242 N. H. STAIE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



remote from barn-yards and encumbered by rocks ? Tho 

 most feasible, cheapest and eflicicnt remedy, I tliink, may 

 be found in the use of a sharp-toothed crotched harro"^, a 

 cheap compost and a fair supply of clover and other grass 

 seeds. I am aware that to talk of compost for pasture 

 lands, may bring a smile upon the face of many a farmer, 

 who (accustomed to look at things in a mass) cannot look 

 at matters in detail, and the bare mention of spreading 

 compost upon forty or fifty acres would appear an absurdi- 

 ty. Yet the same farmers would look upon it as altogether 

 feasible to build two or three hundred rods of stone wall 

 for fence, involving fifty times the amount of labor ; and 

 why this difference ? Simply -in this, that in the latter 

 case he looks at it in its practical details, that is, he goes 

 about the gigantic undertaking at his leisure, and makes it 

 an incidental work to the other labors of the farm, and as 

 he turns the sod of his fields and exposes their stores to 

 view, he, of course,/emoves them to the site of his future 

 fence, and then lays them up at his leisure. In this way, 

 without interfering with the ordinary labors of the farm, 

 he, in a few years, counts his rods of durable stone fence 

 by the hundred, with scarce a perceptible expenditure of 



labor. 



Now if farmers would view the renovation of their 

 grazing lands in the same light, and make it incidental to 

 their ordinary labors, we should in a few years observe a 

 marked difference in the fertility of our pastures, and a 

 proportionate increase in the products of our dairies. To 

 be more explicit, if all our farmers would have a well 

 digested plan of their operations for the year, mucl^time, 

 labor and travel might be saved, and at the same time 

 extensive preparations made for fertilizers for their pas- 

 tures. Almost any farm has deposits of peat or muck, and 

 a few hours of spare time in the summer, occasionally ap- 

 plied to digging it out, would supply the foundation of a 

 laro-e amount of compost, and then a few casks of limo or 



