16 WHAT I KNOW OF FARMING. 



clover, &c., that it would amply carry that increase. 

 Fifteen years later, he sold* out farm and stock for 

 $45,000, and migrated to the West. I did not under- 

 stand that he was a specially hard worker, but only 

 a good manager, who kept his eyes wide open, let 

 nothing go to waste, and steadily devoted his ener- 

 gies and means to the improvement of his stock and 

 his farm. 



Walking one day over the farm of the late Prof. 

 Mapes, he showed me a field of rather less than ten 

 acres, and said, " I bought that field for $2,400, a 

 year ago last September. There was then a light 

 crop of corn on it, which the seller reserved and took 

 away. I underdrained the field that Fall, plowed 

 and sub-soiled it, fertilized it liberally, and planted it 

 with cabbage ; and, when these matured, I sold them 

 for enough to pay for land, labor, and fertilizers, alto- 

 gether." The field was now worth far more than 

 when he bought it, and he had cleared it within fif- 

 teen months from the date of its purchase. I con- 

 sider that a good operation. Another year, the crop 

 might have been poor, or might have sold much low- 

 er, so as hardly to pay for the labor ; but there are 

 risks in other pursuits as well as in farming. 



A fruit-fanner, on the Hudson above Newbunr, 



Cf 



showed me, three years since, a field of eight or ten 

 acres which he had nicely set with Grapes, in rows 

 ten feet apart, with beds of Strawberries between the 

 rows, from which he assured me that his sales per 

 acre exceeded $YOO per annum. I presume his out- 



