Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1877-07-05
The faru1 and fireside.
THE CHUFA, OR EARTH ALMOND.

In our recent visit to Shelby Springs, Mr..
j. J. Norris took US into his fields for the pur-
pose of showing US piece Of land on which he
had made an experiment with chufas. The
land was thin, gravelly soil, capable, we
should say, of producing not more than ten
bushels of corn. On this, Mr.. Norris planted
last year one acre of chufas, seventy rows
three feet apart, and seventy yards long. Se-
lecting an average row he carefully gathered
and measured the product, which he found to
be one bushel and sixteenth. The acre,
therefore, would have turned out seventy -four
bushels. Mr.. Norris estimates from his ex.
perience in feelings hogs, that a pound Of
chufas is worth as much as pound of corn
He washed, dried and eighed the chufas and
found that they weighed forty.six pounds to
the bushel. The seventy. -four bushels OF chu-
fas, therefore, are equal in feeding capacity to
sixty bushels of corn. That is to say, if Mr..
Norris experiment is fair test, an acre in
chufas is worth six times as much as the same
acre would be in corn.-Southern Plantation
The chufa, in the last few months, has at
tracted great deal of attention in the agri'
cultural journals In the South. The chufa
is, no doubt, a valuable acquisition to the
farmer in aiding him to save vast amount
of corn in producing pork: 1t is claimed for
the chufa that it will make enormous crops
upon very thin soil with very limited amount
of cultivation. 1t is even stated by some that
chufas will actually yield good paying crop
upon land where peas will fail to grow; again
it is said that they are not exhaustive to soil,
ike goobers. Chufas possess remarkable flesh
producing properties perhaps equal to corn.
Every farmer should have his patch of chufas,
as he can do so at less expense than almost
any other crop
If farmer can raise chufas as food for
hogs at less expense than corn, then he Ger.
tainly should do 80. We do not mean to dis
pense with corn altogether-by no means-as
the chufa crop only lasts for short period Of
the year but our idea is this, that during the
length of time they do last, we might save for
that length of time considerable corn. We
are led to think that as corn is an expensive
crop in localities in the South where the land
is naturally poor or made so by an abusive
system of farming, that the farmer acts very
unwise to raise corn altogether as feed for his
hogs, when his land is better adapted to other
crops equally as efGcacious for his purpose and
less expensive than the corn crop. There are
many reasons why chufas should be more sx-
tensively cultivated, and We believe when the
merits of this nut are more generally known,
they will receive more general and liberal ap.
probation of our farmers.-Southern Stock
Journal.
think, all things considered, that it is an
excellent if not the best crop for certain pur.
poses, to-wit: To fill the smoke house on
cheap scale.
In the first place they are very nutritious !;
sugary, oily, and well-tasting to stock and
man. Hogs, chickens, turkeys, mules, or any
other stock that have tried, prefer them to
corn after they have tasted them. Hogs will
leave corn any time for chufas. l am satis-
fed that hogs will thrive faster on chufas than
they will on corn.
They will grow on the poorest land in
Georgia; they will yield forty to fifty bushels
per acre on land that COW peas will perish in.
On land that will produce ten bushels of corn
per acre without manure, chufas will produce
100 bushels, if properly planted and cultiva-
ted, with less labor, too, than it would take to
make corn.
Old sedge fields suit them admirably. You
can plant them in the corn field as you would
peas, only not so thick; one for every ten or
twelve inches also between the corn hills.
Have corn rows seven feet apart, two rows of
chufas in the middle Some object to them
and say they are pests; they are just as
easily eradicated as sprout of young corn.
1t is true they will lie in the ground all the
winter and come in the spring-then plough
them up and that is the last of them -Geor-
gia Grange