What I know of farming:

Horace Greeley

Horace Greeley

What I know of farming: / a series of brief and plain expositions of practical agriculture as an art based upon science

"I know

That where the spade is deepest driven,

The best fruits grow."

В В В В John G. Whittier.

PREFACE

Men have written wisely and usefully, in illustration and aid of Agriculture, from the platform of pure science. Acquainted with the laws of vegetable growth and life, they so expounded and elucidated those laws that farmers apprehended and profitably obeyed them. Others have written, to equally good purpose, who knew little of science, but were adepts in practical agriculture, according to the maxims and usages of those who have successfully followed and dignified the farmer's calling. I rank with neither of these honored classes. My practical knowledge of agriculture is meager, and mainly acquired in a childhood long bygone; while, of science, I have but a smattering, if even that. They are right, therefore, who urge that my qualifications for writing on agriculture are slender indeed.

I only lay claim to an invincible willingness to be made wiser to-day than I was yesterday, and a lively faith in the possibility – nay, the feasibility, the urgent necessity, the imminence – of very great improvements in our ordinary dealings with the soil. I know that a majority of those who would live by its tillage feed it too sparingly and stir it too slightly and grudgingly. I know that we do too little for it, and expect it, thereupon, to do too much for us. I know that, in other pursuits, it is only work thoroughly well done that is liberally compensated; and I see no reason why farming should prove an exception to this stern but salutary law. I may be, indeed, deficient in knowledge of what constitutes good farming, but not in faith that the very best farming is that which is morally sure of the largest and most certain reward.

I hope to be generally accorded the merit of having set forth the little I pretend to know in language that few can fail to understand. I have avoided, so far as I could, the use of terms and distinctions unfamiliar to the general ear. The little I know of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, &c., I have kept to myself; since whatever I might say of them would be useless to those already acquainted with the elementary truths of Chemistry, and only perplexing to others. If there is a paragraph in the following pages which will not be readily and fully understood by an average school-boy of fifteen years, then I have failed to make that paragraph as simple and lucid as I intended.

Many farmers are dissuaded from following the suggestions of writers on agriculture by the consideration of expense. They urge that, though men of large wealth may (perhaps) profitably do what is recommended, their means are utterly inadequate: they might as well be urged to work their oxen in a silver yoke with gold bows. I have aimed to commend mainly, if not uniformly, such improvements only on our grandfathers' husbandry as a farmer worth $1,000, or over, may adopt – not all at once, but gradually, and from year to year. I hope I shall thus convince some farmers that draining, irrigation, deep plowing, heavy fertilizing, &c., are not beyond their power, as so many have too readily presumed and pronounced them.

That I should say very little, and that little vaguely, of the breeding and raising of animals, the proper time to sow or plant, &c., &c., can need no explanation. By far the larger number of those whose days have mainly been given to farming, know more than I do of these details, and are better authority than I am with regard to them. On the other hand, I have traveled extensively, and not heedlessly, and have seen and pondered certain broader features of the earth's improvement and tillage which many stay-at-home cultivators have had little or no opportunity to study or even observe. By restricting the topics with which I deal, the probability of treating some of them to the average farmer's profit is increased.

And, whatever may