24 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



farmers of Connecticut have about served their forty years in 

 the wilderness, and that Canaan is almost in sight. I do 

 not know whether it is tent-grown tobacco, or angora goats, 

 or fruit culture, or something else that is to solve the problem, 

 but I thoroughly believe there is dawning a new and better 

 day for the farmers of Connecticut. I have had some ex- 

 perience myself. When I got possession of my grandfather's 

 farm, I was told that the thing to do was to keep a dairy. I 

 invested in a dairy. I got as good a one as I could buy, and I 

 tell you I paid prices for everything that I got. I couldn't get 

 money enough from my products to pay the grain bill, and I 

 got rid of the dairy. Then they told me the thing to do was 

 to raise hay. I plowed and harrowed and sowed. I got a fine 

 crop of hay. I had a market right in the town in a livery 

 stable. The livery stable keeper bought it all. He fed it 

 all out to his horses, and one time when I was away from 

 home I got word that he had left town, and had gone into 

 insolvency. Then I thought I would try orcharding. I set 

 out an orchard of apple trees and peach trees. The peach 

 trees died the first winter. Of the apple trees some of them 

 lived two years, but the third year the borers fixed those that 

 were left, and that was the end of that plan. Of course I had a 

 garden. I raised most every living thing on earth but vege- 

 tables in that garden ; but I am not discouraged. I am satisfied 

 that the reason is that the old ways of farming don't pay. I am 

 satisfied that there is another reason, as given to me by a 

 farmer fiie other day. When I said to him that " he who at the 

 plow would thrive, himself must either hold or drive," he 

 replied, " Yes, you have got to hold and drive both in these 

 times to get a living." I am not discouraged at the outlook 

 for Connecticut farming. I do not think there is any occasion 

 for discouragement. I believe that every rod of land in Con- 

 necticut five years from now will be worth twice what it is 

 today. 



Great, indeed, have been the changes in Connecticut within 



