104 .MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



During the } r ear ending April 1, 1859, sold 

 Milk, amounting to . 

 Butter, 1,741 lbs., . 

 Potatoes, 133 bushels, 

 Cabbages, .... 



Turnips, ..... 



I J ' ' L»5 * • • • • • 



Eggs, 



During the same year, ending April 1, bought 

 Indian meal and corn, .... 

 Shorts, 8,139 lbs., ..... 

 Oil meal, 425 lbs., 



The greater part of the labor on the farm is done by myself 

 and my son. And the work in the house is performed almost 

 entirely by my wife and daughter. I have sometimes hired a 

 man by the month in the summer season. Last year, hired for 

 five and a half months, at a cost, including board, of 8133. 



This year, we did our work till haying time, with the help 

 of an aged friend, who has boarded with us much of the time 

 for several y^ears. To him our cultivated fields owe most of their 

 freedom from weeds, he being very sensitive about allowing 

 weeds to go to seed. Since haying, while making improvements 

 on the farm, digging forty-five rods of drain and clearing three 

 acresof land of rocks, I have hired one man eighty days, at seven- 

 ty-five cents per day, with board, $00. Total expenses, $682. 2» I. 



I regret that a larger number of the committee could 

 not make it convenient to visit the farm, not to be shown 

 a " landscape garden," or a " country residence," that is 

 in the least comparable [with hundreds of beautiful estates 

 to be found scattered all through the lower towns of the 

 county ; but a farm brought, by means within itself, to a fair 

 state of fertility, from a beginning so small that a friend of my 

 father's, when he heard that he had bought the place, said to 

 him, "What in the world did you buy that for? It won't 

 produce enough to keep a goose." 



Otis G. Cheever. 



Wrentham, November, 1*">9. ' 



