I suspect that the average farmer does far too little plowing--by which I mean, not that he plows too few acres, for he often plows too many, but that he should plow oftener as well as deeper and more thoroughly. I spent three or four of my boyish Summers planting and tilling Corn and Potatoes on fields broken up just before they were planted, never cross-plowed, and of course tough and intractable throughout the season. The yield of Corn was middling, considering the season; that of Potatoes more than middling; yet, if those fields had been well plowed in the previous Autumn, cross-plowed early in the Spring; and thoroughly harrowed just before planting-time, I am confident that the yield would have been far greater, and the labor (save in harvesting) rather less--the cost of the Fall plowing being over-balanced by the saving of half the time necessarily given to the planting and hoeing. Fall Plowing has this recommendation--it lightens labor at the busier season, by transferring it to one of comparative dullness. I may have said that I consider him a good farmer who knows how to make a rainy day equally effective with one that is dry and fair; and, in the same spirit, I count him my master in this art who can make a day's work in Autumn or Winter save a day's work in Spring or Summer. Show me a farmer who has no land plowed when May opens, and is just waking up to a consciousness that his fences need mending and his trees want trimming, and I will guess that the sheriff will be after him before May comes round again. * * * * * There is no superstition in the belief that land is (or may be) enriched by Fall Plowing. The Autumn gales are freighted with the more volatile elements of decaying vegetation. These, taken up wherever they are given of in excess, are wafted to and deposited in the soils best fitted for their reception. Regarded simply as a method of fertilizing, I do not say that Fall Plowing is the cheapest; I _do_ say that any poor field, if well plowed in the Fall, will be in better heart the next Spring, for what wind and rain will meantime have deposited thereon. Frost, too, in any region where the ground freezes, and especially where it freezes and thaws repeatedly, plays an important and beneficial part in aerating and pulverizing a freshly plowed soil, especially one thrown up into ridges, so as to be most thoroughly exposed to the action of the more volatile elements. The farmer who has a good team may profitably keep the plow running in Autumn until every rood that he means to till next season has been thoroughly pulverized.