The Wyandot pioneer. (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1853-1868, 1853-11-03

all, and emptied your barn-yard on those
FIVE, leaving the residue untouched, don't
you think you would have harvested o
largercropg'' "Well, perhaps should, "
was the poor farmers response. 1T SEEM
ed never before to have occurred to him
that he could let alone part of his land.
Had he progressed SO far, he might have
yentured thence to the conclusion that it is
less expensive and more profitable 10 raise
q iull crop ON FIVE acres than half a crop
on ten. am sorry. to say we have good
many such farmers still left at the East,
though the. advanced prices of land and
the impoverished condition of the soils
they Inherited, with their slovenly modes
of cultivation, have driven the greater
share of them to the West. Here, on
your deep, virgin soils, thay renew their
round Of exercises in. false husbandry,
wasting their manures because ''this land
is rich enough" and exhausting- their
soils by one graincrop after another; un-
til they run down their capacity from thir
ty bushels per acre of Wheatt to ten of Corn
or FIVE of Rye, when they will be off again
for Iowa, Missouri or Oregon. When
they shall have got SO far West as to find
land that doesn't need nor reward fertili-
zing, and will not be worn out by Meir
mode Of farming, I trust they will come to
full stop and send for all their relations.
Let me be rightly understood: | do not
condemn man for oaoning more land, in
a ew county, where land is cheap, than he
is now willing to cultivate. know per-
fectly well that the system of thorough
culture that succeeds so admirably in Bel
giumis not yet adapted to Indiana. Where
good fenced pasture may be bought for
eight or ten dollars per acre, you cannot
afforded to keep up your cattle and cut all
their food, though that rs excellent policy
in its place. 1t ensures the keeping of a
much larger stock on given area, beside
enriching the land far more rapidly. But
it requires vastly more labor, and where a
weeks work is worth an acre of arabic
land, it won't pay. Wkat insist ON is
simply this: Land 0ortA cultivating AT ALL
IS acorth eultipoting WELL. Almostbalfthe
soil in my section never ought to feel the
touch of plow-iron, unless for the purpose
of striking fire on some of its abundant
rocks. Such land should be kept cover
ed from too particular observation by
growth after growth of wood, giving va
riety and freshness to the landscape, and
persistence, if not stability to the streams.
But wherever an acre is broken up, it
should be with fixed resolve to extract a
good crop from it, and to use all the means
requisite to that end. A field of spind-
ling yellow corn, or stunted, struggling
oats, or blossomng buckwheat that seems
to have been compassionately sown for the
accommodation of broken-winged bum
ble-bees, is palpable impeachment of the
capacity of its owner to manage land at
all. If it can do better than this, he ought
never to have broken it up If he acW do
such stupid thing, he ought at least to
keep his folly out of sight from the public
highway.
presume carefulinvestigation would
coverthe existence ofapretty general law ol
proportion between market value of alarm
and the amount of labor that should be
annually devoted to its cultivation, apart
from enduring improvements. Let ussup-
pose a farm of one hundred acres to be
worth this year $40 per acre, or S 900 in
all; then we will say one mans labor OF
three hundred days work per year, worth
$30O~in all, might be as much as could be
proftably bestowed on its mere cultivation
But roads and marketsimprove, until this
land is worth $50 an acre, orthe farm So,
600; and now much more of it may bt
taken out Of forest or pasture and devoted
to grain and vegetables, involving an in
crease of the labor expended on it to three
mems steady work, or 5000 peryear. So
as the value increased to $50, $40, and a
length 800 per acre, the labor employed
thereon should be correspondingly increas
ed, whether by a division of the farm O
otherwise. do not profess to indicate
the precise proportion of present labor t.
Valuation of fixed Capital, but only tha
there is such proportion, and that Econ
omic Science will yet ascertain and de
clare it.
1t is not necessary that land should b
cultivated in order to be productive. TIL
young, growing wood is earning none
t for its owner, as we'll as the corn-feld
He who has land that he does not need
: yet wishes to keep for his children, ca
: hardly serve them better than by incle
sing it effectually, planting it with locus
r hickory, and other choice timber, and lea,
} ing it undisturbed tillhis sons may requir
? it, But, even left in open, naked con
mon, land generally tends toimprove frol
5 the renovating influences of the atmos
t; phere alone, as the reclaimed cold fields
: of the South bear witness, It is only 200,