XXXVI.
STONE ON A FARM
This earth, geologists say, was once an immense expanse of heated vapor, which, gradually cooling at its surface, as it whirled and sped through space, contracted and formed a crust, which we know as Rock or Stone. This crust has since been broken through, and tilted up into ranges of mountains and hills, by the action of internal fires, by the transmutation of solid bodies into more expansive gases; and the fragments torn away from the sharper edges of upheaved masses of granite, quartz, or sandstone, having been frozen into iceberg, floating, or soon to be so, have been carried all over the surface of our planet, and dropped upon the greater part, as those icebergs were ultimately resolved, by a milder temperature, into flowing water. When the seas were afterward reduced nearly or quite to their present limits, and the icebergs restricted to the frigid zones and their vicinity, streams had to make their way down the sides of the mountains and hills to the subjacent valleys and plains, sweeping along not merely sand and gravel, but bowlders also, of every size and form, and sometimes great rocks as well, by the force of their impetuous currents. And, as a very large, if not the larger portion of our earth's surface bears testimony to the existence and powerful action through ages, of larger and smaller water-courses, a wide and general diffusion of stones, not in place, but more or less triturated, smoothed, and rounded, by the action of water, was among the inevitable results.
These stones are sometimes a facility, but oftener an impediment, to efficiency in agriculture. When heated by fervid sunshine throughout the day, they retain a portion of that heat through a part of the succeeding night, thereby raising the temperature of the soil, and increasing the deposit of dew on the plants there growing. When generally broken so finely as to offer no impediment to cultivation, they not merely absorb heat by day, to be given off by night, but, by rendering the soil open and porous, secure a much more extensive diffusion of air through it than would otherwise be possible. Thus do slaty soils achieve and maintain a warmth unique in their respective latitudes, so as to ripen grapes further North, and at higher elevations, than would otherwise be possible.
The great Prairies of the West, with a considerable portion of the valleys and plains of the Atlantic slope, expose no rock at their surfaces, and little beneath them, until the soil has been traversed, and the vicinity of the underlying rock in place fairly attained. To farmers inured to the perpetual stone-picking of New-England, and other hilly regions, this is a most welcome change; but when the pioneer comes to look about him for stone to wall his cellar and his well, to underpin his barn, and form the foundations of his dwelling, he realizes that the bowlders he had exulted in leaving behind him were not wholly and absolutely a nuisance; glad as he was to be rid of them forever, he would like now to call some of them back again.
Yet, the Eastern farmer of to-day has fewer uses for stone than his grandfather had. He does not want his farm cut up into two or three-acre patches, by broad-based, unsightly walls, which frost is apt to heave year after year into greater deformity and less efficiency; nor does he care longer to use them in draining, since he must excavate and replace thrice as much earth in making a stone as in making a tile drain; while the former affords shelter and impunity to rats, mice, and other mischievous, predatory animals, whose burrowing therein tends constantly to stimulate its natural tendency to become choked with sand and earth. Of the stone drains, constructed through parts of my farm by foremen whose wills proved stronger than my own, but two remain in partial operation, and I shall rejoice when these shall have filled themselves up and been counted out evermore. Happily, they were sunk so low that the subsoil plow will never disturb them.
Still, my confidence that nothing was made in vain is scarcely shaken by the prevalence and abundance of stone on our Eastern farms. We may not have present use for them all; but our grandsons will be wiser than we, and have uses for them which we hardly suspect. I rëinsist that land which is very stony was mainly created with an eye to timber-growing, and that millions of acres of such ought forthwith to be planted with Hickory, White Oak, Locust, Chestnut, White Pine, and other valuable forest-trees. Every acre of thoroughly dry land, lying near a railroad, in the Eastern or Middle States, may be made to pay a good interest on from $50 up to $100, provided there be soil enough above its rocks to afford a decent foothold for trees; and how little will answer this purpose none can imagine who have not seen the experiment tried. Sow thickly, that you may begin to cut out poles six to ten feet long within three or four years, and keep cutting out (but never cutting off) thenceforward, until time shall be no more, and your rocky crests, steep hillsides and ravines, will take rank with the most productive portions of your farm.
In the edges of these woods, you may deposit the surplus stones of the adjacent cultivated fields, in full assurance that moth and rust will not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal, but that you and your sons and grandsons will find them there whenever they shall be needed, as well as those you found there when you came into possession of the farm.
I am further confident that we shall build more and more with rough, unshapen stone, as we grow older and wiser. In our harsh, capricious climate, walls of stone-concrete afford the cheapest and best protection alike against heat and frost, for our animals certainly, and, I think, also for ourselves. Let the farmer begin his barn by making of stone, laid in thin mortar, a substantial basement story; let into a hillside, for his manure and his root-cellar; let him build upon this a second story of like materials for the stalls of his cattle; and now he may add a third story and roof of wood for his bay and grain, if he sees fit. His son or grandson will, probably, take this off, and replace it with concrete walls and a slate roof; or this may be postponed until the original wooden structure has rotted off; but I feel sure that, ultimately, the dwellings as well as barns of thrifty farmers, in stony districts, will mainly be built of rough stone, thrown into a box and firmly cemented by a thin mortar composed of much sand and little lime; and that thus at least ten thousand tuns of stone to each farm will be disposed of. It may be somewhat later still before our barn-yards, fowl inclosures, gardens, pig-pens, etc., will be shut in by cemented walls; but the other sort affords such ample and perpetual lurking places for rats, minks, weasels, and all manner of destructive vermin, that they are certain to go out of fashion before the close of the next century.
As to blasting out Stone, too large or too firmly fixed to be otherwise handled, I would solve the problem by asking, "Do you mean to keep this lot in cultivation?" If you do, clear it of stone from the surface upward, and for at least two feet downward, though they be as large as haycocks, and as fixed as the everlasting hills. Clear your field of every stone bigger than a goose egg, that the Plow or the Mower may strike in doing its work, or give it up to timber, plant it thoroughly, and leave its stones unmolested until you or your descendants shall have a paying use for them.
A friend deeply engaged in lumbering gives me a hint, which I think some owners of stony farms will find useful. He is obliged to run his logs down shallow, stony creeks, from the bottom of which large rocks often protrude, arresting the downward progress of his lumber. When the beds of these creeks are nearly dry in Summer, he goes in, with two or three stout, strong assistants, armed with crowbars and levers, and rolls the stones to this side and that, so as to leave a clear passage for his logs. Occasionally, he is confronted by a big fellow, which defies his utmost force; when, instead of drilling and blasting, he gathers dead tree-tops, and other dry wood of no value, from the banks, and builds a hot fire on the top of each giant bowlder. When the fire has burned out, and the rock has cooled, he finds it softened, and, as it were, rotten, on the top, often split, and every way so demoralized that he can deal with it as though it were chalk or cheese. He estimates his saving by this process, as compared with drilling and blasting as much more than fifty per cent. I trust farmers with whom wood is abundant, and big stones superabundant, will give this simple device a trial. Powder and drilling cost money, part of which may be saved by this expedient.
I have built some stone walls – at first, not very well; but for the last ten years my rule has been: Very little fence on a farm, but that little of a kind that asks no forbearance of the wildest bull that ever wore a horn. The last wall I built cost me at least $5 per rod; and it is worth the money. Beginning by plowing its bed and turning the two furrows together, so as to raise the ground a foot, and make a shallow ditch on either side, I built a wall thereon which will outlast my younger child. An ordinary wall dividing a wood on the north from an open field of sunny, gravelly loam on the south, would have been partly thrown down and wholly twisted out of shape in a few years, by the thawing of the earth under its sunny side, while it remained firm as a rock on the north; but the ground is always dry under my entire wall; so nothing freezes there, and there is consequently nothing to thaw and let down my wall. I shall be sorely disappointed if that wall does not outlast my memory, and be known as a thorough barrier to roving cattle long after the name of its original owner shall have been forgotten.
XXXVII.
FENCES AND FENCING
Though I have already indicated, incidentally, my decided objections to our prevalent system of Fencing, I deem the subject of such importance that I choose to discuss it directly. Excessive Fencing is peculiarly an American abuse, which urgently cries for reform.
Solon Robinson says the fence-tax is the heaviest of our farmer's taxes. I add, that it is the most needless and indefensible.
Highways we must have, and people must traverse them; but this gives them no right to trample down or otherwise injure the crops growing on either side. In France, and other parts of Europe, you see grass and grain growing luxuriantly up to the very edge of the beaten tracks, with nothing like a fence between them. Yet those crops are nowise injured or disturbed by wayfarers. Whoever chooses to impel animals along these roads must take care to have them completely under subjection, and must see that they do no harm to whatever grows by the wayside.
In this country, cattle-driving, except on a small scale, and for short distances, has nearly been superceded by railroads. The great droves formerly reaching the Atlantic seaboard on foot, from Ohio or further West, are now huddled into cars and hurried through in far less time, and with less waste of flesh; but they reach us fevered, bruised, and every way unwholesome. Every animal should be turned out to grass, after a railroad journey of more than twelve hours, and left there a full month before he is taken to the slaughter-pen. We must have many more deaths per annum in this city than if the animals on which we subsist were killed in a condition which rendered them fit for human food.
Ultimately, our fresh Beef, Mutton and Pork, will come to us from the Prairies in refrigerating cars: each animal having been killed while in perfect health, unfevered and untortured by days of cramped, galled, and thirsty suffering, on the cars. This will leave their offal, including a large portion of their bones, to enrich the fields whence their sustenance was drawn and from which they should never be taken. The cost of transporting the meat, hides, and tallow, in such cars, would be less than that of bringing through the animals on their legs; while the danger of putrefaction might be utterly precluded.
But to return to Fencing:
Our growing plants must be preserved from animal ravage; but it is most unjust to impose the cost of this protection on the growers. Whoever chooses to rear or buy animals must take care that they do not infest and despoil his neighbors. Whoever sees fit to turn animals into the street, should send some one with them who will be sure to keep them out of mischief, which browsing young trees in a forest clearly is.
If the inhabitants of a settlement or village surrounded by open prairie, see fit to pasture their cattle thereon, they should send them out each morning in the charge of a well-mounted herdsmen, whose duty should be summed up in keeping them from evildoing by day and bringing them safely back to their yard or yards at nightfall.
Fencing bears with special severity on the pioneer class, who are least able to afford the outlay. The "clearing" of the pioneer's first year in the wilderness, being enlarged by ax and fire, needs a new and far longer environment next year; and so through subsequent years until clearing is at an end. Many a pioneer is thus impelled to devote a large share of his time to Fencing; and yet his crops often come to grief through the depredations of his own or his neighbor's breachy cattle.
Fences produce nothing but unwelcome bushes, briers and weeds. So far as they may be necessary, they are a deplorable necessity. When constructed where they are not really needed, they evince costly folly. I think I could point out farms which would not sell to-day for the cost of rebuilding their present fences.
We cannot make open drains or ditches serve for fences in this country, as they sometimes do in milder and more equable climates, because our severe frosts would heave and crumble their banks if nearly perpendicular, sloping them at length in places so that animals might cross them at leisure. Nor have we, so far north as this city, had much success with hedges, for a like reason. There is scarcely a hedge-plant at once efficient in stopping animals and so hardy as to defy the severity, or rather the caprice, of our Winters. I scarcely know a hedge which is not either inefficient or too costly for the average farmer; and then a hedge is a fixture; whereas we often need to move or demolish our fences.
Wire Fences are least obnoxious to this objection; they are very easily removed; but a careless teamster, a stupid animal, or a clumsy friend, easily makes a breach in one, which is not so easily repaired. Of the few Wire Fences within my knowledge, hardly one has remained entire and efficient after standing two or three years.
Stone Walls, well built, on raised foundations of dry earth, are enduring and quite effective, but very costly. My best have cost me at least $5 per rod, though the raw material was abundant and accessible. I doubt that any good wall is built, with labor at present prices, for less than $5 per rod. Perhaps I should account this costliness a merit, since it must impel farmers to study how to make few fences serve their turn.
Rail Fences will be constructed only where timber is very abundant, of little value, and easily split. Whenever the burning of timber to be rid of it has ceased, there the making of rail fences must be near its end.
Where fences must still be maintained, I apprehend that posts and boards are the cheapest material. Though Pine lumber grows dear, Hemlock still abounds; and the rapid destruction of trees for their bark to be used in tanning must give us cheap hemlock boards throughout many ensuing years. Spruce, Tamarack, and other evergreens from our Northern swamps, will come into play after Hemlock shall have been exhausted.
As for posts, Red Cedar is a general favorite; and this tree seems to be rapidly multiplying hereabout. I judge that farmers who have it not, might wisely order it from a nursery and give it an experimental trial. It is hardy; it is clean; it makes but little shade; and it seems to fear no insect whatever. It flourishes on rocky, thin soils; and a grove of it is pleasant to the sight – at least, to mine.
Locust is more widely known and esteemed; but the borer has proved destructive to it on very many farms, though not on mine. I like it well, and mean to multiply it extensively by drilling the seed in rich garden soil and transplanting to rocky woodland when two years old. Sowing the seed among rocks and bushes I have tried rather extensively, with poor success. If it germinates at all, the young tree is so tiny and feeble that bushes, weeds, and grass, overtop and smother it.
That a post set top-end down will last many years longer than if set as it grew, I do firmly believe, though I cannot attest it from personal observation. I understand the reason to be this: Trees absorb or suck up moisture from the earth; and the particles which compose them are so combined and adjusted as to facilitate this operation. Plant a post deeply and firmly in the ground, butt-end downward, and it will continue to absorb moisture from the earth as it did when alive; and the post, thus moistened to-day and dried by wind and sun to-morrow, is thereby subjected to more rapid disintegration and decay than when reversed.
My general conclusion is, that the good farmer will have fewer and better fences than his thriftless neighbor, and that he will study and plan to make fewer and fewer rods of fence serve his needs, taking care that all he retains shall be perfect and conclusive. Breachy cattle are a sad affliction alike to their owner and his neighbor; and shaky, rotting, tumble-down fences, are justly responsible for their perverse education. Let us each resolve to take good care that his own cattle shall in no case afflict his neighbors, and we shall all need fewer fences henceforth and evermore.
XXXVIII.
AGRICULTURAL EXHIBITIONS
I must have attended not less than fifty State or County Fairs for the exhibition (mainly) of Agricultural Machines and Products. From all these, I should have learned something, and presume I did; but I cannot now say what. Hence, I conclude that these Fairs are not what they might and should be. In other words, they should be improved. But how?
As the people compose much the largest and best part of these shows, the reform must begin with them. Two-thirds of them go to a Fair with no desire to learn therefrom – no belief that they can there be taught anything. Of course, not seeking, they do not find. If they could but realize that a Farmer's Fair might and should teach farmers somewhat that would serve them in their vocation, a great point would be gained. But they go in quest of entertainment, and find this mainly in horse-racing.
Of all human opportunities for instruction in humility and self-depreciation, the average public speaker's is the best. He hurries to a place where he has been told that his presence and utterance are earnestly and generally desired – perhaps to find that his invitation came from an insignificant and odious handful, who had some private ax to grind so repugnant to the great majority that they refuse to countenance the procedure, no matter how great the temptation. Even where there is no such feud, many, having satiated their curiosity by a long stare at him, walk whistling off, without waiting or wishing to hear him. But the speaker at a Fair must compete with a thousand counter-attractions, the least of them far more popular and winning than he can hope to be. He is heard, so far as he is heard at all, in presence of and competition with all the bellowing bulls, braying, jacks, and squealing stallions, in the county; if he holds, nevertheless, a quarter of the crowd, he does well: but let two jockeys start a buggy-race around the convenient track, and the last auditor shuts his ears and runs off to enjoy the spectacle. Decidedly, I insist that a Fair-ground is poorly adapted to the diffusion of Agricultural knowledge – that the people present acquire very little information there, even when they get all they want.
What is needed to render our annual Fairs useful and instructive far beyond precedent, I sum up as follows:
I. Each farmer in the county or township should hold himself bound to make some contribution thereto. If only a good hill of Corn, a peck of Potatoes, a bunch of Grapes, a Squash, a Melon, let him send that. If he can send all of these, so much the better. There is very rarely a thrifty farmer who could not add to the attractions and merits of a Fair if he would try. If he could send a coop of superior Fowls, a likely Calf, or a first-rate Cow, better yet; but nine-tenths of our farmers regard a Fair as something wherewith they have nothing to do, except as spectators. When it is half over, they lounge into it with hands in their pockets, stare about for an hour, and go home protesting that they could beat nearly everything they saw there. Then why did they not try? How can we have good Fairs, if those who might make the best display of products save themselves the trouble by not making any? The average meagerness of our Fairs, so generally and justly complained of, is not the fault of those who sent what they had, but of those who, having better, were too lazy to send anything. Until this is radically changed, and the blame fastened on those who might have contributed, but did not, our Fairs cannot help being generally meager and poor.
II. It seems to me that there is great need of an interesting and faithful running commentary on the various articles exhibited. A competent person should be employed to give an hour's off-hand talk on the cattle and horses on hand, explaining the diverse merits and faults of the several breeds there exhibited, and of the representatives of those breeds then present. If any are peculiarly adapted to the locality, let that fact be duly set forth, with the simple object of enabling farmers to breed more intelligently, and more profitably. Then let the implements and machinery on exhibition be likewise explained and discussed, and let their superiority in whatever respect to those they have superseded or are designed to supersede be clearly pointed out. So, if there be any new Grain, Vegetable, or Fruit, on the tables, let it be made the subject of capable and thoroughly impartial discussion, before such only as choose to listen, and without putting the mere sightseers to grave inconvenience. A lecture-room should always be attached to a Fair-ground, yet so secluded as to shut out the noise inseparable from a crowded exhibition. Here, meetings should be held each evening, for general discussion; every one being encouraged to state concisely the impressions made on him, and the improvements suggested to him, by what he had seen. Do let us try to reflect and consider more at these gatherings, even though at the cost of seeing less.
III. The well supported Agricultural Society of a rich and populous county must be able, or should be able, to give two or three liberal premiums for general proficiency in farming. If $100 could be proffered to the owner or manager of the best tilled farm in the county, $50 to the owner of the best orchard, and $50 to the boy under 18 years of age who grew the best acre of Corn or Roots that year, I am confident that an impulse would thereby be given to agricultural progress. Our premiums are too numerous and too petty, because so few, are willing to contribute with no expectation of personal benefit or distinction. If we had but the right spirit aroused, we might dispense with most of our petty premiums, or replace them by medals of no great cost, and devote the money thus saved to higher and nobler ends.
IV. Much of the speaking at Fairs seems to me insulting to the intelligence of the Farmers present, who are grossly flattered and eulogized, when they often need to be admonished and incited to mend their ways. What use or sense can there be in a lawyer, doctor, broker, or editor, talking to a crowd of farmers as if they were the most favored of mortals and their life the noblest and happiest known to mankind? Whatever it might be, and may yet become, we all know that the average farmer's life is not what it is thus represented: for, if it were, thousands would be rushing into it where barely hundreds left it: whereas we all see that the fact is quite otherwise. No good can result from such insincere and extravagant praises of a calling which so few freely choose, and so many gladly shun. Grant that the farmer's ought to be the most enviable and envied vocation, we know that in fact it is not and, agreeing that it should be, the business in hand is to make it so. There must be obstacles to surmount, mistakes to set right, impediments to overcome, before farming can be in all respects the idolized pursuit which poets are so ready to proclaim it and orators so delight to represent it. Let us struggle to make it all that fancy has ever painted it; but, so long as it is not, let us respect undeniable facts, and characterize it exactly as it is.
V. If our counties were thoroughly canvassed by township committees, and each tiller of the soil asked to pledge himself in writing to exhibit something at the next County Fair, we should soon witness a decided improvement. Many would be incited to attend who now stay away; while the very general complaint that there is nothing worth coming to see would be heard no more. As yet, a majority of farmers regard the Fair much as they do a circus or traveling menagerie, taking no interest in it except as it may afford them entertainment for the passing hour. We must change this essentially; and the first step is to induce, by concerted solicitation, at least half the farmers in the county to pledge themselves each to exhibit something at the next annual Fair, or pay $5 toward increasing its premiums.
VI. In short, we must all realize that the County or Township Fair is our Fair – not got up by others to invite our patronage or criticism, but something whereto it is incumbent on us to contribute, and which must be better or worse as we choose to make it. Realizing this, let us stop carping and give a shoulder to the wheel.