Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1875 — High Farming. [ARTICLE]

High Farming.

The English Agricultural Gazette contains the following admirable article on “farming: “ What are you giving foroats just now, Mr. Drake?” we asked, when engaging a carriage at a livery-stable. " Thirty-four shillings a quarter, sir,” was the reply. " Thirty-four shillings a quarter! Why, you can buy fair oats for a shilling a bushel less than that.” “ Yes, sir, I know that, too; but I have long since learnt that it is never good policy to buy or use a second-rate article;” - To what department of tanning, we wonder, does not this maxim apply, and in what department does it not need enforcement? Second-rate liorses incur as great a daily cost, and yield much less in return. Second-rate 'food for horses, cheaper though it be, produces “footpounds” of force per shilling of its cost. Second-rate implements produce an inferior result at more expense of draught. Second-rate laborers often do but half per shilling of their smaller wages.- Secondrate varieties of jvheat. oats, barley,beans and peas extract and use just as much fertility from the soil in the production of their inferior yield. Second-rate cattle consume as much food, yielding perhaps but a pound of meat or a gallon of milk a day, increasing meanwhile little, sometimes nothing, or even less than nothing, daily, while first-rate stock, yielding a double or even a quadruple return, consume no more in doing it. Second-rate management generally - may be quite as costly qs that which is first-rate, differing frdm it far more in its deficient yield than in the expense at which it is directed.

Take the live stock of tlie farm for example : How many head of stock on most, farms under listless management are there not which are doing literally nothing, making no progress, if kept as growing or trotting stock, or improving but a litwith others Hvhich are prosperous and productive. They are consuming just as much, and in the one case are mere machines for destroying farm produce, in the other they, afe machines for wasting it. We believe that next to skill in choosing or" in breeding stock the profit of the stock-keeper depends on promptitude and resolution in selling, palling with, dispatching it as soon as it is seen that it is not prospering. Of course if every one acted on a maxim of this kind the value of such stock in the mar ket would soon reach the level which properly belongs to its character, and the loss on sales might then almost equal tlie loss in keeping; but in the meantime those who act with greatest promptitude in weeding out inferior stock certainly have the advantage. The fact that stock which is not prospering is jm& a machinery for the destruction of farm produce ought to startle many a man’who will read these words. Let'him . remember, too, that all live stock are inevitably machines for destroying a certain portion daily, which is as directly wasted and burnt up in every animal that feeds as if it had been put on the Are. How 1 much greater the premium then on keeping cattle, whose fattening is done in a lifetime of 700 days, than on keeping those - whose fattening requires 1,200 days or ■more. The weeding of the flock ana herd upon a farm is a part of live-stock management which needs as much promptitude and decision as the weeding of crops and fields. And this brings us to the other great agricultural department to which Mj. Darke’s maxim especially applies. If it be unquestionable policy to confine ourselves to first-rate articles when choosing the individual animals or the best varieties of the different crops we cultivate, how much more obviously is it not necessary that we avoid devoting the fertility of our soil, or any portion of it, to the growth ot plants which not only are not marketable, but which ate mischievous. Why should weeds be, as they seem, from almost universal practice and expe-, rience to be, a necessary part of farm management? They occupy the space in which good plants would grow—they consume the §>od on which good plants would prosper—their worthless lives involve expenditure, which might otherwise have gone to increase the number ot valuable lives upon the farm, or the ability of the farm to feed them. The fight with weeds costs far more on the farm which is always foul than on the farm' which is always clean. And more than that, we engage to say that, given a larm overrun with thistles, bindweed,, couch and coltsfoot, at the commencement of a tenancy, the man who at the end of ten years finds he has succeeded in getting it and keeping it clean has spent less in fallow work and wages than the man who, having all these years maintained an unsuccessful fight, at length leaves the farm but little cleaner than he found it. If it be impolitic to buy or keep oj use a “second-rate article,” as we learnt from the experience we have quoted, it is unquestionably the extreme of folly to permit such mere incumbrance, worthlessness and wastefulness as we incur by harboring weeds? And so ends for the present this short agricultural homily, founded on the text with which the maxim of the livery-stable keeper furnished us.