Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1875-05-13
agricultural department.
WHAT 1 WOULD DO,
WERE I A YOUNG FARMER.

provided a nice, we'll raised girl could be
found, brave enough to marry poor man,
and not be sorry for it afterward.
If from ten to thirty acres of land could be
spared from cultivation, would plant it in
pecan nut trees, which would, in twenty years,
prove source of income to me. When past
middle age, would cultivate bees to obtain
honey for home consumption at least, and, if
the pasturage is good, for market, also should
certainly raise cattle, for an ample supply of
milk and butter; there is no good living with
ou. milk and butter; not much digestion and
but little perfect health.
should keep sheep also; say four or five
sheep to each head of cattle, and if my farm
was too small to Craze them, and no privilege
was offered ME Of grazing them on the public
domain, l would sell out, or move without
selling, and locate myself not in the far West,
but within line of sixty miles from the At
laDtic and Gulf coast, extending from North
Carolina to Alabama; would seek healthy,
level pine land, with light sandy soil, lying
upon substratum of red or yellow clay, and
near enough streams to obtain cane pasturage
for my cattle during the winter. Our own
State furnishes thousands upon thousands Of
such acres. Colleton, Beaufort, and Barn
we'll counties ill the bill exactly.
/ would plant corn, cotton, peas, potatoes,
oats and sugar-cane would not spend dol
lar for commercial fertilizers, but all my dol
lars for sheep and cattle, and would keep as
many as I could winter, or that could winter
themselves, if the number should reach one
thousand. and the. farm should be proportioned
to the size Of the herd. Cattle and sheep
should herd together, to protect the latter from
dogs; and if the pasture was within two miles
they should be driven up and penned in port.
able pens every night, for eight months in
the year. In this genial latitude there are
but few days of winter so cold rs to forbid
herding cattle in the open air. My cattle and
sheep would be the source of all the phos-
phates and ammoniates that could be desired.
They would be living and portable phosphate
beds, putting their deposits where it would do
the most good, without the aid of lazy negroes,
mules and an old rattling wagon to haul straw
and then haul out the lot treadings upon the
fields. There is nothing to prevent the gath
ering of fabulous crops from few acres en-
riched by this process. Moreover, it is sys.
tenn requiring but little labor, and that job
labor, Just the kind our fellow citizens of At
rican descent prefer to render. Our planters
hire men to sit upon the fence and watch cot
ton-pickers. I would prefer to pay stock
minder, and watch my highly fertilized acres
from cool piazza, through all object G lass.
Where never less than one five hundred pound
bale of lint cotton per acre is grown, three
are quite practicable I should want but few
laborers, little while at time. Splitting
rails, blowing, hoeing, planting, cutting oats,
grinding sugar-cane-can all be done by job,
or Gay labor For whenever the plan of ma.
king large yields from small areas, when the
old plantation system, with dozen mules,
and its two or three dozen careless, lazy, thev
ish, and destructive "hands," shall become
everlastingly obsolete, all enterprising men,
who take hold Of farming and stock growing
at the right end, will find themselves emanci-
pated from Sambo's destructive clutches, and
perfectly able, without the aid Of exhaustive
and crushing liens, to begin safely, and carry
out successfully the only system of agri"ul
ture that can redeem the South and save its
people from destitution.
Men of small capital should begin on a
small scale always within their means. Let
it be one COW and calf, and four sheep, if no
more. Instead of hiring a man to drive up
this miniature herd, better hire the herd to
come without driving, by paying it every
evening few peas, oat sheaves, or fresh cut
grass. Stock are more faithfully responsive
to regularly paid wages than eighttenths of
our hirelngs. Pen them in movable pen
forty by forty feet, and move the pen every
ten days. This will Zurich land faster for the
outlay than any other method known to me.
True, it covers less than an acre in one year
of eight months; but if this area be increased
each year from fifty 10 one hundred per cent,
it will, in ten years, develop snug farm, and
its owner will find that he has slowly but
surely been growing comfortable and inde-
w. OGILvIE, in Rural Caro-
inian for May.
DIR. DANIEL LEE on BERMUDA GRASS.
Cato pleaded eloquently for reform with his
short.sighted, mistaken countrymen. MIR.
Howard is the Cato of our age and generation.
Cato told his friends to make water meadows
if they could command water for irrigation !;
if not, then make upland meadows, and by all
means have good artificial pastures aud graz
ing. Mr.. Howard invites public attention to
the agricultural phenomenon of ten tons Of
most nutritious hay being grown and harvest
ed on an acre of naturally poor land, near
Charleston, in one year. 10 corroborate the
credit due to Mr.. Ravenels report, on which
Mr.. Howard's statement rests, in regard to
Bermuda grass for hay and grazing purposes,
copy from the Patent Office Report of lS49,
the statement of Mr.. Thomas Atfleck, then Of
Mississippi. Let me say that | knew Mr..
Aftieck, as an educated Scotchman, who knew
all about grass, hay and fine stock, in his ma
tive country, and one whose word command
ed the universal confidence Of those best &C
quainted with him:
81 repeat, (see Southern Almanac for 1913,
page 81 y and can refer to numerous witnesses
to prove, if needful, that we have measured
the ground, and weighed the well-cured hay,
and this more than once, when one cutting,
and that the second one that season, yielded
over FIVE tons per acre. After that fair
third cut was taken from the same ground.
Five tons per annum is moderate yield
from good we'll set Bermuda meadow, which
is either top dressed with sludge from an
overflow, or receives one Of manure annually"
If the first and third cuts of grass on Mr..
Afflecks land were together equal to the sec
ond, (and they probably exceeded it,) this
Mississippi bottom yielded considerably over
ten tons of good hay per acre. In another
paragraph on the same page (l56) this gen.
tleman says:
II am not aware to what extent experiments
have been tried with other grasses. [ have
imported from Europe seeds of over forty
kinds; from Texas and the far West, over
ten or a dozen and have, also, tried any