52 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



land, and seeded it down to Timothy, and ploughed twelve 

 acres for cultivating the coming year of 1874. In the winter 

 I removed the old stone walls, and the following summer 

 planted the twelve acres with potatoes and squash, and re- 

 ceived fair crops, and in the fall seeded this same twelve 

 acres to Timothy. At the base of the slope was a bog- 

 meadow of some seven acres, where, before the twelve-inch 

 drain was put in, the stream had sprayed over, making it 

 worthless as pasture or meadow. This I attacked next, pla- 

 cing a well at the head, eight feet deep, then running a four- 

 inch tile drain at right angles to the main drain running to 

 Beaver Brook, then connecting two-inch laterals with it suffi- 

 cient to drain all wet land on the " Cox Place." In Novem- 

 ber of 1874 I ploughed the same with six heavy oxen ; 

 whereas, the year before, it would have been impossible to 

 have driven even one over. In the summer of 1875 I 

 summer-cultivated all of it, carted the hassocks from one-half, 

 and seeded it down to Timothy ; also ploughed three acres 

 more to cultivate the next summer, this being the extent of 

 cultivation on the " Cox Place." 



On the " Varnum Farm," in the same summer (1875) and 

 fall, I under-drained and ploughed four acres, after digging 

 up and removing seventy-five old apple-trees : all this I 

 planted in the summer of 1876 to potatoes, squash, and 

 sweet-corn, and seeded the same down to Timothy in the fall. 



I commenced on the "Varnum Farm," except the four 

 acres above mentioned, in the spring of 1876. The first 

 work was to cut through alders and brush, where water 

 remained the summer through, and to put in an eight-inch 

 plank drain, being an extension of the twelve-inch plank 

 diain through the " Cox Place," at a depth of four feet and 

 a half, and about six hundred feet in length, cutting the 

 brush, and saving about twenty cords of wood from eighteen 

 acres, then completely under-draining all the wet portion of 

 the eighteen acres, and ploughing all that fall. In the sum- 

 mer of 1877 I put in five acres and a half of corn, using 

 chemical manures, four acres and a half of cabbage, two 

 acres of potatoes, one acre of rutabagas, all yielding good 

 crops, except the potatoes: the rest of the eighteen acres 

 were summer-cultivated. In the spring of 1877 I also com- 

 menced on twenty-two acres more, immediately west, con- 



