FARMING IN NEW ENGLAND. 261 
farms. The variety generally grown for starch is known as tbe “ California potato.” 
It is not a good table-potato, but is preferred by the starch manufacturers. This is a 
good hay and grass-producing section, and large quantities of timothy-grass seed are 
raised, and the high price at which it has been sold for the past few years makes it a 
profitable farm product. Much more might be said of the prosperous condition of that 
section of our State; of its fine horses, herds, and flocks; of its railroad facilities for 
transporting to market its wood, lumber, bark, charcoal, and numerous other products, 
all of which largely contribute to the increasing wealth of that part of the “Old 
Granite State.” 
More recently I visited Hanover, the town in which the New Hampshire Agricultural 
College is located, and spent a day in driving around among the farmers of that ancient 
town, the settlement of which commenced over one hundred years ago. There are 
large numbers of fine and productive farms. Much of the land consists of a finely 
comminuted and somewhat clayey soil, free from rocks, and easily cultivated. All of 
the farm crops cultivated in that section make good returns, especially wheat, both 
spring and autumn sown. From five or six of these farmers I obtained statements of 
the average yield per acre for a series of years. There were better crops in some sea- 
sons than in others. The lowest yield in any one season was twenty bushels. The 
largest, ninety-eight and one-half bushels on two acres of land. This was in 1860, a 
favorable season or the wheat crop in this section. Some of the records are of the 
crops for eleven years in succession on the samv farms. 
Mr. C. C. Foster the past season raised twenty-five bushels of winter wheat on one 
acre. Theseed was obtained from the Department of Agriculture. Mr. F. has forgotten 
thename. It very closely resembles the “ White Touzelle winter wheat,” imported from 
Marseilles, France; by the Department. The land planted with corn is heavily manured 
and followed by wheat and grass-seeds: As far as I can learn, there are but few, if 
any, sections of the country where larger average yields of wheat are grown than in 
the town of Hanover. A portion of the farmers in the town of Fairmount, Onondaga 
- County, New York, obtain about the same average. 
I will now give the farm practices of three of the prominent farmers of Merrimack 
County, who have made farming profitable, but who differ somewhat in their practice 
and in the disposal of their products. 
In 1856 Colonel David M. Clough, of Canterbury, purchased the farm he now occu- 
pies for the sum of $4,400. It contained about four hundred acres, two hundred of 
which were interval, lying on the eastern bank of the Merrimack River, opposite the 
village of Boscawen Plain. The remainder was pasture ana woodland. <A few years 
previous to his purchase most of the wood and timber had been removed. For more 
than thirty years a widow had held a life-estate in the farm, and during this 
period it had been rented and largely cropped with corn and oats, which, with a por- 
tion of the hay, were annually sold, and no manure purchased. By this skinning pro- 
cess the farm had become badly worn; the buildings and fences were in a most dilapi- 
dated condition, and a large portion of this once fertile interval had been turned out as 
pasture. To renovate the tillable fields, large quantities of muck and. lime were com- 
posted. Muck and a clay marl, of which there are inexhaustible quantities on the 
farm, were used in the barn-yards, cattle and sheep hovels, and hog-yards. Fences 
were rebuilt with good boards and chestnut posts. The large, old farm-house was com- 
pletely remodeled and renovated, both inside and outside, and additions made to it, and 
old barns were removed and splendid new ones erected. 
When Colonel C. came into possession of the farm there were about twelve tons of 
English and about the same quantity of natural or low-ground hay cut upon the farm, 
suflicient, with some grain feed, to winter twelve head of cattle, thirty sheep, and two 
horses. He now winters upon an average ninety head of cattle, six’ horses, old and 
young, and one hundred and fifty sheep. He had at the time I was there sixteen hogs, 
about eighteen montlis old, and a large number of last spring’s shoats, The old hog 
will average not far from four hundred pounds each. For several years past the average 
sales have been about $1,500 for beef cattle ; $500 for pork ; sheep, lambs, and wool, $4U0. 
$1400 years since he sold for slaughter 200 sheep at seven dollars a head, aggregating 
The proceeds of the farm this year are’150 tons of hay, 800 bushels of corn, 800 
bushels of oats, and 50 bushels of wheat. The whole of the hay, most of the corn, and 
a large portion of the oats are fed to his farm stock and to horses from the cities to be 
wintered. Having lost several acres of his interval land by the washing away of the 
soil, which is twenty feet deep at that place, he has, by the expenditure of over six 
hundred dollars, prevented future inroads by sloping the banks aud cobbling them with 
stone, drawn two miles. He has, during the fourteen years of his occupancy of the 
farm, expeuded over four thousand dollars in repairing the eld and erecting new farm 
buildings. The results of his farming, in a pecuniary point of view, are satisfactory, 
he having now a larger surplus of cash on hand than the farm originally cost him. 
Colonel Clough plows his land deep, manures high, and cultivates thoroughly, sows 
liberally of grass seeds, and harvests corresponding crops. 
