GETTING POOR ON RICH LAND AND RICH ON POOR LAND.
A close observer of men and things told us the following little history, which we hope will plow very deeply into the attention of all who plow very shallow in their soils.
Two brothers settled together in —— county. One of them on a cold, ugly, clay soil, covered with black-jack oak, not one of which was large enough to make a half dozen rails. This man would never drive any but large, powerful, Conastoga horses, some seventeen hands high. He always put _three_ horses to a large plow, and plunged it in some ten inches deep. This deep plowing he invariably practised and cultivated thoroughly afterward. He raised his seventy bushels of corn to the acre.
This man had a brother about six miles off, settled on a rich White River bottom-land farm—and while a black-jack clay soil yielded seventy bushels to the acre, this fine bottom-land would not average fifty. One brother was steadily growing rich on poor land, and the other steadily growing poor on rich land.
One day the bottom-land brother came down to see the black-jack oak farmer, and they began to talk about their crops and farms, as farmers are very apt to do.
“How is it,” said the first, “that you manage on this poor soil to beat me in crops?”
That was it, exactly. Some men have such rich land that they won’t _work_, it; and they never get a step beyond where they began. They rely on the _soil_, not on labor, or skill, or care. _Some men expect their_ LANDS _to work, and some men expect to_ WORK THEIR LAND;—and that is just the difference between a good and a bad farmer.
When we had written thus far, and read it to our informant, he said, “three years ago I travelled again through that section, and the only good farm I saw was this very one of which you have just written. All the others were desolate—fences down—cabins abandoned, the settlers discouraged and moved off. I thought I saw the same old stable door, hanging by one hinge, that used to disgust me ten years before; and I saw no change except for the worse in the whole county, with the single exception of this one farm.”
Haul tanbark and bank up around the house to insure a warm cellar. Cellar windows should be kept open through the day, and closed after the nights begin to freeze, as late in the season as possible. See that dry walks are prepared from the house to all the out-houses. Do not be stingy of your materials; make the paths high and rounding, so as to insure dryness, especially about the barn. See that stones, gravel, or timber are laid so as to be out of the way of cattle’s feet, and just in the way of your own. We have seen swamp-barn-yards, before going into which a prudent man would choose to make his will. Mud on the shoes from roads and fields is all well enough; but mud from one’s own yards, shows that the owner has not fixed up as he ought to have done.