Mr. Sloe, who lives on an adjoining farm, had three acres of Peachblow potatoes the same year. The yield was 100 bushels per acre—of which 25 bushels were not large enough for market, he got 50 cents per bushel for the others.
The account of the two crops stands as follows:
| Expenses Per Acre: | Mr. Sloe | Judge. |
|---|---|---|
| Plowing, harrowing, rolling, marking, planting and covering | $ 8 00 | $ 8 00 |
| Seed | 5 00 | 5 00 |
| Hoeing, cultivating, etc. | 7 00 | 10 00 |
| Digging | 10 00 | 10 00 |
| 30 00 | 33 00 | |
| Receipts Per Acre: | ||
| 75 bushels, @ 50c | 37 50 | |
| 25 bushels, @ 12½c | 3 12 | |
| 40 62 | ||
| 200 bushels, @ 60c | 120 00 | |
| 8 bushels, @ 12½c | 1 00 | |
| 121 00 | ||
| Profit per acre | $10 62 | $98 00 |
Since then, Mr. Sloe has been making and using more manure, and the year before last (1875) his crop of potatoes averaged over 200 bushels per acre, and on the sandy knolls, where more manure was applied, the yield was at least 250 bushels per acre.
“Nevertheless,” said the Deacon, “I do not believe in ‘high farming.’ It will not pay.”
“Possibly not,” I replied. “It depends on circumstances; and these we will talk about presently. High farming aims to get large crops every year. Good farming produces equally large crops per acre, but not so many of them. This is what I am trying to do on my own farm. I am aiming to get 35 bushels of wheat per acre, 80 bushels of shelled corn, 50 bushels of barley, 90 bushels of oats, 300 bushels of potatoes, and 1,200 bushels of mangel-wurzel per acre, on the average. I can see no way of paying high wages except by raising large crops per acre. But if I get these large crops it does not necessarily follow that I am practising ‘high farming.’”
To illustrate: Suppose I should succeed in getting such crops by adopting the following plan. I have a farm of nearly 300 acres, one quarter of it being low, alluvial land, too wet for cultivation, but when drained excellent for pasturing cows or for timothy meadows. I drain this land, and after it is drained I dam up some of the streams that flow into it or through it, and irrigate wherever I can make the water flow. So much for the low land.
The upland portion of the farm, containing say 200 acres, exclusive of fences, roads, buildings, garden, etc., is a naturally fertile loam, as good as the average wheat land of Western New York. But it is, or was, badly “run down.” It had been what people call “worked to death;” although, in point of fact, it had not been half-worked. Some said it was “wheated to death,” others that it had been “oated to death,” others that it had been “grassed to death,” and one man said to me, “That field has had sheep on it until they have gnawed every particle of vegetable matter out of the soil, and it will not now produce enough to pasture a flock of geese.” And he was not far from right—notwithstanding the fact that sheep are thought to be, and are, the best animals to enrich land. But let me say, in passing, that I have since raised on that same field 50 bushels of barley per acre, 33 bushels of Diehl wheat, a great crop of clover, and last year, on a part of it, over 1,000 bushels of mangel-wurzel per acre.
But this is a digression. Let us carry out the illustration. What does this upland portion of the farm need? It needs underdraining, thorough cultivation, and plenty of manure. If I had plenty of manure, I could adopt high farming. But where am I to get plenty of manure for 200 acres of land? “Make it,” says the Deacon. Very good; but what shall I make it of? “Make it out of your straw and stalks and hay.” So I do, but all the straw and stalks and hay raised on the farm when I bought it would not make as much manure as “high farming” requires for five acres of land. And is this not true of half the farms in the United States to-day? What then, shall we do?
The best thing to do, theoretically, is this: Any land that is producing a fair crop of grass or clover, let it lie. Pasture it or mow it for hay. If you have a field of clayey or stiff loamy land, break it up in the fall, and summer-fallow it the next year, and sow it to wheat and seed it down with clover. Let it lie two or three years in clover. Then break it up in July or August, “fall-fallow” it, and sow it with barley the next spring, and seed it down again with clover.