Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1871-05-25
rrni, and Grain in california. a..

When the last rail was laid and the
last golden spike driven in the great Cen
trail Pacific Railroad, the Rev. DR.. Todd,
of Pitts6eld, Massachusetts,, was present,
and on his way to the Golden State,
where he penned that excellent little book.
" The Sunset Land" issued by Lee &
Sheppard, Boston, and in which he has
given wonderful and thrilling accounts of
the fruit and other products of that coun-
try. He writes as follows:
Instead of planting your seed and wait
ing years before you can eat your apple
or your pear, you may feel sure of a good
crop of fruit the third year. The rapidlty
of growth will astonish you, and not less,
the early day at which you get returns.
I saw in Oakland, in the garden of Mr..
Hunt, large area of dwarf apple trees,
none of which were much over two feet
high, literally loaded with fruit; and Oft
which his son assured me, that in the
second year, they gathered apples which
weighed twenty ounces each ; and | saw,
also, limb of fig tree, which he said he
cut off the autumn previous, and stuck 1t
in the ground, and which the next sum-
mer bore figs. In the same garden IS
century plant, whose stem was as large as
a mans leg; and when I saw it, the height
was twenty one feet 1t had grown four
teen feet in several weeks. He predicted
it would grow twenty feet more and than
blossom. How amazed we should be to
see beets that will weigh one hundred and
twenty-seven pounds each onions foot
cross the top; cabbages weighing eighty
pounds each, and other vegetables in pro-
portion. The great trouble there about
fruit is, that it is so easily raised it has no
market.
The long, dry summer allows the farm
err to take his own time to harvest his
wheat and his barley, and let the grain lie
in the field as long as he chooses. The
mildness of the climate saves him the
necessity of building barns or raising hay.
He harvests his grain in the latter part Of
May, or the beginning of June. One
popularity is, that the dryness of the air
causes the glumes of the wheat to contract
and hold the large plump kernels, or else
there would be great loss. The very
thing which would shell out our wheat
here, retains it there; so that, if your
wheat stands uncut two weeks after it is
ripe, you sustain no loss. They thresh it
and put it into sacks in the fields, and let
| it lie till convenient to carry it TO market.
The very dryness of the wheat, almost as
if Kindred, preserves the berry well for
expectation, and defends it from the weevil
and other insects. The average bushels
of wheat to the acre, through the State, is
less than it should be, from the fact, that
it has been the fashion, after the first plow-
ing, which gives forty or fifty busbel to
the acre, Just to brush over the stubble, in
the fall, with brush-harrow, and trust
that enough seed has been dropped to in
sure crop. The ground was not proba-
bly, moved an inch deep, and yet the
second crop would be from twenty to
twenty five bushels to the acre. So the
third year the crop would be from twelve
to fifteen bushels. This system is exhaus
tive of the soil, and suicidal of the future,
and this accounts for the low average per
acre. They have been in the habit, too,
of just clipping off the heads of the wheat
and barley by peculiar reaper, and then
burning the stubble in the field They
are beginning to learn that this is poor
economy, and are now blowing in their
stubble. The annual produce of wheat
now Ia about twenty millions of bushels,
and about half that amount is barley.
This often yields by the large fields, eighty
and even one hundred bushels to the acre.
1t is used chiefly for feed ; for though
Indian corn can be raised to great advant-
age, they find the barley better feed in
their climate, and much more easily raised.
OF oats they raise two millions of bushels
of superior quality; but this is not a
favorite crop.