Rutland weekly herald. [volume] (Rutland, Vt.) 1859-1877, 1872-09-19

or unfit to tighten the farmers labor or
to increase its product. As yet, however,
steam is the only force artificially eyolv-
ed from dead, inorganic matter which
has been widely pressed into the service
of productive industry. Steam FORCES
and hammers and cuts iron; it converts
animal and vegetable fibers into every
form and fashion of textile fabric; it
is to-day doing more work than all the
artisans and artificers on earth could do
without it. Steam is to-day mans most
useful servant: the horse and the OK do
his bidding on a far wider area but
their relative power is declining, while
that of steam is still rapidly advancing.
To dispense with steam would set US back
a long stage on the road whereby we
have advanced from barbarism.
But steam has as yet rendered little
direct service to the farmer. 1t should
and might have rendered much. Animal
power is not merely slow and ineffective
in comparison with this tlabors under
the capital disadvantage of being costly
while idly waiting through weeks and
months for the return of genial weather;
whereas a steam engine no longer used
or needed may be oiled up and set away
under shelter, where it need consume
nothing until once more needed. If
steam were as costly while in use as
horsepower, this fact would render it
immensely preferable. Never striking
for higher wages nor for fewer hours,
steam will work increasingly, uncOm-
plainingly, from Monday morning till
Saturday night, asking only to be fed
and drinking nothing stronger than
water.
Our harsh, capricious climate, withits
late and early frosts, its long frozen and
then thoroughly sodden fields, invites to
the use of steam. I have known Illinois
and her neighbOrs to be visited by rain
after rain in spring-time, so that scarce
ly an acre per township of blowing for
corn had been effected by the middle of
May. Now the sky clears, the soil dries,
and everything invites to blowing and
planting but there is hardly time to
put in half a crop before seeding must
give way to cultivating, and the planted
/ area can be no further enlarged. With
steam plows, Quadruple the present
number of acres may be fitted to receive
the seed in, a week; and so all the risk
and loss TO which a rainy season in
spring now subjects us may be obyiated.
OF course, New England will never
more grow all her own grain; she can
do better But that she might advantage
Ouslv grow more grain, and larger aver
age crops of it, I fully believe. The
chief obstacle to her grain-grOWing in
heres not in her climate, nor even in the
qualities of her soil, but in its vicious
| Topography. An arabic, fertile acre or
so, with rocky ridge on one side and q
! ,y-p4,1,v
| on the other. affords no scope for the
profitable growing Of grain. Our east
| ern agriculture is too fragmentary-a
thing of shreds and patches. As [ sat
| beside a New England-bOrn farmer il
| Illinois, and looked off across his quarter
section of dry, fertile prairie, mainly
under fence, l asked him, " How much
corn do you grow annually?' About
sixty acres" "With what help ?"
"None." What area do you plant in
! day ?" "Fourtcen acres 1t would
take man q week. on an average, to
plant fourteen acres hercabCuts and
| then it would not be so we'll planted as
by the Illinoisian's seed-drill, dropping
and covering two rows as fast as he
wanted to walk.
Now the billy, swampy, irregular sur
/ itit't Oh NtW IIl1ldlJl II Ill t'ltt.lN.i ttjIt
! fact, and as such to be respected, But,
while it cannot be overcome, it may be
modified. Here are two strips of rich.
arabic soil. with a sWampy intcrvale sep
arating them Drain that efficiently,
and YOU have a field of twelve to fifteen
acres. all Of which may be this year in
potatoes, next year in corn, then in
oats. and then laid down in grass, or
NAV suggest. If the arabic fields of this
State were thus enlarged, sby the sweep
| inc away of fences. the removal of Su-
| perficial rocks, and the draining Of Dogs,
| until ten to forty acres might be given
to one crop, instead Of a patch Of one to
five acres as at present, she would grow
far more grain, and to greater profit,
than is now possible.
Let me indicate few more points at
which Improvement seems to me feasible
and cOmmendable
I. IrrjQGtj0n. This. the original basis
and Indictment Of tillage is, in myyicW,
one of its later requirements also. God
taught men to prepare the earth and SOW
seed by setting them the example in the
annually inundated valleys of the lower
Nile and other rivers. From this to
damming back water and thus keeping
it for application to the soil when thirsty,
is but a step; yet man was long in TAX
ing that step. At present, the great
plain of L0mbardy or upper Italy, SlOp-
ing from the Alps to the Pc, and crossed
by the Adige Mincio. and many smaller
tributaries, affords the best subsisting
example. of comprehensive, successful
irrigation; though Utah follows at some
distance, and Colorado is treading rather
timidly in Utahs footsteps. That irri-
cation is desirable in itself, no one
doubts: the practical question to be
answered is VIII it pay2" On this
point, I proffer some suggestions based
on extensive observation and some little
experience:
Follow any of the streams that start
near the crest of the Green Mountains
down to the Connecticut on the one
hand or to Lake Champlain or the
HoOsac on the other, and you will note
MANY places where water might be
taken out. by the help of q cheap dam
and ditch, and conducted along hill
side or across a swale or valley so as to
be gradually let off in rills or petty riv-
ulets to m0isten and fertiliZe the slope
| between it and the stream whence it was
taken. Very little of it would reach that
destination, as the thirsty earth would
drink it up by the way. ! estimate that
of the total area of this State, 100000
acres Immediately, 100000 ultimate
ly, might thus be irrigated at an average
cost of $50 per acre and with an aver
age increase of their annual product by
at least S. per acre, or an interest on
the investment of % per cent. There
are doubtless gold mines in Utah or Col
orado, as there possibly may be diamond
mines in Arizona, that would pay bet
ter interest than this, but [ should pre-
fer not to designate them. In fact, do
not know another enterprise which seems
to me 50 certain to yield large profit as
that of irrigating the hillsides and inter
wales of this same Vermont.
Almost any one who has-On his farm
even the tiniest streamlet with q cOnsid-
prahIp fall in If NAV experiment i'm irri-