470 THE POTATO 



potatoes are harvested they are pitted or stored 

 alongside this railway. They call these pits 

 "clamps." There are 600 acres of potatoes on 

 this farm that will be harvested and stored in this 

 way, making a pit three miles long. They expect 

 ten tons to the acre, making 6,000 tons of potatoes. 



The carting of potatoes in this level peat soil 

 is often quite impossible when they have excessive 

 rain. 



Land values in Lincolnshire have changed very 

 greatly in forty years. They are about the 

 same values now as in 1870. Then Mr. Dennis 

 paid $500 per acre for his first purchase. He 

 pointed out to me a 100-acre farm for which $500 

 an acre was refused in 1870. It was sold in 1908 

 for $275 an acre. Since 1870 the lands that sold 

 as low as $175 to $300 an acre are bringing from 

 $400 to $500 an acre. 



These lands are now producing up to fifty-six 

 bushels of wheat to the acre, with a general aver- 

 age of a series of years of forty-five bushels. It 

 weighs sixty-three pounds to the bushel. Oats 

 produce up to eighty bushels, weighing forty-two 

 pounds to the bushel. The general average is 

 sixty bushels to the acre. A great deal of the grain 

 of 1909 is still in the stacks unthreshed. They do 

 not thresh their grain until they need the straw. 

 It is kept in thatched stacks instead of in ware- 

 houses. 



Growing white mustard is a very profitable 

 industry and it serves as a good change of crops 

 for soils. It often returns $60 an acre with very 

 little expense. 



A very interesting visit was made to Titus Kime, 

 Marham-le-Fen, Boston, Lincolnshire. In a letter 

 to E. H. Grubb in July, 1911, he gives many facts 



