94 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



ences of llie atmosplicre, ^^ill be found sufficient to annually renovate 

 quite a piece, say one acre. Tliis ■will give roots enou;j;h to keep 

 three hogs, and these, if Avell supplied with material, will manure 

 half an acre more; thus the ratio is ever increasing. I see but one 

 pi'actical objection to this course ; that is the great amount of labor 

 involved ; but the farmer who has an exhausted soil may practice 

 this course to the extent of his ability. Then — but it is impossible 

 to "ive directions without knowing; the situation both of the farm and 

 farmer. I may suppose a case or two, such as we frequently see : 

 Farmer A has one hundred acres of cleared land, fifty of which he 

 mows over and gets twenty -five tons of hay ; he plants three acres, 

 and sows grain on ten more ; the produce of his farm may be set down 

 at twenty-five tons hay, ten tons of straw, fifty bushels wheat, two 

 hundred bushels oats, one hundred bushels potatoes, twenty bushels 

 corn, and five hundred bushels roots. This is as much as one man 

 can do — more than most* men can. How shall he dispose of it, so 

 as to get a living out of it, and still improve bis farm, is a question 

 many have asked, and are still asking. It must in the first place 

 be made to produce more hay; it now keeps fifteen head of neat 

 cattle, or a pair of horses and eleven head of neat cattle (say cows.) 

 Now sell five cows, and give the pasturage, together with twenty 

 acres of the mowing bind for pasture to the remainder; buy with 

 the proceeds of the stock so sold, guano and bone-dust enough to 

 manure six acres sufficiently to produce two tons of hay per acre, 

 for three years at least. This, witli the increased crop of roots, will 

 enable him to turn out thi; remainder of his grass land to pasture, 

 and still have fodder for his stock, and he will probably find that 

 the six cows, with their increased quantity of feed, are fully equal 

 to the eleven sparingly fed; then by a rotation, in which the land 

 has three years in pasture, and three years in mowing and tillage, a 

 farm may be rapidly improved. But I find this improvement much 

 more easy in theory than in practice. , The absolute necessity of 

 eating and wearing clothes, to say nothing about keeping up appear- 

 ances, makes such a draft upon the farmer's time, as to leave him but 

 little opportunity for improving either the farm or the mind. 



To throw aside this scribbling, and answer the question more 

 directly — ' Where there is lack of capital to purchase fertizers,' 

 there is probably lack of capital for any juiprovement, as this is one 

 of the least expensive. This lack must in some way be supplied, 

 by selling part of the stock. or farm, if no oiher means offsr; and 

 when capital is obtained which can be spared, let the firmer divide 

 liis farm into two equal fields — p:isturc one — manure as much of the 

 other as his means will allow him to do v:ell, putting five hundred 

 to one thousand pounds bone-dust on an acre of such as is intended 

 for wheat or barley, and to be laid down to grass. Till this minured 

 part tlt.oroKir'liJij. and mow the remainder. Next year, fence off 

 from the pastured field one-third, to be manured and cultivated with 



