But this is a digression. Let us carry out the illustration. What does this upland portion of the farm need? It needs underdraining, thorough cultivation, and _plenty of manure_. If I had plenty of manure, I could adopt high farming. But where am I to get plenty of manure for 200 acres of land? “Make it,” says the Deacon. Very good; but what shall I make it of? “Make it out of your straw and stalks and hay.” So I do, but all the straw and stalks and hay raised on the farm when I bought it would not make as much manure as “high farming” requires for five acres of land. And is this not true of half the farms in the United States to-day? What then, shall we do? The best thing to do, _theoretically_, is this: Any land that is producing a fair crop of grass or clover, let it lie. Pasture it or mow it for hay. If you have a field of clayey or stiff loamy land, break it up in the fall, and summer-fallow it the next year, and sow it to wheat and seed it down with clover. Let it lie two or three years in clover. Then break it up in July or August, “fall-fallow” it, and sow it with barley the next spring, and seed it down again with clover. Sandy or light land, that it will not pay to summer-fallow, should have all the manure you can make, and be plowed and planted with corn. Cultivate thoroughly, and either seed it down with the corn in August, or sow it to barley or oats next spring, and seed it down with clover. I say, _theoretically_ this is the best plan to adopt. But practically it may not be so, because it may be absolutely necessary that we should raise something that we can sell at once, and get money to live upon or pay interest and taxes. But the gentlemen who so strenuously advocate high farming, are not perhaps often troubled with considerations of this kind. Meeting them, therefore, on their own ground, I contend that in my case “high farming” would not be as profitable as the plan hinted at above. The rich alluvial low land is to be pastured or mown; the upland to be broken up only when necessary, and when it is plowed to be plowed well and worked thoroughly, and got back again into clover as soon as possible. The hay and pasture from the low land, and the clover and straw and stalks from the upland, would enable us to keep a good many cows and sheep, with more or less pigs, and there would be a big pile of manure in the yard every spring. And when this is once obtained, you can get along much more pleasantly and profitably. “But,” I may be asked, “when you have got this pile of manure can not you adopt high farming?” No. My manure pile would contain say: 60 tons of clover-hay; 20 tons wheat-straw; 25 tons oat, barley, and pea-straw; 40 tons meadow-hay; 20 tons corn-stalks; 20 tons corn, oats, and other grain; 120 tons mangel-wurzel and turnips.