FARM EXPERIENCE. 249 



costs too much, and it is not profitable." Well, wliether it is 

 profitable or not, I can say this ranch : I began with nothing, 

 and I am snre I hold my own. You know that last year was 

 an nnfavorable one for farmers to make money. I hired two 

 men, giving one $25 a month and the other |26, and I hired 

 another man, who left in the month of Jnly, for about the 

 same price. It has been claimed that we can not raise grain 

 to a profit here in New England. I raised last year nearly 

 800 bushels of grain ; I had two acres of very good potatoes; 

 I had three-quarters of an acre of turnips; I mowed over 

 something like seventy-five acres of grass. Now does this 

 pay ? Could I have bought, at present prices, as much grain 

 for the amount I expended? I could not. I can raise my 

 corn cheaper than I can buy it, and I believe that if we keep 

 our farms up, we can carry on our business with profit. 



Colonel Mead. — If there is any young man here who will 

 take an acre of natural grass land and work upon that until 

 it is like a garden, as it should be, and then take another 

 piece, and so on, when he is forty years old, if he has not in- 

 creased the value of tliat farm one-half more than that of the 

 farm of any young man who goes on in the old way, afraid to 

 lay out a penny, then I am very much mistaken. The great 

 mistake of farmers is in not seeing that every improvement 

 adds so much to their capital. The farm that I am on pro- 

 duces six times as much as it did in 1830, taking the average 

 right through. 



Dr. Riggs. — My advice to a young man is, when he buys a 

 farm, to get as much arable land as possible, and land requir- 

 ing the least drainage. If he has a piece of swale land, or 

 muck, or swamp, when he gets to it let him improve that, and 

 make it good meadow land. This buying two or tiiree hun- 

 dred acres, with hardly a place where a man can cut any grass 

 or get a crop, because the water is so abundant upon it, is 

 rather discouraging business for a young man, unless he has 

 a large capital. Tliat is my advice. If I were going to buy 

 over again I should try to get a good deal of what we call 

 sandy loam. It is more easily restored, and produces quite as 

 good crops as these lands which need so much under-draining, 



