likely to bear when the Apple-crop of your vicinity proves a failure. I do not recommend storing ice to plant or bury under the trees in April, for that involves too much labor and expense; yet I have no doubt that even that has been and sometimes might be done with profit. In the average, however, I judge that it would not pay.

In locating and setting an orchard, the very first consideration is thorough drainage. Nothing short of a destructive fire can be more injurious to an apple-tree than compelling it to stand throughout Winter and Spring in sour, stagnant water. Barrenness, dead branches, and premature general decay, are the natural and righteous consequences of such crying abuse. There are many reasons for choosing sloping or broken ground for an apple-orchard, whereof comparative exemption from frost and natural facility of drainage are the most obvious. A level field, thoroughly undrained to-day, may, through neglect and the mischiefs wrought by burrowing animals, have become little better than a mora.s.s thirty years hence; but an orchard set on a tolerably steep hillside is reasonably secure against wet feet to the close of its natural life.

A gravelly or sandy loam is generally preferred for orchards; yet I have known them to flourish and bear generously on heavy clay. Whoever has a gravelly field will wisely prefer this for Apples, not merely to clay but to sand as well.

And, while many young orchards have doubtless been injured by immoderate applications of rank, green manures, I doubt that any man has ever yet bestowed too much care and expense on the preparation of his ground for fruit-trees. Where ridges or plateaus of fast stone do not forbid, I would say, Turn over the soil to a depth of at least fifteen inches with a large plow and a strong team; then lift and pulverize the subsoil to a depth of not less than nine inches; apply all the Wood-ashes you can get, with one thousand bushels of Marl if you are in a Marl region; if not, use instead from thirty to fifty bushels of quick Lime (oyster-sh.e.l.l if that is to be had) with one hundred loads per acre of Swamp Muck which has lain a year on dry upland, baking in the sun and wind; and now you may think of setting your trees. If your soil was rich Western prairie or Middle-State garden to begin with, you can dispense with all these fertilizers; yet I doubt that there is an acre of Western prairie that would not be improved by the Lime or (perhaps better still) a smaller quant.i.ty of refuse Salt from a packing-house or meat retailing grocery. There are not many farms that would not repay the application of five bushels per acre of refuse Salt at twenty-five cents per bushel.

Your trees once set--(and he who sets twenty trees per day as they should be set, with each root in its natural position, and the earth pressed firmly around its trunk, but no higher than as it originally grew, is a faithful, efficient worker), I would cultivate the land, (for the trees' sake), growing crops successively of Ruta Bagas, Carrots, Beets, and early Potatoes, but no grain whatever, for six or seven years, disturbing the roots of the trees as little as may be, and guarding their trunks from tug, or trace, or whiffle-tree, by three stakes set firmly in the ground about each tree, not so near it as to preclude constant cultivation with the hoe inside as well as outside of the stakes, so as to let no weed mature in the field. Apply from year to year well-rotted compost to the field in quant.i.ty sufficient fully to counterbalance the annual abstraction by your crops. Make it a law inflexible and relentless that no animal shall be let into this orchard to forage, or for any purpose whatever but to draw on manures, to till the soil, and to draw away the crops. Thus until the first blossoms begin to appear on the trees; then lay down to gra.s.s _without_ grain, unless it be a crop of Rye or Oats to be cut and carried off for feed when not more than half grown, leaving the ground to the young gra.s.s.

Let the gra.s.s be mowed for the next two or three years, and thenceforward devote it to the pasturage of Swine, running over it with a scythe once or twice each Summer to clear it of weeds, and taking out the Swine a few days before beginning to gather the Apples, but putting them back again the day after the harvest is completed. Let the Swine be sufficiently numerous and hungry to eat every apple that falls within a few hours after it is dropped, and to insure their rooting out every grub or worm that burrows in the earth beneath the trees, ready to spring up and apply himself to mischief at the very season when you could best excuse his absence. I do not commend this as all, or nearly all, that should be done in resistance to the pest of insect ravage; but I begin with the Hog as the orchardist's readiest, cheapest, most effective ally or servitor in the warfare he is doomed unceasingly to wage against the spoilers of his heritage. I will indicate some further defensive enginery in my next chapter.

XXV