332 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



field and another farm of which I propose to speak, no man has ever 

 got on to a mowing machine or rake of mine but myself; and of 

 the plowing, first and last, seven- eigths has been done by myself 

 as plowman, and with a single teamster. 



I f have arrived at the conclusion, after pursuing this course, 

 that with three hundred dollars judiciously expended in labor and 

 fertilizers in .August and early in September I can improve my 

 farm more and better than I can by consuming ^fifteen hundred 

 dollars worth of hay (at the price it has been for the last few 

 years) and applying the resulting manure in the ordinary course of 

 farming. That might be conclusive in regard to the first farm, if 

 you accept that. But after I received this premium it operated 

 as it might have done elsewhere. I put that farm into the market 

 and sold it at a round price and then I took another situated about 

 two miles distant, which I knew to be a good one, although it 

 was in worse condition than my first one. It had been treated as 

 my father's farm had been, by consuming all the hay and raising 

 hoed crops, until about ten years before I took it. At that time 

 the gentleman who owned it died and left it to his grandson who 

 tried to farm it. Four years before I bought it some men pur- 

 chased it to make money. They sold every pound of the hay and 

 did not turn a furrow or do anything except run the farm down. 

 When I first took that farm, four years ago, I put all the hay in 

 four mows, I think not more than sixteen or eighteen tons. The 

 same system that I practiced on my old farm has been practiced 

 on this, except that since the first year 1 have sold nearly all the 

 hay cut upon it. I have not received any premium upon this 

 farm yet, but this year I inaugurated a system of holding field days 

 in New Hampshire, and asked the farmers to come and see my 

 results upon the farm, aud they came, and we had a good, old- 

 fashioned time, which I hope will be kept up by the farmers there, 

 and which I hope will be inaugurated in this State. When my 

 friends of the Board of Agriculture and of the State Agricultural 

 Society, aud the agricultural editors with whom I am acquainted, 

 came and saw, they said, " Mr. Lawrence, we have heard your 

 statements. We thought som< times you exaggerated a little, but 

 you have more than sustained yourself by the exhibition of the 

 farm to us to-day." I assure you that if I ever was proud in all 

 my life it was when taking these friends over the field, and then 

 showing them a barn of a hundred feet in Length as full as it could 

 comfortably he with hay. 



