The harvest, which, in seed-culture, lasts for many consecutive weeks, has just commenced. The first important crop that ripens is the turnip,—which is now being cut. The work is performed by the use of grass-hooks or toothless sickles; stem after stem is cut, until the hand is full, when they are deposited in canvas sheets; as these are filled, boys stand ready to spread others; men follow to tie up those which have been filled; others succeed, driving teams, and loading wagons, with ample shelvings, with sheet-full piled on sheet-full, until the sturdy oxen are required to test their strength in drawing them to the drying-houses; arrived there, each sheet-full is separately removed by rope and tackle, and the contents deposited on the skeleton scaffolding within the building, there to remain until the seed is sufficiently cured and dry enough to thresh. These drying-houses are buildings of uniform character, two stories in height and fifty feet square, constructed so as to expose their contents to sun and air, and each provided with a carefully laid threshing-floor, extending through the building, with pent-house for movable engine. When the houses are full and the hulm in a fit state for threshing, the engine is started and the work begun. One man, relieved by others from time to time, (for the labor requires activity, and consequently is exhausting,) feeds the thresher, which, with its armed teeth, moves with such velocity as to appear like a solid cylinder. Here there is no stopping for horses to take breath and rest their weary limbs,—puff, puff, onward the work,—steam as great a triumph in threshing as in printing or spinning. Men and boys are stationed at the rear of the thresher to remove the straw, and roughly separate the seed from the shattered hulm,—others again being engaged in thrusting the dried crop from the scaffolds, and placing it in suitable position for the feeders. When one drying-house has thus been emptied, the engine is removed to another; the same process is pursued until the circuit of the buildings has been made, and thus the ceaseless round (ceaseless at least for a season) is continued. As soon as the crop in the first house has been threshed, the work of winnowing is commenced, and skilled hands thus engaged follow on in the track of the engine. As each crop is cleaned and put in merchantable order, it is placed in bags of two bushels each and carried to the storehouses and granaries, there to await a requisition from the city-warehouse.
We have just witnessed the process of saving the crop of turnip-seed. And how much may that reach? is a natural inquiry. Of all the varieties, including the ruta-baga, about one thousand bushels, is the response. We should have thought a thousand pounds would supply the entire Union; but we are reminded it is in part exported to far distant lands. And what is the crop so much like turnip, but still green, and apparently of more vigorous growth? That is one of the varieties of cabbage, of which several standard kinds are under cultivation. Another adjoining is radish; still another, beet; and thus we pass from kind to kind, until we have exhausted a long catalogue of sorts.
Let us stop our walk over the grounds for a few moments, taking seats under the shadow of a tree, and make some inquiries as to the place itself, its extent, the course of culture, the description of manures used, etc. Our cicerone assents to the proposal, and proceeds to answer our general inquiries. Bloomsdale contains in round numbers four hundred acres; it has a frontage on the Delaware of upwards of a mile, is bounded on the west by the Delaware Canal, and is divided into two nearly equal parts by the Philadelphia and Trenton Railroad. The soil is a light loam, easily worked, suited to rapid percolation, admitting of labor immediately after heavy rain, and not liable to suffer by drought. The manures used are principally crude, obtained from the city, and landed on the premises from shallops continually plying, laden with the "sinews of farming." Street-scrapings are more used than stable-manure; bone-dust and guano enter largely into the account; and the aggregate annual expenditure foots up a sum almost equivalent to the fee-simple of an ordinary farm. The culture is that denominated drill; but of course much of it is simply straight lines drawn by the plough, in which the roots for seeding are planted by hand. The ground, with the exception of the lawn and a portion occupied from time to time by grass for home use, is divided by wagon-roads into squares and parallelograms; cross fences are not used; and each crop forms a distinct feature, accessible at any stage of growth. The several varieties of each kind, as, for instance, those of turnip, cabbage, beet, lettuce, are planted widely apart, to guard against possible admixture; but the chances of that result must be much less than is popularly supposed, efforts having been used experimentally to test its practicability, and that between kindred closely allied, without success. Although the extent of the grounds would appear to be formidable, even for a farm conducted in the usual mode, it is insufficient for the demands on the proprietors, without diligent exertion and prompt recropping,—two crops in each year being exacted, only a small part of the land escaping double duty, the extent annually ploughed thus amounting to nearly twice the area of the farm. The heavy hauling is performed by oxen, the culture principally by mules, which are preferred to horses, as being less liable to injury, and better adapted to the narrow drill culture practised.
The seeds of Bloomsdale have attained a world-wide reputation, and, to quote an expression used in reference to them, "are almost as well known on the Ganges as on the Mississippi or Ohio." They are regularly exported to the British possessions in India, to the shores of the Pacific, throughout the West Indies, and occasionally to Australia. The drier atmosphere of this country ripens them better than the humid climate of England, adapting them to exportation; and it is no slight triumph to see them preferred by Englishmen on English soil. At home, thousands of hamlets, south and west of Philadelphia, until interrupted by the war, were supplied with Landreth's seeds. The business, founded nearly three-quarters of a century ago, is now conducted by the second and third generations of the family with which it originated. Thus has success been achieved through long and patient industry steadily directed to the same pursuit, and a reputation built up for American seeds, despite the want of national protection.
THE EAST AND THE WEST.
[This poem was written by THEODORE WINTHROP seven years ago, and after his death was found among his unpublished papers.]
We of the East spread our sails to the sea,
You of the West stride over the land;
Both are to scatter the hopes of the Free,
As the sower sheds golden grain from his hand.
'Tis ours to circle the stormy bends
Of a continent, yours its ridge to cross;
We must double the capes where a long world ends,
Lone cliffs where two limitless oceans toss.
They meet and are baffled 'mid tempest and wrath,
Breezes are skirmishing, angry winds roar,
While poised on some desperate plunge of our path
We count up the blackening wrecks on the shore.
And you through dreary and thirsty ways,
Where rivers are sand and winds are dust,
Through sultry nights and feverish days,
Move westward still as the sunsets must: