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WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING:
A SERIES OF
BRIEF AND PLAIN EXPOSITIONS
OF
PRACTICAL AGRICULTURE
AS AN ART BASED UPON SCIENCE:
BY HORACE GREELEY.
"I _know_
That where the spade is deepest driven,
The best fruits grow."
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
NEW-YORK:
PUBLISHED BY THE TRIBUNE ASSOCIATION.
1871.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by
HORACE GREELEY,
at the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
TO
THE MAN OF OUR AGE,
WHO SHALL MAKE THE FIRST PLOW PROPELLED BY
STEAM,
OR OTHER MECHANICAL POWER, WHEREBY NOT LESS THAN
TEN ACRES PER DAY
SHALL BE THOROUGHLY PULVERIZED TO A
DEPTH OF TWO FEET,
AT A COST OF NOT MORE THAN TWO DOLLARS PER ACRE,
THIS WORK IS ADMIRINGLY DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS.
PAGE
I. Will Farming Pay? 13
II. Good and Bad Husbandry 18
III. Where to Farm 23
IV. Preparing to Farm 29
V. Buying a Farm 34
VI. Laying off a Farm; Pasturing 39
VII. Trees; Woodlands; Forests 44
VIII. Growing Timber; Tree-Planting. 49
IX. Planting and Growing Trees 56
X. Draining; My Own 62
XI. Draining Generally 69
XII. Irrigation; Means and Ends 74
XIII. Possibilities of Irrigation 79
XIV. Plowing, Deep or Shallow 85
XV. Plowing, Good and Bad 91
XVI. Thorough Tillage 96
XVII. Commercial Fertilizers--Gypsum. 102
XVIII. Alkalis--Salt, Ashes, Lime. 107
XIX. Soils and Fertilizers 112
XX. Bones, Phosphates, Guano 118
XXI. Muck--How to Utilize It 124
XXII. Insects; Birds 129
XXIII. About Tree-Planting 134
XXIV. Fruit-Trees--The Apple 139
XXV. More about Apple-Trees 145
XXVI. Hay and Hay-Making 150
XXVII. Peaches, Pears, Cherries, Grapes 156
XXVIII. Grain-Growing--East and West 162
XXIX. Esculent Roots--Potatoes 170
XXX. Roots--Turnips, Beets, Carrots 178
XXXI. The Farmers' Calling 183
XXXII. A Lesson of To-day 189
XXXIII. Intellect in Agriculture 195
XXXIV. Sheep and Wool-Growing 200
XXXV. Accounts in Farming 207
XXXVI. Stone on a Farm 212
XXXVII. Fences and Fencing 219
XXXVIII. Agricultural Exhibitions 225
XXXIX. Science in Agriculture 231
XL. Farm Implements 237
XLI. Steam in Agriculture 241
XLII. Co-operation in Farming 248
XLIII. Farmers' Clubs 254
XLIV. Western Irrigation. 260
XLV. Sewage 266
XLVI. More of Irrigation 274
XLVII. Undeveloped Sources of Power 280
XLVIII. Rural Depopulation 286
XLIX. Large and Small Farms 292
L. Exchange and Distribution. 297
LI. Winter Work 303
LII. Summing up 308
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.
H. G.
_New York, Feb. 3, 1871._
WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING.
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.
He who has a farm already, and is content with it, has no reason to ask,
"Whither shall I go?" and he may rest assured that thoroughly good
farming will pay as well in New England as in Kansas or in Minnesota. I
advise no man who has a good farm anywhere, and is able to keep it, to
sell and migrate. I know men who make money by growing food within
twenty miles of this city quite as fast as they could in the West. If
you have money to buy and work it, and know how to make the most of it,
I believe you may find land really as cheap, all things considered, in
Vermont as in Wisconsin or Arkansas.
And yet I believe in migration--believe that there are thousands in the
Eastern and the Middle States who would improve their circumstances and
prospects by migrating to the cheaper lands and broader opportunities of
the West and South. For, in the first place, most men are by migration
rendered more energetic and aspiring; thrown among strangers, they feel
the necessity of exertion as they never felt it before. Needing almost
everything, and obliged to rely wholly on themselves, they work in their
new homes as they never did in their old; and the consequences are soon
visible all around them.
"A stern chase is a long chase," say the sailors; and he who buys a farm
mainly on credit, intending to pay for it out of its proceeds, finds
interest, taxes, sickness, bad seasons, hail, frost, drouth, tornadoes,
floods, &c., &c., deranging his calculations and impeding his progress,
until he is often impelled to give up in despair. There are men who can
surmount every obstacle and defy discouragement--these need no advice;
but there are thousands who, having little means and large families, can
grow into a good farm more easily and far more surely than they can pay
for it; and these may wisely seek homes where population is yet sparse
and land is consequently cheap. Doubtless, some migrate who might better
have forborne; yet the instinct which draws our race toward sunset is
nevertheless a true one. The East will not be depopulated; but the West
will grow more rapidly in the course of the next twenty years than ever
in the past. The Railroads which have brought Kansas and Minnesota
within three days, and California within a week of us, have rendered
this inevitable.
But the South also invites immigration as she never did till now. Her
lands are still very cheap; she is better timbered, in the average, than
the West; her climate attracts; her unopened mines and unused
water-power call loudly for enterprise, labor and skill. It is absurd to
insist that her soil is exhausted when not one-third of it has ever yet
been plowed. I do not advise solitary migration to the South, because
she needs schools, mills, roads, bridges, churches, &c., &c., which the
solitary immigrant can neither provide nor well do without: and I have
no assurance that he, if obliged to work out for present bread, would
find those ready to employ and willing to pay him; but let a hundred
Northern farmers and mechanics worth $1,000 to $3,000 each combine to
select (through chosen agents) and buy ten or twenty thousand acres in
some Southern State, embracing hill and vale, timber and tillage,
water-power and minerals, and divide it equitably among themselves,
after laying it out with roads, a park, a village-plat, sites for
churches, schools, &c., and I am confident that they can thus make
pleasant homes more cheaply and speedily there than almost anywhere
else.
Good farming land, improved or unimproved, is this day cheaper in the
United States, all things considered, than in any other country--cheaper
than it can long remain. So many are intent on short cuts to riches that
the soil is generally neglected, and may be bought amazingly cheap in
parts of Connecticut as well as in Iowa or Nebraska. When I was last in
Illinois, I rode for some hours beside a gray-coated farmer of some
sixty years, who told me this: "I came here thirty years ago, and took
up, at $1-1/4 per acre, a good tract of land, mainly in timber. I am now
selling off the timber at $100 per acre, reserving the land." That seems
to me a good operation--not so quick as a corner in the stock-market,
but far safer. And, while I would advise no man to incur debt, I say
most earnestly to all who have means, "Look out the place where you
would prefer to live and die; take time to suit yourself thoroughly;
choose it with reference to your means, your calling, your expectations,
and, if you can pay for it, _buy_ it. Do not imagine that land is cheap
in the West or the South only; it is to be found cheap in _every_ State
by those who are able to own and who know how to use it."
I earnestly trust that the obvious advantages of settling in colonies
are to be widely and rapidly improved by our people, nearly as follows:
One thousand heads of families unite to form a colony, contribute $100
to $500 each to defray the cost of seeking out and securing a suitable
location, and send out two or three of the most capable and trustworthy
of their number to find and purchase it; and now let their lands be
surveyed and divided into village or city lots at or near the center,
larger allotments (for mechanics' and merchants' homes) surrounding that
center, and far larger (for farms) outside of these; and let each
member, on or soon after his arrival, select a village-lot, out-lot,
farm, or one of each if he chooses and can pay for them. Let ample
reservations of the best sites for churches, school-houses, a town hall,
public park, etc., be made in laying out the village, and let each
purchaser of a lot or farm be required to plant shade-trees along the
highways which skirt or traverse it. If irrigation by common effort be
deemed necessary, let provision be made for that. Run up a large, roomy
structure for a family hotel or boarding-house; and now invite each
stockholder to come on, select his land, pay for it, and get up some
sort of a dwelling, leaving his family to follow when this shall have
been rendered habitable; but, if they insist on coming on with him and
taking their chances, so be it.
IV.
PREPARING TO FARM.
I write mainly for beginners--for young persons, and some not so young,
who are looking to farming as the vocation to which their future years
are to be given, by which their living is to be gained. In this chapter,
I would counsel young men, who, not having been reared in personal
contact with the daily and yearly round of a farmer's cares and duties,
purpose henceforth to live by farming.
To these I would earnestly say, "No haste!" Our boys are in too great a
hurry to be men. They want to be bosses before they have qualified
themselves to be efficient journeymen. I have personally known several
instances of young men, fresh from school or from some city vocation,
buying or hiring a farm and undertaking to work it; and I cannot now
recall a single instance in which the attempt has succeeded; while
speedy failure has been the usual result. The assumption that farming is
a rude, simple matter, requiring little intellect and less experience,
has buried many a well-meaning youth under debts which the best efforts
of many subsequent years will barely enable him to pay off. In my
opinion, half our farmers now living would say, if questioned, that they
might better have waited longer before buying or hiring a farm.
When I was ten years old, my father took a job of clearing off the
mainly fallen and partially rotten timber--largely White Pine and Black
Ash--from fifty acres of level and then swampy land; and he and his two
boys gave most of the two ensuing years (1821-2) to the rugged task.
When it was finished, I--a boy of twelve years--could have taken just
such a tract of half-burned primitive forest as that was when we took
hold of it, and cleared it by an expenditure of seventy to eighty per
cent. of the labor we actually bestowed upon that. I had learned, in
clearing this, how to economize labor in any future undertaking of the
kind; and so every one learns by experience who steadily observes and
reflects. He must have been a very good farmer at the start, or a very
poor one afterward, who cannot grow a thousand bushels of grain much
cheaper at thirty years of age than he could at twenty.
To every young man who has had no farming experience, or very little,
yet who means to make farming his vocation, I say, Hire out, for the
coming year, to the very best farmer who will give you anything like the
value of your labor. Buy a very few choice books, (if you have them not
already,) which treat of Geology, Chemistry, Botany, and the application
of their truths in Practical Agriculture; give to these the close and
thoughtful attention of your few leisure hours; keep your eyes wide
open, and set down in a note-book or pocket-diary each night a minute of
whatever has been done on the farm that day, making a note of each
storm, shower, frost, hail, etc., and also of the date at which each
planted crop requires tillage or is ripe enough to harvest, and
ascertaining, so far as possible, what each crop produced on the farm
has cost, and which of them all are produced at a profit and which at a
loss. At the year's end, hire again to the same or another good farmer
and pursue the same course; and so do till you shall be twenty-four or
twenty-five years of age, which is young enough to marry, and quite
young enough to undertake the management of a farm. By this time, if you
have carefully saved and wisely invested your earnings, you will have
several hundred dollars; and, if you do not choose to migrate to some
region where land is very cheap, you will have found some one willing to
sell you a small farm on credit, taking a long mortgage as security.
Your money--assuming that you have only what you will have earned--will
all be wanted to fix up your building, buy a team and cow, with the few
implements needed, and supply you with provisions till you can grow
some. If you can start thus experienced and full-handed, you may, by
diligence, combined with good fortune, begin to make payments on your
mortgage at the close of your second year.
I hate debt as profoundly as any one can, but I do not consider this
really running into debt. One has more land than he needs, and does not
need his pay for it forthwith; another wants land, but lacks the means
of present payment. They two enter into an agreement mutually
advantageous, whereby the poorer has the present use and ultimate
fee-simple of the farm in question, in consideration of the payment of
certain sums as duly stipulated. Technically, the buyer becomes a
debtor; practically, I do not regard him as such, until payments fall
due which he is unable promptly to meet. Let him rigorously avoid all
other debt, and he need not shrink from nor be ashamed of this.
I have a high regard for scientific attainments; I wish every young man
were thoroughly instructed in the sciences which underlie the art of
farming. But all the learning on earth, though it may powerfully help to
make a good farmer, would not of itself make one. When a young man has
learned all that seminaries and lectures, books and cabinets, can teach
him, he still needs practice and experience to make him a good farmer.
--"But wouldn't you have a young man study in order that he may become a
good farmer?"
--If he has money, Yes. I believe a youth worth four or five thousand
dollars may wisely spend a tenth of his means in attending lectures, and
even courses of study, at any good seminary where Natural Science is
taught and applied to Agriculture. But life is short at best; and he who
has no means, or very little, cannot really afford to attend even an
Agricultural College. He can acquire so much of Science as is
indispensable in the cheaper way I have indicated. He cannot wisely
consent to spend the best years of his life in getting ready to live.
He who has already mastered the art of farming, and has adequate means,
may of course buy a farm to-morrow, though he be barely or not quite of
age. He has little to learn from me. Yet I think even such have often
concluded, in after years, that they were too hasty in buying land--that
they might profitably have waited, and deliberated, and garnered the
treasures of experience, before they took the grave step of buying their
future home; with regard to which I shall make some suggestions in my
next chapter.
But I protest against a young man's declining or postponing the purchase
of a farm merely because he is not able to buy a great one. Twenty acres
of arable soil near a city or manufacturing village, forty acres in a
rural district of any old State, or eighty acres in a region just
beginning to be peopled by White men, is an ample area for any one who
is worth less than $2,000. If he understands his business, he will find
profitable employment hereon for every working hour: if he does not
understand farming, he will buy his experience dear enough on this, yet
more cheaply than he would on a wider area. Until he shall have more
money than he needs, let him beware of buying more land than he
absolutely wants.
V.
BUYING A FARM.
No one need be told at this day that good land is cheaper than
poor--that the former may be bought at less cost than it can be made.
Yet this, like most truths, may be given undue emphasis. It should be
considered in the light of the less obvious truth that _Every farmer may
make advantageous use of_ SOME _poor land_. The smallest farm
should have its strip or belt of forest; the larger should have an
abundance and variety of trees; and sterile, stony land grows many if
not most trees thriftily: Even at the risk of arousing Western
prejudice, I maintain that New-England, and all broken, hilly, rocky
countries, have a decided advantage (abundantly counterbalanced, no
doubt) over regions of great fertility and nearly uniform facility, in
that human stupidity and mole-eyed greed can never wholly divest them of
forests--that their sterile crags and steep acclivities must mainly be
left to wood forever. Avarice may strip them of their covering of
to-day; but, defying the plow and the spade, they cannot be so denuded
that they will not be speedily reclothed with trees and foliage.
I am not a believer that "Five Acres" or "Ten Acres" suffice for a farm.
I know where money is made on even fewer than five acres; but they who
do it are few, and men of exceptional capacity and diligence. Their
achievements are necessarily confined to the vicinage of cities or
manufacturing villages. The great majority of all who live by
Agriculture want room to turn upon--want to grow grass and keep
stock--and, for such, no mere garden or potato-patch will answer. They
want genuine farms.
Yet, go where you may in this country, you will hear a farmer saying of
his neighbor, "He has too much land," even where the criticism might
justly be reciprocated. We cannot all be mistaken on this head.
There are men who can each manage thousands of acres of tillage, just as
there are those who can skillfully wield an army of a hundred thousand
men. Napoleon said there were two of this class in the Europe of his
day. There are others who cannot handle a hundred acres so that nothing
is lost through neglect or oversight. Rules must be adapted to average
capacities and circumstances. He who expects to live by cattle-rearing
needs many more acres than he who is intent on grain-growing; while he
who contemplates vegetable, root, and fruit culture, needs fewer acres
still. As to the direction of his efforts, each one will be a law unto
himself.
If I were asked, by a young man intent on farming, to indicate the
proper area for him, I would say, _Buy just so large a farm as half
your means will pay for_. In other words, "If you are worth $20,000,
invest half of it in land, the residue in stock, tools, etc.; and
observe the same rule of proportion, whether you be worth $1,000,000 or
only $1,000. If you are worth just nothing at all, I would invest in
land the half of that, and no more. In other words, I would either wait
to earn $500 or over, or push Westward till I found land that costs
practically nothing."
This, then, I take to be the gist of the popular criticism on our
farmers as having unduly enlarged their borders: _They have more land
than they have capital to stock and till to the best advantage._ He who
has but fifty acre has too much if he lets part of his land lie idle and
unproductive for lack of team or hands to till it efficiently; while he
who has a thousand acres has none too much if he has the means and
talents wherewith to make the best of it all.
I have said that I consider the soil of New England as cheap, all things
considered, for him who is able to buy and work it, as that of Minnesota
or Arkansas--that I urge migration to the West only upon those who
cannot pay for farms in the old States. I doubt whether the farmers of
any other section have, in the average, done better, throughout the last
ten years, than the butter-makers of Vermont, the cheese-dairymen of
this State. And yet there is, in the ridgy, rocky, _patchy_ character of
most of our Eastern farms, an insuperable barrier to the most economic,
effective cultivation. If the ridges were further apart--if each rocky
or gravelly knoll were not in close proximity to a strip of bog or
morass--it would be different. But the genius of our age points
unmistakably to cultivation by steam or some other mechanical
application of power; and this requires spacious fields, with few or no
obstacles to the equable progress of the plow. I apprehend that, for
this reason, the growth of bread-corn eastward of the Hudson can never
more be considerably extended, so long as the boundless, fertile
prairies can so easily pour their exhaustless supplies upon us. Fruits,
Vegetables, Roots and Grass, we must continue to grow, probably in
ever-increasing abundance; but we of the East will buy our bread-corn
largely if not mainly from the West.
He, therefore, who bays land in the Eastern States should regard
primarily its capacity to produce those crops in which the East can
never be supplanted--Grass, Fruits, Vegetables, Timber. If a farm will
also produce good Corn or Wheat, that is a recommendation; but let him
place a higher value on those capacities which will be more generally
required and drawn upon.
In the West, the case is different; for, though Wheat-culture still
recedes before the footsteps of advancing population, and Minnesota may
soon cease to grow for others, as Western New-York, Ohio, Indiana, and
Northern Illinois, have already done, yet Indian Corn, being the basis
of both Beef and Pork, will long hold its own in the Valley of the Ohio
and in that of the Upper Mississippi. As it recedes slowly Westward,
Clover and Timothy, Butter and Cheese, will press closely on its
footsteps.
Good neighbors, good roads, good schools, good mechanics at hand, and a
good church within reach, will always be valued and sought: few farmers
are likely to disregard them. Let whoever buys a farm whereon to live,
resolve to buy once for all, and let him not forget that health is not
only wealth but happiness--that an eligible location and a beautiful
prospect are elements of enjoyment not only for ourselves but our
friends; let him not fancy that all the land will soon be gobbled up and
held at exorbitant prices, but believe that money will almost always
command money's worth of whatever may be needed, so that he need not
embarrass himself to-day through fear that he may not be able to find
sellers to-morrow, and he can hardly fail to buy judiciously, and thus
escape that worst species of home-sickness--sickness of home.
VI.
LAYING OFF A FARM--PASTURING.
Whoever finds himself the newly installed owner and occupant of a farm,
should, before doing much beyond growing a crop in the ordinary way,
study well its character, determine its capacities, make himself well
acquainted with its peculiarities of soil and surface, with intent to
make the most of it in his future operations. I would devote at least a
year to this thoughtful observation and study.