The Louisiana Democrat. [volume] (Alexandria, La.) 1845-1918, 1874-03-18
,sr;cuItural Prospects in the South,
FEW WORDS TO SOUTHERN FARMERS
AND PLANTERS.

y y
hest possible labor, because it W a s
smenable to discipline, and, like reg
Mar army, ever ready to obey the or
ders of the commander-in-chief. You
have now lost by the arbitrament of
the sword the control of tie forces
which made your broad fields laugh
with annual harvests, and now you
find yourselves burdeped with an enor-
NOUS reproductive landed property,
which is more heavily taxed than when
it filed your store houses, and srana-
ries aud barns, and furnished nine
tepths of the foreign exchange of the
whole Union. What, under these Cir
cumstances, are you to do7 Your la
bor is comparatively worthless, and
YOUR land without labor must inevita-
bly. sooner or later, come under the
hammer of the sheriff. We fancy the
solution of the problem is to be found
in one word, and that is grass.
Get your fields in sod, and pasture
upon them every grazing animal that
has money value. Depend less upon
the plow and The still more expensive
hoe, and have recourse TO the mower.
If you have not the capital in labor,
horses, implements and manure-nat-
ural add artificial to get your land in
grass in the speediesC way, be not i'm
patient or discouraged, have recourse
to sheep; III time The very poorest
land will put on good sod of nulri-
tious grasses under the fructifying
tread of flock of sheep. 1t may he
objected that vagrant negroes and va
grant ours will prevent sheep breeding
in the South. This objection has some
weight, but is not irsuperable. On
the contrary, We may pluck safety
from this danger, and be compelled to
fold our sheep, part Of their manage
meat too often omitted, but which
stculd never be neglected under any
circumstances.
By means of the fold you effectualIy
protect your focks from night prowl-
ing dogs and their masters, aud the
brier patches aud CALLED spots in your
fields will soon be cleaned or enriched
by their tramping aud their droppinss.
Again, it may be objected that but Il
small portion of The cleared lands of
the South are adopted to grass, and
some of them not even to clover. To
a certain extent this is true, but the
fact is that Southern planters, absorbed
in the cultivation Of tobacco, cotton,
aud sugar, have never given sufficient
thought to other agricultural products
quite as Indispensable in their way as
the three above-named staples. In
the palmy days of cotton culture in
Mississippi the planter who raised his
own bread and meat was the excep-
ton. Most of them were corn buyers,
and none of them raised pork. Most
OF them had cotton on the brain, aud
they all dreaded grass as they would
cholera, the boil worm and tue CATER
pillar.
Under the new dispensation you
must of necessity give more attention
to other possible farm products, and
chief among these are grass and other
forage plants. 1t generally believed
That except on still clays, grass cannot
@srown with profit on the tide water
lands OF the Southern States; but has
lever been attempted? Until the at
Tempt is made and fails, we must re
lase to subscribe to the general belief.
where is the grass which makes f.
Oer or closer sod than the Bermuda,
growing in many Iouse-yards in Mis-
Ssslpp, always green aud growing
undeF the hottest sunlight and heavi-
e'ttramping7
Who has tried the new grass called
Japan Clover, which has appeared in
sumo OF the cotton States since the
vail Who among tha Southern nlan-