The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1872-11-07

is devoted to increasing tne Slze Willie lLhpTOV-
ing the quality of its muck-heap. IT your soil
is sandy or gravelly, and a pit or bank OF clay
is convenient, one hundred loads OF simple clay
per acre may be spread over your grass-lands
late in the fall or early in the winter with proht
while clay soils are in like manner improved
by g. dressing of sand or fine gravel by loan.
Fill up any hollows or depressions by thus
coating clay with sand and sand with clay, and
large crops will respond to your persistent,
wisely directed efforts. Of course, whole
farm cannot be thus thoroughly treated at once;
but get few acres into perfect condition eacn
year, lay these down to grass and proceed with
the next lot, and your whole farm Will soon be
model, alike for facility of working and GER
tainty of ample harvests. :.
am writing for poor men, who DO not admit
that they should therefore be poo; farmers.
The rich can buy fertilizers right and left, un-
derdrain. subsoil and till to perfection; but
address the thousands whose will is good but
whose means are scanty, who cannot afford to
ebranch out" but must make each years saw
ings pay for the next years Improvements. To
tell one of these how he might proftably spend
several thousand dollars forthwith on his farm
is only to annoy him; he has not the money,
can not borrowit, and can spare nothing where
with to buy it. So have said little OF under
draining, because that costs at least one hum
dred dollars per acre, and is not in order except
on small scale, until the farm has been made
productive and profitable. Let the farmer OF
scanty means improve the first dry autumn 70
underdrain thoroughly his wettest, boggiest
acre when thoroughly dry, let him sweeten
this by liberal application of lime, and tho
roughly pulyerizing its soil, note well the two
or three succeeding crops, and think he will
be convinced, as am, that undertaking pays,
at least wherever it is undeniably needed
Undertaking dry upland will come far later,
and, as to many farms, may never come at all.
With irrigation the case is different. Doubt
less generations will pass before our fields are
blessed by that Universal Irrigation, by the
aid of wells pumped by windpower, which |
thoroughly believe in. That must come slowly,
gradually, in ages, not years merely, and will
not be hurried. Let me speak only of what is
practicable and advisable to-day.
Most farms are trayersed or skirted by some
sort of brook, runnel or timer water-course,
which may be dry for part of nearly every
year. Each is fullest in Springs, when fed by
copious rains, and often by melting SHOWS also:
Its current is of course, richest in plant-food
Just when most ample. A slight dam thrown
across its channel near the upper side of farm
or field, with mere furrow run diagonally
thence Shrough the field or fields below, so as
to lead the water gradually away from the
brook-bed, escaping across the lower bank Of
the shallow ditch at intervals until the last
drop has been used to moisten and enrich the
soil through which it filters down to its natu-
raj bed-such is rude outline of very rude
device for doubling the crops while-increaslng
the permanent fertility of larger or smaller
portion of every farm. Of course, the mode
so5 20 mi fn ho n
stream, the lay of the land but an intelligent
farmer will know how to avail himself of the
topography of his freehold so as to insure him
the largest increase of product at moderate,
perhaps inconsiderable, cost. l am confident
that our country's annual harvests might be
largely increased by irrigation, with an annual
profit of ten to twenty-five per cent. on the to-
tai outlay or cost.
J. need not say that this question of cost is
one that the average farmer must continually
ponder. He would like to do and to buy many
things that he cannot afford-at least, not yet.
The need of improved and more effective i'm
plements of husbandry is forever staring him
in the face. Mowers and reapers, tedders and
horse-rakes, stalk-cutters, feed-steamers, &C.,
&C., are all good in their place; but he cannot
yet pay for half of them, while he must pro-
duce and sell in free competition with those
who possess and use them all. Of course he
must give more labor for every bushel of grain,
each ton of hay, than his fore-handed neighbor
does; and this disparity the progress of inven-
ton is steadily increasing. 1t is this rather
than the inferority of our soils that is carrying
the erain.fields of our country farther and far
ther West. Minnesota and California did not
average twenty bushels of wheat per acre last
yearVdid not average, believe, so large a
Weld of this foremost of bread-grains as Penn
sylvania did-but the former States grew their
crops mainly on vast plains or prairies, by the
help of the most efficient machinery, which
enabled their farmers to pay high wages and
yet realize fair profits. We, too, must ultimate
ly use steam and most effective machinery, or
submit to be driven out of grain-culture almost
entirely.
DO hold, therefore, that our seaboard farm
ers must abandon the goodly region in which
they were born and follow the Indian and the
pioneer on the paths which point ever toward
the setting sun? By no means. A part will
do this; let them be waited on their way by
our hearticst good wishes, our fondest prayers.
But a large fraction of our sons and daughters
will remain by the graves of their fathers, and
till the fields on which their eyes first opened
These, too, must have bread-corn and l dis
trust-nay, dispute-the wisdom of obtaining
this wholly from distant growers. An individ-
ual family of cultivators, may do it with ad-
vantage; doubt that whole community Of
fifty thousand farmers ever did or will. A
mining, numbering region, is apt to have an
unusual proportion of its inhabitants living
from hand to mouth; 1 doubt that an exclu-
sively tobacco or cotton-growing county can be
found which does not present similar social
aspect. Diversity of employment is essential
to general thrift; rotation of crops is vital to
the healthful vigor of the soil, the prosperity of
its owner and tiller do not say that no con-
siderable community ever throve by making
gmlets or growing hemp exclusively; do in
sist that any such exclusive devotion to sin.
gle pursuit must ever prove, in the average and
in the long run, mistaken and pernicious. Let
the South grow her cotton, the Northwest her
wheat, the midwest her Indian corn, but let
each steadily enlarge and diversity her range of
production, and let the Atlantic seaboard show
,ybot ,,,ov hn dnno hy cvatem undpr which