What I know of farming:: a series of brief and plain expositions of practical agriculture as an art based upon scienceGreeley, Horace
Science
What I know of farming:: a series of brief and plain expositions of practical agriculture as an art based upon science
Greeley, Horace
Agriculture -- United States
I insist that the States this side of the Delaware; though they will
draw much grain from the Canadas after the political change that cannot
be far distant, will be compelled to grow a very considerable share of
their own breadstuff; that the West will cease to supply them unless at
prices which they will deem exorbitant; and that grain-growing eastward
of a line drawn from Baltimore this north to the Lakes will have to be
very considerably extended. Let us see, then, whether this might not be
done with profit even now, and whether the East is not unwise in having
so generally abandoned grain-growing.
I leave out of the account most of New-England, as well as of Eastern
New-York, and the more rugged portions of New-Jersey and Pennsylvania,
where the rocky, hilly, swampy face of the country seems to forbid any
but that _patchy_ cultivation, wherein machinery and mechanical power
can scarcely be made available, and which seem, therefore, permanently
fated to persevere in a system of agriculture and horticulture not
essentially unlike that they now exhibit. In the valleys of the
Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Hudson, and of our smaller rivers, there
are considerable tracts absolutely free from these natural impediments,
whereon a larger and more efficient husbandry is perfectly practicable,
even now; but these intervales are generally the property of many
owners; are cut up by roads and fences; and are held at high prices: so
that I will simply pass them by, and take for illustration the "Pine
Barrens" of Southern New-Jersey, merely observing that what I say of
them is equally applicable, with slight modifications, to large portions
of Long Island, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas.
The "Pine Barrens" of New-Jersey are a marine deposit of several hundred
feet in depth, mainly sand, with which more or less clay is generally
intermingled, while there are beds and even broader stretches of this
material nearly or quite pure; the clay sometimes underlying the sand at
a depth of 10 to 30 or 40 inches. Vast deposits of muck or leaf-mold,
often of many acres in extent and from two to twenty feet in depth, are
very common; so that hardly any portion of the dry or sandy land is two
miles distant from one or more of them, while some is usually much
nearer; and half the entire region is underlaid by at least one stratum
of the famous marl (formed of the decomposed bones of gigantic marine
monsters long ago extinct) which has already played so important and
beneficent a part in the renovation and fertilization of large districts
in Monmouth, Burlington, Salem, and other counties.
Let us suppose now that a farmer of ample means and generous capacity
should purchase four hundred acres of these "barrens," with intent to
produce therefrom, not sweet potatoes, melons, and the "truck" to which
Southern Jersey is so largely devoted, but substantial Grain and Meat;
and let us see whether the enterprise would probably pay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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