e us
to dispense with industry. Chemistry throws great light on the art of
cooking, but a farmer's wife will roast a turkey better than a Liebig.

When Mr. James O. Sheldon, of Geneva. N.Y., bought his farm, his entire
crop of hay the first year was 76 loads. He kept stock, and bought more
or less grain and bran, and in eleven years from that time his farm
produced 430 loads of hay, afforded pasture for his large herd of
Shorthorn cattle, and produced quite as much grain as when he first took
it.

Except in the neighborhood of large cities, "high farming" may not pay,
owing to the fact that we have so much land. But whether this is so or
not, there can be no doubt that the only profitable system of farming is
to raise large crops on such land as we cultivate. High farming gives us
large crops, and _many of them_. At present, while we have so much land
in proportion to population, we must, perhaps, be content with large
crops of grain, and few of them. We must adopt the slower but less
expensive means of enriching our land from natural sources, rather than
the quicker, more artificial, and costly means adopted by many farmers
in England, and by market gardeners, seed-growers, and nurserymen in
this country. Labor is so high that we can not afford to raise a small
crop. If we sow but half the number of acres, and double the yield, we
should quadruple our profits. I have made up my mind to let the land lie
in clover three years, instead of two. This will lessen the number of
acres under cultivation, and enable us to bestow more care in plowing
and cleaning it. And the land will be richer, and produce better crops.
The atmosphere is capable of supplying a certain quantity of ammonia to
the soil in rains and dews every year, and by giving the wheat crop a
three years supply instead of two years, we gain so much. Plaster the
clover, top-dress it in the fall, if you have the manure, and stimulate
its growth in every way possible, and consume all the clover on the
land, or in the barn-yard. Do not sell a single ton; let not a weed
grow, and the land will certainly improve.

The first object should be to destroy weeds. I do not know how it is in
other sections, but with us the majority of farms are completely overrun
with weeds. They are eating out the life of the land, and if something
is not done to destroy them, even exorbitantly high prices can not make
farming profitable. A farmer yesterday was contending that it did not