320 Percy Wells Bidwell 



England. He says: "A man in England that farms 150 acres, 

 would think a stock of £500 sterling necessary; three teams would 

 be employed; four or five ploughs; barrows, wagons, carts, &c. in 

 proportion; 70 to 80 acres tilled; 8 or 10 labourers at work; 800 to 

 1000 loads of manure annually collected; and perhaps three times 

 more cattle, sheep, and hogs kept, than are kept here on a farm 

 that is naturally as good. A man in America that farms 150 

 acres, would think a stock of £150 sufficient. One miserable team; 

 a paltry plough, and everything in the same proportion; three acres 

 of Indian corn, which require all the manure he has; as many acres 

 of half-starved English grain from a half-cultivated soil, with a 

 spot of potatoes, and a small yard of turneps, complete the round 

 of his tillage, and the whole is conducted, perhaps, by a man and a 

 boy, and performed in half their time; no manure but dung from 

 the barn, which, if the heaps are not exposed to be washed away by 

 the winter rains, may amount to 15 or 20 loads; and if they are so 

 exposed to much less, without any regret to the farmer. All the 

 rest of the farm is allotted for feeding a small stock. A large space 

 must be mowed for a little hay for winter; and a large range for a 

 little feed in summer. Pastures are never manured, and mowing 

 lands seldom; . . . ."^ 



The author of American Husbandry wrote: "And the mention 

 of cattle leads me to observe, that most of the farmers in this country 

 are, in whatever concerns cattle, the most negligent ignorant set of 

 men in the world .... Horses are in general, even valuable 

 ones, worked hard and starved: .... This bad treatment ex- 

 tends to draft oxen; to their cows, sheep and swine; only in a dif- 

 ferent manner as may be supposed .... 



1 must, in the next place take notice of their tillage, as being 

 weakly and insufficiently given; worse ploughing is no where to be 

 seen, yet the farmers get tolerable crops; this is owing, particularly 

 in new settlements, to the looseness and fertility of old woodlands 

 which, with very bad tillage, will yield excellent crops; a circum- 

 stance the rest of the province is too apt to be guided by, for seeing 

 the effects, they are apt to suppose the same treatment will do on 

 land long since broken up, which is far from being the case.^ Thus, 

 in most parts of the province, is found shallow and unlevel furrows, 

 which rather scratch than turn»the land; and of this bad tillage the 



» Vol. 11. No. II. August, 1787. p. 347. 



2 For a further consideration of the effect of the frontier, a nearby region of 

 new, cheap land, see infra pp. 350-352. 



