What I know of farming Part 9

x.x.xI

THE FARMER'S CALLING.

If any one fancies that he ever heard _me_ flattering farmers as a cla.s.s, or saying anything which implied that they were more virtuous, upright, unselfish, or deserving, than other people, I am sure he must have misunderstood or that he now misrecollects me. I do not even join in the cant, which speaks of farmers as supporting everybody else--of farming as the only indispensable vocation. You may say if you will that mankind could not subsist if there were no tillers of the soil; but the same is true of house-builders, and of some other cla.s.ses. A thoroughly good farmer is a useful, valuable citizen: so is a good merchant, doctor, or lawyer. It is not essential to the true n.o.bility and genuine worth of the farmer's calling that any other should be a.s.sailed or disparaged.

Still, if one of my three sons had been spared to attain manhood, I should have advised him to try to make himself a good farmer; and this without any romantic or poetic notions of Agriculture as a pursuit. I know well, from personal though youthful experience, that the farmer's life is one of labor, anxiety, and care; that hail, and flood, and hurricane, and untimely frosts, over which he can exert no control, will often destroy in an hour the net results of months of his persistent, well-directed toil; that disease will sometimes sweep away his animals, in spite of the most judicious treatment, the most thoughtful providence, on his part; and that insects, blight, and rust, will often blast his well-grounded hopes of a generous harvest, when they seem on the very point of realization. I know that he is necessarily exposed, more than most other men, to the caprices and inclemencies of weather and climate; and that, if he begins responsible life without other means than those he finds in his own clear head and strong arms, with those of his helpmeet, he must expect to struggle through years of poverty, frugality, and resolute, persistent, industry, before he can reasonably hope to attain a position of independence, comfort, and comparative leisure. I know that much of his work is rugged, and some of it absolutely repulsive; I know that he will seem, even with unbroken good fortune, to be making money much more slowly than his neighbor, the merchant, the broker, or eloquent lawyer, who fills the general eye while he prospers, and, when he fails, sinks out of sight and is soon forgotten; and yet, I should have advised my sons to choose farming as their vocation, for these among other reasons:

I. There is no other business in which success is so nearly certain as in this. Of one hundred men who embark in trade, a careful observer reports that ninety-five fail; and, while I think this proportion too large, I am sure that a large majority do, and must fail, because compet.i.tion is so eager and traffic so enormously overdone. If ten men endeavor to support their families by merchandise in a towns.h.i.+p which affords adequate business for but three, it is certain that a majority must fail; no matter how judicious their management or how frugal their living. But you may double the number of farmers in any agricultural county I ever traversed, without necessarily dooming one to failure, or even abridging his gains. If half the traders and professional men in this country were to betake themselves to farming to-morrow, they would not render that pursuit one whit less profitable, while they would largely increase the comfort and wealth of the entire community; and, while a good merchant, lawyer, or doctor, may be starved out of any towns.h.i.+p, simply because the work he could do well is already confided to others, I never yet heard of a temperate, industrious, intelligent, frugal, and energetic farmer who failed to make a living, or who, unless prostrated by disease or disabled by casualty, was precluded from securing a modest independence before age and decrepitude divested him of the ability to labor.

II. I regard farming as that vocation which conduces most directly and palpably to a reverence for Honesty and Truth. The young lawyer is often constrained, or at least tempted, by his necessities, to do the dirty professional work of a rascal intent on cheating his neighbor out of his righteous dues. The young doctor may be likewise incited to resort to a quackery he despises in order to secure instant bread; the unknown author is often impelled to write what will sell rather than what the public ought to buy; but the young farmer, acting _as_ a farmer, must realize that his success depends upon his absolute verity and integrity.

He deals directly with Nature, which never was and never will be cheated. He has no temptation to sow beach sand for plaster, dock-seed for clover, or stoop to any trick or juggle whatever. "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap," while true, in the long run, of all men, is instantly and palpably true as to him. When he, having grown his crop, shall attempt to sell it--in other words, when he ceases to be a farmer and becomes a trader--he may possibly be tempted into one of the many devious ways of rascality; but, so long as he is acting simply as a farmer, he can hardly be lured from the broad, straight highway of integrity and righteousness.

III. The farmer's calling seems to me that most conducive to thorough manliness of character. n.o.body expects him to cringe, or smirk, or curry favor, is order to sell his produce. No merchant refuses to buy it because his politics are detested or his religious opinions heterodox.

He may be a Mormon, a Rebel, a Millerite, or a Communist, yet his Grain or his Pork will sell for exactly what it is worth--not a fraction less or more than the price commanded by the kindred product of like quality and intrinsic value of his neighbor, whose opinions on all points are faultlessly orthodox and popular. On the other hand, the merchant, the lawyer, the doctor, especially if young and still struggling dubiously for a position, are continually tempted to sacrifice or suppress their profoundest convictions in deference to the vehement and often irrational prepossessions of the community, whose favor is to them the breath of life. "She will find that _that_ won't go down here," was the comment of an old woman on a Mississippi steamboat, when told that the plain, deaf stranger, who seemed the focus of general interest, was Miss Martineau, the celebrated Unitarian; and in so saying she gave expression to a feeling which pervades and governs many if not most communities. I doubt whether the social intolerance of adverse opinions is more vehement anywhere else than throughout the larger portion of our own country. I have repeatedly been stung by the receipt of letters gravely informing me that my course and views on a current topic were adverse to public opinion: the writers evidently a.s.suming, as a matter of course, that I was a mere jumping-jack, who only needed to know what other people thought to insure my instant and abject conformity to their prejudices. Very often, in other days, I was favored with letters from indignant subscribers, who, dissenting from my views on some question, took this method of informing me that they should no longer take my journal--a superfluous trouble, which could only have meant dictation or insult, since they had only to refrain from renewing their subscriptions, and their _Tribune_ would stop coming, whenever they should have received what we owed them; and it would in no case stop till then. That a journalist was in any sense a public teacher--that he necessarily had convictions, and was not likely to suppress them because they were not shared by others--in short, that his calling was other and higher than that of a waiter at a restaurant, expected to furnish whatever was called for, so long as the pay was forthcoming--these ex-subscribers had evidently not for one moment suspected. That such persons have little or no capacity to insult, is very true; and yet, a man is somewhat degraded in his own regard by learning that his vocation is held in such low esteem by others. The true farmer is proudly aware that it is quite otherwise with _his_ pursuit--that no one expects him to swallow any creed, support any party, or defer to any prejudice, as a condition precedent to the sale of his products. Hence, I feel that it is easier and more natural in his pursuit than in any other for a man to work for a living, and aspire to success and consideration, without sacrificing self-respect, compromising integrity, or ceasing to be essentially and thoroughly a gentleman.

x.x.xII.

A LESSON OF TO-DAY.

The current season is quite commonly characterized as the coldest, the hottest, the wettest, or the dryest, that was ever known. Men undoubtingly a.s.sert that they never knew a Summer so hot, or a Winter so cold, when in fact several such have occurred within the cycle of their experience. Hardly anything else is so easily or so speedily forgotten as extremes of temperature or inclemencies of weather, after they have pa.s.sed away. I presume there have been six to ten Summers, since the beginning of this century, as hot and as dry as that of 1870; yet the fact remains that, throughout the Eastern section of our country, to say nothing of the rest, the heat and drouth of the current Summer have been quite remarkable. For two months past, counting from the 10th of June, nearly every day has been a hot one, with blazing suns.h.i.+ne throughout, rarely interrupted and slightly modified by infrequent and inadequate showers; and, as a general result of this tropical fervor, the earth is parched and baked from ten to forty inches from the surface; streams and ponds are dried up or shrunk to their lowest dimensions; forests are often ravaged and desolated by fires; our pastures are dry and brown; while crops of Hay, Oats, Potatoes, Buckwheat, etc., either have proved, or certainly must prove, a disappointment to the hopes of the growers. I estimate the average product for 1870 of the farms of New-England, eastern New-York and New-Jersey, as not more than two-thirds of a full harvest; while the earth remains at this moment so baked and incrusted that several days' rain is needed to fit it for Fall plowing and the sowing of Winter grain.

Such seasons must not be regarded as extraordinary. The Summer of 1854 was nearly or quite as dry as this; and I presume one or two such have intervened since that time. The heat of 1870 is remarkable for its persistence rather than its intensity. Every Summer has its heated term; that of 1870 has been longer in this region than any before it that I can remember, though doubtless the recollection of others might supply its perfect counterpart. Nearly every Summer has its drouth; the present is peculiar rather for its early commencement than its extreme duration.

As our country is more and more denuded of its primitive forests, drouths longer and severer even than this may naturally be expected.

What our farmers have to do is, to prepare for and provide against them.

Such seasons are disastrous to those only who farm as if none such were to be expected. Those who plow deeply, fertilize bountifully, and cultivate thoroughly, need not fear them, as fields of Hay and Oats already harvested, and of Corn and Potatoes now hastening to maturity in almost every towns.h.i.+p of the suffering region, abundantly attest. I doubt that more luxuriant crops of Corn, Tobacco, or Onions, were ever grown on the bottom-lands of the Connecticut Valley than may be seen there to-day, with failures all about them, and under drouth so fierce that Blackberries and Whortleberries are withered when half grown; even the bushes in some cases peris.h.i.+ng for lack of moisture.

My last trip took me along the banks of the upper Hudson, through the rugged county of Warren, N. Y. The narrow, irregular intervale of this mountain stream appear to have been cultivated for the last fifty or sixty years by a hardy race, who look mainly to the timber of the wild region north of them for a subsistence. In such a district, whatever ministers to the sustenance of man or beast bears a high price; and Corn, Rye, Oats, Buckwheat, Apples and Gra.s.s, are grown wherever the soil is not too rugged or too sterile for culture. I presume half a crop of Hay has been secured throughout this valley, with perhaps a full crop of Rye where Rye was sown; but of Oats the yield will be considerably less than that, while of Corn and Buckwheat it will range from ten bushels per acre down to nothing. When I, last Summer, pa.s.sed through s.p.a.cious field after field of Corn in Virginia that would not mature a single ear, I spoke of it as something unknown at the North; but there are fields planted to Corn, in the upper valley of the Hudson, that will not produce a single sound ear, nor one bushel even of the shortest and poorest "nubbins;" and alongside of these are acres of Buckwheat, blossoming at an average hight of four inches, and not likely to get two inches higher.

Now, if this land were so poor or so rocky that good crops could not be extracted from it, far be it from me to disparage the agriculture whereof the results are so meagre; but I am speaking of a river intervale of considerable natural fertility, from which deep and thorough cultivation would insure ample harvests, subject only to the contingency of early frosts in Autumn. Were these lands fertilized and cultivated as they might be, and as mine are, they would yield 30 bushels of Rye or 60 of Indian Corn per acre, and would richly repay the husbandman's outlay and efforts. Now, I venture to say that all the grain I saw growing in the valley of the Hudson through Warren County will not return the farmer 75 cents for each day's labor expended thereon, allowing nothing for the use of the land.

"But how shall we obtain fertilizers?" I am often asked. "We are poor; we can afford to keep but few cattle; Guano, Phosphate, Bones, Lime, etc., are beyond our means. Even if we could pay for them, the cost of transportation to our out-of-the-way nooks would be heavy. We cannot deal with our lands so bountifully as you do, but must be content to do as we can."

To all which I make answer: No man ever lacked fertilizers who kept his eyes wide open and devoted two months of each Fall and Winter to collecting and preparing them. Wherever swamp muck may be had, wherever bogs exist or flags or rushes grow, there are materials which, carted into the barn-yard in Autumn or Winter, may be drawn out fertilizers in season for Corn-planting next Spring. Wherever a pond or slough dries up in Summer or Autumn, there is material that may be profitably transformed into next year's gra.s.s or grain. In the absence of all these--and they are seldom very far from one who knows how to look for them--rank weeds of all sorts, if cut while green and tender, or forest leaves, gathered in the Fall, used for litter in the stable, and thence thrown into the yard, will serve an excellent purpose. Nay, more: I am confident that the farmer who lacks these, but has access to a bed or bank of simple clay, may cart 200 loads of it in November into an ordinary farm-yard, have it trampled into and mixed with his manure in the Winter, and draw it out in the Spring, excellently fitted to enrich his sandy or gravelly land, and insure him, in connection with deep and thorough culture, a generous yield of Corn, even in such a season as the present. Dr. George B. Loring, the most successful farmer in Ma.s.sachusetts, uses naked beach sand in abundance as litter for his 80 cows, mixes it with his manure throughout the Winter, and draws out the compound to fertilize his clay meadows in the Spring, with most satisfactory results. Depend on it, no man need lack fertilizers who begins in season and is willing to work for them.

And yet once more:

From the hills which inclose this valley of the upper Hudson (and from ever so many other valleys as well), brooks and rivulets, copious in Spring, when their waters are surcharged and discolored by the richest juices of the uplands, pour down in frequent cascades and dance across the intervale to be lost in the river. There is scarcely an acre of that intervale which might not be irrigated from these streams at a very moderate outlay of work at the season when work is least pressing: the water thus held back by dams being allowed to flow thence gently and equably across the intervale, conveying not moisture only, but fertility also, to every plant growing thereon. I am confident that I pa.s.sed many places on the upper Hudson, as well as on the Connecticut and Ammonoosuc, where 100 faithful days' work providing for irrigation would have given 100 bushels of grain, or 10 tuns of hay additional this year, and as much per annum henceforth, at a cost of not more than two days'

work in each year hereafter.

Farmers, but above all farmers' sons, think of these things.

x.x.xIII.

INTELLECT IN AGRICULTURE.

If a man whose capital consists of the clothes on his back, $5 in his pocket, and an ax over his right shoulder, undertakes to hew for himself a farm out of the primitive forest, he must of course devote some years to rugged manual labor, or he will fail of success. It is indeed possible that he should find others, even on the rude outposts of civilization, who will hire them to teach school, or serve as county clerk, or survey lands, or do something else of like nature: thus enabling him to do his chopping trees, and rolling logs, and breaking up his stumpy acres, by proxy; but the fair presumption is that he will have to chop and log, and burn off and fence, and break up, by the use of his own proper muscle; and he must be energetic and frugal, as well as fortunate, if he gets a comfortable house over his head, with forty arable acres about him, at the end of fifteen years' hard work. If he has brains, and has been well educated, he may possibly shorten this ordeal to ten years; but, should he begin by fancying hard work beneath him, or his abilities too great to be squandered in bushwhacking, he is very likely to come out at the little end of the horn, and, straggling back to some populous settlement, more needy and seedy than when he set forth to wrest a farm from the wilderness, declare the pioneer's life one of such dreary, hopeless privation that no one who can read or cypher ought ever to attempt it.

A poor man, who undertakes to live by his wits on a farm that he has bought on credit, is not likely to achieve a brilliant success; but the farmer whose hand and brain work in concert will never find nor fancy his intellect or his education too good for his calling. He may very often discover that he wasted months of his school-days on what was ill-adapted to his needs, and of little use in fighting the actual battle of life; but he will at the same time have ample reason to lament the meagerness and the deficiency of his knowledge.

I hold our average Common Schools defective, in that they fail to teach Geology and Chemistry, which in my view are the natural bases of a sound, practical knowledge of things--knowledge which the farmer, of all men, can least afford to miss. However it may be with others, he vitally needs to understand the character and const.i.tution of the soil he must cultivate, the elements of which it is composed, and the laws which govern their relations to each other. Instruct him in the higher mathematics if you will, in logic, in meteorology, in ever so many languages; but not till he shall have been thoroughly grounded in the sciences which unlock for him the arcana of Nature; for these are intimately related to all he must do, and devise, and direct, throughout the whole course of his active career. Whatever he may learn or dispense with, a knowledge of these sciences is among the most urgent of his life-long needs.

Hence, I would suggest that a simple, lucid, lively, accurate digest of the leading principles and facts in Geology and Chemistry, and their application to the practical management of a farm, ought to const.i.tute the Reader of the highest cla.s.s in every Common School, especially in rural districts. Leave out details and recipes, with directions when to plant or sow, etc.; for these must vary with climates, circ.u.mstances, and the progress of knowledge; but let the body and bones, so to speak, of a primary agricultural education be taught in every school, in such terms and with such clearness as to commend them to the understanding of every pupil. I never yet visited a school in which something was not taught which might be omitted or postponed in favor of this.

Out of school and after school, let the young farmer delight in the literature ill.u.s.trative of his calling--I mean the very best of it. Let him have few agricultural books; but let these treat of principles and laws rather than of methods and applications. Let him learn from these how to ascertain by experiment what are the actual and pressing needs of his soil, and he will readily determine by reflection and inquiry how those needs may be most readily and cheaply satisfied.

All the books in the world never of themselves made one good farmer; but, on the other hand, no man in this age can be a thoroughly good farmer without the knowledge which is more easily and rapidly acquired from books than otherwise. Books are no subst.i.tute for open-eyed observation and practical experience; but they enable one familiar with their contents to observe with an accuracy, and experiment with an intelligence, that are unattainable without them. The very farmer who tells you that he never opened a book which treats of Agriculture, and never wants to see one, will ask his neighbor how to grow or cure tobacco, or hops, or sorgho, or any crop with which he is yet unacquainted, when the chances are a hundred to one that this particular neighbor cannot advise him so well as the volume which embodies the experience of a thousand cultivators of this very plant instead of barely one. A good book treating practically of Agriculture, or of some department therein, is simply a compendium of the experience of past ages combined with such knowledge as the present generation have been enabled to add thereto. It may be faulty or defective on some points; it is not to be blindly confided in, nor slavishly followed--it is to be mastered, discussed, criticised, and followed so far as its teachings coincide with the dictates of science, experience, and common sense. Its true office is suggestion; the good farmer will lean upon and trust it as an oracle only where his own proper knowledge proves entirely deficient.

By-and-by, it will be generally realized that few men live or have lived who cannot find scope and profitable employment for all their intellect on a two-hundred-acre farm. And then the farmer will select the brightest of his sons to follow him in the management and cultivation of the paternal acres, leaving those of inferior ability to seek fortune in pursuits for which a limited and special capacity will serve, if not suffice. And then we shall have an Agriculture worthy of our country and the age.

Meantime, let us make the most of what we have, by diffusing, studying, discussing, criticizing, Liebig's Agricultural Chemistry, Dana's Muck Manual, Waring's Elements, and the books that each treat more especially of some department of the farmer's art, and so making ourselves familiar, first, with the principles, then with the methods, of scientific, efficient, successful husbandry. Let us, who love it, treat Agriculture as the elevated, enn.o.bling pursuit it might and should be, and thus exalt it in the estimation of the entire community.

We may, at all events, be sure of this: Just so fast and so far as farming is rendered an intellectual pursuit, it will attract and retain the strongest minds, the best abilities, of the human race. It has been widely shunned and escaped from, mainly because it has seemed a calling in which only inferior capacities were required or would be rewarded.

Let this error give place to the truth, and Agriculture will win votaries from among the brightest intellects of the race.

x.x.xIV.

SHEEP AND WOOL-GROWING.

Ours is eminently an agricultural country. We produce most of our Food, and export much more than we import of both Grain and Meat. Of Cotton, we grow some Three Millions of bales annually, whereof we export fully two-thirds. But of this we reimport a portion in the shape of Fabrics and of Thread; and yet, while we are largely clothed in Woolens, and extensive sections of our country are admirably adapted to the rearing of Sheep and the production of Wool, we not only import a considerable share of the Woolens in which we are clad, but we also import a considerable proportion of the Wool wherefrom we manufacture the Woolens fabricated on our own soil. In other words: while we are a nation of farmers and herdsmen, we fail to grow so much Wool as is needed to s.h.i.+eld us against the caprices and inclemencies of our diverse but generally fitful climates.

There is a seeming excuse for this in the fact that extensive regions in South America and Australia, are devoted to Sheep-growing where animals are neither housed nor herded, and where they are exclusively fed, at all seasons, on those native gra.s.ses which are the spontaneous products of the soil. I presume Wool is in those regions produced cheaper than it can permanently be on any considerable area of our own soil; and yet I believe that the United States should, and profitably might, grow as much Wool as is needed for their own large annual consumption. Here are my reasons:

I. When the predominant interest of British Manufactures constrained the entire repeal of the duties on imported Wool, whereby Sheep-growing had previously been protected, the farmers apprehended that they must abandon that department of their industry; but the event proved this calculation a mistake. They grow more Sheep and at better profit to-day than they did when their Wool brought a higher price under the influence of Protective duties, because the largely increased price of their Mutton more than makes up to them their loss by the reduced prices of their Wool. So, while I do not expect that American Wool will ever again command such high prices as it has done at some periods in the past, I am confident that the general appreciation in the prices of Meat, which has occurred within the last ten or fifteen years, and which seems likely to be enduring, will render Sheep-growing more profitable in the future than it has been in the past. At all events, while our farmers are generally obliged to sell their Grain and Meat at prices somewhat below the range of the British markets, it is hardly conceivable that they should not afford to grow Wool, for which they receive higher average prices than the British farmers do, who feed their Sheep on the produce of lands worth from $300 to $500 (gold) per acre.

II. Interest being relatively high in this country, and Capital with most farmers deficient, it is a serious objection to cattle-growing that the farmer must wait three or four years before receiving a return for his outlay. If he begins poor, with but a few cows and a team, he naturally wants to rear and keep all his calves for several years in order to adequately stock his farm, so that little or no income is meantime realized from his herd; whereas a flock of Sheep yields a fleece per head each year, though not even a lamb is sold, while its increase in numbers is far more rapid than that of a herd of cattle.

III. Almost every farmer, at least in the old States, finds some part of his land infested with bushes and briers, which seem to flourish by cutting, if he finds time to cut them, and which the ruggedness of his soil precludes his exterminating by the plow. In every such case, Sheep are his natural allies--his unpaid police--his vigilant and thorough-going a.s.sistants. Give them an even start in Spring with the bushes and briers; let their number be sufficient; and they are very sure to come out ahead in the Fall.

IV. Our farmers in the average are too much confined in Summer and Autumn to salt meats, and especially to Pork. However excellent in quality these may be, their exclusive use is neither healthful nor palatable. With a good flock of Sheep, the most secluded farmer may have fresh meat every week in haying and harvest-time if he chooses; and he will find this better for his family, and more satisfactory to his workmen, than a diet wherefrom fresh meat is excluded.

V. Now, I do not insist that every farmer should grow Sheep, for I know that many are so situated that they cannot. In stony regions, where walls are very generally relied on for fences, I am aware that Sheep are with difficulty kept within bounds; and this is a serious objection. In the neighborhood of cities and large villages, where Fresh Meat may be bought from day to day, one valid reason for keeping them has no application; yet I hold that twice as many of our farmers as now have flocks ought to have them, and would thereby increase their profits as well as the comfort of their families.

The most serious obstacle to Sheep husbandry in this country is the abundance and depredations of dogs. Farmers by tens of thousands have sold off, or killed off, their flocks, mainly because they could not otherwise protect themselves against their frequent decimation by prowling curs, which were not worth the powder required to shoot them.