DAIRYING IX AROOSTOOK COUNTY. 'JJ 



The time will come when the farmers of Aroostook county 

 will learn as they have in older sections of our state that the 

 raising of potatoes for a long period on the same ground will 

 exhaust the soil. I hope you will try to avoid the mistake made 

 in other sections of the state when they had their virgin soil. 

 Would it not be better for you to take advantage of dairying to 

 increase the fertility of your soil before it is exhausted, and in 

 this way save thousands of dollars every year that go out of our 

 state to purchase fertilizer? Then you would have more than 

 one source to draw from, so if one crop fails you will have some- 

 thing else to help you out. I could not pay my bills if it were 

 not for my milk and cream checks coming every month. 



If I were a young man it would be the height of my ambition 

 to come to your beautiful county and put up a barn two hundred 

 feet long and have in it one hundred good cows. I know from 

 my own experience for a term of years that I could make them 

 pay me S70 per cow per annum, and at the same time double 

 and treble the hay crop in a few years. 



We have a great many men whose dairies are paying them 

 better than mine, for the cows in some dairies are averaging 

 $100 per cow each year. 



I am aware that the potato crop is putting thousands of dollars 

 each year into your pockets at the present time, but I well 

 remember that a few years ago the potato crop for some cause 

 proved a failure here, and almost bankrupted some of the 

 farmers. 



You must not forget we are all Yankees, and some of the 

 farmers in the older sections of the state, including our commis- 

 sioner of agriculture, have been watching you and have learned 

 some of your scientific ways of raising the tubers, and have put 

 these ideas into practice and surprised us with what they have 

 demonstrated. One of my Yankee friends, Hon. Geo. R. Smith, 

 has raised the past season, from twenty acres or less, about 4,000 

 bushels of potatoes. 



You will remember that the freight on our potatoes to market 

 is very much less than it is on potatoes from here. The freight 

 on four hundred pounds of butter from here to Boston probably 

 would not be any more than the freight on seven bushels of pota- 

 toes, and the butter ought to bring you $100, and the potatoes 

 would sell for about $3.85. It seems to me it would be better 



