The Emporia news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1859-1881, 1870-05-06
WHATIKNOW OF FARMING.
By HORACE GREELEY.
THOROUGH TILLAGE.

WHAT KNOW OE EARMlNUs
By HORACE GREELEY.
THOROUGH TILLAGE-
My little, billy, rocky farm teaches
lessons OF thoroughness which i would
gladly impart to the boys of to-day who
are destined to be the farmers of the last
quarter of this century. l am sure they
will find profit in farming better than
their grandfathers did, and especially in
putting their land into the best possible
condition for effective tillage. There
were stones in my fields varying in size
from that of brass kettle up TO that of
q hay-cOck-some of them raising their
heads above the surface, others burrOw-
ing Just below (which had been plOw-
ed around and over perhaps hundred
times, till l went at them with team and
bar, or (where necessary with drill and
blast, turned or blew them out, and
hauled them away, SO that they will in
terfere with cultivation nevermore. L
insist that this is profitable operation
that a field which will not pay for
such clearing should be planted with
trees and thrown out of cultivation con-
clusively. Dodging and skulking from
rock to rock is hard upon team, pillow,
and plowman, and it can rarely pay.
Land ribbed and spotted with fast rocks
will pay if judiciOusly planted with TIM
ber-possibly if well set in fruit-but
tflling it from year to year is thank
less task, and its owner may better work
by the day for his neighbors than try to
make his bread by such tillage.
So with fields soaked by springs or
sodden with stagnant water. If you say
you cannot afford to drain your wet
land, respond that you can still less af
ford to fit it for cultivation; your next
best course is to let it severely alone.
A poor man who has rough, rugged,
sterile farm, which he is unable to bring
to its best possible condition at once, yet
which he clings to and must live from,
should resolve that, if life and health be
spared him, he will reclaim one field
each year until all that is not devoted to
timber shall have been brought into
high conditions. When his summer har-
vest is over, and his fall crops have re-
ceived their last cultivation, there will
generally be from one to two autumn
months which he can devote mainly to
this work Let him take hold of it with
resolute purpose to improve every avail
able hour not by running oyer the
largest possible area, but by dealing with
one field so thoroughly that it will need
no more during long lifetime. If it
has stone that the pillow will reach, dig
them out; if it needs draining, drain it
so thoroughly that it may hereafter be
plowed in spring so soon as the frost
leaves it; and now let soil and subsOil
be so lOosened and pulveriZed that roots
may freely penetrate them to depth of
fifteen to twenty inches, finding nour-
ishment all the way, with Indictment to
60 further if ever falling moisture shall
render this necessary. Drouth habitu-
ally shortens our fall crops from ten to
fifty per cent. I; it is sure to injure us
more graVely as our forests are swept
away by AK and fire; and, while much
may be done to mitigate its ravages by
enriching the soil so as to give your crops
an early start, and q rank, luxuriant
growth, the farmers chief reliance must
still be depth of soil adequate to with
stand weeks of the fiercest sunshine.
1 have considered what is urged as to
the choice of roots to run just beneath
the surface, and it does not signify.
Roots seek at once heat and moisture
if the moisture awaits them close to the
surface, of course they mainly run there,
because the heat is there greatest. II
moisture fails there, they must descend
to seek it, even at the cost of finding the
heat nadequate-though heat increases
and descends under the fervid suns
which rob the surface of moisture.
Make the soil rich and mellow ever so
far down, and you need not fear that the
roots will descend an inch lower than
they should. They understand their
business: ii is your sagacity that may
possibly prove deficient.
l suspect that the average farmer does
far too little plowing-by which mean,
not that he plows too few acres, for ne
| often plOWS too many, but that he should
pillow oftener as well as deeper and more
| thoroughly. / spent three or four OF
my boyish summers in planting and till
ing corn and potatoes on fields broken
up just before they were planted, never
crOss-plowed, and of course tough and
intractable throughout the season. The
yield of corn was middling, considering
the season that of potatoes more than
middling; yet, ii those fields had
been well plowed in the previous Au-
tumn, cross-plowed early in the spring
and thoroughly narrowed just before
planting time, | am confident that the
| Yell would have been far greater, and
the labor (save III harvesting) rather less
1.-The cost of the fall blowing being
balanced by the saving of half th1
| time necessarily given to the planting
and hOeing.
Fall blowing has this recommends
tion-it lightens labor at the buster sea
son, by transferring it TO one of com
parative dizziness l may have said tha
l consider him good farmer who know
how to make a rainy day equally effec
tive with one that is dry and fair; and
in the same spirit, count him my mas
ter in this art who can make day
work in autumn or winter save day
/ work in spring or summer. Show me
farmer who has no land plowed wheI
May opens, and is just waking up to
consciousness that his fences need mend
ing and his trees want trimming, and
will guess that the Sheriff will be afte
him before May comes around again.
There is no superstition in the belle
that land is~(or may bea enriched by fal
blowing. The autumn gales are freight
ed with the more volatile elements o
deeayiBg vegetation. These, taken ~
wherever they are given off in excess
are waited to and deposited in thessoil
best fitted for their reception Regard
ed simply as a method of fertilizing,
n do not say that fail blowing is the cheap
est !; do say that any poor field. if wei
plowed in the fall, will be in better hear
the next spring, for what wind and raj
will meantime have deposited thereon
; Frost. too, in any region where tn
ground freezes and thaws repeatedly
, plays an important and beneficent PAL
{ in aerating and pulverizing freshl
plowed soil, especially one thrown u
into ridges. so as to be most thorough
, exposed to the action of the more vols
tile eieIpents. The farmer who has
good team may probably keep the ploN
running in autumn until every rood this
he means to till next season has bee
thoroughly pulveriZed.
In this section, our minnie ehequeI
work of fences operates to instruct an
impede blowing. Our predecessor
!. wished 10 clear their fields. at least ST
n peFticially, Of the looses troublesom
J. powders of granite wherewith the
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