No. 85.] 97 



of butter, to sell at eight cents per pound, the marketing of which costs 

 more than its produce. 



We would premise, that a farm, when it is right, should not have 

 one square foot but what is arable, and capable of producing any crop 

 put upon it ; and as nearly as convenient, always to have one-third 

 in wheat, one-third or more in clover and grass, and one-third or less 

 in summer crops. Now let us explain the modus operandi : It is now 

 spring — one-third in wheat, properly seeded ; one-third or more in 

 meadow and pasture ; and such portion of the other third as shall be 

 convenient fall-plowed, for summer crops, which is to be devoted to 

 oats, corn, potatoes, bagas, wurtzel, carrots, &c. — on which is to be 

 expended the fresh barn-yard manure made the winter previous, or 

 so much as is needed, and the balance composted, for dressing the 

 summer fallow. All of the oat, corn, and potatoe ground, or so much 

 as the season wall admit, should be sown with wheat, after the crops 

 come off; if any lays over, it may be sown the next spring with peas 

 or barley, and followed with wheat. 



The manure which was applied to the summer crops, is now in the 

 best possible state for producing wheat, having lost its fermentative 

 quality, and, by rotting, plowing, and working, has become tho- 

 roughly divided and mixed with the soil, and is in a better state to 

 promote the production of the wheat berry than in any other shape 

 that it can be applied. So much of the summer crop and enough of 

 the grass in pasture to make about one-third of the arable land, comes 

 into wheat each year. This course of cropping gives but a small 

 portion of mowing land, after providing pasturage for the sheep and 

 neat stock ; yet, with the judicious use of the root crops, and the 

 straw from the w^heat and oats, a very small quantity of hay need be 

 used before the first of April, and yet the whole farm stock be kept 

 in as good order as those to which is fed a ton and a half per head; by 

 which course a great amount of land is relieved, for the grand desid- 

 eratum of the wheat crop. 



The meadows and part of the pasture of this year, become the fal- 

 low of the next ; and this year's stubble, properly seeded, becomes 

 the meadow and pasture of the succeeding season. 



This course your committee consider the best, safest, and most 

 profitable, taking into consideration the importance of keeping the 

 soil in good heart and productiveness, and in a state of improvement, 

 rather than impoverishing it. Yet there are some good and judicious 

 farmers who, occasionally, where a field throws heavy to straw, fol- 

 low with two or more crops of wheat alternately ; when clover suc- 

 ceeds well, and the ground is free from weeds and foul grasses, we 

 have known this course to succeed well, even with once plowing, but 

 it is a course, generally speaking, more to be deprecated than praised. 

 Another course is pursued, by some of our best farmers, who pre- 

 fer to let all the manured summer-crop land lie over to the next sea- 

 son, and take off a crop of barley or peas, and follow with wheat. 

 The committee incline to the opinion, that this course must nearly or 

 quite exhaust and neutralize all the virtue of the previous year's ma- 

 nuring, and have a tendency to keep the land in a situation notimprov- 



[Senate, No. 85. J G 



