Litchfield enquirer., 1859-06-16
THURSDAY, JUNE 16, iS59
well everywhere. Oats are scarcely more than

| out or the ground yet they, too, promise well, so far as can now be foreseen.
 But an unpleasant truth must be stated There are too many idle, shiftless people ill Kansas. speak not here of lawyers, gen. tlemen spectators and other non-producers, who are in excess here as elsewhere alude directly to those who call themselves settlers, and who would be farmers if they were any thing. To see man squatted on quarter section in cabin which would make fair l hog-pen, but is unfit for human habitation, and there living from hand to mouth hy litt'e of this and little of that, with hardly an acre of prairie broken (sometimes without a fence up, with no garden, no frnit-trees, ''no nothing"-wating for some one to come along and buy out his claim" and let him move on to repeat the operation somewhere else-ths is enough to give cheerful man the horrors. Ask the squatter what he means and he can give you hundred good excuses for his misc rable condition he has no breaking team he has little or no good rai-timber he has had "the shakes j" his family have been sick he lost two years and some stock by the Bor der Rufiars &c.,, &c. But all this don't overbear the facts that, if he has no good timber, some of his neighbors have it in abun- dance, and would be very glad to have him work part of it into rails on shares at fair rate and if he has no breaking team, he can hire out in having and harvesting, and get nearly or quite two acres broken next month for every faithful weeks work he chooses to give at that busy season. The poorest man ought thus to be able to get ten acres broken, feuced and into crop, each year. For poor men gradually hew farms out of heavy tim Der, where every fenced and cultivated acre has cost twice to thrice the work it does here. And it is sad to note that hardly half the settlers make any sort of provision for winter ing their cattle, even by cutting stack of prairie hay, when every good days work will
 put up ton of it. If he has corn-6eld, the squatter's cattle are welcome to pick at that all Winter if he has none, they must go into the bottoms aud browse through as best they can. or course, his calves are mis- erable affairs his COWS unfit to make butter from till the best of the season is over his oxen, should he have a pair, must be recruit ing from their Winters faEine just when he most urgently needs their work. And this ex- posing cattle all Winter to these fierce prairie winds is alike nhuman and wasteful. l asked settler the other day how he could do it. "I had no time to make a shelter for them" "But had you no Sundays ?--did you not have these at your disposal p 70, yes I don't work Sundays" "Well, you should have worked every one of them, rather than let your cattle shiver in the cold blasts all winter-it would have been a'work of humanity and mercy to cut and haul logs get up cattle-stall, and cover it with prarie-hay, which will warrant to be more religious than any thing you did on those Sundays" But the squatter was of different opinion.
 How a man located in little squalid cabin on one of these rich claims" eau sleep moon- lit nights under the average circumstances of his class, passes my comprehension. should want to work moderately but resolutely at least fourteen hours of each secular day until I had made myself comfortable with a fence around at least eighty acres quarter of this partitioned off for my working cattle, de- cent, warm shelter to cover them in cold or stormy weather, tolerable habitation for my family, at least forty acres in crop, and young orchard growing. For one commencing with next to nothing, estimate this as the work of five I years after which he might take things more easily, awaiting the fruit from his orchard and the coming up of his boys to help him. But for the first four or five years, the poor pio- neer should work every hour that he does not absolutely need for rest. Every hours work then will save him many hours work in after life.
 For the farmer who comes in with liberal means, the task is much easier. Let us sup pose one to be worth $5,00O the day he lands on the Kansas shore of the Missouri, and see how quickly he can make farm and home. He arrives, we will say, in August, when he can see just what the country produces, wheth- | CT in a state of nature or under cultivation. He buys a quarter section (which is land enough for any man) in a choice locality, in- cludiug thirty or forty acres of timbered river or creek bottom, say for $l0 per acre, charges | $l ,000 of the $l 500 thus called for to the account of the Pro-Savery Democracy for de- feating the Free LaLd bill, and sets to work with two good hired men. He buys five yoke of oxen for breaking team. span of good wagon horses, a COW in fresh milk, and three heiters which will be COWS next Spring, puts up cabin that will just do, and is ready to commence breaking by the lst of September. As his men break, he follows with the horses, sowing and narrowing in wheat so long as that will ahswer, but does not stop breaking tlll the ground is frozen. Now he begins to cut and draw timber for filter habitatlon to which to welcome his family in the Spring. Having done this, he gets good mechanics to
 finish it, while he and his men go to work at fencing by cutting sawlcgs for light, narrow boards, if there be sawmill convenient Ii not, then by cutting for and splitting rails 50 soon as the dryest land will answer for it, he
 begins to put in Spring Wheat then Oats then Corn and putting up fence whenever the soil is too wet for blowing; let him not for get to have a few acres seasonably set In frult-
 trees, some of them dwarfs, for early bearing. Thus his money will rot have been exhausted by the ensuing Fall, when he will have crops coming in and more than hundred acres of his land broken aud subdued for future cultl- vation. see no reason why resoluts, good