Show improvement OE earming FARMING LAND fred Pred frederick hick holbrook in the new england fat far farmer 1 mer gives his views relative to the most sure and direct way of 0 improving land which in short is to feed out its products returning the manure to the soil and to let the income of lne ine 1116 farm be derived mainly from stock 11 which welch 4 is a far more excellent policy than that pursued by some farmers in utah namely selling i off their grain to merchants army butlers and employees employee s rather than to exert themselves as they should to live wholly wb olly or comparatively independent of foreign importations tb e pres present ent state of afra affairs irs so far as as I 1 the 1 perma permanent neni nent lnla inhabitants litante li tants are concerned is by no means so desirable as to require no effort at a amelioration in li oration it is a condition of things that every ever reflecting I 1 A ting individual must dust earne earnestly st ly deprecate pr ecate it is neither more nor less than a condition of political vassalage a pecuniary monopoly and that too by a class who without hesitancy acknowledge that the they have no aoi i common interest with us that they or only ay seek ourt curt gold an d for which some bome of them ha have ve not faltered atthe at th e shrine of their shining 0 goi god oal even when our aurlio llo ilo lio n 4 vms was at stake 1 l so lon ion long iong as our farmer farmers swill will willingly bow themselves under the yoke and submit to become the pliant instruments for amassing the wealth of men mer merchants chants and speculators to their own injury so long iong will there be hordes of unprincipled adventurers and greedy traders to swallow up their harI harl earning earnings s leaving them themy as asan an equivalent what they have hitherto left a scanty supply of inferior goods mainly unsuited to their wants while at the same time the people are distracted in their efforts feeble tb tha buiey ahey were to bring forth from the elements around them so far as possible whatever their immediate necessities required till some favorat favorable I 1 ae change should take place that woula would give a more reasonable access to those things things which at present on account of their enormous cost and the extreme difficulty frequently que n aly experienced in obtain obtaining in them are esteemed as luxuries when iden it 1 is known that the gover government ament has awarded to a gentleman having no permanent interest in utah the contract contract act acl for supplying 0 the utah expedition with flour at the rate ov 0 twenty eight dollars per hundred pounds how many of our farmers will be willing 0 to supply that staple article of bread breadstuffs stuffs at the nominal price of five or six dollars per hundred receiving in pay those goods which while hl le in too many crises case are such as only pamper an art extravagant 0 taste without intrinsically contributing contti buting to personal c comfort or co convenience ay fience do not add or return one ingredient gre gro mt of fertility to the soil exhausting itself jear r en r after year by continued croppa cropping 0 without receiving a due resuscitation from a judiciously applied manures mr holbrock Holbro pk says it appears to me that generally sp eking speaking 1 the great aim in farming s should ouid be to devise and perfect ways for expending the various products of the soil upon the fare farm so as to get about as much for them in the growth of stock the meats dairy products ro ducts or wool etc into which they have been been converted aa as though they had been sold off for money thus giving back to the land the manures the crops may make increased in quantity of course by all judicious modes of composting com posting 0 with them the various unemployed or waste vegetables and other substances of the farm which alich contain i the elements of fertility the mistake has been and still is too common of selli selling tig off a considerable proportion of the grain crops especially and converting them into money if any surplus were left after baying paying debts aud and expenses that has generally been een invested either in the purchase of more land or at interest or in stocks and other property outside of farming the farm thus not receiving back a sufficient compensation for the products it has borne has been undergoing a gradual waste of fertility and generally has not been as profitable to the owner as it would atwould have been under a more generous cultivation indeed his income from all source sources sy is per haps less than if he had invested more from year to year in the improvement of the soil I 1 tear looking oking c to a highly cultivated farm for dividends and less in in merely added acres or in in stocks and other outside property i cases are not rare of men who have worked hard during the best working period of their life to get enough income from their farms over and above expenses to make an annual investment of money at interest or in in some kinds of stock so aa as to have something as they term it laid up for a wet day or for old age but the difficulty is they have been exi haisting hau sting tha the farm by so doing and as life advances and they find themselves less able to labor on the land the farm is less productive than when they were young will not reward labor as formerly and much hard and discouraging agin work must really be done to get a tolerable return from the investment they are n not ot so well situated to live easily and plea in old and their income or resources all told are not as good as though I 1 larger investments had from time to time been made in the improvement of the soil the farm I 1 growing roving more and more productive and bequir ing in less legs I 1 ess hard labor than formerly in proper tion to the income derived from it there may be instances where it is best to sell seli off the products of the farm to a consider i able extent and purchase town manures and this course will do provided enough manure isi is bought to compensate the land for fon bearing beaff i ng those products but in by far the generality of cases the farmer must mostly rely upon the manure made on his own farm the hay bay and coarse fodder are generally mostly fed out on the farm but often the principal part of the grain is sold ox off directly for cash now I 1 have the impression that in the long iong run all things considered it might be better to feed out the greater part of the grain along with the hay and other forage and kletthe let iet the income of the farm be derived mainly from the stock the grain fredwith fed with the forage adasa peculiar essence or strength and activity to the manure heap is emphatically the leaven which leavens the whole lump and has a very marked influence in in creasing increasing jn the products of the farm generally the land will be more productive in every kind of clop ci op than if the grain were sold off and it only got back the colder and less fertilising fertilizing lising manure made simply from hay hay and coarse forage after aate a fe few ay years of this kind of feeding the products of the farm will be so much increased that considerable more stock can be kept kepton on it which will in turn make more manure for the land these influences will work back and forth one upon the other so that in fact the business will grow more and more profitable and the income will increase more in proportion than it will be necessary to increase the investment there are hardly any limits to the productive capacity of our farms if we will only study out ways of expending our crops judiciously and making the most of the manures they will return to the soil sections of country may be pointed out in europe not naturally more favored for soil and climate than our own where the land has been cultivated for hundreds of years and is now more productive than at any former period and far more so acre for acre than the very best virgin soils and lands of our own country another thin thing 0 deserving particular consideration land thal thai that is in high cultivation and is judiciously cropped can be kept at a hi high P h mark of fertility with ease as compared with making exhausted land fertile the very luxuriance of the crops gives back a large mass of roots and stems to the soil especially is thistle this the case when a grass sward has hag been allowed to form so that in breaking the sod for a new rotation of 0 crops we can turn under many tons per er acre of matter fertilising fertilizing lising to the land contained in the roots and stems of the sward then too land in high condition is much less jess injuriously affected by y unfavorable pe peculiarities of the season as to drouth or moisture cold or heat than if it were in poor and indeed ia is in a good degree independent of these peculiarities in kny gny any any season it will pay a larger profit in proportion to what has been expended to obtain the crop than can be derived from exhausted land in it feeding out th the e grain crops pretty free cree freely 1 y on the farm there will be some years when the growth of stock the meats the wool the dairy products etc into which the grain has been converted will sell high enough to pay considerably sider ably more per bushel for the grain than it would have brought had it been sold off the farm other years the grain may perhaps bring a greater immediate income if sold off but taking one year with another and considering considering the steady improvement of the farm where tite the crops are ea expended e d le d upon on it there will vii be more profit in feeding outage out the grain than in selli ngit off in a period say of twelve or twenty years i I 1 am inclined to think that seventy five cents 1 per bushel realized for corn for instance fed out on the farm and the manure returned to the land is as good as one dollar per bushel realised realized reali sed by sending it off to market for cash and the farm robbed of an equivalent in manure for the corn thus sold off take for instance the whole amount or number of bushels of grain of any kind produced on an acre of land or on the farm and place it in a pile together it makes only a small heap even though the yield per acre be a very large one yet that heap small as it is contains a large per cent of the very essence of the fertility of the soil that produced it and has taxed the land far more than if it had only produced the stalk and leaf of the plant I 1 a nt or in other words a forage crop of any ti kind nd this ibis grain fed out with the hay and other crops adds wonderfully to the activity and fertilising fertilizing lising power of the farmyard farm yard manure and greatly quickens the soil to renewed efforts at production then again by feeding out the grain with the forage crops and ilus thus makin making manure abounding in gases and salts yo you u in may a T compost much larger proportions of muck tui tur turf f the rich soils washed into hollow places or other materials gathered up about the farm to swell the manure heap and have them all decomposed and sweetened and prepared to become the food of plants than you could properly r 0 use if the cattle droppings were ato afo atone ne composed of the more lifeless and inactive elements derived only from hay hayy straw and other forage mr col CON coke the late earl of leicester once said the more meat a poor land farmer sent to smithfield Smith hiem fieM the more grain he would be enabled to sell per acre at mark lane convert plenty of corn and cake into meat for the value oe 0 farmyard farm yard manure is is in in proportion to what it is made of if cattle eat straw alone the manure is straw and the farin farm is straw and are all straw not long iong on 0 ago I 1 had four cows come up to the stall in the tte fall which I 1 thought might yield a good supply of milk through h le the winter if well fed 1 also 8 had four coffier other animals cows cowa and helfers which vere 6 not expected to give much milk till the following grass season the first four were tied in the stable side by side and received each in addition to hay and stalks four quarts of small potatoes each morning and two quarts of corn and oat meal each evening through the winter As was expected they gave a good mess of 0 milk and came out well in the spring the manure I 1 of these four cows was thrown out of a stable window under the cattis shed by itself the other four animals were tied in the same stable next to the first four and received only hay and corn fodder their manure was thrown out by itself at the next stable yin yin vin dow and under the same shed so that the two heaps lay side by side the heap made by i the four cows that were daily messed with potatoes and meal kept hot and shoki smoking bg all winter and was waa wholly free from frost the heap made by the other animals that had only ohly oni y hay and stalks showed no signs of fermentation and was somewhat frozen observing t this dlf dif different difference ferenc ferene e from time to time curi curl curiosity curiosity y prompted apted me in the spring to apply th thi e ese se two rea heaps p of f manure separately but in equal quantities til es side by side on a piece of corn ground T the supe superiority roio rolo rity of the corn crop where the manure f from r in the we messed cattle was applied over oleg that where the other heap was wasi spread i was quite apparent and striking and called my rat lat attention more particularly than it was ever before directed to the im importance port an ce of feeding out our best or richest products if we 1 would have the best kind of manure for our lands and large crops from them I 1 might here go oi on lo 10 show that the hay produced du ced by y the farm fed upon it and say seven to eight dollars per ton realized for the same and the manure given back to the land would generally in a term of years be as valuable thus disposed of as though it were carried off to market and sold for twelve dollars per ton and the land not compensated by an equivalent of manure also how the feeding of potatoes c carrots and an other dother root crops adds to the quantity ana quality of the manure and the profit of keeping stock but these matters would form another branch of the general subject the treatment of which would make this communication muni cation too long iong on 1 it may be proper to briefly andl indicate acate some of the ways in which the grain crops maybe profitably fed out upon the farm though I 1 can no more than barely mention them at this time titre it is generally good farming to keep at least a few cows for their dairy products and in connection with them about an equal number 1 of spring pigs of a good breed feeding the 1 skim milk etc etcy of the dairy to the pigs together with grain when pork brings beings seven cents per pound and corn one dollar per bushel I 1 have found it better to feed the corn to march pigs of a good breed slaughtering them at nine or ten months of age than to sell the corn off for cash by supplying the pigs with suitable materials they will make each five or six oxcart ox cart loads of first rate com compost post pott the pork thus made will bring about a cent per pound more than pork of the average quality in the markets and meat of the and steak pieces will bo be about as tender a and delicate aa as that of the breast of a cb chicken icken the skim milk thus fed adds much to the growth and general thrift of the pigs piga and is worth a considerable per cent of what the new milk would bring if sold soli ot off the farm for cash in addition to what is realised realized reali reail sed from th the e pigs there lis sis the value of the dairy products and ald the manure derived from the cows it often proves profitable to buy up in the fall of a good breed treed of mutton sheep feeding them a portion of grain along with hay and other crops say till into march |