It is time to prepare your hot-bed, if you design having early plants in your garden.
3. WORK FOR MARCH.—Begin the year by thorough, deep plowing, where your fields are in good order for it. Depend upon it, that deep plowing is the only good plowing. Your first crop, generally, will tell you so. But if the subsoil is such that the first crop is rather poor, a year’s exposure of the land will ameliorate it so that your second crop will remunerate all expenses of time and labor laid out in deep plowing. No farmer should be without a subsoil plow who has got his lands clear of stumps and roots.
Take especial care of cows now just coming in with calf. See that those which are heavy are carefully handled, well fed, and warmly sheltered. Mares with foal should be tenderly used, exercised a little, but not put to hard or straining work. _The condition of the mother will to a great extent determine the condition of the offspring._ Cows, mares, sows, ewes, etc. etc., should be kept in a hearty condition, without being _fat_.
ORCHARD.—Do not trouble your trees with premature pruning. Let the axe, and knife, and saw alone. Loosen the dirt or sod around and beneath your trees. The best manure for your trees is fresh mold, or forest soil and lime in the proportion of about one part to ten. Take soft soap, dilute it with urine, scrub your trees with it plentifully, having first scraped off all rough bark. If you would work easily always, never let your work drive you.
4. WORK FOR APRIL.—Gather from your barn the loose hay seed, and sow it upon your wheat fields; it will give good pasturage, after harvest, and make fine stuff for plowing under. Push forward your plowing, but look well to the teams; as cattle and horses are like men, unable in early spring to endure severe labor all at once. Your spring wheat should be got in; barley is a better crop, usually, than rye. The middle and last of the month will keep you in the corn-field. Plow deep—plow thoroughly; and after planting, give the plow no rest, if you wish good corn.
YOUNG ANIMALS.—You will now begin to have plenty of calves, colts, pigs, and lambs. If you mean to have profitable pork, you ought to _push_ your pigs from the birth. Look carefully after your lambs; see that the mothers are well cared for; have dry and warm pens for any that are feeble. A little tenderness to the lambs will be well repaid by and by.