Norwich Bulletin Newspaper, January 1, 1915, Page 18

T TVIR TR Reclaimed Bogs the Farmers’ Gold Mine-- They've got a pretty good farmer in charge of the big Burn- ham farm, three miles south of me, I'm told. He's been studying the farm ond its possibilities for quite a time; feeling his way around it and across it and over it and under it, as a good farmer should; learning what it has been and has done, and studying Into what it might be and might do. Now that this period of study and planning is over, he has ‘begun his first real work, which he tersely describes as “the open~ ing of that gold-mine west of the road.” It happens that the partion of the farm lying “west of the road” is a swamp; a big, siimy, 007y, mucky, treacherous swamp; one which can be crossed only with extreme caution, and then only by those knowing its hidden sink-holes and slime-pits. It covers quite an area, hew many acres I haven't heard, but cer- tainly more than a hundred, perhaps two or three hundred. - The whole of it is water-soaked; part of it is always under water; some of it grows a coarse, reedy sedge: some of it is covered with stunted shrubbery; it is thickly dotted with puddles of mixed mud and sreen-scummed water,—not probably “bottomless,” but deep enough to ensulf anything which stumbles into them, and sticky enough to prevent its escape. Altogether, it’s about as mean a swamp as I have ever chanced to Imow about. Nevertheless, when that new farm manager calls it his “sold- mine” be is dead right. The New England farmer, arywhere, who has en his farm a dratnable ewamp has the nearest to a gold-mine of anything now attainable in the agricultural way. WHAT A SWAMP" REALLY IS. Geolozically a swamp is generally the bottom of an old, partly @ried-up lake or pond. When the great glacier which, thirty or forty or fifty thousand vears ago, plowed its way southeastward across the Atlantic States had finally been stopped and melted by the slow, aeon- Jong northward swing of the sun, it left the surface over which it had dresged and scraped and sullied a confused desert of more or less rounded rock ledges, with scooped-out basins and hollows between, and occasional heaps of gravel, deposited at the Zlacler’s sides or ends or through holes in its meiting mass. Its own melting left the hollows filled with wa Sinca that Aay the rains of the succeeding centuries have drained into them, tending to keep them full. But all the evidence avaflable goes toward indicating that, despite tnis drainage Into them, they have generally shrunk and lowered and partially dried up, in the long interval. Convulsione of nature have opened outlets whereby some have drained themselves away; others have been evaporated by the sun a trifie faster than their contents have been rnewed by rains and melting snows. Moreover, the water which pours into them from the surrounding hillsides brings more or less dirt and rubbish with 1, by which the original bottoms are slowly silted up, thus making them always shallower and shaliower. There is every reason to belleve that the lakes and ponds and swamps which we have left are very few in comparison ith the number which existed after the great ice sheet had melted away behind the northern horizon. Some have burst their way through elementally opened out- lets in the confining hills; some have silted up and dried away 1l they have become just miry swamps: some have totally dis- appeared. so far as water is concerned, leaving just depressions of the surface Now, the practical farmer knows that his best and most fertile land is apt to be, not that on hilltops or hillsid. but that in the valleys and lowlands which are varlously called “bottoms,” “intervale: “meadows,” “pralries,” according to the localities in which they occur. These lowlands are generally composed of deep, rich sofl, whose chief agricultural fault may be a tendency to “sourness.” They are easy to work and, when their sourness iz corrected, are ususlly productive in a high degree. If you will think it over a minute, you will see that this is exactly what might be expected of a soil composed of washings from surrounding heights, bringing down to the bottom and de- mositing on it the very richest elements of all the dirt from acres and acres, perhaps from many square miles of higher land. Considering their geological history and the length of time during which this process of silting and Slling up has been going on, it 1s no wonder such lands are rich. When the farmer plows an acre of such a patch, he is not just plowing an acre. He is stirring up the fertility which has been washing and draining and seepinz upon and into that acre from a hundred other acres, during many, many thousand years. This is the case with those arable bottom lands which had once been lakes, then swamps, but had been naturally dried up ‘before the farmer appeared on the scene. He usually accepted them as he found them, asked few questions, but took the gifts the gods provided and felt himself Jucky that he had a few such alluvial acres on his otherwise rather thin-soiled and hilly farm. The fertfle lands of the Conmecticut Valley, the wonderful “corn-beit” lands of the western prairies with their black stone- 1ess soil ninety feet deep and every foot down richer than the one above it, were all made in this way, by the deposition of dirt and silt and decaying vesetation at the bottom of lakes or inland seas, which later, in the slow course of endless ages, draine away or dried up, fliting the one-time lake bottom for possibla cultt THE LAKES, PONDS AND SWAMPS, Most of the lakes and ponds and swamps we have left are e/mply those which, for one reason or another, haven't yet dried up like the others. They, also, are unquestionably doinz so. The process is, however, slow,—mighty slow, as compared with the life of any man. The fact that a natural process is o slow as to be unnoticed is not evidence it does not e Remember that God and nature have had and have for - work more millions of years than our lives can count of split seconds, and don't doubt that they are working because we can't see all the results visibly showing from hour to hour! 7ell, now, to come back to our swamps. There are plenty of them still, in Fastern Connectl average farmer regards them as just so much waste land, whi he has to fence and pay taxes on, but which isn't worth either. Yet, as a matter of fact, every drainable swamp is a possible gold-mine of agricultural wealth. All that needs is to remove the surplus water, artificially, s nature has already removed it normally from existing bottom lands, to have the same fifty- thousand-year-filled bank of wealth opened to exploitation that existed in those natural bottom lands when the first plow fur- rowed them. The only practical question fs whether the owner of such a swamp can afford the initial cost of draining and sweetening it. In that respect, it is quite like any other gold-mine. It takes some work and some capital to open up any mine to produc- tiveness. It is unlike in that the gold-miner has to spend his prepara- tory work end money on a guess and a gamble, with no cer- tainty that he will eventualiy strike it rich, while the farmer who reclaims a shallow swamp is about as surc of results as any many can be of anything. THE BiG BURNHAM SWAMP, In the case of the big Burnham swamp which I mentioned at the outset, the farm manager who has attacked it has a falr amount of labor at his disposal, but not much capital. He has therefore wisely limited his attack to his means, The swamp is drainable. That has been made ¢lear by care- ful surveys and levelings. From its lowest end a maln ditch is being dug up into it, as fast as feasible. This has already lowered the water-table perceptibly, especially around the edges. Thers existed previously several acres of arable land at one side, sloping gently down to the swamp proper. This area has already been pushed quite a bit nto the swamp, and is ready for cropping when spring opens. As the big ditch pierces farther and farther into the heart of the swamp, and as laterals are run out from it, the subsidence of the water will continue with Increasing rapidity. Tt will take some years, probabdly, to finish the work. But it is an old saying that & good beginning is half the job. And this has been well begun. HOW A SMALL SWAMP WAS RECLAIMED. Still nearer to me, a small farmer who two or three years ago bought a forty-acre place with a couple of “cat swamps™ or “muck-holes” of an acre or so each on it, has already reclaimed one, and last season, despite lack of help to work it properly and lack of material to sweeten it as he wanted, took from a part of it some of the smoothest and cleanest and most productive pota- toes that I have ever seen, even in this potato country. This acre, too, was at first seemingly undrainable. It lay low, with the 1and on all sides but one many feet higher. On that one side a small brook oozed muddily through the edge, with so little fall as to have no perceptible current. In times of high , thus away. water this brook actually overflowed into the muck-hole and thus helped to keep it full. From his land the little brook went on across another similar swamp Dbelonging to another farmer, seeping rather than running for a full fifty rods before it came to any real descent. But my neighbor, after clearing out the channel as far as his own line, got permission from the owner below to clear it out through his swamp, too. The result of taking out a few obstructions, digging out a few alder roots, and opening a few short cuts through cork- screwing banks was to develop an actual current in ghe rivulet end enable it to run along a clear channel, instead of soak over the land either side. Next a shallow ditch was cpened from the brooklet up Into the muck-hole. The ground seemed so nearly level that my neighbor had small hope of accomplishing much. But he worked carefully. He took pains to dig no deeper than he found that water would move behind him towards the brook on the bottom. Greatly to his own surprise, he found that he was able to get down nearly two feet before he reached the upper end of the hole. In the mesntime, he had cut off the thin shrubbery and rank sedges which covered the space and burned it over. All this was a year ago, last summer. The past season he was able to plow it, for the first time in the history of the world. The resultant soil was about as black as soot and about as fine as flour. As he was unable to afford the sweetening materials which ‘he assumed it must need, he had nothing better to do than keep it exposed to sunlight and air, for these agencies to clear up Its assumed actdlty. But, as he would have a few seeds left in planting other plots, he tried various remnants on his reclalmed bog. In one place he put on a little clover; in another set some cabbage plants; in another some turnips; in another planted perhaps half a bushel of potatoes; In another a few mangel seeds. The results were surprising. This black dirt which for many tho nd years had been a cold, water-soaked quaking bog, produced bunkum vields of almost everything he trled. The potatoes, especially, were notable for size, cleanness, smoothness and productiveness. He reckons that, if all the crops he planted on other parts of the place had done as well as those experimental remnants in the old bog, he would have had more than three times as big a total yjeld as he did have. Moreover, this was without any manure whatever on the reclaimed swamp, while the other cul- tivated plats were heavily manured. Undoubtedly, there are some swamps than can't be drained at any reasonable expense. At the same time, it now and then happens that the impossibility is in the owner's mind rather than in the swamp itself. This case of my neighbor's is In point. When he began T said no word of discouragement. But T cer- tainly did think that he'd have his trouble for his pains, and nothing more. Yet he has succeeded. His patient and careful digeing away at the seemingly insuperable obstacles In his way has resulted in adding to his small farm its most valuable acre. It has also taught him the way to reclaim the other two-acre bog which lies on the other sde of his little brook. When he has got them both thoroughly in hand the three or three and a half acres in them will be worth more for sither farming or gardening pur- poses than any other ten acres within a mile, A SMALL SWAMP AND ITS HISTORY. Sometimes, also, where one man fails another may succeed by using a different method. My father once ditched and tiled a small swamp cornering in a pasture. He dug the ditches about three feet deep and laid three-inch horse-shoe tiles. For one they worked. Tken the outlet ceased to discharge any water and has never done so since. And that was forty years The trovble was that akont twoe feet Gown the subsofl wes vater-tieht hard-pan. He dug into that. laid his tile in it, and filled the ditches with it. In the course of & vear or =o thie hard- pan settled itself together, right over his tile, into a roof no water could get through. So the wet stald above as it elwars bad, and turned the top two feet into a water-soaked slime, Yet in one cormer of my last vear's potato-patch is a bog- hole which he gave up as impossible to drv out. but which I have at last succeeded In saving. There Is no drainage from it in any direction. I¢is lower than any other land within s hundred rods, —not much, but enough to make any outlet impossible, by dltch- ing. On one side the ground rises quite markedly, and the sofl is decidedly gravelly. It occurred to me that this gravel stratum might pitch under that boggy depression. So, one dry fall, T dug down and found that it did. The gravel was about six feet below the surface. I knew that water would run through gravel about as well as through tile. So T enlarged my test hole into a pit, perhaps ten feet in diameter and reachinz down well into the gravel. Then I drew all the Ioose stones and cobbles I could find —thirty or forty stone-boat loads of them,—and dumped them into the hole, finally fllling them over with the excavated dirt. The spot is still low, of course, and water settles into it after every rain. But it scon drains down through my stone filter into the gravel stratum below and goes off somewhere,—I den't kmown or care where, As the old saying soes, There are more ways than one to skin a cat, snd where one There is another very small pocket at one end of my celery plat, which nts to be a frog-pond, and tries its best to be. It could be drained cutting a ditch about ten feet deep through one lip of the But there's no need. Years ago, we dug a small hole in the st place, about four feet deep, set two four- t upright, one on top of the other, filled them full of s, laid a flattish stone over the top, and then filled the hole up. When the spring thaws some water pours into this shallow bed and, so long as the ground remains frozen, stays there and makes s very unpleasant looking pond. But, as soon soil thaws out so the water can soak throu to those o fast that you can actuailly see it Twenty-four hours will take the last drop from a puddie broad and three deep. lower. ninety feet long by thirty or fort HOW AN CH!IO FARMER RECLAIMED BOGS. When T. B. Terry, the famous Ohio farmer, started to im ove nls worn-out fifty acre place,—on which no previous farmer ears had been able to make a ving,— “cat-swamps,” springy places, little swales, ing from a half an acre down, which were ponds in swamp-holes at other seasons. They were never plow- produced nothing more valuable than mnd and weeds and frogs and green scum. The prevailing impression among local farmers at the time was that these spots couldn’t be drained. were generally depressions surrounded on all sides by higher land. There seemed no way to get the water out of them except to pump it out. which was, of course, out of the questio But.—and here’s the real point about drainage—while My, v wasn't able to drain any two of them in exactly the same he did, in time, drain them all. It took a lot of “contriving” and a good deal of troubdle, but not much actual expense, In one case the cat-swamp involved lay so that no direct drain couid be laid into it withont digging a ditch so deep and long that it would have cost more than the whole farm was worth. So a common ditch about three feet desp was dug up to within @ short distance of the swamp-hole. Then, taking advantage of a dry time, an old salt-barrel was sunk in the mud, till it's top was just above the level of the ditch end. A pipe was then laid from the tile in the ditch to the bottom of this barrel, sloping quite steeply down towards the mud-hole, as vou will note. Naturally, water wouldn't run up this pipe out of the swamp. But the barrel would fill and, when it was filllng, the pipe would fin, too. Before the water had guite reached the top of the barrel, the pipe would be full to the tiles and begin to run into them and That instant syphonic action was established and Hterally sucked the little pond-hole dry. The cost of the job was about $50, including lador. Neigh- bors laughed at the man who would spend $50 on what they frankly told him was a hopeless attempt to save & quarter acre of land, when the regular price of a good acre was only $40. That fall, Terry dug and sold from the patch thus drained %66 worth of potatoss. He writes: “Then I laughed. The net profit on that one first crop pald the entire cost of the drain eand s litile over. We have made money out of it since, on the averags, but not always. It isetoo rich.” Note those last four words. ANOTHER DRAINAGE METHOD, Another similar swamp-hole which he dreined by another device costing a week's work of himself and his man, he thus reported on, many years later: “It is now alwuys dry and usual. 1y grows a heavy crop. We have grown {n them in n dry scasen potatoes that ylelded at the rate of $240 an acre , , , , It s almost too rich yet for wheat. My wheat bn that spot is down today (May 24). Still, with all drawbacks it has pald tremendous, We have sometimes had to mow the wheat In thers and eoek it up, but I would hardly dare tell yon how many bushels we got, three years ago. It is betfer this year, and will grow atill better, as we are able to exhaust the sxirems fertility a little, Of eourse, such places have been accumulating fertllity for ages, They will need nons put dack for a lifetime or more, All that grows on them and is removed cau be used to bring up the higher and less fertile land. Were you to ride by my farm today you weuld hardly notice this place except from overgrowth of wheat,” Mr, Terry had prectically no capital, when hs begun dralning his wretched cat-swamps. Instead, he was in debt. He had simply an inexhaustible fund of energy and gumption. After all these are more important factors than capital. By their sirenuous use he compelled his swamps to become capital, and pay the cost of turning themselves into it. NEW LONDON COUNTY BOGS. According to the soil survey of New London County, there are mapped in it over 28,000 acres of “meadow,” (described as “prevailingly wet” or “semi-swampy”): “muck:” and “Podunk fine sandy loam,” (described as “molst throughout the year,” with “some areas badly water-logged”). In addition the map shows numerous areas of true swamp, no attempt at computing the acreage of which is made. A oursory study of the map leads to the impression that they would measure up fully another 25,000 acres. In other words, in this one county are at least 50,000 acres of the richest land left us, utterly unworked; without drainege utterly unworkable; yet, if drained, probably capable of produc- ing, without a penny’'s fertilizer, doubla the crops of any equal acreage in the county. . Inspector Lapham, who made the survey, says of the “meadow” lands: “If good drainage were established, and most areas can be drained at a reasonable cost, it would produce heavy yields of corn and forage, and of special crops, such as onions and cabbage.” Of the “muck” lands he says: “If prop- erly drained this is excellent soil for growing a variety of special and general crops, among which may be mentioned onions, celery, cabbage, potatoes, corn and hay.” Of the “Podunk fine san loam,” he says: “With good drainage, it would grow not only heavy crops of corn, hay and potatoes, but would prove especially adapted to celery, onions and fall cabbage.” The same resuits would follow in the case of true swamps, onoe they were drained. Secretary Wilson reported, seven years ago, that there then surveyed out in the eastern half of the United States alone 77,000,000 acres of swamp land, an area equal to all New England, New York and half of Pennsylvania, all of which “can be re- claimed and which, under prevailing climatic conditions, when so reclaimed, are exceedlngly productive.” In another report he declares that “the drainage of the swamp overflowed lands of the humid parts of the United States would extend or greatly im- prove agriculture over an area almost equal to that of the states of Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.” A CONTRAST OF LAND VALUES. Here are two extracts from reports to the Department of Agriculture on farm values in New York state, which I want you to read together and ponder upon: First—"“Farms in Cortland County, with medium buildings which. a few years ago, were worth $40 an acre, can be bought for $8 an acre.” . Second—“Swamp lands in Steuben County that have been re- claimed for celery or lcttuce growing, have risen from $S per acre to $80 and $125.” Eh? What? ONIONS AS A DRAINED LAND CROP. Tale. for Instance, onions. You will remember that onions were mentioned by Inspector Larham as oné of the special crops which would do well on any of the wet lands he surveyed and mapped, if only the land were prepared by adequate drainage. There is always a demand for onions. Seldom, indeed, does one hear of any market being cloyed with an over-supply. Many tarmers, however, don't even try any longer to ralse them. They require exceedingly rich soil to begin with, and the cost of fertilizing old land to produce a biz crop of onions is something to make sny farmer shiver at. But the new land which one gets by reclaiming his swamp obviates that expensive cutlay almost entirely. There is ac- oumulated fertility enough in the black bottom of almost any old swamp to grow sim ng crops of onioms for year after year, without the addition of a dime’s worth of manure. And ontcns are some crop, when properly grown, now let me tell you! you don't believe !t, ask Gilbertson of Iowa, who raises forty acres every year, and has ‘for twenty years, made an average profit of $15.000 off the patch. Profit mind you, net profit, efter deducting all costs of raising the crop. Onions want rich, strong land. It used to be sald that they were the one crop which would do well, Sown year after vear on the same ground without change in the rotation. This simply means that onion land has to be manured so heavily, in order to got any crop at all, that the ground gets richer, every vear. There are a 00d many other crops that can be grown right alonz on the same land t rotation, if you'll only shovel on the manure thick enough, ] / But you don"t need manure to grow them on the black, mellow, bottomiess soil of a reclaimed swamp. Gilberston's forty acre patch was bottom land which had originally been as rich as could be asked, had been cropped out for half a century. He had to restore ometh like its original fertility and tilth by a c to has to keep it in good heart by constant tilization. Nevertheless, his net profit on the valent to ten per cent. interest on an investment d we arc talking that, narked that Gilbertson doesn’t his onlons, either. His average a bushel. His profit is due ices the cost of raising ch drops just one seed entirely the need hree-quarters the n of other weeding and cultivating ma- n to reduce production cost. When he began actual cost of producing a bushel of onions Most of this went for hand labor, spent > rer largely to the methods his crop. Bj g a spe every two inches in the ari for thinning the ro on seems to e something of a “hust- the average of energy and s in Connecticut, yet, as swamp land affords every part of the west, and there on why Yankee brains can't cessfully as those nurtured perhaps rathi But there are bright doesn’ get around the la in Towa. THE BOGS FOR GROWING CRANBERRIES. How for onions, enly. cranberrie At present, cranberries a; rown commercially in practically New Jersey, and Wisconsin. Of these three the best and largest bogs are in Massachusetts. That state ordinarily produces more than all others combined. The prevaient idea that cranberry bogs are limited to Cane Cod {s not correct. The fruit is also grown extensively in Plymouth and Bristol co nd on the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. 0-acre Burgess bog on Nantucket is the largest known under cultivation. Now the climatic and sefl condltions of Connecticut bogs and Old Colony bogs are not materially different. Frost, which is the greatest enemy of the cranberry-raiser, s probably as little likely fo hurt him in Connecticut as In portions of Massachusetts Iying in a more northern latitude, As a matter of fact, the probabilities deduced from likenass of climate and soil conditions are borne out by the cranberries themgelves. There are places near by whero they grow wild, of their own accord, without any care whatever. I have myself picked them off Preston swamps, many yeams ago, It {s mani- fest that such thinga will not grow of themselves unless the con- ditions are favorable. Where they thus do grow of themselves, naturally and wildly, it is highly reasonabls to suppose that they could be made to grow, more productively and of higher grade, if taken care of, Nor {s it true that cranberry bogs must always be sunded as some of those on Cape Cod are, Sand {s about the plentiest stusf there {s on Cape Cod, and the evidence goes to thow that thoroush sanding of 2 bog tends to delay fall frost-damage, because sand is & good conductor of heat, and because the clean surface 1t ex- poses to the sun's rays permits them to heat up the moll during the daytime encugh to keep it warm during a frosty night. But New Jersey eranberry growers do not sand their haga ardi~a= holding that the vines srowing In an unsanded bog produce better frult than where sanding !s practiced, And the Wisoonsin growers do not uee sand, because they do not think tha slignt advantare given, in the matter ef holding off frost, ravs for {he cost, They have found by years of careful test an observation that when & marsh is well drained, frost Is less likely to 4o damage than in ons that {s too wet and where the temperaturs {s materially lowered by the proeess of evaporation. The Wis- congin growers gsemetimes have te fleod thelr bogs in late spring and early fall to prevent frost damage, using the warmer water stored in epecial reservoirs for this purpose. But their minimum temperature during the growing season averages § deerees lower than that of elther Massachusetts or Connecticut, and this ex- pense, therefore, need not be counted as necessary. If ene takes to that sert of farming, there is strong reasen Evidences of Their Extraordinary Value 3 to believe that reclaimed bogs all over eastern Connecticut would /| produce big crops of this salable fruit, < p CABBAGE, CELERY AND LETTUCE BOG CROPS. But, after all, it s in the growing of special crops, such as .. cabbage and celery and lettuce, that such lands would find their highest development. Where one is big enough to be treated by itself, and not simply as part of a larger fleld, and can be devoted to such truck crops, the returns ought to be simply immense in propertion to the ground cultivated. This sort of farming is vitally @ependent upon its possfble markets. Given a market that will absorb the production and no gold-mine that ever was dug into ever vielded higher proportional profits than patches of these vegetables may be made to on the bottomlessly fertile surface of an old swamp. I haven't any such land available for Y cabbages; that is, not in any piace or shape where I can use it for them. I have to set them on ground not specially adapted to them by natural conditions, and I have to supply giout all the fertility they get by applications of manure and commercial fertilizers. Yet on such land I have done better than $200 an acre, net, after deduct= ing all direct crop expense and proportionately for taxes, interest, fencing, etc. What I might have netted off an acre of such swamp as my neighbor is now reclaiming gocdness onlv knows, Judging by the few cabbages he grew last summer on one corner of it, I believe I could gét two tons oft it for every ton I can get off my less suitable patch. 1 could save more than $50 an acre in manure and fertilizer, anyway. And if you're an “average farmer” you know as well as I do that the spring scraping for money enough to pay fertilizer bills is something beastly! Perhaps, though, the growing of lettuce and celery might de even more profitable on such reclaimed bog lanes. In our climate these two creps dove-tail together with great facility. The best lettuce is that grown in the cooler weather of spring and early summer; the best celery is that forced in late summer and fall. The same patch, if rich enéugh, can be made very easily to produce two good harvests each season, one of lettuce and one of celery. The salad will have been marketed and be out of the way before the celery will call for the ground. It is perfectly practicable with a little planning to set the young : celery plants between two rather widely spaced rows of lettuce, even before the salad is cut, if earlier celery is desired. It takes the stuff some time to start and, as it grows and calls for more ground, the lettuce rows nesrest it can be removed. Or, it might be feasible for others to do what is done by a big celery grower for a ncighboring city market. He sows his celery sced where it is to be grown. He does not transplant. Instead he thins out the rows in which his seedlings have started, often getting quite an income by selling the thinned out plants to other celery growers who haven't raised their own. With his soil he finds this method simpler, easier and just as satisfactory as the usual system of starting the seeds in & @peclal plat, transplanting them, etc. It must be understood, however, that there is no.chance for Profit in growing either celery or lettuce, unless there is a Zood and hardy market for the product. Where the grower has to depend upon packing them and shipping to some distant market, the condition and demands of which he cannot feel daily, the get- ting of any great profit out of such crops is more than doubtful. The various middlemen will see to it that they get most of that, themselves, But where the raiser can dispose of most of his output to his own customers within the reach of his own haul, either in retail or wholesale quantities, both lettuce and celery are money-makers. I find. for instance, that my small celery and lettuce plat, grown solely for sale by the bunch or head to my own customers, vields me an average return at the rate of about $600 an acre for each crop; that is, of about $1,200 an acre for the two, which I grow in succesgion on the same plat, as I have suggested above. Of course, this rate would be materially lessened if I had to sell it all, or any large proportion, at wholesale. And it might be lessened somewhat If an entire acre was actuallv involved. My restricted markst doesn’t call for the use of more than a part of an acre, and I am, therefore, able to give the smaller patch better care than might be found feasibie on a layger ai On the other hand, my plat is not nearly so well adapted to either crop as would be the soil of a reclaimed swamp. It Is moist and rich, to be sure. But the richness comes from what T've plowed under and harrowed in, mostly. And no artificially fertilized soil T comes quite up td the perfect fulness and balance of the fertilit: T her own Nature prepares in way, during the untold ass myself lds as In any way phenomenal even unusual. I have no doubt that there are plenty of gardeners who could, and do, beat me all hollow at the game. What T have done I quote simply as an indication of what any one with average industry and common sense can do, on similar land. On mcre suitable soil, any farmer ought to be able to do Dbetter. or THE GROWING OF CELERY AND LETTUCE. But there is a certain “knack” about ralsing all these spectal crops which must come from experience, fostered by a natural liking for that kind of worlk. I don't think a man, all whose farm xperience had been on a dairy farm and all whose interest was live-stock, would be apt to become a howling success at raising garden-sass, even on an ideally perfect sofl. Also, let me beg of you not to take any stock In the “guff” | which Is occasicnally printed about it’s being “easy” to raise celery or lettuce. It may be “easy” enough to raise something of them, of a sort, and after a fashion. But to raise good, solid, crispy head-lettuce, or to raise stocky, tender, nutty, attractive celery is not easy. It takes work, and a Iot ef it; it takes care, and a lot of it; it takes some gumption. In the case of lettuce, it 18 necessary to find out Dy test the varieties which do best on the scil you have and which sell best in the market you have. Then the ground must be well prepared, the seed-bed carefully fitted, and the young plants kept growing vigorously, without a day’s let-up or set-back. At the right stage, the rows must be thinned. As lettuce seed is usually pretty surs to grow, it is always too thick in the rows fo permit of right heading. And the thinning of a row of thickly-growing young lettuce, g0 as to remove all plants except one In, say, six inches or so, requires not only some care but alzo more work than the weeding of any row of onions I ever happened to crawl along! Then it must be watched to see that drouth doesn't stunt it which, in a dry season, means almost dafly tillage and mulch- making; or that the heads don't crowd eo as to start slimy rot, which is apt to follow too much wet weather. Moreover, as the heads are very apt to begin growing up through into seed-stalks very soon after they have reached full development, it is essential, in growing for market, to sow in succession, a row or two at least every week if not oftener. Otherwise your crop will come all in a bunch, and you will have more than you can sell at one time and not enough at other times, As to celery, | think I've tried all the schemes and devices suggested or imasined by the apostles of the easy life to eave labor, And they don’t work,—not a single one of them! Some of hem @demand more labor than the old ways; some of them are utterly Ineffective; some of them are unduly expensive; some of them result in efther lessened production or deterlorated quality. I have found none what they are cracked up to be. Z In my own practice, I set celery in the bottom of a plowed furrow, cut as deep as possible In mellow dirt. Then, as the plants grow, they are “handied” two or three, sometimes four tifhes. The tendency of celery stalks is to grow out almost horizontally, on the surface of the ground. To Induce the up- right, bunched growth essential in the marketable product, it is necessary to gather these up with the hand and draw loose dirt around them emough to restrain thelr spreading tendency and cause them to grow upwards, only. This must be done only when the plants are dry and the soil also dry. Otherwise rust may ensue, In these repeated “handlings” the furrow is filled to a level. Then, elther more dirt must be ridged up alongside the rows to%blanch the stalks, or boerds must be set egainst them inverted “V" shaped, so as to exclude light, except where the plant tips protruds through the narrow opening at the apex of the “V." This crop, too, must be kept growing, vigorously and all the time, It must be kept absolutely free from weeds; must be watehed for worms; mustn’t be allowed to get water-logged, and yot must be kept supplied with rather more water than any other erop I know of. It is werk and care from the beginning of the season to the end, But, Great Scott! haven’t ws got to work, at something and for some sort of return, whatever we try to ralse? The one great question i{s not whether we must work hard, but, which sort of hard work will pay the best? = If a man has got a drainable swamp, with a deep doposit’of black eofl, rich with the accumulated fertllity of a past eternity, which he ean dry out and open up, the chances are that that swamp will give him bigger returns and more worth-while profits, from the same amount of work, than any other patoh of equal area on his farm, Think it over, brethren, ‘HE FARMER.