GKAYLING INSTITUTE. 315 



to tell you what I know about farming, on condition that only experience 

 and not theory is expected from a mossback. 



I have been lumbering since 1868, and not until 1874 did I conceive the 

 idea of utilizing the lands that had been lumbered for farming purposes. 



I first cleared off about ten acres of stripped or lumbered-off lands and pre- 

 pared it for fall wheat. A portion of this field was white sand and the bal- 

 ance gravelly. The timber had been white pine and hemlock. I put in 

 fall wheat and, to my surprise, in two weeks I had a splendid crop of brakes, 

 six to eight inches high. My neighbors on the clay farms about two miles 

 distant began to poke fun at me, and the only way I could sneak out was by 

 telling them that I was cultivating a valuable plant that I expected to make 

 my fortune out of and would show them in the near future how valuable my 

 lands were. In the spring, before the snow had disappeared, I sowed clover 

 seed, and despite the brakes I had about ten bushels of good wheat to the 

 acre. 



The next season I pastured the field and in October turned it over for a 

 spring crop. When spring came I put it into peas and it bore about fifteen 

 bushels of peas to the acre. The brakes this time were not quite so persistent, 

 but maintained their inherent right to the soil. I plowed again in the fall 

 and sowed to oats in the spring. The result of this crop was twenty-six 

 bushels to the acre. Plowed again in the fall and in the spring put in spring 

 wheat and seeded down with two-thirds clover and one-third Timothy. Only 

 a few brakes appeared and when I took off the wheat the clover was so high 

 that the tops were clipped off while cutting the wheat. I threshed twenty- 

 five bushels of as pretty spring wheat to the acre as I ever saw. The next 

 season I cut one and a half tons of hay to the acre. I have since subdued 

 other pieces of even lighter soil. 



But I have been told by my neighbors that it required capital to make a 

 farm from the light soil. That is true; but you have the advantage of first 

 finding your lands nearly cleared ; and what man is there so poor that he 

 cannot take on contract from his employer a 40 acres of stripped land, 

 agreeing to pay when he can $100.00 with 7 per cent interest. (I am speak- 

 ing now more particularly of the men who work in the lumber woods and 

 mills. ) If he is an honest, industrious man he will have no trouble in getting 

 lumber enough to put up a small house from his employer. Now comes the 

 fight for a home of his own ; he has some incentive ; he has something to 

 work for. He buckles in with a will when he has a chance to lay off between 

 the time the mill shuts down and the time to go in the woods. His good 

 wife goes out and holds one end of the board while he nails the other, and 

 they soon have a home ; then they both together clear around the house, and 

 a patch of potatoes is planted in the spring. The wife puts in the cabbage, 

 onion, turnip and other seeds, and tends the plants as well as the potatoes 

 while the husband is off working in the mill ; and Saturday night he comes 

 home with fiour, tea, sugar, etc., leaving with his employer as much each 

 month as he would have paid for rent in town to apply as payment on the 

 farm. Another acre or two is cleared in the fall, and in the spring millet is 

 sown on last year's potato ground, and the new piece is put into potatoes. 

 And now they need a cow, because perchance a brand new baby has put in an 

 appearance ; and, of course, the millet will keep the cow next winter, and 

 the cow will keep a pig, and the mother will keep the baby, and the father 

 will keep them all, and they all will keep the farm. Now I have pictured 

 out to you a farmer that has succeeded. 



