36 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



in chemicals, you have over a hundred dollars worth of fertiliz- 

 ing material for leaching in the spring and fall rains. 



You may tell me that is all pretty as a picture, that perhaps 

 my experience has not taught me and that I theorize on these 

 things, as an office farmer, with gloves on, sporting a gold- 

 headed cane; that it is one thing to make a pretty newspaper 

 article, a fancy sketch of agricultural success, and another thing 

 to gain it. I will only say this much, — that for eight years, on 

 money which I have earned or borrowed, with limited capital, 

 I have been able to carry the farm from 112 tons to 600 tons 

 by using the factors named : capital, labor, tools, chemicals, 

 extensive tillage, and other modern factors, and placed the 

 balance sheet on the right side. Chemicals are used at the rate 

 of fifty or more tons a year, and would, if not successful, over- 

 load the enterprise. So I believe I can say with authority to 

 you here today that extensive intensive farming, the use of cap- 

 ital, of hired labor, of tools, of chemical manures, of the agencies 

 and knowledge of the twentieth century, is profitable on a New 

 England farm. 



You may apologize for yourselves by saying, we have seen 

 no way to feed these lands and have narrowed our operations 

 because of that fact, and would be glad to farm broader if we 

 could secure the plant food. Having laid out a system that 

 requires several fold increase of plant food, and regarding this 

 as one of the most important factors to settle, I shall dwell upon 

 it, though briefly. 



I fertilize my farm from the following sources : First, tillage. 

 This is by divine command. Adam was ordered to "till" the 

 ground and to "keep" it. Job said, "If my land cry against me, 

 or that the furrows likewise thereof complain." To him good 

 tillage was virtue, a moral force. Columello when asked to state 

 the best ways of manuring said, "First of all, thorough tillage, 

 second, good tillage, third, tillage in the ordinary manner, and 

 fourth, the laying on of manure." Jethro Full for more than 

 thirty-four years raised thirty-four bushels of wheat per acre 

 by tillage alone, and Rev. S. Smith repeated the operation. 



Grass here, though in a northern country, is infrequently 

 plowed. It stands straight and close, holding the air between its 

 spires and forming dead air spaces which prevent the circulation 

 of air in the soil. When it is plowed the soil is opened to the 



