382 State Board of Agriculture, &c. 



life easier and happier withal, the desire to become a large 

 farmer is allowed to assume pre-eminerce, and self, wife and 

 children are taxed anew to carry out this midsirected ambi- 

 tion, that has prevailed in our State to such an extent as in 

 many communities to dispossess nearly every other farmer, 

 and add his possessions to his neighbor's. 



While it may be expected that the farmer, in paying for 

 his home, should direct his best energies in this direction, 

 even for this purpose denying himself and family many of 

 the comforts and conveniencies of life, neglecting numerous 

 opportunities for useful improvements, however much 

 desired, for the want of means, it is poor policy, and still 

 worse economy for the farmer to keep adding to his landed 

 possessions, involving himself continually in debt, and in a 

 routine of hopeless labor and care, with no prospect of alle- 

 viation^for these overgrown farms, even when paid for, 

 require constantly a great amount of work, watching and 

 anxiety to keep them even in running order — and pur- 

 suing still the same mistaken course, as relates to a better sys- 

 tem of cultivation, bringing forward in justification the oft- 

 repeated words : " No money for these things, must wait till 

 I get out of debt." 



To give a little insight into this " absorbing process," I will 

 quote from the 27th Annual Report of the Vermont Far- 

 mers' Insurance Company for 1874. There are, it is said, 

 at this time in the town of Whitingham, 33 unoccupied farm 

 houses, 27 in Wilmington, 33 in Halifax, 23 in Marlboro, 

 20 in Townsend, &c., all in the County of Windham ; and 

 so it is with the principal parts of the State away from the 



