The Wichita city eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1872-1883, 1876-09-14
Hints about Farm Work for September.

The results of the harvest season
now nearly closed show very clearly
that the effects of the variableness of
the seasons may be greatly modified
by the farmer himself. In parts of the
East, where severe drouth has pre-
vailed, and where the potato beetles
have appeared in great numbers, those
farmers have suffered most whose
fields have been poor, or who have
neglected those simple precautions by
which others have saved their crops.
In the West, where floods of rain have
drenched the fields, it is the undrained
lands that have suffered. Where lib
eral manuring, drainage. or careful
cultivation has been done, the i'll effects
of drouth or excessive moisture have
been mitigated. One more resource
remains to be exercised, and that is
irrigation. Every successive year
shows more and more 9onclusively
that some practical means of utilizing
the excess of the rainfall of part
of the year, during our almost
certain dry season, would be of the
greatest advantage. How we can best
use the surplus of our wet months, is
question that appeals to the interest
of farmers, fruit-growers and garden
ers.
The dry weather of July and August
over large portion of the East, has
brought the wheat and rye into con-
dition of ripeness that will much facil-
itate early threshing. a large proper
ton of the grain was in the best con-
dition for threshing as it came from
the field. Many of the best farmers
now haul their grain direct from the
field to the machine. A second hand
ling is thus avoided, and the straw
may go into the stack in better con-
dition, or into the barn direct. With
our usually dry harvest season there
seems to be no reason for this double
handling, and none to prevent the
threshing of wheat, rye or oats direct
ly from the field. Our own experience
is decidedly in favor of this practice.
Rye is little more than half the price
of wheat. The chief reason why this
crop is grown, is that the soil is too
poor TO bring crop of wheat. To
grow bGshel of rye costs just as
much as to produce bushel of wheat. |
Either the rye is grown at a loss, or
the wheat at large profit. The for
mer is the fact. Why then should rye |
be grown, excepting in those rare cases
in which the straw is in demand for
various purposes, and in which the
profit of the crop thus lies Only be-
cause the method of farming is poor,
and therefore Improbable. As help |
to change the system, we might sug-
gest that the manure used to grow a
few acres of rye, be used on half the
number of acres of wheat, and the rest
of the land be fallowed or sown to
clover in the spring, as means Of rem
ovation. But in some way wheat
ought TO take the place of rye in many
districts where that is grown.
To procure the largest, ripest grains
for seed, some sheaves may be thrown
upon the barn floor in deep bed, and
partly threshed with a fail, or by driv-
ing pair Of horses over them, with
out untying them. They may then be
returned to the NOW. This may seem
like going back on machinery, and re-
turning to bygone fashions, but there
are some things which can and perhaps
always will be done best by hand, and
this is one Of them. Machlne-threshed
grain is so much cracked or broken,
that large proportion is unfit for
seed, and especially when we have to
buy seed at double prices, or even
more, much is saved by procuring
hand-thrcshed seed. In the way point
ed out we get The largest and ripest
grain, which makes the best seed.
How much seed per acre should be
sown, is a question about which there
are various opinions. 1t depends upon
the kind OF seed and the richness Of