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Part 27

Pleasant Talk About Fruits, Flowers and Farming · Henry Ward Beecher — chapter 27 of 73 · ~2,631 words · public domain

Overhaul all your plows, carts, shovels, hoes, etc., and put everything in complete readiness.

While you are moving about and repairing holes in the fence, putting on a rail here, a stake yonder, a rider in another place, you may inquire of yourself whether your character is not in some need of repairs? Perhaps you are very careless and extravagant—the fence needs rails there; perhaps you are lazy—in that case the fence corners may be said to be full of brambles and weeds, and must be cleared out; perhaps you are a violent, passionate man—you need a stake and rider on that spot. And lastly, perhaps you are not temperate, if so, your fence is all going down and will soon have gaps enough to let in all the hogs of indolence, vice, and crime: and they make a large drove and fatten fast. Now is a good time to plan how to get out of debt. Don’t be ashamed to save in little things, nor to earn small gains: “Many a mickle makes a muckle.” But set it down, to begin with, that no saving is made by cheating yourself out of a good newspaper. No man reads a good paper a year, without saving by it. Suppose you put in your wheat a little better for something you see written by a good farmer and get five bushels more to the acre. One acre pays for a year’s paper. One recipe, a hint which betters any crop, pays for the paper fourfold. Intelligent boys work better, plan better, earn and save better; and reading a good paper makes them intelligent. Besides, suppose you took a good paper a year, and found nothing new during all that time (an incredible supposition!) yet every two weeks it comes to jog your memory about things which you may forget, but ought not to forget. It steps in and asks whether that little store bill is paid? Whether that loan drawing a fatal six, seven or ten per cent (poison! poison! deadly poison!) is being melted down? whether the children are going to school? whether the tools are all right? the fences snug? whether economy, and industry, and sound morals (the best crop one can put in), are flourishing? It will look at your orchard—peep over into your garden, pry into the dairy—nay, into the cupboard and bureau, and even into your pocket. Now, if you are a man willing to learn, it will give you hints enough in a year to pay ten times over for your paper.

“SHUT YOUR MOUTH.”

We heard a lad, in anger, use this expression to another. It was not very bad advice, though given somewhat roughly.

When we hear some of our mincing misses singing, now away up, and now away down, tossing their heads and rolling their eyes, we think, Well, miss, if you knew what folks thought of you, you’d shut your mouth.

We have seen many men ruined because they did not know how to shut their mouth when tempted to say “Yes,” to a bad business.

When we see a man standing before the bar just ready to drink, we think, Ah! you fine fellow, if you will not keep your mouth shut before that bar, you will, by and by, find yourself before a Bar where it will be shut tight enough.

When we hear a fine lady scolding till every room rings; or tattling from house to house—or scandal-mongering, we think, Ah, you lady, with all your schooling, you never learned to shut your mouth.

SPRING WORK ON THE FARM.

Thoroughly overhaul your tools; let plows be sharpened; repair their stocks if anywhere started or weakened; look after the chains, the swingletrees, the yokes for your oxen, or the harness for your horses. Don’t have any straps to replace, or harness to tie up with tow strings after you get into the fields, and when time is precious. NOW IS THE TIME TO SAVE TIME, BY GETTING READY. Old rusty buckles will give way the moment the plow strikes a root; stitches which have been longing for some time to fall out and part, will be likely to do it when you have the least time to mend them. Then we shall hear talk; you’ll be cursing the old horse or the old rickety harness, and declaring that your “luck is always on the wrong side;” and you may depend upon it, that it always will be, so long as you are not more careful. Good luck is a wary old fish which nibbles at everybody’s hook, but the shrewd and skillful angler only catches it.

The opening of spring is usually debilitating both to man and beast. Your horses cannot stand hard usage at once; some of them will need physic—all of them should be put to work carefully; increase their task gradually; favor them, and you will get abundantly paid for it before their summer’s work is done.

A good farmer may be known by the way he manages his spring work. Consider how much there is of it. Cows are calving; mares foaling; young heifers for the first time to be broken to milking; all the tools to be got ready; the ground to be broken up and seeded; the orchards to be set; or old ones to be attended to; a garden to be made; and a hundred other things to do. Now here is a chance for good management, and a yet better chance for bad management. There is as much skill in “laying out” a season’s work for the farmer, as there is in “laying out” a frame for a house or barn.

Bethink you of all the mistakes you made last season; if you made any good hits, improve upon them this year. Every farmer should resolve to do all things as well as he did the last year, and some things a great deal better.

While everything is merry, birds singing, bees at work, cattle frisky, and the whole animated world is joyous, do but search and see if, among all beasts, birds, or bugs, you can find one that needs whisky to do its spring or summer work on?

Look again; seeds are sprouting; trees budding; flowers peeping out from warm nooks. Everything grows in spring-time. Youth is spring-time, habits are sprouting, dispositions are putting out their leaves, opinions are forming, prejudices are getting root. Now take at least as good care of your children as you do of your farm. If you don’t want to use the land you let it alone, and weeds grow; but when you wish to improve a piece, you turn the natural weeds under, and sow the right seed, and tend the crop. I have heard good kind of folks object to much “bringing up” of their boys. They guessed the lads would come out about right. You break a colt, and break a steer, and break a heifer, and break a soil, and if you won’t break your children, they will be very likely to break you—heart and pocket.

Fermenting manures should not be hauled or spread until you are ready to plow them under. [If you spread manure on meadows it should be fine, and well rotted, and let ashes be liberally mixed with it.] If you let manure lie a week or ten days exposed in the fields to the air, it will waste one half of “its sweetness on the desert air.” Let the plow follow the cart as fast as possible, and the gases generated by your manure will then be taken up by the soil, and held in store for your grain.

DEEP PLOWING.—There may be some rare cases where, for special reasons, shallow plowing is advisable. But the standing rule upon the farm should be deep plowing. A good farmer remarked the other day to us, “One of my neighbors who is always talking of deep plowing was at it last summer, and I followed in the furrow, and his depth did not average more than four inches; he did not measure on the land side but on the mold-board side.” The reasons are very strong for deep plowing.

1. When crop after crop is taken off the first four or five inches of top earth, it tends speedily to rob it of all materials required by grass or grain. Every blade taken from the soil, takes off some portion of that soil with it.

2. Deep plowing brings up from beneath a greater amount of earth, which, when subjected to the frosts, the atmosphere, and the action of the plow, becomes fit for vegetation.

3. Summer droughts seldom injure deeply-plowed soils; certainly not to that degree that they do shallow soils. The roots penetrate the mellow mould to a greater depth, and draw thence moisture when the top is as dry as ashes. Will not some one who is curious in such matters try two acres side by side plowed shallow and deep, respectively, and give us the history of their crop?

QUANTITY OF SEED.—It has been often said that American husbandry was unfavorably peculiar in stinginess of seed-sowing. It is certain that very much greater quantities are employed in Great Britain and on the Continent than with us, and that much greater crops are obtained per acre. In part the crop is owing to a superior cultivation; but those who have carefully studied the subject affirm that, in part, it is attributable to the use of much greater quantities of seed. We give a table showing the average quantity of seed per acre for different grains, in England, Germany, and the United States. The table was formed in that manufactory of so many valuable articles, the Albany Cultivator. It must be remembered that the average crop is not the average of the best farming States, but of the whole United States.

SPRING WORK IN THE GARDEN.

When spring comes, everybody begins to think of the garden. A little of the experience of one who has learned some by making many mistakes will do you no harm.

TOO MUCH WORK LAID OUT.—When the winter lets us out, and we are exhilarated with fresh air, singing birds, bland weather, and newly-springing vegetation, our ambition is apt to lay out too much work. We began with an acre, in garden; we could not afford to hire help except for a few days; and we were ambitious to do things as they ought to be done. By reference to a Garden Journal (every man should keep one), we find that we planted in 1840, sixteen kinds of peas; seventeen kinds of beans; seven kinds of corn; six kinds of squash; eight kinds of cabbage; seven kinds of lettuce; eight sorts of cucumber, and seven of turnips—seventy-six varieties of only eight vegetables! Besides, we had fruit-trees to transplant in spring—flowers to nurture, and all the etceteras of a large garden. Although we worked faithfully, early and late, through the whole season, the weeds beat us fairly; and every day or two some lazy loon, who had not turned two spadefuls of earth during the season, would lounge along and look over, and seeing the condition of things, would very quietly say: “Why, I heard so much about your garden—whew! what regiments of weeds you keep. I say, neighbor, do you boil that parsley for greens?” It nettled us, and we sweat at the hoe and spade all the harder, but in vain; for we had laid out more than could be well done. Nobody asked how much we had done—they looked only at what we had not done. To be sure so many sorts were planted only to test their qualities; but the laying out of so large a work in spring is not wise. A HALF well done is better than a WHOLE half done. Remember there is a July as well as an April; and lay out in April as you can hold out in July and August. We have profited by our own mistakes and have no objections that others should do it.

VEGETABLE GARDEN.—Before you meddle with the garden, do two things: first inspect your seeds, assort them, rejecting the shrunk, the mildewed, the sprouted, and, generally, the discolored. Buy early, such as you need to purchase. Do not wait till the minute of planting before you get your seeds. Second, make up your mind beforehand just what you mean to do in your garden for the season.

Preparation.—Haul your manure and stack it in a corner; do not spread it till the day that you are ready to turn it under; cut your pea-brush and put it under shelter; inspect your bean-poles and procure such as are necessary to replace the rotten or broken ones; inspect every panel of the garden fence; one rail lost, may ruin, in a night, two months’ labor, and more temper and grace than you can afford to spare in a whole year. Clean up all the stubble, haulm, straw, leaves, refuse brush, sticks and rubbish of every sort, and cast it out, or burn it and distribute the ashes. If you intend to do your work in the best manner, see that you have the sorts of manure that you may need through the season: ashes, fine old barn-yard manure, green long manure, leaf-mold from the wood, top-soil from pastures, etc., etc. Every florist understands the use of these.

Coarse manure may be put upon your pie-plant bed, as a strong and succulent leaf-stalk is desirable. Let it be thoroughly forked, gently near the stools and deeply between the rows.

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