No. 85.J 367 



AGRICULTURE OF ONEIDA COUNTY. 



BY HON. POMEROY JONES, ONEIDA CO., N. Y. 



Col. Benj. P. Johnson, 



Cor. Sec. JV. F. State Agr. Soc. 



Dear Sir : — I have always resided in the southern section of 

 Oneida county ; of course very much of the observation I have been 

 enabled to bestow on the defects and improvement of agriculture, 

 have been confined to the county, and more particularly the southern 

 part of it. 



The first settlers, something more than fifty years since, generally 

 removed from the most sterile parts of New-England. When arrived, 

 with true Yankee perseverance, they set themselves to work, to anni- 

 hilate this stupendous frontier portion of the forest, which w^as then 

 the yar west. They planted and sowed their newfcleared fields, and 

 without much further trouble, the rich virgin soil enabled them to 

 reap bounteously. They took no thought to preserve them in their 

 fruitfulness. This El Dorado they had no idea couldever be impo- 

 verished, by unfruitful, worn out fields. To heighten their infatuation, 

 they saw land in the valley of the Mohawk that had been plowed 

 its threescore and ten years, yet producing well. They even saw 

 these Mohawk farmers, hauling the manure from their barn-yards, 

 unloading it on the ice, that it might float out of their way in the 

 spring. 



Many of our first cleared fields were plowed and cropped fifteen 

 and even twenty successive years. For a time this skinning, or 

 skimming, for they literally took all the cream by their shallow 

 plowing, passed off tolerably well. ■ At the end, however, of about 

 that time, they bound they were considerably well used up. 



Wheat was raised with great ease ; sowed any time between the 

 first of September, and the setting in of winter, and a good crop gen- 

 erally ffoliowed. But the mistake was at last found out. Farming 

 any how, late sowing, shallow plowing, and no manuring, was found 

 to be a bad, unprofitable business. Like the lands in the olden time, 

 their worn out fields required to be sown to grass and clover to en- 

 joy their jubilee. The ten year old manure heaps about the barns, 

 had to be put in requisition ; and it was found by sad experience, 

 that it would have been far easier to have preserved the land in its 

 fertility, than to renovate that thus early worn out. 



PRODUCTIONS. 



Wheat, which for a series of years, was reckoned as the staple 

 crop c,f Oneida, has nearly disappeared. The rust and the 

 worm have almost excluded both winter and spring wheat from 



