PROGRESSIVE FARMING. 21 



If we expect to make our business profitable, we must turn 

 our attention to those crops which are required by our local 

 markets, — crops which are perishable, or difficult or expensive 

 to transport for long distances. We, farmers of Essex, are pe- 

 culiarly situated. Encircled by a belt of large manufacturing 

 towns and cities affording an abundant supply of fertilizing mat- 

 ter, and a ready market for every product, with Boston and its 

 surrounding cities within easy reach of every town in the coun- 

 ty, our choice of the crops we will grow is only limited by con- 

 ditions of soil and climate. Here is a field for enterprise that a 

 farmer a hundred miles from market, and away from a railroad, 

 knows nothing about. He must do as our fathers did, — produce 

 such articles as can be transported a long distance without in- 

 jury, which do not involve too great an expense in carriage, and 

 which do not need to be used at once. We can disregard all 

 these conditions. 



The practical considerations which should govern the farmer 

 in his choice of crops are many, and vary with the surround- 

 ings of each individual. Hay is, and must continue to be, un- 

 questionably, the leading crop for all, except those engaged 

 exclusively in market gardening and horticulture. The small 

 amount of labor necessary to its production, our nearness to a 

 market, and, above all, the fact that only a small portion of our 

 cultivated land can be used at once in the production of hoed 

 crops, without expending more labor, manure and capital than 

 most of us can employ, combine to make this crop the most im- 

 portant to an Essex County farmer. It is safe to say that most 

 farms should be managed with special reference to the produc- 

 tion of grass. And I mean by this, that the expenditure of fer- 

 tilizers and rotation of crops should always have reference to the 

 crops of grass which are to follow. 



Some cultivate the same lot of ground year after year with 

 a succession of hoed crops, meanwhile doing little or nothing to 

 their grass lands. If, instead of this, the different parts of the 

 farm should be successively cultivated, and then sowed with 

 grass, the total income would be greater. 



The census returns give the average yield of hay for the State 

 of Massachusetts at a trifle less than a ton per acre. Perhaps the 

 average for this county is somewhat larger, but yet is far below 

 what the soil is capable of producing. The culture of grass is 



