222 Bureau of Farmers' Institutes. 



Early potatoes and cattle are the principal farm products; the 

 potato croj) alone that was shipped from the island this year 

 brought £445,872 or $2,175,855. There is on the island, all told^ 

 about 25,000 acres. There is of course a great deal of waste land 

 along the coast so that there is only about 10,000 acres of land 

 worked or tilled by farmers. There are 1,200 farmers and the 

 average sized farm therefore is about eight and a half acres. On 

 an eight-acre farm there will be, say four and a half to five acres 

 of potatoes (followed by a crop of roots same season) an acre or 

 acre and a half of grass, and on the balance of the farm, oats or 

 meadow, garden and buildings. The farmers pay from forty to 

 eeventy-five dollars per acre annual rent, and 300 bushels of 

 early (partiall}- grown) potatoes is considered a good crop, while 

 400 bushels and even more is not uncommon. I am afraid to tell 

 the truth as to the number of tons of mangolds that are produced 

 per acre, after the potato crop, without additional fertilizers. 



How is it possible to grow such crops on such a small piece of 

 land, support such a large population and export over three mil- 

 lion dollars worth of produce yearly, at the same time to in- 

 crease the fertility of the soil so as to produce such crops? I 

 reply by keeping a large number of live stock for the manu- 

 facture of barn-yard manure. Incredible as it may seem, on these 

 10,000 acres there are owned — according to the last census — 

 11,891 Jerseys, 2,343 horses, or 14,2.34 head of stock, to say 

 nothing of pigs and poultry. The farmers buy some com- 

 mercial fertilizers and draw a great many tons of sea weeds 

 gathered on the sands when the tide is out which they spread on 

 their meadows and grass land, but their principal reliance is barn- 

 yard and liquid manure. I doubt if there is a farm on the island 

 without a liquid manure cistern, the contents of which is pumped 

 into a hogshead, on a two-wheeled cart and distributed on the 

 grass and meadows. 



But how can they feed such a great number of cattle from so 

 small an acreage of grass land, when potatoes and other crops 

 occupy about two-thirds or three-quarters of the land, where 14,- 

 234 head of live stock is nearly an animal and a half per acre 

 for every acre farmed? By adopting a strict soiling system only 

 the milch cows are allowed to go to pasture; these are soiled or 



