108 



This is. certainly, a very fair remuneration for the labor and cost of tillage. 

 Even when cultivated for the seed alone, flax is a profitable crop, yielding, 

 in that event about twenty bushels per acre; which at eighty-five cents, is 

 seventeen dollars cash, since there is always a ready and cash demand for the 

 article, and the price very seldom fluctuates. Active inquiries in regard to the 

 flax culture, are being made in all parts of the State; and the farmers of Racine 

 County are preparing to go more largely into that crop the coming season than 

 heretofore.* 



Hops. — Grow spontaneously as a wild creeper, in niost parts of northern 

 Europe and the United States. Their culture is made profitable in England 

 and Germany, and in the older settled portions of our country. The soil and 

 climate of Racine county are well adapted to their culture, and I understand 

 some of our farmers mean to try the experiment of hop-raising. Experiments 

 in other counties have been eminently successful. I learn that a farmer in Keno- 

 sha county, last season, realized $60, nett profit, per acre, from the culture of 

 hops. And it appears from the Watertown Register, that a gentleman in 

 Waukesha county, sold hops to the amount of $1200 last season, which were 

 the product of six acres. And another farmer, in Jefferson county, sold $1000 

 worth of hops from four acres ! These cases are undoubtedly the result of extra- 

 ordinarily good management, good seasons, good markets, and good luck I But 

 they show what can be done by enterprizing farmers. 



Vegetables. — No where (out of California) do onions, beets, parsnips, car- 

 rots, pumpkins, turnips, and every variety of garden vegetables, grow more 

 luxuriantly or yield better than in this count}^, or in Wisconsin generally. Vast 

 quantities are consumed in families, and some — especially onions — are shipped 

 to regions less favored. 



Tobacco — which is indigenous to the American continent — has attracted the 

 attention of some of our agriculturists as a marketable product. Small patches 

 have already been cultivated for family use; and as a considerable portion of 

 our people indulge in the luxury (or vice, according to the fancy of the reader) 

 of the pipe, several of our farmers design trying the crop for the supply of that 

 demand. 



The Cranberry is a native of both Europe and America. It grows sponta- 

 neously and abundantly in some parts of Racine county. On and near Wind 



* Flax. — Chevalier Claussen (a German, I believe,) has invented a process and a ma- 

 chine for converting the green flax, immediately on being pulled from the field, into flax 

 cotton ready for spinning, without being previously "rotted," <fec. as hitherto practised. 

 He has obtained a patent from our government, and sold rights for using the invention in 

 most of the New England States, as well as in New York, Illinois, <irc. It has been tested 

 in presence of some of the most intelligent of the artizans and men of science at the East; 

 and it would seem to be their opinion, tliat it performs nil that is claimed for it. 



