THOROUGH TILLAGE.
My little, hilly, rocky farm teaches lessons of thoroughness which I would gladly impart to the boys of to-day who are destined to be the farmers of the last quarter of this century. I am sure they will find profit in farming better than their grandfathers did, and especially in putting their land into the best possible condition for effective tillage. There were stones in my fields varying in size from that of a brass kettle up to that of a hay-cock—some of them raising their heads above the surface, others burrowing just below it—which had been plowed around and over perhaps a hundred times, till I went at them with team and bar, or (where necessary) with drill and blast, turned or blew them out, and hauled them away, so that they will interfere with cultivation nevermore. I insist that this is a profitable operation—that a field which will not pay for such clearing should be planted with trees and thrown out of cultivation conclusively. Dodging and skulking from rock to rock is hard upon team, plow, and plowman; and it can rarely pay. Land ribbed and spotted with fast rocks will pay if judiciously planted with Timber—possibly if well set in Fruit—but tilling it from year to year is a thankless task; and its owner may better work by the day for his neighbors than try to make his bread by such tillage.
So with fields soaked by springs or sodden with stagnant water. If you say you cannot afford to drain your wet land, I respond that you can still less afford to till it without draining. If you really cannot afford to fit it for cultivation, your next best course is to let it severely alone.
A poor man who has a rough, rugged, sterile farm, which he is unable to bring to its best possible condition at once, yet which he clings to and must live from, should resolve that, if life and health be spared him, he will reclaim one field each year until all that is not devoted to timber shall have been brought into high condition. When his Summer harvest is over, and his Fall crops have received their last cultivation, there will generally be from one to two Autumn months which he can devote mainly to this work. Let him take hold of it with resolute purpose to improve every available hour, not by running over the largest possible area, but by dealing with one field so thoroughly that it will need no more during a long life-time. If it has stone that the plow will reach, dig them out; if it needs draining, drain it so thoroughly that it may hereafter be plowed in Spring so soon as the frost leaves it; and now let soil and subsoil be so loosened and pulverized that roots may freely penetrate them to a depth of fifteen to twenty inches, finding nourishment all the way, with incitement to go further if ever failing moisture shall render this necessary. Drouth habitually shortens our Fall crops from ten to fifty per cent.; it is sure to injure us more gravely as our forests are swept away by ax and fire; and, while much may be done to mitigate its ravages by enriching the soil so as to give your crops an early start, and a rank, luxuriant growth, the farmer's chief reliance must still be a depth of soil adequate to withstand weeks of the fiercest sunshine.
I have considered what is urged as to the choice of roots to run just beneath the surface, and it does not signify. Roots seek at once heat and moisture; if the moisture awaits them close to the surface, of course they mainly run there, because the heat is there greatest. If moisture fails there, they must descend to seek it, even at the cost of finding the heat inadequate—though heat increases and descends under the fervid suns which rob the surface of moisture. Make the soil rich and mellow ever so far down, and you need not fear that the roots will descend an inch lower than they should. They understand their business; it is your sagacity that may possibly prove deficient.
I suspect that the average farmer does far too little plowing—by which I mean, not that he plows too few acres, for he often plows too many, but that he should plow oftener as well as deeper and more thoroughly. I spent three or four of my boyish Summers planting and tilling Corn and Potatoes on fields broken up just before they were planted, never cross-plowed, and of course tough and intractable throughout the season. The yield of Corn was middling, considering the season; that of Potatoes more than middling; yet, if those fields had been well plowed in the previous Autumn, cross-plowed early in the Spring; and thoroughly harrowed just before planting-time, I am confident that the yield would have been far greater, and the labor (save in harvesting) rather less—the cost of the Fall plowing being over-balanced by the saving of half the time necessarily given to the planting and hoeing.
Fall Plowing has this recommendation—it lightens labor at the busier season, by transferring it to one of comparative dullness. I may have said that I consider him a good farmer who knows how to make a rainy day equally effective with one that is dry and fair; and, in the same spirit, I count him my master in this art who can make a day's work in Autumn or Winter save a day's work in Spring or Summer. Show me a farmer who has no land plowed when May opens, and is just waking up to a consciousness that his fences need mending and his trees want trimming, and I will guess that the sheriff will be after him before May comes round again.
There is no superstition in the belief that land is (or may be) enriched by Fall Plowing. The Autumn gales are freighted with the more volatile elements of decaying vegetation. These, taken up wherever they are given of in excess, are wafted to and deposited in the soils best fitted for their reception. Regarded simply as a method of fertilizing, I do not say that Fall Plowing is the cheapest; I do say that any poor field, if well plowed in the Fall, will be in better heart the next Spring, for what wind and rain will meantime have deposited thereon. Frost, too, in any region where the ground freezes, and especially where it freezes and thaws repeatedly, plays an important and beneficial part in aerating and pulverizing a freshly plowed soil, especially one thrown up into ridges, so as to be most thoroughly exposed to the action of the more volatile elements. The farmer who has a good team may profitably keep the plow running in Autumn until every rood that he means to till next season has been thoroughly pulverized.
In this section, our minute chequer-work of fences operates to obstruct and impede Plowing. Our predecessors wished to clear their fields, at least superficially, of the loose, troublesome bowlders of granite wherewith they were so thickly sown; they mistakenly fancied that they could lighten their own toil by sending their cattle to graze, browse, and gnaw, wherever a crop was not actually on the ground; so they fenced their farms into patches of two or ten acres, and thought they had thereby increased their value! That was a sad miscalculation. Weeds, briars and bushes were sheltered, and nourished by these walls; weasels, rats and other destructive animals, found protection and impunity therein; a wide belt on either side was made useless or worse; while Plowing was rendered laborious, difficult, and inefficient, by the necessity of turning after every few hundred steps. We are growing slowly wiser, and burying a part of these walls, or building them into concrete barns or other useful structures; but they are still far too plentiful, and need to be dealt with more sternly. O squatter on a wide prairie, on the bleak Plains, or in a broad Pacific valley, where wood must be hauled for miles and loose stone are rarely visible, thank God for the benignant dispensation which has precluded you from half spoiling your farm by a multiplicity of obstructing, deforming, fences, and so left its soil free and open to be everywhere pervaded, loosened, permeated, by the renovating Plow!