504 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE 



was settled some 28 years ago. The farmers are largely younger people, 

 quite largely foreigners from several nationalities; they started poor, 

 but are fairly educated, and most of tliem now have nice farms. Up 

 to this time most of these farmers have had timber to sell, and have 

 relied on this for ready money, but the timber is getting scarce and, 

 more especially since we have had our Farmers' Institutes, dairying 

 is being quite largel}^ introduced. A butter factory recently started 

 paid the tirst summer for the cream 80 cents per hundred pounds of 

 milk and the skinmied milk returned. 



The county is quite rapidly settling up, and very few sections but 

 contain farmers. Wc have some large farms, several having over 1,(M)0 

 acres each under Ihe i)low. Still I think that not over 5 per cent of 

 our available laud is under cultivation, and, as a matter of fact, these 

 lands are realh" our poorest. At one time the so called ''high lands" 

 were considered the best. I think this was largely due to the fact that 

 the burning deposited large amounts of ashes, which enabled the new 

 ground, to produce exceedingly good crops. There is no question in my 

 mind but what our cedar swamps are our best land. Of course there is 

 great difficulty and expense in clearing these lands, but when once got 

 under cultivation their fertility is almost inexhaustible. However, the 

 art of clearing such land is not understood by most of our peoijle. The 

 general practice is to burn the land when it is very dry, thus getting 

 what is termed ''a good burn," but in doing this the splendid deposit of 

 surface soil, consisting of partly decayed vegetable matter, is burned 

 off. The better way is to wait for a good rain, after the land is once 

 ready to bu'rn, and when the brush is dry but the water still standing 

 in the hollows, set the lire. But it will not get ''a good burn," and it 

 will generally cost |5 to |10 per acre to do the second burning; but I 

 believe that if we can save from three to six inches of this top soil, 

 amounting to several hundred loads per acre, we can well afford to put 

 in the extra expense. Our swamp lands have mostly a clay sub-soil, or 

 gravell}^ mixture, with a deposit of muck from six inches to three feet 

 deep. 



There is another difficulty in getting these swamp lands cleared, and 

 that is in the present drain law. I think we ought to have an amend- 

 ment that will give us the right, under proper restrictions, to drain 

 through our neighbor's land to a natural outlet. They have such a law 

 in Sweden which goes even farther, for after the drain is made through 

 the neighbor's land he has to keep it in repair, under penalty for dam- 

 ages resulting from his neglect. Perhaps if we sent more farmers to 

 the legislature we would have some of these things remedied. 



Perhaps it may interest some of your readers to know something about 

 my own work, not because I wish to boast of what I have done, but to 

 show that any man with the right kind of energy can make a good suc- 

 cess of farming in this county. I came from a good farming country in 

 Sweden; in fact, I was sure that anything I did not know about farming 

 was not worth knowing. After arriving in this country, for six years I 

 worked in the mills, saving my money, and thus bought the land that 1 

 now farm. My first three years of farming were a failure so far as money 

 making was concerned, but I got in the habit of reading agricultural 

 papers and, together with my unsuccessful experiences, made up my 

 mind that I did not know everything about farming. E^-er since this I 



