168 MASSACHUSETTS AGKICULTURE. 



MAIS^URES. 



ESSEX. 



From a Report by J. J. H. Gregory. 



There is an idea, very generally prevalent in the commu- 

 nity, that, though other substitutes may do for an emergency, 

 yet to keep up the fertility of the farm through a long series 

 of years, barn-yard manure, by which is specially meant that 

 of horses and neat-stock, is, after all, the only reliance. I 

 believe that this idea can be shown to belong to the popular 

 class of errors, though countenanced very generally by the 

 agricultural press, and by the agricultural writers of the 

 popular type. To demonstrate that the agriculture of the 

 farmers of an entire community is carried on, and that 

 most successfully, too, with but little dependence on the 

 manure of the baru-yard as a fertilizer, I will instance the prac- 

 tice of the farmers of Marblehead, extending over a period of 

 more than twenty years. Their crops are mostly early pota- 

 toes, cabbages, squashes and onions, vegetables whicH require 

 the very highest feeding to give first-class crops ; and these 

 enterprising tillers of the soil are well known to fame as a 

 class who are contented with nothing less than first-class 

 crops, and when they fail in growing these the cases are 

 exceptional. As a body, beyond one, or perhaps two cows 

 for family use, they keep almost no stock in addition to that 

 needed to carry on the work of the farm. These consist of 

 from two to four horses, or in the place of two of the horses, 

 a yoke of oxen. From such resources it will be seen that 

 there can averasre but about half a dozen cords of home-made 

 barn-manure annually. Of barn-yard manure from other 

 sources, some of them on an average purchase three or four 

 cords a year, while half of them do not purchase any at all. 



