The Port Gibson reveille. [volume] (Port Gibson, Miss.) 1890-current, 1909-04-29
farm implements.

farm implements.
| The second step that ! advocate
is to produce upon your farm all
that is required for your family and
for your stock on the farm.
The third step that | advocate is
to have plenty of good pastures
have a good meadow; cut and cure
plenty of pea-vine and other hays.
Fill the corn fields full of cowpeas
and plant fields of peas, peamit
and sweet potatoes. When the
corn is gathered in the fall, you
can turn your hogs, cattle, horses,
and mules into the fields and be
sure that all will be rolling fat by
winter.
The fourth step that I advocate
is to increase the number of good
brood mares, and milk cows, and
beef cattle, and hogs, and poultry.
The up-to-date farmer always
sells some surplus farm produce.
Every time he goes to town he
carries some vegetables, fruits,
butter, eggs, poultry. The farmer
who drives an empty wagon to
town and returns with it loaded
with foods that he ought to pro-
duce on his own farm lives hard
at home and wears one suspender
and crownless hat.
Cotton is the greatest money
crop in the world and enough of
the odds and ends should be sold
by every farmer to pay the running
expenses of the farm so that the
cotton money may be placed in the
bank.
WASHING OF LAND.
No human precaution can wholly
prevent the washing of cultivated
lands. However, we can prevent
excessive washing and recover the
already quilted fields.
A field thoroughly pulverized
and full of vegetable matter to a
depth of say ten inches will readi-
ly absorb three inches of rain fall,
and soil in this condition will
suffer no surface washing from any
ordinary rain. This being true,
land which is apt to wash should
have the soil gradually deepened
and be kept full of vegetable mat
ter SO as to greatly increase the
storage capacity for water.
Any crop which requires clean
culture, as for example cotton, is
is exhausting to the land for the
reason that constant exposure of
the surface of the soil to the sun
uses up the organic matter, re-
duces the water holding capacity
of the soil, and the soil particles
themselves are more easily washed
away. Cotton ought not to be
planted on the same land more
than one year out of three-cer-
tainly not more than one year out
of two. We ought TO sow some
crop like vetcb, burr, red, or white
clover, rye, or oats in the cotton
at the last working Of the crop to
bind the surface particles and pro-
tect it from washing in the fall and
winter, reduce the teaching out of
the plant food to the minimum,
and add vegetable matter to the
soil.
While the soil may be gradually
deepened, filled full of humus, and
thereby made more porous and
more absorbent of water, covered
with vegetation as much of the
year as possible-still these meth
DDS may not be sufficient to SO
change the physical texture OF the
soil as to enable it to absorb all of
the rain that falls at times. It is,
therefore, advisable to provide hill.
side bitches with a fall of from one
to two inches to twenty feet to car.
ry the surplus water out of the field.
The distance apart of the bitches
will depend upon the slope of the
field.
| These bitches must be construct
ed with, care and have to be
strengthened where they cross any
depression or sudden curve by
building up an embankment with
sticks or brush thrown across te
support the embankment. In
| less bitches are well constructed