The Kansas herald of freedom. [volume] (Wakarusa, Kan. Territory) 1854-1860, 1859-07-02
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show us better crops at less expense,
better flocks, and better farms, and better
owners on them, than book farmers can,
we shall become converts to their doc
trines But, as yet, we cannot see how
intelligence in farmer, should injure his
crops. Nor what difference it makes
whether farmer gets his ideas from
sheet of paper or from neighbours mouth,
or from his own experience, SO that he
only gets good, practical, sound ideas. A
farmer never objects to receive political
information from newspapers; he is quite
willing to learn the state of markets from
newspapers, and as willing to gain relig-
ious notions from reading, and historical
knowledge, and all sorts of information
except that which relates 10 his business.
He will 60 over and hear neighbor tell
now he prepares his wheat lands, how he
selects and puts in his seed, how he deals
with his grounds in spring, in harvest and
after harvest time; but if that neighbor
should write it all down carefully and put
it into paper, it's all poison its book farm
| ing,
Strange such difference there should be
/ 'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee.
II We raise a bed of lettuce surprising
all that has been seen hereabouts, every
good farmer that loves q salad would
send for little seed, aud ask, as he took
/ it, "How do you contrive to raise such
monstrous heads? You must have some
secret about it." But if my way were
written down and printed be would not
touch it. "Poh, it's bookish ~
Now let US inquire in what States land
is the best managed, yields the most with
the least cost, where are the best sheep,
the best cattle, the best hogs, the best
wheat 1t will be found TO be in those
States having the most agricultural pa
pers.
What is there in agriculture that re-
quires man to be ignorant if he will be
skillful? Or, why may every other class
of men learn by reading, except the farm
er? Mechanics have their journals; COM
mercial men have their papers; religious
men, theirs; politicians, theirs; there are
magazines and journals for the arts, for
sciences, for education, and t0hy not for
that grand pursuit on tclich all these stand ?
We really could never understand why
farmers should not wish to have their vo
cation ~ !. level with others; why they
should .eer proud to have no paper, while
every other pursuit is fond of having one.
Those who are prejudiced against book
farming are either good farmers, misin-
formed o. the design oe agricultural pa
pers, or poor farmers who only treat this
subject as they do all others, with blum
dering ignorance. First, the good farm
ers; there are in every county many in
dustrious, hard working men, who know
that they cannot afford to risk anything
upon wild experiments. They have a
growing family to support, taxes to pay,
lands, perhaps, on which purchase money
is due, or they are straining every nerve
to make their crops build barn, that the
barn may hold their crops They suppose
an agricultural paper 10 be stuffed full of
wild fancies, expensive experiments, big
stories made up by men who know of no
farming except parlor-f farming. They
: would, doubtless, be surprised to learn
that ninety nine parts in hundred of the
e contents of agricultural papers are written
by hard 'rorLing practical farmers that
/ the editors business is not to foist absurd
!, stories upon credulous readers, but to sift
stories, to scrutinize accounts, to obtain
o whatever has been abundsntly proved to
be fact, and to reiec: all that is suspected
r to be mere fanciful theory. Such papers
are designed to prevent imposition; to
kill off pretenders by exposing them; to
search out from practical men whatever
they have found out, and to publish it for
the benefit of their brethren all over the
Union; to spread before the laboring
classes such sound, well-approved scien-
tific knowledge as shall throw light upon
every operation of the farm, the orchard
and the garden.
The other class who rail at book farm
ing, ought to be excused, for they do not
treat book-farming any worse than they
do their own farming; indeed, not half so
bad. They rate the paper with their
tongue; but cruelty abuse their ground,
for twelve months in the year, with both
hands. | will draw the portrait Of gen.
uine anti book farmer of this last sort
He plows three inches deep, lest he
should turn up the poison that, in his es'
timation, lies below; his wheat land !:
plowed so as to keep as much water on j,
acre and reaps ten, SO that it takes a fifth
of his crop to seed his ground; his corn.
land has never any help from him, bu
bears Just what it pleases, which is from
thirty to thirty. five bushels by measure.
ment, though he brags that it is Fifty o.
ID sixty. His hogs, if not remarkable fo
,e fattening qualities, would beat old ECLIPSE
at a quarter-race; and were the man no
- prejudiced against deep blowing, his hog
would work his grounds better with thei
II, prodigious shouts than he does with hi
T. jack-kni plow. His meadow lands yielC
he him from three-quarters of ton to
whole ton of hay, which is REGULAR.
10 spoiled in curing. regularly left out for
K month, and very irregulafly stacked uE
~ and left for the cattle to pull out at thei
Nv pleasure, and half-eat and half-trampl
: underfoot. His horses would excite tn
~ avarice CT an anatomist in search of osteo
ce logical specimens, and returning fror
be their range of pasture, they are walkip
herbariums, bearing specimens in the
, name and tail Of every weed that bears
10 y bur or cookie. But, o, the cowsl
TIC held up in bright day to the sun, don
you think they would be semi. tran,
he parent? But he tells US that good mill
:, ers are always poorl His cows get viii
y! Providence sends them, and very littl
oil beside, except in winter, then they has
half-peck of corn on ears q foot lon
thrown to them, and they afford livel
spectacles of animated corn and cob-crusl
le' ers-never mind, they yield, on an ave
~ age, three quarts of milk day! and tn
Z. milk yields varieties of butter quite a
10 tonishing.
81 :, His farm never grows any better;
=" many respects it gets annually worse. A
" ter ten years work on good soil, viii
III his neighbors have grown rich. he is ju
=. where be started, only his house is dirtie
-, his fences more tottering. his soil poore