What I know of farming:. Greeley Horace

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СКАЧАТЬ doubt the profit of heavy manuring; and well they may, if three-fourths of the fertilizers applied are soaked out and swept away by flooding rains or sudden thaws and floated off to some distant sea or bay; but let all that is applied to the soil only remain there till it is carted away in crops, and it will hardly be possible to manure too highly for profit.

      IV. Trees, especially evergreens, may be so disposed as to modify agreeably the average temperature of your farm, or at least of the most important parts of it. When I bought my place – or rather the first installment of it – the best spot I could select for a garden lay at the foot of a hill which half surrounded it on the south and east, leaving it exposed to the full sweep of north and north-west winds; so that, though the soil was gravelly and warm, my garden was likely to be cold and backward. To remedy this, I planted four rows of evergreens (Balsam Fir, Pine, Red Cedar, and Hemlock), along a low ridge bounding it on the north, following an inward curve of the ridge at its west end; and those evergreens have in sixteen years grown into very considerable trees, forming a shady, cleanly, inviting bower, or sylvan retreat, daintily carpeted with the fallen leaves of the overhanging firs. I judge that the average temperature of the soil for some yards southward of this wind-break is at least five degrees higher, throughout the growing season, than it formerly was or would now be if these evergreens were swept away; while the aspect of the place is agreeably diversified, and even beautified, by their appearance. I believe it would sell for some hundreds of dollars more with than without that thrifty, growing clump of evergreens.

      V. I have already urged, though not strongly enough, that crops, as well as springs, will be improved by keeping the crests of ridges thickly wooded, thus depositing moisture in Winter and Spring, to be slowly yielded to the adjacent slopes during the heat and drouth of Summer. I firmly believe that the slopes of a hill whose crest is heavily wooded will yield larger average crops than slope and crest together would do if both were bare of trees.

      VI. The banks of considerable streams, ponds, etc., may often be so planted with trees that these will shade more water than land, to the comfort and satisfaction of the fish, and the protection of those banks from abrasion by floods and rapid currents. Sycamore, Elm, and Willow, do well here; if choice Grape-Vines are set beside and allowed to run over some of them, the effect is good, and the grapes acceptable to man and bird.

      VII. Never forget that a good tree grows as thriftily and surely as a poor one. Many a farmer has to-day ten to forty acres of indifferent cord-wood where he might, at a very slight cost, have had instead an equal quantity of choice timber, worth ten times as much. Hickory, Chestnut, and Walnut, while they yield nuts that can be eaten or sold, are worth far more as timber than an equal bulk of Beech, Birch, Hemlock, or Red Oak. Chestnut has more than doubled in value within the last few years, mainly because it has been found excellent for the inside wood-work of dwellings. Locust also seems to be increasing in value. Ten acres of large, thrifty Locust near this City would now buy a pretty good farm; as I presume it would, if located near any of our great cities.

      VIII. Where several good varieties of Timber are grown together, some insect or atmospheric trouble may blast one of them, yet leave the residue alive and hearty. And, if all continue thrifty, some may be cut out and sold, leaving others more room to grow and rapidly attain a vigorous maturity.

      IX. Wherever timber has become scarce and valuable, a wood-lot should be thinned out, nevermore cleared off, unless it is to be devoted to a different use. It seems to me that destroying a forest because we want timber is like smothering a hive of bees because we want honey.

      X. Timber should be cut with intelligent reference to the future. Locust and other valuable trees that it is desirable should throw up shoots from the stump, and rapidly reproduce their kind, should be cut in March or April; while trees that you want to exterminate should be cut in August, so that they may not sprout. There may be exceptions to this rule; but I do not happen to recollect any. Evergreens do not sprout; and I think these should be cut in Winter – at all events, not in Spring, when full of sap and thus prone to rapid decay.

      XI. Your plantation will furnish pleasant and profitable employment at almost any season. I doubt that any one in this country has ever yet bestowed so much labor and care on a young forest as it will amply reward. Sow your seeds thickly; begin to thin the young trees when they are a foot high, and to trim them so soon as they are three feet, and you may have thousands thriving on a fertile acre, and pushing their growth upward with a rapidity and to an altitude outrunning all preconception.

      XII. Springs and streams will soon appear where none have appeared and endured for generations, when we shall have reclothed the nakedness of the Plains with adequate forests. Rains will become moderately frequent where they are now rare, and confined to the season when they are of least use to the husbandman.

      I may have more to say of trees by-and-by, but rest here for the present. The importance of the topic can hardly be overrated.

      X.

      DRAINING – MY OWN

      My farm is in the township of Newcastle, Westchester County, N. Y., 35 miles from our City Hall, and a little eastward of the hamlet known as Chappaqua, called into existence by a station on the Harlem Railroad. It embraces the south-easterly half of the marsh which the railroad here traverses from south to north – my part measuring some fifteen acres, with five acres more of slightly elevated dry land between it and the foot of the rather rugged hill which rises thence on the east and on the south, and of which I now own some fifty acres, lying wholly eastward of my low land, and in good part covered with forest. Of this, I bought more than half in 1853, and the residue in bits from time to time as I could afford it. The average cost was between $130 and $140 per acre: one small and poor old cottage being the only building I found on the tract, which consisted of the ragged edges of two adjacent farms, between the western portions of which mine is now interposed, while they still adjoin each other beyond the north and south road, half a mile from the railroad, on which their buildings are located and which forms my eastern boundary. My stony, gravelly upland mainly slopes to the west; but two acres on my east line incline toward the road which bounds me in that direction, while two more on my south-east corner descend to the little brook which, entering at that corner, keeps irregularly near my south line, until it emerges, swelled by a smaller runnel that enters my lowland from the north and traverses it to meet and pass off with the larger brooklet aforesaid. I have done some draining, to no great purpose, on the more level portions of my upland; but my lowland has challenged my best efforts in this line, and I shall here explain them, for the encouragement and possible guidance of novices in draining. Let me speak first of

       My Difficulties.– This marsh or bog consisted, when I first grappled with it, of some thirty acres, whereof I then owned less than a third. To drain it to advantage, one person should own it all, or the different owners should coöperate; but I had to go it alone, with no other aid than a freely accorded privilege of straightening as well as deepening the brook which wound its way through the dryer meadow just below me, forming here the boundary of two adjacent farms. I spent $100 on this job, which is still imperfect; but the first decided fall in the stream occurs nearly a mile below me; and you tire easily of doing at your own cost work which benefits several others as much as yourself. My drainage will never be perfect till this brook, with that far larger one in which it is merged sixty rods below me, shall have been sunk three or four feet, at a further expense of at least $500.

      This bog or swamp, when I first bought into it, was mainly dedicated to the use of frogs, muskrats and snapping-turtles. A few small water-elms and soft maples grew upon it, with swamp alder partly fringing the western base of the hill east of it, where the rocks which had, through thousands of years, rolled from the hill, thickly covered the surface, with springs bubbling up around and among them. Decaying stumps and imbedded fragments of trees argued that timber formerly covered this marsh as well as the encircling hills. A tall, dense growth of blackberry briers, thoroughwort, and all manner of marsh-weeds and grasses, covered the center of the swamp each Summer; but my original portion of it, being too wet for СКАЧАТЬ