Chapter 39

FARMING AS A BUSINESS.

“Farming is a poor business,” said the Deacon. “Take the corn crop. Thirty bushels per acre is a fair average, worth, at 75 cents per bushel, $22.50. If we reckon that, for each bushel of corn, we get 100 lbs. of stalks, this would be a ton and a half per acre, worth at $5 per ton $7.50.”

Total receipts per acre for corn crop $30 00 Expenses.--Preparing the land for the crop $5 00 Planting and seed 1 50 Cultivating, three times, twice in a row both ways 5 00 Hoeing twice 3 00 Cutting up the corn 1 50 Husking and drawing in the corn 4 00 Drawing in the stalks, etc. 1 00 Shelling, and drawing to market 2 00 Total cost of the crop ----- $23 00 ------ Profit per acre $7 00

“And from this,” said the Deacon, “we have to deduct interest on land and taxes. I tell you, farming is a poor business.”

“Yes,” I replied, “_poor_ farming is a _very_ poor business. But _good_ farming, if we have good prices, is as good a business as I want, and withal as pleasant. A good farmer raises 75 bushels of corn per acre, instead of 30. He would get for his crop, including stalks

$75 00 Expenses.--Preparing land for the crop $5 00 Planting and seed 1 50 Cultivating 5 00 Hoeing 3 00 Cutting up the corn 1 50 Husking and drawing 10 00 Drawing in the stalks 3 00 Shelling, etc. 6 00 ----- $35 00 ------ Profit per acre $40 00

Take another case, which actually occurred in this neighborhood. The Judge is a good farmer, and particularly successful in raising potatoes and selling them at a good price to hotels and private families. He cultivates very thoroughly, plants in hills, and puts a handful of ashes, plaster, and hen-manure, on the hill.

In 1873, his crop of Peachblows was at the rate of 208 bushels per acre. Of these, 200 bushels were sold at 60 cents per bushel. There were 8 bushels of small potatoes, worth say 12½ cents per bushel, to feed out to stock.

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 ” @ 12½c | 3 12 | +----------+--------- | 40 62 | 200 bushels, @ 60c | | 120 00 8 ” @ 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.

Sandy or light land, that it will not pay to summer-fallow, should have all the manure you can make, and be plowed and planted with corn. Cultivate thoroughly, and either seed it down with the corn in August, or sow it to barley or oats next spring, and seed it down with clover. I say, _theoretically_ this is the best plan to adopt. But practically it may not be so, because it may be absolutely necessary that we should raise something that we can sell at once, and get money to live upon or pay interest and taxes. But the gentlemen who so strenuously advocate high farming, are not perhaps often troubled with considerations of this kind. Meeting them, therefore, on their own ground, I contend that in my case “high farming” would not be as profitable as the plan hinted at above.

The rich alluvial low land is to be pastured or mown; the upland to be broken up only when necessary, and when it is plowed to be plowed well and worked thoroughly, and got back again into clover as soon as possible. The hay and pasture from the low land, and the clover and straw and stalks from the upland, would enable us to keep a good many cows and sheep, with more or less pigs, and there would be a big pile of manure in the yard every spring. And when this is once obtained, you can get along much more pleasantly and profitably.

“But,” I may be asked, “when you have got this pile of manure can not you adopt high farming?” No. My manure pile would contain say: 60 tons of clover-hay; 20 tons wheat-straw; 25 tons oat, barley, and pea-straw; 40 tons meadow-hay; 20 tons corn-stalks; 20 tons corn, oats, and other grain; 120 tons mangel-wurzel and turnips.

This would give me about 500 tons of well-rotted manure. I should want 200 tons of this for the mangels and turnips, and the 300 tons I should want to top-dress 20 acres of grass land intended for corn and potatoes the next year. My pile of manure, therefore, is all used up on 25 to 30 acres of land. In other words, I use the unsold produce of 10 acres to manure one. Is this “high farming?” I think in my circumstances it is good farming, but it is not high farming. It gives me large crops per acre, but I have comparatively few acres in crops that are sold from the farm.

“High farming,” if the term is to have any definite meaning at all should only be used to express the idea of a farm so managed that the soil is rich enough to produce maximum crops _every year_. If you adopt the system of rotation quite general in this section--say, 1st year, corn on sod; 2d, barley or oats; 3d, wheat; 4th, clover for hay and afterwards for seed; 5th, timothy and clover for hay; and then the 6th year plowed up for corn again--it would be necessary to make the land rich enough to produce say 100 bushels shelled corn, 50 bushels of barley, 40 bushels of wheat, 3 tons clover-hay, and 5 bushels of clover-seed, and 3 tons clover and timothy-hay per acre. This would be _moderate_ high farming. If we introduced lucern, Italian rye-grass, corn-fodder, and mangel-wurzel into the rotation, we should need still richer land to produce a maximum growth of these crops. In other words, we should need more manure.

The point I am endeavoring to get at, is this: Where you want a farm to be self-supporting--where you depend solely on the produce of the farm to supply manure--it is a sheer impossibility to adopt high farming _on the whole of your land_. I want to raise just as large crops per acre as the high farmers, but there is no way of doing this, unless we go outside the farm for manure, without raising a smaller area of such crops as are sold from the farm.

I do not wish any one to suppose that I am opposed to high farming. There is occasionally a farm where it may be practised with advantage, but it seems perfectly clear to my mind that as long as there is such an unlimited supply of _land_, and such a limited supply of fertilizers, most of us will find it more profitable to develop the latent stores of plant-food lying dormant in the soil rather than to buy manures. And it is certain that you can not adopt high farming without either buying manure directly, or buying food to feed to animals that shall make manure on the farm.

And you must recollect that high farming requires an increased supply of labor, and hired help is a luxury almost as costly as artificial fertilizers.

We have heard superficial thinkers object to agricultural papers on the ground that they were urging farmers to improve their land and produce larger crops, “while,” say they, “we are producing so much already that it will not sell for as much as it costs to produce it.” My plan of improved agriculture does not necessarily imply the production of any more wheat or of any more grain of any kind that we sell than we raise at present. I would simply raise it on fewer acres, and thus lessen the expense for seed, cultivation, harvesting, etc. I would raise 30 bushels of wheat per acre every third year, instead of 10 bushels every year.

If we summer-fallowed and plowed under clover in order to produce the 30 bushels of wheat once in three years, instead of 10 bushels every year, no more produce of any kind would be raised. But my plan does not contemplate such a result. On my own farm I seldom summer-fallow, and never plow under clover. I think I can enrich the farm nearly as much by feeding the clover to animals and returning the manure to the land. The animals do not take out more than from five to ten per cent of the more valuable elements of plant-food from the clover. And so my plan, while it produces as much and no more grain to sell, adds greatly to the fertility of the land, and gives an increased production of beef, mutton, wool, butter, cheese, and pork.

“But what is a man to do who is poor and has poor land?” If he has good health, is industrious, economical, and is possessed of a fair share of good common sense, he need have no doubt as to being able to renovate his farm and improve his own fortune.

Faith in good farming is the first requisite. If this is weak, it will be strengthened by exercise. If you have not faith, act as though you had.

Work hard, but do not be a drudge. A few hours’ vigorous labor will accomplish a great deal, and encourage you to continued effort. Be prompt, systematic, cheerful, and enthusiastic. Go to bed early and get up when you wake. But take sleep enough. A man had better be in bed than at the tavern or grocery. Let not friends, even, keep you up late; “manners is manners, but still your elth’s your elth.”

“But what has this to do with good farming?” More than chemistry and all the science of the schools. Agriculture is an art and must be followed as such. Science will help--help enormously--but it will never enable us to dispense with industry. Chemistry throws great light on the art of cooking, but a farmer’s wife will roast a turkey better than a Liebig.

When Mr. James O. Sheldon, of Geneva. N.Y., bought his farm, his entire crop of hay the first year was 76 loads. He kept stock, and bought more or less grain and bran, and in eleven years from that time his farm produced 430 loads of hay, afforded pasture for his large herd of Shorthorn cattle, and produced quite as much grain as when he first took it.

Except in the neighborhood of large cities, “high farming” may not pay, owing to the fact that we have so much land. But whether this is so or not, there can be no doubt that the only profitable system of farming is to raise large crops on such land as we cultivate. High farming gives us large crops, and _many of them_. At present, while we have so much land in proportion to population, we must, perhaps, be content with large crops of grain, and few of them. We must adopt the slower but less expensive means of enriching our land from natural sources, rather than the quicker, more artificial, and costly means adopted by many farmers in England, and by market gardeners, seed-growers, and nurserymen in this country. Labor is so high that we can not afford to raise a small crop. If we sow but half the number of acres, and double the yield, we should quadruple our profits. I have made up my mind to let the land lie in clover three years, instead of two. This will lessen the number of acres under cultivation, and enable us to bestow more care in plowing and cleaning it. And the land will be richer, and produce better crops. The atmosphere is capable of supplying a certain quantity of ammonia to the soil in rains and dews every year, and by giving the wheat crop a three years supply instead of two years, we gain so much. Plaster the clover, top-dress it in the fall, if you have the manure, and stimulate its growth in every way possible, and consume all the clover on the land, or in the barn-yard. Do not sell a single ton; let not a weed grow, and the land will certainly improve.

The first object should be to destroy weeds. I do not know how it is in other sections, but with us the majority of farms are completely overrun with weeds. They are eating out the life of the land, and if something is not done to destroy them, even exorbitantly high prices can not make farming profitable. A farmer yesterday was contending that it did not pay to summer-fallow. He has taken a run-down farm, and a year ago last spring he plowed up ten acres of a field, and sowed it to barley and oats. The remainder of the field he summer-fallowed, plowing it four times, rolling and harrowing thoroughly after each plowing. After the barley and oats were off, he plowed the land once, harrowed it and sowed Mediterranean wheat. On the summer-fallow he drilled in Diehl wheat. He has just threshed, and got 22 bushels per acre of Mediterranean wheat after the spring crop, at one plowing, and 26 bushels per acre of Diehl wheat on the summer-fallow. This, he said, would not pay, as it cost him $20 per acre to summer-fallow, and he lost the use of the land for one season. Now this may be all true, and yet it is no argument against summer-fallowing. Wait a few years. Farming is slow work. Mr. George Geddes remarked to me, when I told him I was trying to renovate a run-down farm, “you will find it the work of your life.” We ought not to expect a big crop on poor, run-down land, simply by plowing it three or four times in as many months. Time is required for the chemical changes to take place in the soil. But watch the effect on the clover for the next two years, and when the land is plowed again, see if it is not in far better condition than the part not summer-fallowed. I should expect the clover on the summer-fallow to be fully one-third better in quantity, and of better quality than on the other part, and this extra quantity of clover will make an extra quantity of good manure, and thus we have the means of going on with the work of improving the farm.

“Yes,” said the Doctor, “and there will also be more clover-roots in the soil.”

“But I can not afford to wait for clover, and summer-fallowing,” writes an intelligent New York gentleman, a dear lover of good stock, who has bought an exhausted New England farm, “I must have a portion of it producing good crops right off.” Very well. A farmer with plenty of money can do wonders in a short time. Set a gang of ditchers to work, and put in underdrains where most needed. Have teams and plows enough to do the work rapidly. As soon as the land is drained and plowed, put on a heavy roller. Then sow 500 lbs. of Peruvian guano per acre broadcast, or its equivalent in some other fertilizer. Follow with a Shares’ harrow. This will mellow the surface and cover the guano without disturbing the sod. Follow with a forty-toothed harrow, and roll again, if needed, working the land until there is three or four inches of fine, mellow surface soil. Then mark off the land in rows as straight as an arrow, and plant corn. Cultivate thoroughly, and kill every weed. If the ditchers can not get through until it is too late to plant corn, drill in beans on the last drained part of the field.

Another good crop to raise on a stock farm is corn-fodder. This can be drilled in from time to time as the land can be got ready. Put on half a ton of guano per acre and harrow in, and then mark off the rows three feet apart, and drill in four bushels of corn per acre. Cultivate thoroughly, and expect a great crop. By the last of July, the Ayrshire cows will take kindly to the succulent corn-fodder, and with three or four quarts of meal a day, it will enable each of them to make 10 lbs. of butter a week.

For the pigs, sow a few acres of peas. These will do well on sod-land, sown early or late, or a part early and a part late, as most convenient. Sow broadcast and harrow in, 500 lbs. of Peruvian guano per acre and 200 lbs. of gypsum. Drill in three bushels of peas per acre, or sow broadcast, and cover them with a Shares’ harrow. Commence to feed the crop green as soon as the pods are formed, and continue to feed out the crop, threshed or unthreshed, until the middle of November. Up to this time the bugs do comparatively little damage. The pigs will thrive wonderfully on this crop, and make the richest and best of manure.

I have little faith in any attempt to raise root crops on land not previously well prepared. But as it is necessary to have some mangel-wurzel and Swede turnips for the Ayrshire cows and long-wool sheep next winter and spring, select the cleanest and richest land that can be found that was under cultivation last season. If fall plowed, the chances of success will be doubled. Plow the land two or three times, and cultivate, harrow, and roll until it is as mellow as a garden. Sow 400 lbs. of Peruvian guano and 300 lbs. of good superphosphate per acre broadcast, and harrow them in. Ridge up the land into ridges 2½ to 3 ft. apart, with a double mould-board plow. Roll down the ridges with a light roller, and drill in the seed. Sow the mangel-wurzel in May--the earlier the better--and the Swedes as soon afterwards as the land can be thoroughly prepared. Better delay until June rather than sow on rough land.

The first point on such a farm will be to attend to the grass land. This affords the most hopeful chance of getting good returns the first year. But no time is to be lost. Sow 500 lbs. of Peruvian guano per acre on all the grass land and on the clover, with 200 lbs. of gypsum in addition on the latter. If this is sown early enough, so that the spring rains dissolve it and wash it into the soil, great crops of grass may be expected.

“But will it pay?” My friend in New York is a very energetic and successful business man, and he has a real love for farming, and I have no sort of doubt that, taking the New York business and the farm together, they will afford a very handsome profit. Furthermore, I have no doubt that if, after he has drained it, he would cover the whole farm with 500 lbs. of Peruvian guano per acre, or its equivalent, it would pay him better than any other agricultural operation he is likely to engage in. By the time it was on the land the cost would amount to about $20 per acre. If he sells no more grass or hay from the farm than he would sell if he did not use the guano, this $20 may very properly be added to the permanent capital invested in the farm. And in this aspect of the case, I have no hesitation in saying it will pay a high rate of interest. His bill for labor will be as much in one case as in the other; and if he uses the guano he will probably double his crops. His grass lands will carry twenty cows instead of ten, and if he raises the corn-fodder and roots, he can probably keep thirty cows better than he could otherwise keep a dozen; and, having to keep a herdsman in either case, the cost of labor will not be much increased. “But you think it will not pay?” It will probably not pay _him_. I do not think _his_ business would pay me if I lived on my farm, and went to New York only once or twice a week. If there is one business above all others that requires constant attention, it is farming--and especially stock-farming. But my friend is right in saying that he cannot afford to wait to enrich his land by clover and summer-fallowing. His land costs too much; he has a large barn and everything requisite to keep a large stock of cattle and sheep. The interest on farm and buildings, and the money expended in labor, would run on while the dormant matter in the soil was slowly becoming available under the influence of good tillage. The large barn must be filled at once, and the only way to do this is to apply manure with an unsparing hand. If he lived on the farm, I should have no doubt that, by adopting this course, and by keeping improved stock, and feeding liberally, he could make money. Perhaps he can find a man who will successfully manage the farm under his direction, but the probabilities are that his present profit and pleasure will come from the gratification of his early love for country life.