FARMS. 15 



particularly in the winter. "We hire two men by the year at 

 $150 each and board them, (we do but little labor ourselves, as 

 our health will not permit us to do much hard work,) and in 

 addition, we hire by the day through the summer, about fifty 

 days at 85 cents a day and they board themselves. For getting 

 our hay and grain, we hire three men at $1.25 a day, about 

 twenty days each, besides our steady help, they boarding them- 

 selves. Besides the crops before specified, we have milk, butter, 

 eggs, fruit, vegetables, and in fact almost every thing that a 

 farmer raises and has to dispose of, and which finds a ready 

 market at our door. 



AuBUEN, October 24:th, 1853. 



P. S. — The year before we came upon the farm there were not 

 more than ten tons of hay cut upon it, and a large share of that 

 was of poor quality ; the first year after we came on to the farm 

 we cut some fifteen or twenty tons, about six of this was clover 

 that had been seeded down the year before, and for the balance 

 we did not get two or three tons to the acre, but it took two 

 or three acres for a ton, and much of that of very poor quality ; 

 and where we now get sixty bushels of corn to the acre, it had 

 been sown year after year to buckwheat until they could raise 

 nothing else. 



WORCESTER WEST. 



The committee were called to examine three farms, all 

 entered for the society's premium on farms of 100 acres and 

 over. As but one premium was offered on farms of this 

 description, the committee were confined to the awarding of a 

 single premium. 



The first farm visited was that of Mr. David Bacon of Barre, 

 and is the same for which he received the society's second 

 premium last year. For a particular description of which see 

 last year's report. 



The only peculiarity in the management of his farm which 

 your committee noticed, was the stabling of his cattle and 

 horses on the ground, upon beds of dry muck and litter, suffer- 

 ing the cattle to stand upon the muck till it had absorbed its 



