12 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



The chairman of the committee having reason to believe that 

 Ira Worcester, of Ipswich, had for a series of years been suc- 

 cessful in Agricultural pursuits, called on him October 5, 

 requesting opportunity to become acquainted with his mode of 

 farm management. Mr. AV., it must be premised, is the 

 accomplished master of the House of Correction, Jail and 

 Lunatic Asylum. His own farm, in distinction from the county 

 farm, consists of twenty-three acres of land lying in the south 

 parish. The principal products of his farm in 1854, were 

 twenty-four tons of English hay, for which he received twenty 

 dollars per ton, and four hundred bushels of potatoes — three 

 hundred and fifteen of which he sold for one dollar per bushel. 



Mr. W.'s farm of twenty-three acres cost him $4,600, and 

 for the last four years it has paid seven per cent, on the outlay, 

 annually ;pand in 1853 it paid seven and a half per cent. 



Mr. W. keeps six cows, two heifers, three swine, one horse, 

 two colts. With this stock, supplied as they are with the neces- 

 sary materials, he made last year seventy-eight loads of manure, 

 or thirty-nine and a half cords. And it may be well to say, as 

 many suppose meadow mud to be the indispensable basis of 

 manure, that Mr. W. has no material of this kind at command. 

 He buys spoilt hay for his colts to stand upon, and once in two 

 or three weeks tliis is thrown out and packed up with other 

 manure from the linto, dnd other hay, mulch and rock weed 

 put in. The solid part is river mud, making probably one- 

 third of the whole mass. The urine of the cow linto is all 

 made to run into the hog yard, which is also kept well supplied 

 with material for manure. 



Mr. W.'s method is to keep but little land up, but to manure 

 well, and keep it up two or three years. He has now six and 

 a half acres in tillage, planted wuth corn and potatoes. He has 

 five hundred bushels of potatoes in the cellar, and one hundred 

 and fifty to dig. The potatoes were large, as potatoes are 

 every where this year. He planted small ones altogether, — 

 another fact subversive of the theory that none but large ones 

 should be used for seed. Out of two hundred and ninety bush- 

 els in one bin now in his cellar, of the finest potatoes for size, 

 lie took out only four barrels of small ones ! Mr. W. always 

 spreads his manure for potatoes. In 1853 he raised two hun- 

 dred and fifty-seven bushels of the Bradstreet potato, and had 

 no disease am^ong them. 



