HOW THE CALIFORNIA FIELDS ARE PLOUGHED.

Waikato Times, Volume I, Issue 61, 19 September 1872, Page 3

HOW THE CALIFORNIA FIELDS ARE PLOUGHED.

Tin , , fields arc ploughed with what arc called gang ploughs, which are nimply four, nix, or eight plough shares tiwUuicd to (i stout frame of wood. On tin; lighter Hoil eight horses tl.'uw a hcvcii gang plough, mid urn: such team is counted on to put in 040 acres of wheat in thij sowing tenon, or from eight to ten ac re ./per day. Captain dray, near Merced, has }»ut in tfon ..mason KJUU acres with five .such teams his owrHand and his own teams. A Heed sower is fastened in IV-/lit of the plough. It scatters the seed, the ploughs cover it --and the work in done. The plough has no handle*, and the ploughman in, in fact, only a driver ; lie guide* the team; the ploughs do their work. It is cany work, and a Kmart boy, if hia legs are equal to the walk, in in good a ploughman as anybody for the team turns the corners, and the plough is not. handled at all. It is a striking night to hi:i! ten eight-horse teams following each other over a vast, plain, cutting " lands" a mile long, and when all have passed, leaving 11 track 40 feel wide of ploughed ground. On the heavier soil the process is somewhat dill'ereiit. An eight-horse team moves a four-gang plough, and gets over about six acres per day. The need in then sown by a machine which scatters it 'M feet, and sown from 75 to 100 acres in a day, and the ground is then harrowed and cross harrowed. When the farmer in this valley has done his winter sowing, he turns his teams and men into other ground, which he is to Hummer fallow. This he can do from the first of March to the middle of May, and by it he secures ii remunerative crop for the following year, even if the Heason is dry. This discovery is of inestimable irPMortiincc to the farmers on the drier parts of these great plains. Experience has now demonstrated conclusively that if they plough their land in the spring, let it lie until the winter rains come on, then how their wheat and harrow it in, they are hui-o of a crop, und (he summer will have killed every weed besides. — li'ciciUiJic Amcrlain.