Agricultural show

“ Let us conduct a campaign for increased production, at least one more cavan of rice or corn per hectare of the’ thousands we are now cultivating. The plans are ad­vanced for the setting up of a fertilizer plant to encourage larger agricultural production. ”

“ The price of wheat rose to an average of 14s. per quarter, thereby encouraging tillage once more. There was steady inflation.
With enclosure of agricultural land there could be more innovation and more efficiency, e.g. the time for sowing could be chosen. It was easier to prevent over-grazing and half-starved animals as a result. The complications of the open system with its endless quarrels and lawsuits were avoided. Now noblemen talked about manure and drainage, rotation of crops, clover, and turnips instead of hunting, horses, and dogs. The breed of horses and cattle was improved. ”

“ Number farms, 63,387. Average value per acre, cleared land, $8.93; woodland, $25.85.
Corn crop, 1884, 122,100,000 bushels; wheat, 28,325,000 bushels; oats, 21,630,000 bushels. Rye, buckwheat, barley, flax and hemp yield abundant crops. Apples, pears, plums, grapes and berries are plentiful. Ranks eighth in corn and barley, and ninth in rye.
Herd law excellent, and grazing land good. Cattle raising the great industry of the State, next to agriculture.
Manufacturing establishments show a wonderful increase of from 670 in 1870 to 1,403 in 1880. Capital invested, $4,881,150 ”

“ You see, sir, the range isn’t so open any more, because people are taking up the land from the government every year; and so there isn’t so much room for the cattle. Besides, we’ve been irrigating the last few years and raising wheat, because by and by almost all the cattle land that’s good for grain will be gone. ”

“ The magical notions which, in part at least, explain the garland customs of the agricultural festival, are still more strongly at work in some of its subsidiary rites. These declare themselves, when understood, to be of an essentially practical character, charms designed to influence the weather, and to secure the proper alternation of moisture and warmth which is needed alike for the growth and ripening of the crops and for the welfare of the cattle. ”

“ An empty void now, save on the weekly market-day, that occasion finds its broad, cobble-stoned space thickly covered with stalls, while groups of farmers throng the pavements, and with their samples of corn displayed in the palms of their hands sell and buy in immense quantities. ”

“ On these farms every advantage of machinery, and every discovery in agricultural science, should be utilised [140] to the utmost. The crops should be carefully chosen with reference to soil and aspect—cereals, fruit, vegetables—and the culture adapted to the crop, the one aim being to obtain the largest amount of produce with the least expenditure of human labor. Whether land is most profitably cultivated in large or small parcels depends on the crop; and in the great area of the County Farm, la grande et la petite culture might each have its place. ”

“ Viewed from some impossible altitude, the great, green corn fields were broken here and there by smaller fields of wheat, in which some venturesome farmer reaped a little crop hardly indigenous to that black soil, and to the eastward, over the broad pastures of virgin prairie, blocky cattle browsed and fattened at their leisure. ”

“ A stranger will have remarked with surprise that there are but few, very few, of the knee-breeched, top-booted, double-chinned, jolly, old-class farmers amongst the numerous groups who are either watching their sample-bags and waiting for customers, or chewing and smelling handfuls of wheat and barley, and casting what they do not swallow on the flags, already carpeted with grain. ”

“ Where the farm is celebrated for a special breed of sheep, the great event of the year is the annual auction at home of ram lambs. Where the farm is famous for cattle, the chief occasion is the yearly sale of young shorthorns. And recently, since steam plough and artificial manure and general high pressure have been introduced, many large arable farmers sell their corn crops standing. The purchaser pays a certain price for the wheat as it grows, reaps it when ripe, and makes what profit he can. ”

“ He further explains that continuous grain cropping, even with careful plowing and spring and fall tillage, is unsuccessful; but holds that certain rotations of crops, including grain and a hoed crop every other year, are often more profitable than grain alternating with clean summer fallow. ”

“ There is a good deal of timber, and we saw several droves of scraggy-looking cattle on the hillsides. Most of the cultivated land is planted to wheat and other grains. At every stopping place a portion of the platform at the end of the station house is surrendered to vegetable sellers, usually old women, who have onions, lettuce, radishes, and other garden truck piled up on little trays around them and seemed to be doing a good business. ”

“ There are other and newer clearings beyond the ranges and out of sight, but here all that is visible is very much trimmer and neater in appearance than our farm.
Over three parts of the basin the plough has passed. About one-half is under wheat, maize, and other crops, while the grass on the remainder looks wonderfully rich, freed as it is from stumps, drained, and, to a measurable extent, levelled. Cattle, sheep, horses, and pigs are feeding in the paddocks.
We eye the scene with great admiration, and even envy. This is the sort of thing our farm ought to be, and will be. ”

“ The Year Book returns for 1911–12 show more than two million acres under wheat cultivation with a total production of over twenty million bushels, a low average compared with other countries, but against which must be set the exceptionally low cost of production brought about by conditions of soil and climate.
One peculiarly local industry is the growth of wattle for its bark, which is utilised for tanning leather. The industry is a lucrative one. ”

“ Agriculture is beaming forth {37} in its glory. If some of our travellers to whom I have alluded were now here, they would see some of the finest wheat crops their eyes ever beheld: they would witness the most luxuriant crops of natural grasses, now gathering for the supply of winter food; also fine plants of artificial grasses well set in our inclosures; they would acknowledge that the corn crops were as abundant, or more so than any they had before witnessed in the United States ”

“ Sparsely settled regions always practice extensive cultivation, raising light crops on big farms, because only such crops can be grown as can be raised on large areas by machinery, and are not perishable. Staples like corn, wheat, pork, and beef are transported at low prices for long distances by the railroads. ”

“ The man you see on horseback, in the distance at the right, is the overseer of this field. His sharp eyes have discovered that many stalks of wheat have been left on the ground, and so he has sent the women to gather them that there may be no waste.
In the background of the picture we see other women at the same task, and men busily piling the wheat from the wagon into high stacks. Farther back, and partly hidden behind the wheat stacks, we see several cottages which may be the homes of the peasants or barns in which to store the grain. ”

“ Indian bands hunted, dug roots, and pastured their ponies. Quick to recognize the productivity of the soil, the newcomers staked claims, strung miles of barbed-wire fences, and set to work breaking the sod, in the meantime turning their cattle out on the range to fatten. Within a few years, thousands of acres had been planted to wheat and were producing exceptional yields. Wheat continues to be the chief crop of the region. In the spring the entire countryside, seen from an eminence, is a checkerboard of green fields and dark brown squares of fallow land. ”

“ A great deal of land in the old settlements of this State has been exhausted by a too frequent repetition of the wheat crop, and is now being employed as pasture for sheep and cattle. After remaining in grass for a few years, this land will be in excellent condition for producing wheat, especially when fertilized with that plentiful supply of barn-yard dung which the raising of stock always produces. ”

“ Paucity of arable land in mountain regions leads to the utilization of the untillable slopes for stock grazing. This industry is always a valuable ally to mountain agriculture on account of the manure which it yields; but in high altitudes, where the steepness or rockiness of the soil, cold and the brevity of the growing season restrict or eliminate cereal crops, it becomes the dominant occupation of the inhabitants, while agriculture takes a subordinate place, limited to the production of hay and fodder for the winter feeding of the stock. ”

“ But the truth is, the planting of apple and pear trees in fields is no extravagance, rather an economy, the fruit they produce exceeding in value the corn they damage, whilst the puzzling line of poplars growing beside canals and rivers is the work of the Government, every spare bit of ground belonging to the State being planted with them for the sake of the timber. The crops are splendid partly owing to the soil, and partly to the advanced system of agriculture. ”

“ A farm of twenty acres is divided into strips for various crops, so that the landscape is striped with the fields of wheat, alfalfa, potatoes and grass, which seem to be the popular products. Cattle are not so numerous, but sheep are plentiful, goats abound and hogs (always white that I have seen) are on every place. ”

“ In the fall, the summer's accumulation in hog-pens and barn cellars is spread upon the mowing grounds, and a liberal supply of muck carted in and spread in the bottoms of the cellars, ready for the season for stabling cattle. When this is well saturated with the drippings of the stables, a new supply is added. The accumulation of the winter is usually applied to the land for the corn crop, except the finer portion, which is used to top-dress meadow land. ”

“ His fattened hogs find a steadily increasing market at good prices, while poultry is a source of revenue. The vegetable crop is always a success; wonderful yields of potatoes and roots are regularly recorded. Many portions of the country, partially wooded and somewhat broken, which were formerly overlooked, are now proving desirable for mixed farming. These park districts have sufficient area for growing grain, hay, and grasses. ”

“ When the farmer raises crops for sale, and removes his grain and grasses from the land, he sells a portion of his soil; and if he does not renew in some way the saline matters taken away in his crops, he invariably impoverishes his farm. This work of exhaustion is now going on to an alarming extent, and the prolific wheat lands are to be searched for farther and farther westward as the operation proceeds. ”

“ One acre of soiling crops produced sufficient fodder for an equivalent of 3 cows for six months. Rye, corn, crimson clover, alfalfa, oats and peas, and millets have been found to furnish food more economically than any other green crops in that locality. A grain rotation was always fed in addition to the soiling crops. ”

“ After the cattle and the flocks came the wheat. Up from the meeting waters the land billowed with grain. Owners buckled the ploughs together and drove them with engines by tens and twenties across the thousand-acre fields. But men and engines, they were alike driven by the drouth. In wet years the wheat rancher rode to view his shoulder-high harvest, but when the rains, going high and wide over the valley to break along the saw-teeth of the Sierras, left the wheat unwatered, the same thing happened to the crops that had happened to the cattle and the sheep. ”

“ The principal crops were potatoes, barley, oats, rye, and wheat,—the three former being perfectly green, the two latter completely ripe; and as it happened, from some reason or other, that these sets of crops were generally sown on the same sort of land, it constantly occurred that the entire produce of some hills wore the green dress of spring, while other eminences were as wholly clothed in the rich dusky garments of autumn. The harvest, however, not having commenced, and the villages being, generally speaking, hidden in the ravines, the crops often seemed to be without owners. ”

“ Except in regions of large-scale production, wheat is usually grown in rotation with other crops; for a nurse crop for grass seeding; and as a cover crop to prevent soil erosion and leaching. Some is sold, some kept for seed, and a percentage of the total production much larger than in areas of specialization is consumed on the farm and grown for such purpose. Such farmers, while growing some wheat, may even find the balance of their interest on the consumer's side. ”

“ So American stock-raising has developed into the most gigantic live-stock industry ever known. The grass-lands of the far west and the corn-belt of the central west complement each other, each supplying what the other lacks. Land unfit for cultivation, where grass is cheap but corn and shelter wanting, is utilized for producing cattle and sheep. Breeding-herds that supply superior sires and dams are raised in the corn-belt, and this is the finishing or fattening ground for the stock from the western ranches. ”

“ For nearly five hours we drove through birch forests, over rolling downs, through a boundless ocean of golden rye, diversified by small patches of buckwheat, oats, millet, and wheat. But wheat thrives better in the adjoining government, and many peasants, we are told, run away from pressing work and good wages at hand to harvest where they will get white bread to eat, and return penniless. ”