The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1859-12-28
HEAD WORK IN FARMING.

It is. surprising how much muscular labor is
wasted every year, which might be saved, or
better directed. This is true in all kinds of
business, and not the least in farming. For
instance how many farmers toll on, year after
year, with scanty or imperfect implements of
thusbandry. The modern Improvements, which
saye much labor, and do the work cheaper and
better, they will have nothing to do with
Improved varieties of seed, they hold to be
almost without exception, humbugs. Drain
ing and subsoil blowing are ranked in the
same catalogue, they are labor lost; but ma
nuriHg cold, wet lands, and blowing them late
in summer q few inches deep gathering scanty
crops-tAts is not labor lost! Rotation of
crops and manuriDg lands with reference to
the grain or roots TO be grown on them, thsy
consider something like book-farming-a very
dangerous thing.
We never could see why farmers should not
think for themselves, and be able to give a sat
~isfactory reason for every process they under
take. We never could see why they should
not endeayor to improve in all farming opera
tons, to learn the very best way of doing ev-
erything, and then to do it so. 1t is told of a
certain backwoods' farmer, who had not We:
found time to clear the stumps from his fields
that his boys complained bitterly of their
troubles in blowing and narrowing, the old
fashioned drag especially troubled them by its
frequent overturnings while plunging among
the stumps, and needing to by set right side up
at every few rods. :Boysv said the enraged
farmer one day, take that harrow over to
blacksmith, and tell him to make all the teeth
twice their present length, and sharp at both
ends, and wen see what thatll do? The
thing was done the teeth now pointed both
ways, like those of a revolving rake. Gee up,
Bill now go along;' But. father, it has upset
- 90 Lol Nc hoGorat GNauar mind how.
90 right ahead, it will work we'll either side up.
See, now what comes from a little thinking
And sure enough it did work, and the field
was narrowed in spite of the stumps. We
might have selected a more dignifed example
of the use of headwork, but this homely story
will answer our purpose.
In the matter of rotation of crops, there is
need of forethought and management. Some
farmers neglect to manure largely, because OF
its expensiveness they would like to under
drain more extensively, and to subsoil pillow
their lands, if these things did not cost more
time, labor and money than they think they
can spare. But it costs no more to follow a good
system of rotation of crops than it does to car
.ry on a farm without any such plan. Yet
such a system may bring the farmer three-fold
greater and better crops. Nor in devising
such a plan, has he got to depend entirely on
his own experience or sagacity. Books and
agricultural Journals are at hand, containing
the result of other mems experience, and ali
he has to do is to adapt such information to the
wants of his own case. A very little head
work of this sort would pay we'll. 1t would
pay in clean cultivation. Chess, red-root,
~quack-grass, Canada thistles, butter cups
daisies, and what not, would hide their heads
and grubs, wire-worms, and all manner of in
sects would rapidly diminish, if not wholly
disappear. It would pay in the increased and
prolonged fertility of the land, and in more
bountiful crops.