We knew a case where a farmer subsoiled a field and raised crops in consequence which were the admiration of the neighborhood; and for years the field showed the advantage of deep handling. But we could not learn that a single farmer in the neighborhood took the hint. The man who acted thus wisely, sold his farm and his successor pursued the old way of surface-scratching.
A stanch farmer complained to us of his soil as too loose and light; we mentioned ashes as worth trying; “well, now you mention it, I believe it will do good. I bought a part of my farm from a man who was a wonderful fellow to save up ashes, and around his cabin it lay in heaps. I took away the house and ordered the ashes to be scattered, and to this day I notice that when the plow runs along through that spot, the ground turns up moist and close-grained.” It is strange that he never took the hint! There are thousands of bushels of ashes lying not far from his farm about an old soap and candle factory with which he might have dressed his whole farm.
A farmer gets a splendid crop of corn or grain from off a grass or clover lay. Does he take the hint? Does he adopt the system which shall allow him every year just such a sward to put his grain on? No, he hates book-farming, and scientific farming, and “this notion of rotation;” and jogs on the old way.
A few years ago our farmers got roundly into debt; and they have worried and sweat under it, till some of them have grown greyer, and added not a few wrinkles to their face. Do they take the hint? Are they not pitching into debt again?
A few years ago _mules_ commanded a high price; everybody raised mules forthwith; the market of course was glutted; the price fell; everybody quit the business; markets became empty and the price rose; a few men who had stuck to the business pushed in their droves and made money; and now everybody is raising mules again. The same game is played every four or five years with pork; men make when pork is scarce, but few farmers have stock on hand. They instantly rush into the business, flood the country with hogs and get almost nothing for them. Why don’t men take the hint? _A moderate stock all the time_, makes more money than that system which has none when the price is high and too many when the price is low.