162 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



profitable productive capacity of Pine Hedge Farm, but have 

 never yet been satisfied that I had reached even half way to 

 the maximum point. A great deal of labor has thus far been 

 annually expended in improvements which should pay quite 

 as well a hundred or a thousand years hence as to-day ; and 

 there is much similar work yet to be done. 



The present season, niore than half of the stone wall which 

 bounded the highway on two sides of the farm has been 

 carried gratuitously to fill a low j^lace in the highway, and 

 make it possible for a team to haul a full load where only a 

 part of a load could be hauled before. Removing such brush 

 and brier-covered old walls not only adds much to the beauty 

 and park-like appearance of a country-place, but it also makes 

 a very marked difference in the cost of working and manur- 

 ing the adjoining lands, while it increases to a considerable 

 extent the available area. I have alluded to the wastefulness 

 of carrying unproductive property, and paying its interest 

 and taxes ; but I fear, that, as a people, we are paying a self- 

 imposed tax upon our property which few of us have begun 

 to realize. I refer, of course, to the cost of maintaining, at 

 an enormous annual expense, our farm and street fences. 

 We have fenced out our neighbors' cattle, our neighbors' 

 chickens, and our neighbors' children, until we are all in 

 imminent danger of forgetting what tlie rights of neighbors 

 are. The cattle-drover and the man who pastures the high- 

 way seem to have little sympathy for the villager who leaves 

 the gate ajar ; and the small boy who is nimble enough to 

 scale the orchard-fence, and retire with well-filled pockets, is 

 by no means a bad fellow in the eyes of those who wait out- 

 side to divide the spoils. 



It is said that good fences make good neighbors, which is 

 true, if those fences surround lands that are to be used as 

 permanent pasture ; but I believe the best neighbors live in 

 those towns and villages where all fences, except those around 

 pastures, have by mutual consent been discarded. 'In my 

 estimation, the moral effect of a high board fence going up 

 between the little quarter-acre lots used as village homes is 

 any thing but good. 



I have, perhaps, as many sorts of neighbors to deal with 

 as any average farmer ; but I have no neighbor that is not a 

 better neighbor now than before I took away all my gates 



