Il6 AGRICULTURt; OF MAINE. 



a special equipment. Squashes are planted 9 feet apart in the 

 rows, and 9 feet between the hills in the row. You can put on 

 your spring tooth harrow or disk harrow and harrow between 

 the rows and you have but a small piece to hoe by hand. You 

 can get over the field very easily and take good care of the crop. 

 But when you come to store them you certainly must be pre- 

 pared to handle the crop. You cannot put squash into the mar- 

 ket from the field and get anything at all. You must have a 

 squash house, perfectly frost proof and you must have fires 

 and maintain a high temperature at the beginning and 50 or 60 

 degrees until they are sold. And you will have to have shelves 

 arranged for them. Of course if you had a potato cellar the 

 room overhead would make a very nice place for the squashes. 

 After once being equipped with a house, it seems to me there is 

 a very good profit in raising squashes. I like the crop the best 

 of any crop that I raise ; but you must plant the right kind of 

 seed, a hard shelled Hubbard squash that will have good keep- 

 ing qualities. 



With cabbage the same thing is true, as regards equipment. 

 The tools are not expensive. The tools used for ordinary farm 

 work will carry the crop through from beginning to end. If 

 you raise cabbage of course you will find a place to put the 

 dressing from your herd. You can raise cabbages on manure 

 with a little fertilizer, but you will find the expense in the stor- 

 age. They must be racked up, separate from each other, so 

 that the air can draw through in order to have them keep until 

 this time or a little later, if you are going to make money on 

 them. I do not know but there are farmers who want to run 

 a farm for a home. Of course that is our life and we want 

 to make that life as comfortable and as entertaining as possible, 

 but we must have the ready cash to do it, and any system of 

 farming that produces cash in hand every year, will receive my 

 sanction, whoever advocates it. It is the financial end of this 

 matter that interests me and I believe it does you. 



The hay crop you are prepared to handle anyway. If I were 

 to make any suggestions in regard to raising feed for cattle, I 

 would say this, — that I would begin in a small way with alfalfa. 

 The question has been raised again and again in this State, year 

 after year. Can we raise alfalfa in Maine? Now I have been 

 experimenting with that crop for a good many years. I began 

 with one-fourth of an acre. It came but it afterwards winter- 



