If I were to estimate the average absolute loss of the farmers of this country from Insects at $100,000,000 per annum, I should doubtless be far below the mark. The loss of fruit alone by the devastations of insects, within a radius of fifty miles from this City, must amount in value to Millions. In my neighborhood, the Peach once flourished, but flourishes no more, and Cherries have been all but annihilated. Apples were till lately our most profitable and perhaps our most important product; but the worms take half our average crop and sadly damage what they do not utterly destroy. Plums we have ceased to grow or expect; our Pears are generally stung and often blighted; even the Currant has at last its fruit-destroying worm. We must fight our paltry adversaries more efficiently, or allow them to drive us wholly from the field.
Now, I have no doubt that our best allies in this inglorious warfare are the Birds. They would save us, if we did not destroy them. The British plowman, turning his sod with a myriad of crows, blackbirds, etc., chasing his steps and all but getting under his feet in their eager quest of grubs, bugs, etc., is a spectacle to be devoutly thankful for. Whenever clouds of birds shall habitually darken our fields in May and (less notably) throughout the Summer months, we may reasonably hope to grow fair crops of our favorite Fruits from year to year, and realize that we owe them to the constant, and zealous, though not quite disinterested, efforts of our friends, the Birds.
But I do not regard the ravages of Insects as entirely due to the reckless destruction and consequent scarcity of our Birds. I hold that their multiplication and their devastations are largely incited by the degeneracy of our plants caused by the badness of our culture. On this point, consider a statement made to me, some fifteen or twenty years ago, by the late Gov. William F. Packer, of Pennsylvania:
"I know (said Gov. P.) the narrow valley of a stream that runs into the west branch of the Susquehanna, which was cleared of the primitive forest some forty or fifty years since, and has ever since been alternately in tillage and grass. A road ran through the middle of it, dividing it into two narrow fields. A few years ago, this road was abandoned, and the whole of this little valley, including the road-way, thrown into a single field, which was thereupon sown to Wheat. At harvest-time, this remarkable phenomenon was presented: A good crop of sound grain on the strip four or fire rods wide formerly covered by the road; while nearly every berry on either side of it was destroyed by the weevil or midge."
Now I do not infer from this fact that insect ravages are wholly due to our abuse and exhaustion of the soil. I presume that Wheat and other crops would be devastated by insects if there were no slovenly, niggard, exhausting tillage. But I do firmly hold that at least half our losses by insects would be precluded if our fields were habitually kept in better heart by deep culture, liberal fertilizing, and a judicious rotation of crops. I heard little of insect ravages in the wheat-fields of Western New-York throughout the first thirty years of this century; but, when crop after crop of Wheat had been taken from the same fields until they had been well nigh exhausted of their Wheat-forming elements, we began to hear of the desolation wrought by insects; and those ravages increased in magnitude until Wheat-culture had to be abandoned for years. I believe that we should have heard little of insects had Wheat been grown on those fields but one year in three since their redemption from the primal forest.
But, whatever might once have been, the Philistines are upon us. We are doomed, for at least a generation, to wage a relentless war against insects multiplied beyond reason by the neglect and short-comings of our predecessors. We are in like condition with the inhabitants of the British isles a thousand years ago, whose forefathers had so long endured and so unskillfully resisted invasion and spoliation by the Northmen that they had come to be regarded as the sea-kings' natural prey. For generations, it has been customary hereabout to slaughter without remorse the birds, and let caterpillars, worms, grasshoppers, etc., multiply and ravage unresisted. We must pay for past errors by present loss and years of extra effort. And, precisely because the task is so arduous, we ought to lose no time in addressing ourselves to its execution.
The first step to be taken is very simple. Let every farmer who realizes the importance and beneficence of Birds teach his own children and hirelings that, except the Hawk, they are to be spared, protected, kindly treated, and (when necessary) fed. They are to be valued and cherished as the voluntary police of our fields and gardens, constantly employed in fighting our battles against our ruthless foes. The boy who robs a bird's nest is robbing the farmer of a part of his crops. He who traverses a farm shooting and mangling its feathered sentinels diminishes its future product of Grain and nearly destroys that of Fruit. The farmer might as well consent that any strolling ruffian should shoot his Horses or Cattle as his Birds. Begin at home to make this truth felt and respected, and it will be the easier to impress it also on your neighbors.
Next, there should be neighborhood or township associations for the protection of insect-eating birds. We must not merely agree to let them live—we must cherish and protect them. I believe that very simple cups or bowls of cast-iron, having each a hole in its centre of suitable size, that need not cost sixpence each, and could be fastened to the side of a tree with one nail lightly driven, would in time be adopted by many birds as nesting strongholds, whence they might laugh to scorn their predacious enemies. If every harmless bird could build its nest among us in a place where its eggs would be safe from hawks, crows, cats, boys, and other robbers, the number of such birds would quickly be doubled and quadrupled.
And we must summon the law to our aid. Though law can do little or nothing against stealthy, skulking nest-plunderers, it can help us materially in our warfare with the cowardly vagabonds who traverse our fields with musket or rifle, blazing away at every unsuspecting robin or thrush that they can discover. Make it trespass, punishable with fine and imprisonment, to shoot on another's land without his express permission, and the cowardly massacre of the farmers' humble allies would be checked at once, and, when public sentiment had been properly enlightened, might, in civilized regions, be arrested altogether.
I have had so little experience in Tree-Planting that I should have preferred to say no more about it; but letters that have reached me imply that the ignorance of others is even denser than mine. For the sake of those only who are conscious that they know nothing, yet are not unwilling to learn, I venture a few timid suggestions with regard to Tree-Planting.
I. Ten or twelve years ago, I bought a pound or more of Locust seed rather late in the Spring, scalded it by plunging for a moment the little cotton bag which held it into a pot of boiling water, and letting the seed steep and steam in the bag till next morning, when the seed was planted in rows in a newly broken bit of poor old pasture-land. This was a mistake; I should have given that seed the richest available spot in my garden, to say nothing of planting it as early as April 20th. My locusts came up slowly and grew feebly that year, not to speak of the many seeds that did not sprout at all. Still many came up and survived, and my place is this day the richer for them. It might have been still richer had I seasonably known more.
II. What I would now advise as to Locust and most other trees is that the best seed be procured in the Fall, or so soon as it drops from the trees; that part of it be sown in drills, two feet apart, with two inches between seeds in the drills, and that the richest of dry, warm garden-soil be devoted to this purpose. Fill a large box with rich loam, stir four ounces of seed into this, and set the box in a cool cellar where frost does not enter, and here let it remain till April; then take out the seed and earth together, and sow in drills as above. If some one who cuts Locust during the Winter or Spring will allow you to trace the smaller surface-roots from the new-made stumps and cut or dig them up, cut fifty or a hundred pieces of root the size of your finger each two feet long, and plant these, about May 1, in the places where you want Locusts to come forward most rapidly. Some of them may not grow, but I think many will; and, from all these sources, I judge that you will obtain a good supply of young trees. Let those you start from the seed get two years' growth before you take them up and set them where you want trees, whether in your present woods, in rugged, rocky pastures, on the sides of steep ravines, or around your buildings. You cannot fail to obtain some trees if you follow these directions.
III. Begin early this Fall to gather Chestnuts, Hickory Nuts, Walnuts, White Oak, Acorns, etc., to plant. Select the largest and finest nuts, giving the preference to those which ripen and fall earliest. Keep them in cool, damp earth in some barn or cellar where rats and mice cannot reach them, and persist in collecting till December. Then plant a part in your garden or in any rich ground where they are not likely to be disturbed; letting the residue remain in the boxes of moist earth where you first placed them till early Spring; then plant these, like the former, in rows two feet apart, with six inches between seed and seed in each row, and give the rows careful culture for two years; after which, set them where you wish them to grow.
I venture to suggest that he who has a ragged, stony hill or other lot which he wishes to surrender to forest should plow it, if it can be plowed, next September or October; if too rocky to be even imperfectly plowed, dig up the earth with pick and spade, and sow it thickly with hickory nuts, walnuts, chestnuts, locust and other tree-seeds, expecting that some will be dug up and carried off by squirrels, etc., and that others will fail to germinate. Go over it with hoes the ensuing June or July, killing all weeds and other infestations; and, nearly a year later, repeat the operation, taking up young trees from your garden or nursery, and filling them in wherever there is room. Plant thickly in order to force an upward rather than a scraggy growth; and so that you may begin to cut out the superfluous saplings for bean-poles, hoop-poles, etc., three or four years thereafter. Cut late in Winter or early in Spring, so that the stumps will each throw up two or more shoots or sprouts, which usually grow much faster than the original tree did. And the process of thinning may thus be continued indefinitely, while the choicer trees are allowed to attain their stateliest proportions. And thus a rocky, sterile hill-side or knoll may be made to yield a crop annually after the first two or three years from planting, while growing trees of decided value. I judge that almost any land within fifty miles of a great city and not more than two miles from a railroad depot or from navigable water may thus be made to earn a good interest on $100 per acre, after meeting all the cost of breaking up and planting. I confidently assert that many thousands of sterile, rocky acres, which now yield less than $5 per acre annually in pasturage, would net at least double that sum to the owner if wisely devoted to forest-trees.
I have a hearty love of forests. They proffer gentle companionship to the thoughtful and rest to the overworked, fevered brain. Our streams will be fuller and less capricious, our gales less destructive, our climate more equable, when we shall have reclothed our rugged slopes and rocky crests with trees. Timber grows yearly scarcer and dearer, when it ought to be becoming more plentiful and accessible, and would be if we devoted to trees all the land which we cultivate at a loss or fail to cultivate at all. Let our boys be incited to gather seeds and plant nurseries; let young trees be bought by the thousand where they now are by the dozen, and let us all coöperate in covering our unsightly rocks and making glad our waste places by a superabundance of choice, thrifty, healthy trees.
Many of our young men have a taste for adventure and excitement which leads them to the ocean, the mines, to Australia or some other far-off land recently and scantily peopled by civilized beings. I will not quarrel with their taste; but I judge that there are openings for their enterprise and daring within the area of our own country. Let one thousand of them resolve to devote the next five years to planting forests on the treeless plains and virtual deserts of the Great Basin and on either side of it; let them select locations where some acres may cheaply and surely be irrigated, and, having carefully provided themselves with an abundance of the best seeds, let them start patches of woodland at points the most remote from present timber, until a thousand different forests—one to each of the associates—shall have been started and guarded till their roots have taken firm hold of the earth. I presume Congress would grant them preëmptions to each section on which they thus planted at least forty acres of forest, and that most of these preëmption rights could, within ten years, be sold to settlers for many times their original cost.
If I were asked to say what single aspect of our economic condition most strikingly and favorably distinguished the people of our Northern States from these of most if not all other countries which I have traversed, I would point at once to the fruit-trees which so generally diversify every little as well as larger farm throughout these States, and are quite commonly found even on the petty holdings of the poorer mechanics and workmen in every village and in the suburbs and outskirts of every city. I can recall nothing like it abroad, save in two or three of the least mountainous and most fertile districts of northern Switzerland. Italy has some approach to it in the venerable olive-trees which surround or flank many, perhaps most, of her farm-houses, upholding grape-vines as ancient and nearly as large as themselves; but the average New-England or Middle State homestead, with its ample Apple-orchard and its cluster of Pear, Cherry and Plum-trees surrounding its house and dotting or belting its garden, has an air of comfort and modest thrift, which I have nowhere else seen fairly equaled. Upland Virginia and the mountainous portion of the States southward of her may in time surpass the most favored regions of the North in the abundance, variety and excellence of their fruits; for the Peach and the Grape find here a congenial climate, while they are grown with difficulty, where they can be grown at all, in the North; but, up to this hour, I judge that our country north of the Potomac is better supplied with wholesome and palatable tree-fruits than any other portion of the earth's surface of equal or nearly equal area.
On the whole, I deem it a misfortune that our Northern States were so admirably adapted to the Apple and kindred fruit-trees that our pioneer forefathers had little more to do than bury the seeds in the ground and wait a few years for the resulting fruit. The soil, formed of decayed trees and their foliage, thickly covered with the ashes of the primitive forest, was as genial as soil could be; while the remaining woods, which still covered seven-eighths of the country, shut out or softened the cold winds of Winter and Spring, rendering it less difficult, a century ago, to grow fine peaches in southern New-Hampshire than it now is in southern New-York. Devastating insects were precluded by those great, dense woods from diffusing themselves from orchard to orchard as they now do. Snows fell more heavily and lay longer then than now, protecting the roots from heavy frosts, and keeping back buds and blossoms in Spring, to the signal advantage of the husbandman. I estimate that my apple-trees would bear at least one-third more fruit if I could retard their blossoming a fortnight, so as to avoid the cold rains and cutting winds, often succeeded by frosts, which are apt to pay their unwelcome farewell visits just when my trees are in bloom or when the fruit is forming directly thereafter. Hence, I say to every one who shall hereafter set an orchard, Give it the northward slope of a hill if that be possible. Other things being equal, the orchard which blossoms latest will, in a series of years, yield most fruit, and will be most likely to bear when the Apple-crop of your vicinity proves a failure. I do not recommend storing ice to plant or bury under the trees in April, for that involves too much labor and expense; yet I have no doubt that even that has been and sometimes might be done with profit. In the average, however, I judge that it would not pay.
In locating and setting an orchard, the very first consideration is thorough drainage. Nothing short of a destructive fire can be more injurious to an apple-tree than compelling it to stand throughout Winter and Spring in sour, stagnant water. Barrenness, dead branches, and premature general decay, are the natural and righteous consequences of such crying abuse. There are many reasons for choosing sloping or broken ground for an apple-orchard, whereof comparative exemption from frost and natural facility of drainage are the most obvious. A level field, thoroughly undrained to-day, may, through neglect and the mischiefs wrought by burrowing animals, have become little better than a morass thirty years hence; but an orchard set on a tolerably steep hillside is reasonably secure against wet feet to the close of its natural life.
A gravelly or sandy loam is generally preferred for orchards; yet I have known them to flourish and bear generously on heavy clay. Whoever has a gravelly field will wisely prefer this for Apples, not merely to clay but to sand as well.
And, while many young orchards have doubtless been injured by immoderate applications of rank, green manures, I doubt that any man has ever yet bestowed too much care and expense on the preparation of his ground for fruit-trees. Where ridges or plateaus of fast stone do not forbid, I would say, Turn over the soil to a depth of at least fifteen inches with a large plow and a strong team; then lift and pulverize the subsoil to a depth of not less than nine inches; apply all the Wood-ashes you can get, with one thousand bushels of Marl if you are in a Marl region; if not, use instead from thirty to fifty bushels of quick Lime (oyster-shell if that is to be had) with one hundred loads per acre of Swamp Muck which has lain a year on dry upland, baking in the sun and wind; and now you may think of setting your trees. If your soil was rich Western prairie or Middle-State garden to begin with, you can dispense with all these fertilizers; yet I doubt that there is an acre of Western prairie that would not be improved by the Lime or (perhaps better still) a smaller quantity of refuse Salt from a packing-house or meat retailing grocery. There are not many farms that would not repay the application of five bushels per acre of refuse Salt at twenty-five cents per bushel.
Your trees once set—(and he who sets twenty trees per day as they should be set, with each root in its natural position, and the earth pressed firmly around its trunk, but no higher than as it originally grew, is a faithful, efficient worker), I would cultivate the land, (for the trees' sake), growing crops successively of Ruta Bagas, Carrots, Beets, and early Potatoes, but no grain whatever, for six or seven years, disturbing the roots of the trees as little as may be, and guarding their trunks from tug, or trace, or whiffle-tree, by three stakes set firmly in the ground about each tree, not so near it as to preclude constant cultivation with the hoe inside as well as outside of the stakes, so as to let no weed mature in the field. Apply from year to year well-rotted compost to the field in quantity sufficient fully to counterbalance the annual abstraction by your crops. Make it a law inflexible and relentless that no animal shall be let into this orchard to forage, or for any purpose whatever but to draw on manures, to till the soil, and to draw away the crops. Thus until the first blossoms begin to appear on the trees; then lay down to grass without grain, unless it be a crop of Rye or Oats to be cut and carried off for feed when not more than half grown, leaving the ground to the young grass. Let the grass be mowed for the next two or three years, and thenceforward devote it to the pasturage of Swine, running over it with a scythe once or twice each Summer to clear it of weeds, and taking out the Swine a few days before beginning to gather the Apples, but putting them back again the day after the harvest is completed. Let the Swine be sufficiently numerous and hungry to eat every apple that falls within a few hours after it is dropped, and to insure their rooting out every grub or worm that burrows in the earth beneath the trees, ready to spring up and apply himself to mischief at the very season when you could best excuse his absence. I do not commend this as all, or nearly all, that should be done in resistance to the pest of insect ravage; but I begin with the Hog as the orchardist's readiest, cheapest, most effective ally or servitor in the warfare he is doomed unceasingly to wage against the spoilers of his heritage. I will indicate some further defensive enginery in my next chapter.
In my opinion, Apple-trees, in most orchards, are planted too far apart and allowed to grow taller and spread their limbs more widely than is profitable. I judge that a pruner or picker should be able to reach the topmost twig of any tree with a ten-foot pole, and that no limb should be allowed to extend more than eight feet from the trunk whence it springs. Our Autumnal Equinox occurs before our Apples are generally ripe for harvest, and, finding our best trees bending under a heavy burden of fruit, its fierce gales are apt to make bad work with trees as well as apples. The best tree I had, with several others, was thus ruined by an equinoctial tempest a few years since. Barren trees escape unharmed, while those heavily laden with large fruit are wrenched and twisted into fragments. And, even apart from this peril, a hundred weight of fruit at or near the extremity of limbs which extend ten or twelve feet horizontally from the trunk, tax and strain a tree more than four times that weight growing within four or five feet of the trunk, and on limbs that maintain a semi-erect position. I diffidently suggest, therefore, that no apple-tree be allowed to exceed fifteen feet in height, nor to send a limb more than eight feet from its trunk, and that trees be set (diamond-fashion) twenty-four feet apart each way, instead of thirty-two, as some of mine were. I judge that the larger number of trees (72 per acre) will produce more fruit in the average than the larger but fewer trees grown on squares of two by two rods to each, that they will thrive and bear longer, and that not one will be destroyed or seriously harmed by winds where a dozen would if allowed to grow as high and spread as far as they could.
Every apple-tree should be pruned each year of its life: that is, it should be carefully examined with intent to prune if that be found necessary. It should be pruned with a careful eye to giving it the proper shape, which, from the point where it first forks upward, should be that of a tea-cup, very nearly. I have seen young trees so malformed that they could rarely, if ever, bear fruit enough to render them profitable. And the pruning should be so carefully, judiciously done from the outset that no wood two years old should ever be cut away. With old, malformed, diseased, worm-eaten, decaying trees, the best must be done that can be; but he who, pruning a tree that he set and has hitherto cared for, finds himself obliged to cut off a limb thicker than his thumb, may justly suspect himself of lacking a mastery of the art of fruit-growing.
Sprouts from the root of an apple-tree remind me of children who habitually play truant or are kept out of school. They not merely can never come to good, but they are a nuisance to the neighborhood and bring reproach on the community.
The apple-grower should never forget that every producer needs to be fed in proportion to his product. If a cow gives twenty quarts of milk per day, she needs more grass or other food than if she gave but two quarts; and an acre of orchard that yields a hundred barrels of Apples per annum needs something given to the soil to balance the draft made upon it. Nature offers us good bargains; but she does not trust and will not be cheated. When she offers a bushel of Corn for a bushel of dirty Salt, Shell Lime, or Wood-Ashes, a load of Hay for a load of Muck, we ought not to stint the measure, but pay her demand ungrudgingly.
And now a last word on Insects.
My township (Newcastle) is said to have formerly grown more Apples per annum than any other township in the United States; its apple-trees are still as numerous as ever, but their product has fallen off deplorably. I estimate the average yield of the last three years at less than a bushel per annum for each full-grown tree; I think a majority of the trees have not borne a bushel each in all these three years. Unseasonable frosts, storms, etc., have borne the blame of this barrenness—perhaps justly, if we consider only immediate causes—but the caterpillar and other vermin are, in my view, our more potent, though remoter, afflictions. Not less than four times within the last sixteen years have our trees been covered with nests and worms; and I have seen whole orchards stripped of nearly every leaf till they were as bare (of every thing but caterpillars) in July as they should have been in December. After the scourge had passed, the trees reclad themselves with leaves; but they grew old under that visitation faster in one year than they would have done in ten of healthful fruit-bearing; and they are now prematurely gray and moss-covered because of the terrible infliction.
I lay down the general proposition that no man who harbors caterpillars has any moral right to Apples—that each grower should be required to make his choice between them. Slovenly farmers say, "O there are so many of them that I cannot kill half so fast as they multiply." Then I say, cut down and burn up the trees you can best spare, until you have no more left than you can keep clear of worms.
If it were the law of the land that whoever allowed caterpillars to nest and breed in his fruit-trees should pay a heavy fine for each nest, we should soon be comparatively clear of the scourges. In the absence of such salutary regulation, one man fights them with persistent resolution, only to see his orchard again and again invaded and ravaged by the pests hatched and harbored by his careless neighbors. He thus pays and repays the penalty of others' negligence and misdoing until, discouraged and demoralized, he abandons the hopeless struggle, and thenceforth repels the enemy from a few favorite trees around his dwelling, and surrenders his orchard to its fate. Thus bad laws (or no laws) are constantly making bad farmers. The birds that would help us to make head against our insect foes are slaughtered by reckless boys—many of them big enough to know better—and our perils and losses from enemies who would be contemptible if their numbers did not render them formidable increase from year to year. We must change all this; and the first requisite of our situation is a firm alliance of the entire farming and fruit-growing interest defensive as to birds, offensive toward their destroyers, and toward the vermin multiplied and shielded by the ruthless massacre of our feathered friends.
Since the foregoing was written we have had (in 1870) the greatest Apple-crop throughout our section that mine eyes did ever yet behold. It was so abundant that I could not sell all my cider-apples to the vinegar-makers, even at fitly cents per barrel. This establishes the continued capacity of our region to bear Apples, and should invite to the planting of new orchards and the fertilization and renovation of old ones.
The Grass-crop of this, as of many, if not most, other countries, is undoubtedly the most important of its annual products; requiring by far the largest area of its soil, and furnishing the principal food of its Cattle, and thus contributing essentially to the subsistence of its working animals and to the production of those Meats which form a large and constantly increasing proportion of the food of every civilized people. But I propose to speak in this essay of that proportion of the Grass-crop—say 25 to 35 per cent. of the whole—which is cut, cured and housed (or stacked) for Hay, and which is mainly fed out to animals in Winter and Spring, when frost and snow have divested the earth of herbage or rendered it inaccessible.
The Seventh Census (1850) returned the Hay-crop of the preceding year at 13,838,642 tuns, which the Eighth Census increased to 19,129,128 tuns as the product of 1859. Confident that most farmers underestimate their Hay-crops, and that hundreds of thousands who do not consider themselves farmers, but who own or rent little homesteads of two to ten acres each, keeping thereon a cow or two and often a horse, fail to make returns of the two to five tuns of Hay they annually produce, considering them too trivial, I estimate the actual Hay-crop of all our States and Territories for the current year at 40,000,000 tuns, or about a tun to each inhabitant, although I do not expect the new Census to place it much, if any, above 25,000,000 tuns. The estimated average value of this crop is $10 (gold) per tun, making its aggregate value, at my estimate of its amount, $400,000,000—and the quantity is constantly and rapidly increasing.
That quantity should be larger from the area devoted to meadows, and the quality a great deal better. I estimate that 30,000,000 acres are annually mowed to obtain these 40,000,000 tuns of Hay, giving an average yield of 1-1/3 tuns per acre, while the average should certainly not fall below two tuns per acre. My upland has a gravelly, rocky soil, not natural to grass, and had been pastured to death for at least a century before I bought it; yet it has yielded me an average of not less than 2-1/2 tuns to the acre for the last sixteen years, and will not yield less while I am allowed to farm it. My lowland (bog when I bought it) is bound henceforth to yield more; but, while imperfectly or not at all drained, it was of course a poor reliance—yielding bounteously in spots, in others, little or nothing.
In nothing else is shiftless, slovenly farming so apt to betray itself as in the culture of Grass and the management of grass lands. Pastures overgrown with bushes and chequered by quaking, miry bogs; meadows foul with every weed, from white daisy up to the rankest brakes, with hill-sides that may once have been productive, but from which crop after crop has been taken and nothing returned to them, until their yield has shrunk to half or three-fourths of a tun of poor hay, these are the average indications of a farm nearly run out by the poorest sort of farming. Such farms were common in the New England of my boyhood; I trust they are less so to-day; yet I seldom travel ten miles in any region north or east of the Delaware without seeing one or more of them.
Fifty years ago, I judge that the greater part of the hay made in New-England was cut from sour, boggy land, that was devoted to grass simply because nothing else could be done with it. I have helped to carry the crop off on poles from considerable tracts on which oxen could not venture without miring. It were superfluous to add that no well-bred animal would eat such stuff, unless the choice were between it and absolute starvation. In many cases, a very little work done in opening the rudest surface-drains would have transformed these bogs into decent meadows, and the product, by the help of plowing or seeding, into unexceptionable hay.
There are not many farmers, apart from our wise and skillful dairymen, who use half enough grass-seed; men otherwise thrifty often fail in this respect. If half our ordinary farmers would thoroughly seed down a full third of the area they usually cultivate, and devote to the residue the time and efforts they now give to the whole, they would grow more grain and vegetables, while the additional grass would be so much clear again.
We sow almost exclusively Timothy and Clover, when there are at least 20 different grasses required by our great diversity of soils, and of these three or four might often be sown together with profit; especially in seeding down fields intended for pasture, we might advantageously use a greater variety and abundance of seed. I believe that there are grasses not yet adopted and hardly recognized by the great body of our farmers—the buffalo-grass of the prairies for one—that will yet be grown and prized over a great part of our country.
As for Hay-Making, my conviction is strong that our grass is cut in the average from two to three weeks too late, and that not only is our hay greatly damaged thereby, but our meadows needlessly impoverished and exhausted. The formation and perfection of seed always draw heavily upon the soil. A crop of grass cut when the earliest blossoms begin to drop—which, in my judgment, is the only right time—will not impoverish the soil half so much as will the same crop cut three weeks later; while the roots of the earlier cut grass will retain their vitality at least thrice as long as though half the seed had ripened before the crop was harvested. Grass that was fully ripe when cut has lost at least half its nutriment, which no chemistry can ever restore. Hay alone is dry fodder for a long Winter, especially for young stock; but hay cut after it was dead ripe, is proper nutriment for no animal whatever—not even for old horses, who are popularly supposed to like and thrive upon it.
The fact that our farmers are too generally short-handed throughout the season of the Summer harvest, while it seems to explain the error I combat, renders it none the less disastrous and deplorable. I estimate the depreciation in the value of our hay-crop, by reason of late cutting, as not less than one-fifth; and, when we consider that a full half of our farmers turn out their cattle to ravage and poach up their fields in quest of fodder a full month earlier than they should, because their hay is nearly or quite exhausted, the consequences of this error are seen to diffuse themselves over the whole economy of the farm.
From the hour in which grass falls under the Mower, it ought to be kept in motion until laid at rest in the stack or the barn; keep stirring it with the tedder until it is ready to be raked into light winrows, and turn these over and over until they will answer to go upon the cart. In any bright, hot day, the grass mowed in the morning should be stacked before the dew falls at night; while, if any is mowed after noon, it should be cocked and capped by sunset, even though it be necessary to open it out the next fair morning.
I have a dream of hay-making, especially with regard to clover, without allowing it to be scalded by fierce sunshine. In my dream, the grass is raked and loaded nearly as fast as cut, drawn to the barn-yard, and there pitched upon an endless apron, on which it is carried slowly through a drying-house, heated to some 200° Fahrenheit by steam or by charcoal in a furnace below, somewhat after the manner of a hop-kiln. While passing slowly through this heated atmosphere, the grass is continually forked up and shaken so as to expose every lock of it to the drying heat, until it passes off thereby deprived of its moisture and is precipitated into a mow or upon a stack-bottom at the opposite side; load after load being pitched upon the apron continuously, and the drying process going steadily forward by night as well as by day, and without regard to the weather outside. I do not assert that this vision will ever be realized; but I have known dreams as wild as this transformed by time and thought into beneficent realities.
I ask no one to share my dreams or sympathise with their drift and purpose. I only insist that Hay-making, as it is managed all around me, is ruder in its processes and more uncertain in its results than it should or need be. We cut our grass rapidly and well; we gather and house it with tolerable efficiency; but we cure much of it imperfectly and wastefully. The fact that most of it is over-ripe when cut aggravates the pernicious effects of its subsequent exposure to dew and rain; and the net result is damaged fodder which is at once unpalatable and innutritious.
Our harsh, capricious climate north of the latitudes of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and St. Louis—so much severer than that of corresponding latitudes in Europe—is unfavorable, or at least very trying, to all the more delicate and luscious Fruits, berries excepted. Except on our Pacific coast, of which the Winter temperature is at least ten degrees milder than that of the Atlantic, the finer Peaches and Grapes are grown with difficulty north of the fortieth degree of latitude, save in a few specially favored localities, whereof the southern shore of Lake Erie is most noted, though part of that of Lake Ontario and of the west coast of Lake Michigan are likewise well adapted to the Peach.
It is not the mere fact that the mercury in Fahrenheit's thermometer sometimes ranges below zero, and the earth is deeply frozen, but the suddenness wherewith such rigor succeeds and is succeeded by a temperature above the freezing point, that proves so inhospitable to the most valued Tree-Fruits. And, as the dense forests which formerly clothed the Alleghenies and the Atlantic slope, are year by year swept away, the severity of our "cold snaps," and the celerity with which they appear and disappear, are constantly aggravated. A change of 60°, or from 50° above to 10° below zero, between morning and the following midnight, soon followed by an equally rapid return to an average November temperature, often proves fatal even to hardy forest-trees. I have had the Red Cedar in my woods killed by scores during an open, capricious Winter; and my observation indicates the warmest spots in a forest as those where trees are most likely to be thus destroyed. After an Arctic night, in which they are frozen solid, a bright sun sends its rays into the warmest nooks, whence the wind is excluded, and wholly or partially thaws out the smaller trees; which are suddenly frozen solid again so soon as the sunshine is withdrawn; and this partly explains to my mind the fact that peach-buds are often killed in lower and level portions of an orchard, while they retain their vitality on the hill-side and at its crest, not 80 rods distant from those destroyed. The fact that the colder air descends into and remains in the valleys of a rolling district contributes also to the correct explanation of a phenomenon which has puzzled some observers.
Unless in a favored locality, it seems to the unadvisable for a farmer who expects to thrive mainly by the production of Grain and Cattle, to attempt the growing of the finer Fruits, except for the use of his own family. In a majority of cases, a multiplicity of cares and labors precludes his giving to his Peaches and Grapes, his Plums and Quinces, the seasonable and persistent attention which they absolutely require. Quite commonly, a farmer visits a grand nursery, sees with admiration its trees and vines loaded with the most luscious Fruits, and rashly infers that he has only to buy a good stock of like Trees and Vines to insure himself an abundance of delicious fruit. So he buys and sets; but with no such preparation of the soil, and no such care to keep it mellow and free from weeds, or to baffle and destroy predatory insects, as the nurseryman employs. Hence the utter disappointment of his hopes; borers, slugs, caterpillars, and every known or unknown species of insect enemies, prey upon his neglected favorites. At intervals, some domestic animal or animals get among them, and break down a dozen in an hour. So, the far greater number come to grief, without having had one fair chance to show what they could do, and the farmer jumps to the conclusion that the nurseryman was a swindler, and the trees he sells scarcely related to those whose abundant and excellent fruits tempted him to buy. I counsel every farmer to consider thoughtfully the treatment absolutely required for the production of the finer Fruits before he allows a nurseryman to make a bill against him, and not expect to grow Duchesse Pears as easily as Blackberries, or Ionas and Catawbas as readily as he does Fox-grapes on the willows which overhang his brook; for if he does he will surely be disappointed.
Some of our hardier and coarser Grapes—the Concord preëminent among them—are grown with considerable facility over a wide extent of our country; and many farmers, having planted them in congenial soil, and tended them well throughout their infancy, are rewarded by a bounteous product for two or three years. Believing their success assured, they imagine that their vines may henceforth be neglected, and in the course of two or three more years they are often utterly ruined. I know that there are wild grapes of some value, in the absence of better, which thrive and bear without attention; but I do not believe that any grape which will sell in a market where good fruit was ever seen, can be grown north of Philadelphia but by constant care and labor, or at a cost of less than five cents per pound, under the most judicious and skillful treatment. In California, and I presume in most of our States south of the Potomac and Ohio, choice grapes may be grown more abundantly and more cheaply. Yet I think the localities are few and far between in which a tun of good grapes can be grown as cheaply as a tun of wheat, under the most judicious cultivation in either case.
I do not mean to discourage grape-growing; on the contrary, I would have every farmer, even so far north as Vermont and Wisconsin, experiment cautiously with a dozen of the most promising varieties, including always the more hardy, in the hope of finding some one or more adapted to his soil, and capable of enduring his climate. Even in France, the land of the vine, one farm will produce a grape which the very next will not: no man can satisfactorily say why. The farmer, who has tried half a dozen grapes and failed with all, should not be deterred from further experiments, for the very next may prove a success. I would only say, Be moderate in your expectations and careful in your experiments; and never risk even $100 on a vineyard, till you have ascertained, at a cost of $5 or under, whether the species you are testing will thrive and bear on your soil.
In my own case, my upland mainly sloping to the west, with a hill rising directly south of it, I have had no luck with Grapes, and I have wasted little time or means upon them. I have done enough to show that they can be grown, even in such a locality, but not to profit or satisfaction.
I would advise the farmer who proposes to grow Pear, Peaches, and Quinces, for home use only or mainly, to select a piece of dry, gravelly or sandy loam, underdrain it thoroughly, plow or trench it very deeply, and fertilize it generously, in good part with ashes and with leaf-mold from his woods. Locate the pig-pen on one side of it, fence it strongly, and let the pigs have the run of it for a good portion of each year. In this plat or yard, plant half a dozen Cherry and as many Pear trees of choice varieties, the Bartlett foremost among them; keep clear of all dwarfs, and let your choicest trees have a chance to run under the pig-pen if they will. Plant here also, if your climate does not forbid, a dozen well-chosen Peach-trees, and two each year thereafter to replace those that will soon be dying out; and give half a dozen Quinces moist and rich locations by the side of your fences; surrounding each tree with stakes or pickets that will preclude too great familiarity on the part of the swine, and will not prevent a sharp scrutiny for borers in their season. Do not forget that a fruit-tree is like a cow tied to an immovable stake, from which you cannot continue to draw a pail of milk per day unless you carry her a liberal supply of food; and every Fall cart in half a dozen loads of muck from some convenient swamp or pond for your pigs to turn over: Should they leave any weeds, cut them with a scythe as often as they seem to need it; never allowing one to ripen seed. There may be easier and surer ways to obtain choice fruits; but this one commends itself to my judgment as not surpassed by any other. I think few have grown fruits to profit but those who make this a specialty; and I feel that disappointment in fruit-culture is by no means near the end. You can grow Plums, or Grapes, or Peaches, outside of the climate most congenial to them, but this is a work wherein success is likely to cost more than its worth. Try it first on a small scale, if you will try it; and be sure you do it thoroughly.