36 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



of the use of modern appliances and fertilizers, that the profit 

 on the half would far exceed their former operations on the 

 whole. 



It is the surplus production of each acre over the cost of 

 producing any crop which constitutes the real profit of farm- 

 ing. If lands are highly cultivated and richly fertilized, they 

 will produce double the usual crops, compared with ordinary 

 farming, and yet at very little additional cost of labor. An 

 improved reaping or mowing machine, while cutting twice 

 the quantity of grass or grain, uses but the one pair of horses 

 and the one man, and invests but the price of one machine. 

 Market-gardening exemplifies the profit and value of limited 

 acreage and liberal cultivation, and many of our progressive 

 farmers have followed the example near cities and large 

 towns, where lands are high and must be made productive 

 .or abandoned altogether. In such cases it has been found 

 profitable and convenient to soil cattle by keeping them up in 

 spacious barn-yards and feeding them on cut grass and other 

 green crops instead of pasturage. I have tried this plan 

 myself with great satisfaction, in Westchester, and would 

 continue the practice on my Berkshire farm, but I have 

 .rough hillside lands, only fit for pasture. 



This practice saves land, — as one acre soiled will produce 

 as much as three pastured, — saves fencing, economizes food, 

 keeps the cattle with more convenience and in better con- 

 dition, produces more milk, increases the quantity and quality 

 of the manure, and if universally practised here, as I have 

 seen it in Belgium, where there are no fences to the farms, 

 we should be greatly relieved of the wasteful and expensive 

 necessity of fencing our lands. We are informed that the 

 annual cost of fencing in the State of Ncav York is not less 

 than eiijht millions of dollars, and that the ao-greuate invest- 

 ment in fences will not fall short of one hundred millions. 

 It requires an annual average expenditure of seventy-five to 

 one hundred per cent, to make and maintain the necessary 

 line and division fences of a farm of one hundred acres in 

 our State. I have long doubted the policy of keeping large 

 herds of cattle on our northern farms during our cold and 

 protracted Aviuters, especially if we can profitably dispose of 

 our hay-crops. 



