Thoroughly overhaul your tools; let plows be sharpened; repair their
stocks if anywhere started or weakened; look after the chains, the
swingletrees, the yokes for your oxen, or the harness for your horses.
Don’t have any straps to replace, or harness to tie up with tow
strings after you get into the fields, and when time is precious. NOW
IS THE TIME TO SAVE TIME, BY GETTING READY. Old rusty buckles will
give way the moment the plow strikes a root; stitches which have been
longing for some time to fall out and part, will be likely to do it
when you have the least time to mend them. Then we shall hear talk;
you’ll be cursing the old horse or the old rickety harness, and
declaring that your “luck is always on the wrong side;” and you may
depend upon it, that it always will be, so long as you are not more
careful. Good luck is a wary old fish which nibbles at everybody’s
hook, but the shrewd and skillful angler only catches it.
The opening of spring is usually debilitating both to man and beast.
Your horses cannot stand hard usage at once; some of them will need
physic—all of them should be put to work carefully; increase their
task gradually; favor them, and you will get abundantly paid for it
before their summer’s work is done.
A good farmer may be known by the way he manages his spring work.
Consider how much there is of it. Cows are calving; mares foaling;
young heifers for the first time to be broken to milking; all the
tools to be got ready; the ground to be broken up and seeded; the
orchards to be set; or old ones to be attended to; a garden to be
made; and a hundred other things to do. Now here is a chance for good
management, and a yet better chance for bad management. There is as
much skill in “laying out” a season’s work for the farmer, as there is
in “laying out” a frame for a house or barn.
Bethink you of all the _mistakes_ you made last season; if you made
any good hits, improve upon them this year. Every farmer should
resolve to do _all things_ as well as he did the last year, and _some_
things a great deal better.
While everything is merry, birds singing, bees at work, cattle frisky,
and the whole animated world is joyous, do but search and see if,
among all beasts, birds, or bugs, you can find one that needs whisky
to do its spring or summer work on?
Look again; seeds are sprouting; trees budding; flowers peeping out
from warm nooks. Everything grows in spring-time. Youth is
spring-time, habits are sprouting, dispositions are putting out their
leaves, opinions are forming, prejudices are getting root. Now take at
least as good care of your children as you do of your farm. If you
don’t want to use the land you let it alone, and _weeds_ grow; but
when you wish to _improve_ a piece, you turn the natural weeds under,
and sow the right seed, and tend the crop. I have heard good kind of
folks object to much “_bringing up_” of their boys. They guessed the
lads would come out about right. You break a colt, and break a steer,
and break a heifer, and break a soil, and if you won’t break your
children, they will be very likely to break you—heart and pocket.
Fermenting manures should not be hauled or spread until you are ready
to plow them under. [If you spread manure on meadows it should be
fine, and well rotted, and let ashes be liberally mixed with it.] If
you let manure lie a week or ten days exposed in the fields to the
air, it will waste one half of “its sweetness on the desert air.” Let
the plow follow the cart as fast as possible, and the gases generated
by your manure will then be taken up by the soil, and held in store
for your grain.
DEEP PLOWING.—There may be some rare cases where, for special reasons,
shallow plowing is advisable. But the standing rule upon the farm
should be deep plowing. A good farmer remarked the other day to us,
“One of my neighbors who is always talking of deep plowing was at it
last summer, and I followed in the furrow, and his depth did not
average more than four inches; he did not measure on the _land side_
but on the mold-board side.” The reasons are very strong for deep
plowing.
1. When crop after crop is taken off the first four or five inches of
top earth, it tends speedily to rob it of all materials required by
grass or grain. Every blade taken from the soil, takes off some
portion of that soil with it.
2. Deep plowing brings up from beneath a greater amount of earth,
which, when subjected to the frosts, the atmosphere, and the action of
the plow, becomes fit for vegetation.
3. Summer droughts seldom injure deeply-plowed soils; certainly not to
that degree that they do shallow soils. The roots penetrate the mellow
mould to a greater depth, and draw thence moisture when the top is as
dry as ashes. Will not some one who is curious in such matters try two
acres side by side plowed shallow and deep, respectively, and give us
the history of their crop?
QUANTITY OF SEED.—It has been often said that American husbandry was
unfavorably peculiar in stinginess of seed-sowing. It is certain that
very much greater quantities are employed in Great Britain and on the
Continent than with us, and that much greater crops are obtained per
acre. In part the crop is owing to a superior cultivation; but those
who have carefully studied the subject affirm that, in part, it is
attributable to the use of much greater quantities of seed. We give a
table showing the average quantity of seed per acre for different
grains, in England, Germany, and the United States. The table was
formed in that manufactory of so many valuable articles, the _Albany
Cultivator_. It must be remembered that the average crop is not the
average of the best farming States, but of the whole United States.
+-------------------------------------------+
| GERMANY. |
| Seed per acre—Product. |
+----------+-----------------+-----------=--+
|Wheat, | 2½ bushels. |25 bushels. |
|Rye, | 2 “ |25 “ |
|Barley, | 2½ “ |35 “ |
|Oats, | 2 to 4 “ |40 “ |
|Millet, | 7 quarts. |35 “ |
|Peas, | 2½ bushels. |26 “ |
|Corn, | 20 quarts. |36 “ |
|Turnips, | |30 to 35 tons.|
|Buckwheat,| 1 bushel. |27 bushels. |
|Clover, | 14 pounds. | |
|Flax, | 2 to 3 bush. |10 bu. seed. |
|Hemp, | 2½ to 3 “ |650 pounds. |
|Potatoes, | 5 “ |300 bushels. |
+----------+-----------------+--------------+
+-------------------------------------------+
| ENGLAND. |
| Seed per acre—Product. |
+----------+-----------------+--------------+
|Wheat, | 2½ to 3½ bu. |28 bushels. |
|Rye, | 2 to 2½ “ |25 “ |
|Barley, | 2½ to 4 “ |36 “ |
|Oats, | 4 to 7 “ |32 “ |
|Millet, | | |
|Peas, | 3 to 3½ “ |30 to 40 bu. |
|Corn, | | |
|Turnips, | 1 to 2 pints. |30 to 35 tons.|
|Buckwheat,| 1 to 1½ bush. |26 bushels. |
|Clover, | 14 to 18 lbs. | |
|Flax, | 2 to 3 bush. |10 bu. seed. |
|Hemp, | 3 “ |550 pounds. |
|Potatoes, | 8 to 12 “ |250 bushels. |
+----------+-----------------+--------------+
+-------------------------------------------+
| UNITED STATES. |
| Seed per acre—Product. |
+----------+-----------------+--------------+
|Wheat, | 1 to 1½ bush. |18 bushels. |
|Rye, | 1 to 1½ “ |15 “ |
|Barley, | 1½ to 2 “ |25 “ |
|Oats, | 2 to 3 “ |35 “ |
|Millet, | | |
|Peas, | 2 to 2½ “ |25 “ |
|Corn, | 20 to 30 qts. |30 “ |
|Turnips, | 1 to 2 lbs. |20 tons. |
|Buckwheat,| 16 to 20 qts. |15 to 30 bu. |
|Clover, | 5 to 10 lbs. | |
|Flax, | 1 to 1½ bush. |8 to 12 bush. |
|Hemp, | 1½ to 2½ “ |500 pounds. |
|Potatoes, | 8 to 20 “ |175 bushels. |
+----------+-----------------+--------------+