Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1882-05-11
How to Save the Country.


siness other than political, for few
days, law might be passed to prevent
the running at large of stock which
would gradually enforce itself.
The rail fences that are maintained all
over the State are the great consumers
of the forests and of the labor of the
farmers. They should be made useless.
The noblest trees that grew upon this
soil Lave been sacrificed for the fences
requisd by the running at large of cat
tie and hogs, and the other domestic an
imals.
But what shall we do for fences? In
the first place, good hedges are the pos
sibilities. They require degree of care
full labor and intelligent attention few
farmers are willing to bestow.
Board fences are good things. Locust
posts last many years, sand the locust tree
grows with such rapidity that an unlim-
tied supply of posts can be provided.
Good post timber can be grown in ten
years. About one-eighth Of the wood
that goes into a rail fence is sufficient
when boards are used.
Wire fences serve an excellent pur-
pose, and it is not essential that they
should be protected by the cruel spikes
that seem contrived to ruin spirited
horses. The wire fence may be made
visible to animals by the frequent inser-
ton of palings or such sticks as may be
selected from brushwood.
How shall we pasture our lands? the
farmers who have not given the question
business consideration inquire. One
method is by the use of portable fences.
A rough form of the portable fence is
that by which hogs, fed on standing
corn, are confined to an acre or so at
time. Made of wire and paliDgs, and
posts, fence that incloses ten acres
could be shifted in day, and the gen.
eral pasturage bettered by contining the
grazing to part at time.
What shall be done with the "tewn
cattle?" is the next question. The peo-
pie of the villages have a justifable pas
sion for cows, and there is usually q
gang of twenty or thirty cows picking
up living along the roads leading to
the small towns that dot the country.
Town cattle should be stabbed, system
atically pastured or suppressed. The
system of allowing them to run at large
is nuisance. They naturally become
expert trespassers and no fence will turn
them 1t is not worth while for a villa
ger to insist upon keeping cow unless
able to feed her. So kindly domestic
animal should not be expected to grub
along the roads or steal from the fields
for living.
Horses are not allowed to wander
about without masters to any great ex-
tent: why should cattle have the privi-
lege? And the raising of hogs and sheep
by foraging on the world at large is
system that belongs to degree of civil
ization less advanced than ours.
An immense strain would be taken
from the farmers by the abolishment of
the old style fences. Now the majority
of the people of the State of Ohio are in
a state of servitude to the fences, and
they are destroying the forests and
wasting the fields in vain struggle TO
keep their farms well fenced in the obso-
lete way. They should emancipate them
selves by abolisning altogether the old
style.
Iron bridges are rapidly replacing
wooden ones on all the substantial roads
in the State. That is gain. The sup
ply of iron ore is unlimited Let iron or
living fences replace the Virginia worm
fence which perishes with increasing
rapidity as the quality of the timber en-
ployed depreciates.
Then the time now wasted on fence
making can be largely bestowed upon
forest growing, and it will be the pride
of the farmer to increase the area of his
woods instead of his cleared ground.
Many barren fields only need to be let
alone to be covered with heavy growth
of original forest trees and where these
do not grow, the seed of the black locust
may be sown with the assurance Of a
speedy and profitable timber crop.
Much damage has been done good
farms by the heavy washing of the soil.
Hillsides once fertile are scanned with
cutters, and the small streams run tur-
bid at the slightest provocation of rain.
A little work well bestowed will check
the enlargement of these scars that
mark the progress of the disease that
wastes the soil. A pile of straw may do
some good, and few handsfull of brush |
is remedy.
In Switzerland, the mountain sides |
are protected by the binding together
the limbs of underbrash, and driving
little stakes in a row, putting vines, or
straw, or twigs between them, so that a
start in washing the surface may not be
made. Often the preservation of broad
fields for below depends upon such ap- |
parently trivial precautions, for if the
water is allowed to have its way and |
start ravine, it deepens and broadens
with astounding rapidity, and enormous
quantities Of gravel and loose stones roll
down and bury the fields forever.
Everybody ought to know, by this
time, that the best protection of the val
leys from the mountains is the forests, |
and the efforts to prevent surface wash
ing, of which we speak, refer to those
parts of the highlands that have been
deprived of their natural garments.
Nowadays, in the civilized countries of
Europe, trees are cut on the mountains
only after surveys and calculations. in
which the public interests are consid-
cred.
No less carefully than the mountains
of Switzerland should the hillsides of
Ohio be protected. Much may be done
by planting shrubbery of quick growth,
and sowing grasses that are deep-rooted