SOUTH KENNEBEC SOCIETY. 171 



fitted for any crop. It thrives equally well on all kinds of ma- 

 nure, provided there is enough of it; and what I consider still 

 more in its favor, is that it does best on recently broken green- 

 sward, and gives the ground the best preparation for succeed- 

 ing crops of grain and grass. It is seldom that a farmer can 

 hoc the same piece of land more than one year without neglect- 

 ing some other portion of his farm. Carrots and beets require 

 the land to be previously tilled and made fine — made by pre- 

 vious culture fit to lay down to grass — and when that is the 

 case, it should generally be done on farms on which stock is 

 kept j for hay is the Maine farmer's great crop ; all his opera- 

 tions should be aimed at increasing its quantity, and the raising 

 of turnips and feeding them on the farm, I look upon as the 

 most effectual means of doing it. Not only is the fine and clean 

 condition in which the land is left for following crops, to be taken 

 into account, but I think it established that no crop, if used on 

 the farm, returns so great an amount of nutriment for future 

 vegetation. Land manured and otherwise treated so as to be 

 capable of producing sixty bushels of corn to the acre, will pro- 

 duce six hundred bushels turnips ; if in condition to produce 

 one hundred bushels of corn, it will produce one thousand bush- 

 els of turnips at about the same cost in labor, and is an equally 

 sure crop. 



Soon after the "potato disease" made its appearance in this 

 section, I gave public expression to the opinion that it would 

 prove a blessing to the valley of the Kennebec. I hold that 

 opinion still, though farmers are slower in placing themselves 

 in a position to receive the blessing than I thought they would 

 be. My expectation was that the ruta baga would take the 

 place of the potato as a field crop, and be extensively culti- 

 vated ; and as there was no market for them abroad, they 

 would be used at home, and the cattle made fat, the farms made 

 rich, and the farmers made glad. This I think will be an im- 

 provement on the system of depiction formerly practiced by 

 exporting the fat of the land, potash and other constituents, to 

 Boston and " along shore'-' in the form of potatoes. 



Statement of Moses True. I, Moses True, of Litchfield, 

 hereby certify that from one acre of ground I, this season, 

 have raised eighty-one and one-half bushels of corn, ascertained 



