JUNE-1865, 1867, 1869, 1871, 1873, 1874-Farmer's Calendar Excerpts

#26

In the Agrarian Nation, June was a month focused on cultivating the soil— in the fields and in the gardens. And children learned how to be useful with a hoe at an early age!

-1865-

It seems to me, neighbor Hard-Dryve, that you are not always as susceptible to the gentle influences of Dame Nature as you should be. I fear you are are seeking for her moneybags a little too assiduously. If you look very eagerly and persistently for money, the rain, the sunshine, the songs of the birds and the odor of the flowers will remind you of nothing but dollars, and your life will become as hard and narrow as the coin you seek.

[Maine]

One-Horse Cultivator

-1867-

Do all the hoeing you can with the horse. With straight rows both ways in the corn and potato field, and in the root patches, you can do as much with a horse cultivator and the horse hoe as ten men in the same time. Isn’t the time and cost worth saving?

Don’t let a weed grow. It won’t pay to raise weeds. Keep the hoe ground sharp. A man can do more and better work in the same time with a good sharp hoe, and so you save in the end by using only the best tools. The best in the market are none too good. 

Sow a lot of corn in drills for fodder. It is worth a good deal to cut up green, when the pastures get dry in August. Cut clover early, and handle it carefully, so as to save all the blossoms and leaves. You can’t turn, and stir, and rake it like hay, without great loss. You will have some pieces of early grass that ought to be cut this month. Early cut grass  makes the sweetest and best hay, and stock will thrive the best upon it. Besides, there is a fair chance for a second crop, and rowen, you know, is about the sweetest bit you can offer a lamb, or a calf, or a cow in milk. You will have a few hours, now and then, to brush off the caterpillars’ nests. The orchards will suffer without careful looking after.

[Thomas’s]

Cultivating a Field of Beets

-1869-

The Swede, or ruta-baga, should be sown this month, from the middle to the 25th, in drills from 27 to 30 inches apart. If sown too near, the cost of labor is very great on land that is weedy. Let the ground be deep, mellow, and rich. Thin out the mangolds to a foot apart in the row and carrots to six inches. Potatoes may still be planted.

[Thomas's]

Man & Wife Hoeing A Corn Field

-1871-

It is always best to keep a little ahead of work, and not be driven by it. If you begin late, everything seems to drag, and it makes the summer go rather hard. If you keep up square with the work you feel greater pride and satisfaction in it, and everything goes smoother.

[Thomas's]

-1873-

Then there are the fences, oh, what a pest and a plague! When the cattle are first put into the pasture they don’t want to stay there. All through May and June, the farmer has to leave his work to run hither and thither after them. It is trying work for the temper. The man who can hear with equanimity, for the twentieth time, that his neighbor’s frisky steers have come down through his pasture, across his best grass land, through his newly planted corn and potatoes, into his garden, and trampled on his best squash vines, that man is a Christian

[Maine]

Mowing Hay

-1874-

Don’t put off haying, as we used to when I was a boy, till after the Fourth of July. Cut grass is better than dead hay. Clover ought to be cut before it is lodged. It is always best to get at the haying early and keep ahead of your work.

[Thomas's]

Cultivating Tall Corn

-1874-

Weeds should never be allowed to grow more than an inch high. We remember some years ago being in Rochester, and going over acres of ground belonging to the largest commercial nursery in the place, and on all that place, we did not see as many weeds as it would take to fill  a bushel basket. The rule was to run the plow and cultivator and keep the hoe going constantly, so that weeds should not be allowed to make any headway. Remember that if a single crop of weed seed be deposited in the soil, it may take years to recover from its effects. Never let the crops suffer because of weeds. Only the slovenly farmer will do it, unless under peculiar circumstances that cannot be avoided.

[Maine]

Coiled Cucumber Tendril

-1875-

It is well to have an eye to your kitchen garden during this growing month. Do not let your cucumbers run on the ground—no one who has not tried this can have any idea of the luxurious growth of a cucumber, when trained to a stake which has a set of stubby side branches left along its length. All plants with tendrils prefer to ramble in this way.

[Leavitt's]

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