DAIRY MEETING. 87 



as with the number of pounds of butter they can force out of 

 an acre, crops being the measure of farm possibilities. Now I 

 shall outline to you, merely for illustrative effects, the line of 

 rotation I am pursuing, and my practice is exactly along the 

 line of production from the acre point of view. Still further to 

 show you the possibilities, and not for any personal vanity I 

 may have, I will say that on my own farm I have increased the 

 productive capacity eight-fold in the last fourteen years. I have 

 observed a Maine gentleman in the audience who drove up to 

 my place, Mr. Blossom of Turner, and I speak in his presence 

 when I say that this farm has increased eight fold in the last 

 fourteen years under the most adverse conditions, being distant 

 from market, etc., and he is free to challenge any statement I 

 may make. I have an eight years' rotation and I fertilize every 

 acre every year. I am going through an acre to show you what 

 we ought to do. In the beginning, however, all that I have to 

 say is based on the thought that every acre of the farm must 

 be put at work to the utmost that is in it. Those acres should 

 include that part of your woods adapted to tillage. That part 

 of the woods with their valueless material for income purposes 

 must be swept out, and the woods pushed over to non-tillable 

 sections of the farm. Every acre of your pasture that can be 

 so used should be forced into tillage. A acre of pasture land 

 which makes a cow work hard all day for meagre results is not 

 profitable, indeed is an embarrassment often as one is led to 

 lean on it. Those acres ought to produce ten or fifteen fold 

 their present returns. They are yielding just what nature gives 

 you in New England, and that is a very small amount. Do you 

 suppose that nature farming on the hard soil of this section will 

 support the present civilization? It does not do it on the most 

 favored areas of the world. It is art and not nature upon 

 which successful farming rests. Let us make the pasture land 

 field land, no longer repressed by a name, and get something 

 from it. I am carrying every acre of my pasture that I can 

 into field. I have put fifteen acres into field this fall, several 

 acres of which cost me $100 to fit for fields. In the last 14 

 years I have handled 140 acres. I know that out in Illinois 

 land is selling for $150 and $200 an acre. Every acre of my 

 farm is worth to me $200 to use. It is better than money in the 



