PUT IN THE LABOR. 25 



to me that, situated as we are at present, that would be the 

 best way to re-seed those fields, now so numerous that we can- 

 not cultivate them and bring them into grass again under the 

 old system. 



I would also recommend clean culture along the walls. It 

 seems to me very important that we should cultivate up to the 

 walls. Nothing looks more slovenly on a farm than weeds and 

 bushes growing by the walls of our mowing fields and pastures. 

 I believe in large fields for mowing lands and small pastures. 

 By having small pastures, we can change our stock oftener, can 

 keep more of it, and can get a greater income than where they 

 have large ranges. 



I believe that a thorough pulverization of the soil will pay 

 just as well, proportionately, as labor will upon butter. For 

 instance : we have farmers who have sold their butter this last 

 year in Boston market at twenty-five, twenty-seven and twenty- 

 eight cents a pound. That was all they could get for it. The 

 market-men, told them it was all they would give. It was all 

 it was worth ; it was not very good butter. They had not put 

 labor and care enough into it. They had been so afraid of 

 work, that a gimlet-hole had to be made in the box to draw 

 out the buttermilk. Yet right by the side of these there are 

 farmers in my own town who have sold their butter in Boston 

 market for seventy-five cents a pound, through the season ; 

 and they don't go to the Parker House to board it out, either ; 

 they go and take their money when they want it. They do not 

 put more than seven cents a pound more into that butter, in 

 the shape of labor, than those men who have taken twenty-five 

 or thirty cents a pound for their butter. I remember, some 

 four or five years ago, that a gentleman doing business in Bos- 

 ton, living in Framingham, said to one of the farmers, " If you 

 will put five cents a pound more of labor into the manufacture 

 of your butter, I will guarantee fifteen cents more a pound for 

 it than you have been getting." That is, the amount of extra 

 labor which he would put into it would make it of that quality 

 that people would want it. It is just so with the soil. It is 

 the labor which you put into that soil, the working it over and 

 pulverizing it thoroughly, which, with a fair amount of manure, 

 will make it ready for the crop, and insure a yield which will 

 abundantly satisfy the farmer, and by this mode of cultivation 

 i 



