Juniata sentinel and Republican. [volume] (Mifflintown, Juniata County, Pa.) 1873-1955, 1874-02-11

Farming I'm California.

The farmer in this State is a person
of uncommon resources and ingenuity.
/ think he uses his brains more than
our Eastern farmers. / do not mean
to say that he lives better, for he does
not. His house is often shabby, even
though he be man of wealth, and his
table is not unfrequently without milk I;
he buys his butter with his camel vege-
tables in San Francisco, and bread and
mutton are the chief part of his living,
both being universally good here. But
in managing his land he displays great
enterprise, and knows how to fit his
efforts to the climate and soil. Thus,
in the tule lands, when they are first
drained, he finds it impossible to work
the soil with cattle or horses but this
does not prevent him from putting in a
crop, for after burning off the tules
which are tail reeds, and the high
grasses, he sows his hundreds of acres
with q coffee-mill wheat sower, and
coolly turns flock of sheep on the
ground, driving them compactly and
slowly over it, with the help of dogs to
keep the flanks of his flock from scat
tering and wheat thus "sheepod in"
as they call it, has borne sixty bushels
per acre. Nor is this all. Unless he
depends upon a volunteer crop next
year, he must plow the ground. 1t is
still, however, commonly too light TO
bear up horses, and so he shoes these
animals with stout wooden sabots, eleven
inches long by eight broad, and thus
they can walk at leisure and drag the
Capp-plow after them.
The gathering of the wheat crop goes
on all the valley lands with headers, and
you will find on all the farms in the
Sacramento Valley the best labor-saving
machinery employed, and human labor,
which is always the most costly, put to
its best and most profitable uses. They
talk here of steam-plows and steam
wagons for common roads, and have no
doubt the steam-plow will be first prac-
tically and generally used, so far as the
United States are concerned, IN these
Californian valleys, where 1 have seen
burrows two miles long, and ten eight
horse teams following each other.
Withal, they are somewhat ruthless in
their pursuit of a wheat crop. You may
see farmer who plows hundreds of
acres, but he will have his wheat grow
ing up to the edge of his verandah. If
he keeps a vegetable garden, he has
performed a heroic act of self denial
and as for flowers, theymust grow wamong
the wheat or nowhere. Moreover, while
he has great ingenuity in his methods,
the farmer of the Sacramento plain has
but little originality in his planting. He
raises wheat and barley. he mightraise
a dozen, score, of other products, many
more profitable, and all obliging him to
cultivate less ground, but it is only here
and there you meet with one who appre-
ciates the remarkable capabilities of the
soil and climate. Near Tehama some
Chinese have in the last two years grown
large crops of peanuts, and have, was
told, realized handsome profits from a
nut which will be popular in America,
suppose, as long as there is pit and a
gallery in theatre; but the peanut
makes valuable oil, and as it produces
enormously here it will some day be
raised for this use, as well as for the
benefit of the old women who keep fruit
stands on the street corners. 1t would
not be surprising if the Chinese, who
continue to come over to California in
great numbers, should yet show the
farmers here what can be done on small
farms by patient and thorough culture
As yet they confine their culture of land
mainly to vegetable gardens.
To the farmer the valley and foot-hill
lands of the Sacramento will be the most
attractive, and there are still here thou
sands of acres in the hands of the gov
eminent and the railroad company to be
obtained SO cheaply that, whether for
crops or for grazing, it will be some time
before the mountainous lands and the
pretty valleys they contain north of
Redding, the present terminus of the
railroad, will attract settlers. But for
the traveller the region north of Redding
to the State line offers uncommon at
traetions.-Haypc,.'s Magazine.