What I know of farming Part 7

MORE ABOUT APPLE-TREES.

In my opinion, Apple-trees, in most orchards, are planted too far apart and allowed to grow taller and spread their limbs more widely than is profitable. I judge that a pruner or picker should be able to reach the topmost twig of any tree with a ten-foot pole, and that no limb should be allowed to extend more than eight feet from the trunk whence it springs. Our Autumnal Equinox occurs before our Apples are generally ripe for harvest, and, finding our best trees bending under a heavy burden of fruit, its fierce gales are apt to make bad work with trees as well as apples. The best tree I had, with several others, was thus ruined by an equinoctial tempest a few years since. Barren trees escape unharmed, while those heavily laden with large fruit are wrenched and twisted into fragments. And, even apart from this peril, a hundred weight of fruit at or near the extremity of limbs which extend ten or twelve feet horizontally from the trunk, tax and strain a tree more than four times that weight growing within four or five feet of the trunk, and on limbs that maintain a semi-erect position. I diffidently suggest, therefore, that no apple-tree be allowed to exceed fifteen feet in height, nor to send a limb more than eight feet from its trunk, and that trees be set (diamond-fas.h.i.+on) twenty-four feet apart each way, instead of thirty-two, as some of mine were. I judge that the larger number of trees (72 per acre) will produce more fruit in the average than the larger but fewer trees grown on squares of two by two rods to each, that they will thrive and bear longer, and that not one will be destroyed or seriously harmed by winds where a dozen would if allowed to grow as high and spread as far as they could.

Every apple-tree should be pruned each year of its life: that is, it should be carefully examined with intent to prune if that be found necessary. It should be pruned with a careful eye to giving it the proper shape, which, from the point where it first forks upward, should be that of a tea-cup, very nearly. I have seen young trees so malformed that they could rarely, if ever, bear fruit enough to render them profitable. And the pruning should be so carefully, judiciously done from the outset that no wood two years old should ever be cut away. With old, malformed, diseased, worm-eaten, decaying trees, the best must be done that can be; but he who, pruning a tree that he set and has. .h.i.therto cared for, finds himself obliged to cut off a limb thicker than his thumb, may justly suspect himself of lacking a mastery of the art of fruit-growing.

Sprouts from the root of an apple-tree remind me of children who habitually play truant or are kept out of school. They not merely can never come to good, but they are a nuisance to the neighborhood and bring reproach on the community.

The apple-grower should never forget that every producer needs to be fed in proportion to his product. If a cow gives twenty quarts of milk per day, she needs more gra.s.s or other food than if she gave but two quarts; and an acre of orchard that yields a hundred barrels of Apples per annum needs something given to the soil to balance the draft made upon it.

Nature offers us good bargains; but she does not trust and will not be cheated. When she offers a bushel of Corn for a bushel of dirty Salt, Sh.e.l.l Lime, or Wood-Ashes, a load of Hay for a load of Muck, we ought not to stint the measure, but pay her demand ungrudgingly.

And now a last word on Insects.

My towns.h.i.+p (Newcastle) is said to have formerly grown more Apples per annum than any other towns.h.i.+p in the United States; its apple-trees are still as numerous as ever, but their product has fallen off deplorably.

I estimate the average yield of the last three years at less than a bushel per annum for each full-grown tree; I think a majority of the trees have not borne a bushel each in all these three years.

Unseasonable frosts, storms, etc., have borne the blame of this barrenness--perhaps justly, if we consider only immediate causes--but the caterpillar and other vermin are, in my view, our more potent, though remoter, afflictions. Not less than four times within the last sixteen years have our trees been covered with nests and worms; and I have seen whole orchards stripped of nearly every leaf till they were as bare (of every thing but caterpillars) in July as they should have been in December. After the scourge had pa.s.sed, the trees reclad themselves with leaves; but they grew old under that visitation faster in one year than they would have done in ten of healthful fruit-bearing; and they are now prematurely gray and moss-covered because of the terrible infliction.

I lay down the general proposition that no man who harbors caterpillars has any moral right to Apples--that each grower should be required to make his choice between them. Slovenly farmers say, "O there are so many of them that I cannot kill half so fast as they multiply." Then I say, cut down and burn up the trees you can best spare, until you have no more left than you can keep clear of worms.

If it were the law of the land that whoever allowed caterpillars to nest and breed in his fruit-trees should pay a heavy fine for each nest, we should soon be comparatively clear of the scourges. In the absence of such salutary regulation, one man fights them with persistent resolution, only to see his orchard again and again invaded and ravaged by the pests hatched and harbored by his careless neighbors. He thus pays and repays the penalty of others' negligence and misdoing until, discouraged and demoralized, he abandons the hopeless struggle, and thenceforth repels the enemy from a few favorite trees around his dwelling, and surrenders his orchard to its fate. Thus bad laws (or no laws) are constantly making bad farmers. The birds that would help us to make head against our insect foes are slaughtered by reckless boys--many of them big enough to know better--and our perils and losses from enemies who would be contemptible if their numbers did not render them formidable increase from year to year. We must change all this; and the first requisite of our situation is a firm alliance of the entire farming and fruit-growing interest defensive as to birds, offensive toward their destroyers, and toward the vermin multiplied and s.h.i.+elded by the ruthless ma.s.sacre of our feathered friends.

Since the foregoing was written we have had (in 1870) the greatest Apple-crop throughout our section that mine eyes did ever yet behold. It was so abundant that I could not sell all my cider-apples to the vinegar-makers, even at fitly cents per barrel. This establishes the continued capacity of our region to bear Apples, and should invite to the planting of new orchards and the fertilization and renovation of old ones.

XXVI.

HAY AND HAY-MAKING

The Gra.s.s-crop of this, as of many, if not most, other countries, is undoubtedly the most important of its annual products; requiring by far the largest area of its soil, and furnis.h.i.+ng the princ.i.p.al food of its Cattle, and thus contributing essentially to the subsistence of its working animals and to the production of those Meats which form a large and constantly increasing proportion of the food of every civilized people. But I propose to speak in this essay of that proportion of the Gra.s.s-crop--say 25 to 35 per cent. of the whole--which is cut, cured and housed (or stacked) for Hay, and which is mainly fed out to animals in Winter and Spring, when frost and snow have divested the earth of herbage or rendered it inaccessible.

The Seventh Census (1850) returned the Hay-crop of the preceding year at 13,838,642 tuns, which the Eighth Census increased to 19,129,128 tuns as the product of 1859. Confident that most farmers underestimate their Hay-crops, and that hundreds of thousands who do not consider themselves farmers, but who own or rent little homesteads of two to ten acres each, keeping thereon a cow or two and often a horse, fail to make returns of the two to five tuns of Hay they annually produce, considering them too trivial, I estimate the actual Hay-crop of all our States and Territories for the current year at 40,000,000 tuns, or about a tun to each inhabitant, although I do not expect the new Census to place it much, if any, above 25,000,000 tuns. The estimated average value of this crop is $10 (gold) per tun, making its aggregate value, at my estimate of its amount, $400,000,000--and the quant.i.ty is constantly and rapidly increasing.

That quant.i.ty should be larger from the area devoted to meadows, and the quality a great deal better. I estimate that 30,000,000 acres are annually mowed to obtain these 40,000,000 tuns of Hay, giving an average yield of 1-1/3 tuns per acre, while the average should certainly not fall below two tuns per acre. My upland has a gravelly, rocky soil, not natural to gra.s.s, and had been pastured to death for at least a century before I bought it; yet it has yielded me an average of not less than 2-1/2 tuns to the acre for the last sixteen years, and will not yield less while I am allowed to farm it. My lowland (bog when I bought it) is bound henceforth to yield more; but, while imperfectly or not at all drained, it was of course a poor reliance--yielding bounteously in spots, in others, little or nothing.

In nothing else is s.h.i.+ftless, slovenly farming so apt to betray itself as in the culture of Gra.s.s and the management of gra.s.s lands. Pastures overgrown with bushes and chequered by quaking, miry bogs; meadows foul with every weed, from white daisy up to the rankest brakes, with hill-sides that may once have been productive, but from which crop after crop has been taken and nothing returned to them, until their yield has shrunk to half or three-fourths of a tun of poor hay, these are the average indications of a farm nearly run out by the poorest sort of farming. Such farms were common in the New England of my boyhood; I trust they are less so to-day; yet I seldom travel ten miles in any region north or east of the Delaware without seeing one or more of them.

Fifty years ago, I judge that the greater part of the hay made in New-England was cut from sour, boggy land, that was devoted to gra.s.s simply because nothing else could be done with it. I have helped to carry the crop off on poles from considerable tracts on which oxen could not venture without miring. It were superfluous to add that no well-bred animal would eat such stuff, unless the choice were between it and absolute starvation. In many cases, a very little work done in opening the rudest surface-drains would have transformed these bogs into decent meadows, and the product, by the help of plowing or seeding, into unexceptionable hay.

There are not many farmers, apart from our wise and skillful dairymen, who use half enough gra.s.s-seed; men otherwise thrifty often fail in this respect. If half our ordinary farmers would thoroughly seed down a full third of the area they usually cultivate, and devote to the residue the time and efforts they now give to the whole, they would grow more grain and vegetables, while the additional gra.s.s would be so much clear again.

We sow almost exclusively Timothy and Clover, when there are at least 20 different gra.s.ses required by our great diversity of soils, and of these three or four might often be sown together with profit; especially in seeding down fields intended for pasture, we might advantageously use a greater variety and abundance of seed. I believe that there are gra.s.ses not yet adopted and hardly recognized by the great body of our farmers--the buffalo-gra.s.s of the prairies for one--that will yet be grown and prized over a great part of our country.

As for Hay-Making, my conviction is strong that our gra.s.s is cut in the average from two to three weeks too late, and that not only is our hay greatly damaged thereby, but our meadows needlessly impoverished and exhausted. The formation and perfection of seed always draw heavily upon the soil. A crop of gra.s.s cut when the earliest blossoms begin to drop--which, in my judgment, is the only right time--will not impoverish the soil half so much as will the same crop cut three weeks later; while the roots of the earlier cut gra.s.s will retain their vitality at least thrice as long as though half the seed had ripened before the crop was harvested. Gra.s.s that was fully ripe when cut has lost at least half its nutriment, which no chemistry can ever restore. Hay alone is dry fodder for a long Winter, especially for young stock; but hay cut after it was dead ripe, is proper nutriment for no animal whatever--not even for old horses, who are popularly supposed to like and thrive upon it.

The fact that our farmers are too generally short-handed throughout the season of the Summer harvest, while it seems to explain the error I combat, renders it none the less disastrous and deplorable. I estimate the depreciation in the value of our hay-crop, by reason of late cutting, as not less than one-fifth; and, when we consider that a full half of our farmers turn out their cattle to ravage and poach up their fields in quest of fodder a full month earlier than they should, because their hay is nearly or quite exhausted, the consequences of this error are seen to diffuse themselves over the whole economy of the farm.

From the hour in which gra.s.s falls under the Mower, it ought to be kept in motion until laid at rest in the stack or the barn; keep stirring it with the tedder until it is ready to be raked into light winrows, and turn these over and over until they will answer to go upon the cart. In any bright, hot day, the gra.s.s mowed in the morning should be stacked before the dew falls at night; while, if any is mowed after noon, it should be c.o.c.ked and capped by sunset, even though it be necessary to open it out the next fair morning.

I have a dream of hay-making, especially with regard to clover, without allowing it to be scalded by fierce suns.h.i.+ne. In my dream, the gra.s.s is raked and loaded nearly as fast as cut, drawn to the barn-yard, and there pitched upon an endless ap.r.o.n, on which it is carried slowly through a drying-house, heated to some 200 Fahrenheit by steam or by charcoal in a furnace below, somewhat after the manner of a hop-kiln.

While pa.s.sing slowly through this heated atmosphere, the gra.s.s is continually forked up and shaken so as to expose every lock of it to the drying heat, until it pa.s.ses off thereby deprived of its moisture and is precipitated into a mow or upon a stack-bottom at the opposite side; load after load being pitched upon the ap.r.o.n continuously, and the drying process going steadily forward by night as well as by day, and without regard to the weather outside. I do not a.s.sert that this vision will ever be realized; but I have known dreams as wild as this transformed by time and thought into beneficent realities.

I ask no one to share my dreams or sympathise with their drift and purpose. I only insist that Hay-making, as it is managed all around me, is ruder in its processes and more uncertain in its results than it should or need be. We cut our gra.s.s rapidly and well; we gather and house it with tolerable efficiency; but we cure much of it imperfectly and wastefully. The fact that most of it is over-ripe when cut aggravates the pernicious effects of its subsequent exposure to dew and rain; and the net result is damaged fodder which is at once unpalatable and innutritious.

XXVII.

PEACHES--PEARS--CHERRIES--GRAPES.

Our harsh, capricious climate north of the lat.i.tudes of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis--so much severer than that of corresponding lat.i.tudes in Europe--is unfavorable, or at least very trying, to all the more delicate and luscious Fruits, berries excepted. Except on our Pacific coast, of which the Winter temperature is at least ten degrees milder than that of the Atlantic, the finer Peaches and Grapes are grown with difficulty north of the fortieth degree of lat.i.tude, save in a few specially favored localities, whereof the southern sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie is most noted, though part of that of Lake Ontario and of the west coast of Lake Michigan are likewise well adapted to the Peach.

It is not the mere fact that the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer sometimes ranges below zero, and the earth is deeply frozen, but the suddenness wherewith such rigor succeeds and is succeeded by a temperature above the freezing point, that proves so inhospitable to the most valued Tree-Fruits. And, as the dense forests which formerly clothed the Alleghenies and the Atlantic slope, are year by year swept away, the severity of our "cold snaps," and the celerity with which they appear and disappear, are constantly aggravated. A change of 60, or from 50 above to 10 below zero, between morning and the following midnight, soon followed by an equally rapid return to an average November temperature, often proves fatal even to hardy forest-trees. I have had the Red Cedar in my woods killed by scores during an open, capricious Winter; and my observation indicates the warmest spots in a forest as those where trees are most likely to be thus destroyed. After an Arctic night, in which they are frozen solid, a bright sun sends its rays into the warmest nooks, whence the wind is excluded, and wholly or partially thaws out the smaller trees; which are suddenly frozen solid again so soon as the suns.h.i.+ne is withdrawn; and this partly explains to my mind the fact that peach-buds are often killed in lower and level portions of an orchard, while they retain their vitality on the hill-side and at its crest, not 80 rods distant from those destroyed.

The fact that the colder air descends into and remains in the valleys of a rolling district contributes also to the correct explanation of a phenomenon which has puzzled some observers.

Unless in a favored locality, it seems to the unadvisable for a farmer who expects to thrive mainly by the production of Grain and Cattle, to attempt the growing of the finer Fruits, except for the use of his own family. In a majority of cases, a multiplicity of cares and labors precludes his giving to his Peaches and Grapes, his Plums and Quinces, the seasonable and persistent attention which they absolutely require.

Quite commonly, a farmer visits a grand nursery, sees with admiration its trees and vines loaded with the most luscious Fruits, and rashly infers that he has only to buy a good stock of like Trees and Vines to insure himself an abundance of delicious fruit. So he buys and sets; but with no such preparation of the soil, and no such care to keep it mellow and free from weeds, or to baffle and destroy predatory insects, as the nurseryman employs. Hence the utter disappointment of his hopes; borers, slugs, caterpillars, and every known or unknown species of insect enemies, prey upon his neglected favorites. At intervals, some domestic animal or animals get among them, and break down a dozen in an hour. So, the far greater number come to grief, without having had one fair chance to show what they could do, and the farmer jumps to the conclusion that the nurseryman was a swindler, and the trees he sells scarcely related to those whose abundant and excellent fruits tempted him to buy. I counsel every farmer to consider thoughtfully the treatment absolutely required for the production of the finer Fruits before he allows a nurseryman to make a bill against him, and not expect to grow d.u.c.h.esse Pears as easily as Blackberries, or Ionas and Catawbas as readily as he does Fox-grapes on the willows which overhang his brook; for if he does he will surely be disappointed.

Some of our hardier and coa.r.s.er Grapes--the Concord preeminent among them--are grown with considerable facility over a wide extent of our country; and many farmers, having planted them in congenial soil, and tended them well throughout their infancy, are rewarded by a bounteous product for two or three years. Believing their success a.s.sured, they imagine that their vines may henceforth be neglected, and in the course of two or three more years they are often utterly ruined. I know that there are wild grapes of some value, in the absence of better, which thrive and bear without attention; but I do not believe that any grape which will sell in a market where good fruit was ever seen, can be grown north of Philadelphia but by constant care and labor, or at a cost of less than five cents per pound, under the most judicious and skillful treatment. In California, and I presume in most of our States south of the Potomac and Ohio, choice grapes may be grown more abundantly and more cheaply. Yet I think the localities are few and far between in which a tun of good grapes can be grown as cheaply as a tun of wheat, under the most judicious cultivation in either case.

I do not mean to discourage grape-growing; on the contrary, I would have every farmer, even so far north as Vermont and Wisconsin, experiment cautiously with a dozen of the most promising varieties, including always the more hardy, in the hope of finding some one or more adapted to his soil, and capable of enduring his climate. Even in France, the land of the vine, one farm will produce a grape which the very next will not: no man can satisfactorily say why. The farmer, who has tried half a dozen grapes and failed with all, should not be deterred from further experiments, for the very next may prove a success. I would only say, Be moderate in your expectations and careful in your experiments; and never risk even $100 on a vineyard, till you have ascertained, at a cost of $5 or under, whether the species you are testing will thrive and bear on your soil.

In my own case, my upland mainly sloping to the west, with a hill rising directly south of it, I have had no luck with Grapes, and I have wasted little time or means upon them. I have done enough to show that they can be grown, even in such a locality, but not to profit or satisfaction.

I would advise the farmer who proposes to grow Pear, Peaches, and Quinces, for home use only or mainly, to select a piece of dry, gravelly or sandy loam, underdrain it thoroughly, plow or trench it very deeply, and fertilize it generously, in good part with ashes and with leaf-mold from his woods. Locate the pig-pen on one side of it, fence it strongly, and let the pigs have the run of it for a good portion of each year. In this plat or yard, plant half a dozen Cherry and as many Pear trees of choice varieties, the Bartlett foremost among them; keep clear of all dwarfs, and let your choicest trees have a chance to run under the pig-pen if they will. Plant here also, if your climate does not forbid, a dozen well-chosen Peach-trees, and two each year thereafter to replace those that will soon be dying out; and give half a dozen Quinces moist and rich locations by the side of your fences; surrounding each tree with stakes or pickets that will preclude too great familiarity on the part of the swine, and will not prevent a sharp scrutiny for borers in their season. Do not forget that a fruit-tree is like a cow tied to an immovable stake, from which you cannot continue to draw a pail of milk per day unless you carry her a liberal supply of food; and every Fall cart in half a dozen loads of muck from some convenient swamp or pond for your pigs to turn over: Should they leave any weeds, cut them with a scythe as often as they seem to need it; never allowing one to ripen seed. There may be easier and surer ways to obtain choice fruits; but this one commends itself to my judgment as not surpa.s.sed by any other. I think few have grown fruits to profit but those who make this a specialty; and I feel that disappointment in fruit-culture is by no means near the end. You _can_ grow Plums, or Grapes, or Peaches, outside of the climate most congenial to them, but this is a work wherein success is likely to cost more than its worth. Try it first on a small scale, if you will try it; and be sure you do it thoroughly.

XXVIII.

GRAIN-GROWING--EAST AND WEST.

I disclaim all pretensions to ability to teach Western farmers how to grow Indian Corn abundantly and profitably, while I cheerfully admit that they have taught _me_ somewhat thoroughly worth knowing. In my boyhood, I hoed Corn diligently for weeks at a time, drawing the earth from between the rows up about the stalks to a depth of three or four inches; thus forming hills which the West has since taught me to be of no use, but rather a detriment, embarra.s.sing the efforts of the growing, hungry plants to throw out their roots extensively in every direction, and subjecting them to needless injury from drouth. I am thoroughly convinced that Corn, properly planted, will, like Wheat and all other grains, root itself just deep enough in the ground, and that to keep down all weeds and leave the surface of the corn-field open, mellow and perfectly flat, is the best as well as the cheapest way to cultivate Corn. And I do not believe that so much human food, with so little labor, is produced elsewhere on earth as in the s.p.a.cious fields of Wheat and Corn in our grand Mississippi valley.

And yet I have seen in that valley many ample stretches covered with Corn, whereof the tillage seemed susceptible of improvement. Riding between these great corn-fields in October, after everything standing thereon had been killed by frost, it seemed to my observation that, while the corn-crop was fair, the weed-crop was far more luxuriant; so that, if everything had been cut clean from the ground, and the corn and the weeds placed in opposite scales, the latter would have weighed down the former. I cannot doubt that the cultivation, or lack of cultivation, which produces or permits such results, is not merely slovenly, but unthrifty.

The West is for the present, as for a generation she has been, the granary of the East. In my judgment, she will not long be content to remain so. Fifty years ago, the Genesee valley supplied most of the wheat and flour imported into New-England; ten years later, Northern Ohio was our princ.i.p.al resource; ten years later still, Michigan, Indiana, northern Illinois, and eastern Wisconsin, had been added to our grain-growing territory. Another decade, and our flour manufacturers had crossed the Mississippi, laying Iowa and Minnesota under liberal contributions, while western New-York had ceased to grow even her own breadstuffs, and Ohio to produce one bushel more than she needed for home consumption. Can we doubt that this steady recession of our Egypt, our Hungary, is destined to continue? Twenty-three years ago, when I first rode out from the then rising village of Chicago to see the Illinois prairies, nearly every wagon I met was loaded with wheat, going into Chicago, to be sold for about fifty cents per bushel, and the proceeds loaded back in the form of lumber, groceries, and almost everything else, grain excepted, needed by the pioneers, then dotting, thinly and irregularly, that whole region with their cabins. Now, I presume the district I then traversed produces hardly more grain than it consumes; taking Illinois altogether, I doubt that she will grow her own breadstuffs after 1880; not that she will be unable to produce a large surplus, but that her farmers will have decided that they can use their lands otherwise to greater advantage. Iowa and Minnesota will continue to export grain for perhaps twenty years longer; but even their time will come for saying, "New-York and New-England (not to speak of _Old_ England) are too far away to furnish profitable markets for such bulky products; the cost of transportation absorbs the larger part of the cargo. We must export instead Wool, Meat, Lard, b.u.t.ter, Cheese, Hops, and various Manufactures, whereof the freight will range from 2 up to not more than 25 per cent. of the value." They thus save their soil from the tremendous exaction made by taking grain-crop after grain-crop persistently, which long ago exhausted most of New-England and eastern New-York of wheat-forming material, and has since wrought the same deplorable result in our rich Genesee valley; while eastern Pennsylvania, though settled nearly two centuries ago, having pursued a more rational and provident system of husbandry, grows excellent wheat-crops to this day.