Keowee courier. [volume] (Pickens Court House, S.C.) 1849-current, 1903-09-02
FARMING BY MACHINERY.
May Do Work for Us that viii 30 Worth
S1,000,000, 900 Year.

May 10 Work tor US that viii 30 Worth
$1,000,000,00 Year.
Farm machinery may some time
do work for US that will be worth
s1,O0O,OOO,OOO a year. Theoretically
it is already saving us nearely three
fourths that sum !; for as far back as
1899, if all the crops to which machin.
cry is adapted could have been
planted and gathered by hand they
would cost nearly $700,000,0OO more
than if they had all been planted
and gathered by machinery. 1t
has only added so much to our
wealth, but it has made US the
foremost exporting nation and it is
changing the character of the farmer
by freeing him from monotonous
hand toll. More than that, it is fast
changing the immemorial conception
of agriculture and the pastoral and
idyllic associations that have
gathered about it since the time of
Abraham. Wealth, industry, com
merce, the character of men and
even their sentiment are all affected
by it.
All the great crops are now
planted and all, except cotton, are
gathered by machinery. Let us
follow crop throughout seasons
work and see the changes that have
come in its treatment.
The ploughman no longer trudges
slowly and wearily back and forth
across the field. He rides sulky
plough with spring seat. There are
ploughs, stubble ploughs, subsoil
special ploughs for every need; turf
ploughs, ploughs for heavy work,
ploughs for light work and gang
ploughs turning B burrows at once. So
simple are many of them that boy
may drive one. Ploughing by steam
is not commonly practiced in the
middle west, but out on the great
wheat ranches of the Pacific coast it
is common. On the table lands of
California sixty-horse- power trac-
tion engine, drawing twenty one feet
of disk ploughs, will break the ground
to depth of ten inches at the rate
of forty-five to Sky acres day.
With mould board ploughs, designed
especially for this work, a strip
twenty eight feet can be broken.
This means that man and pair of
horses with single mould-board
plough would have to cross field
% times to do the same work
that the engine does by one trip of
its ploughs. A farmer of the central
west who uses small traction engine
and gang Of four fourteen-inch
ploughs says that it costs him from
so to so cents per acre to break his
ground. He con siders steam econo-
mical
The ploughing done, the manure
spreader replaces the hand fork and
it's backache. While the farmer with
pair of horses drives back and forth
across his fields, from the rear of his
wagon the fertilizer is mechanically
spread evenly over his land. Manure,
commercial fertilizer, stalks,
straw, lime, ashes or litter from the
barnyard are spread with greater
economy, because with greater even
ness than by hand, to say nothing of
the saving of time and of toll.
The land made ready for the recep-
tion of the seed, machinery still does
the work that muscle used to do.
The sower goes forth to SOW, but not
as. he once did, dropping his seed
into the soil, trudging backwar and
forward from dawn till twilight.
His grass or his grain is broadcasted
or drilled in with mechanical even
ness and the machine automatically
registers the acreage sown. In like
manner his corn is drilled in, listed or
planted in hills, his potatoes are
planted and even his cabbage, his
cauliflower and his tobacco plants
from the seed. beds are set out by
machinery and the work is done
better than it could possibly be by
hand-this, besides the saving of
time and toll. Even in the vege.
table garden seeders are now
extensively used. The machines are
pushed in front of the operator and
they automatically drop and cover
the seeds at the desired distances
and depths and at the same time
marke off the next row.
Promptly after the crop is planted
come the weeds. Thew once meant