102 



THE FARMER'S xMONTHLY VISITOR. 



Reduced price and economy of travel. 



Having completed the businoss ivliich called hiin 

 to Boston on Tuesday, July 7, tlie editor of the 

 Visitor at six o'clock took the omnibus which runs 

 in and out of Boston six miles twice a day to West 

 Cambridge, wliicli commenced as an experiment 

 only a few weeks previous. The omnilius is a 

 vehicle with four whi-els, sometimes transported 

 with two, sometimes with four horses— it is 

 longer or shorter, as more or less power is applied 

 to it. The seats are usually on either side with 

 the entrance door in the rear: the driver remains 

 on his seat and a boy wails at the door, • and 

 rinjs a bell at the entrance or exit of passengers. 

 These vehicles in the city of New York are used 

 daily by men who do business in one part of the 

 city and live in anollicr, enabling thejn to reside 

 with then- families three, four and five miles distant 

 from their shops and stores. In Boston the same 

 carriages run Inlf-hourly, hourly, or less often, to 

 the towns and villages 'in the vicinity, as Cam- 

 bridge Port and Cambridge, Roxbury, Dorchester, 

 &e.' Tli'v are one of the conveniences and me- 

 thods of saving expense peculiar to the times ; for 

 instead of paymg three dollars to some stabler for 

 a horse and chaise to West Cambridge as we have 

 sometimes done, we are now carried and left at the 

 door of our iriend near the tavern where the omni- 

 bus starts v/ith our trunk or valise for the small 

 sum of twenty-five cents. Such cheap and regu- 

 lar and ready means ol' conveyance are well calcu- 

 lated to facilitate both social and business inter- 

 course — to carry the benefits of the city into the 

 country, and to place it in the power of the poor 

 alike with the rich in the cities to breathe a purer 

 and more healthy atmosphere. It is one of the 

 blessings of this country and this age that all our 

 public vcliioles are frequented by the various clas- 

 ses : the daily laborer and his family can afford to 



be conveyed in as good and convenient a carriage, 

 whether it be a rail road car, a stage or an omnibus, 

 as the rich man rolling in wealth. Here there is 

 no invidious distinction which confers a greater de- 

 ference to the man of money than to the man with- 

 out money, of any decent demeanor. The passion 

 and the fashion of showing off wealth and dignity 

 with any uncommon parade, becomes less and less: 

 indeed, if pains should be t^.ken to work to the 

 bottom of men and women, it will be found that 

 those who make the greatest display are generally 

 thjse whose pecuniary condition can least afford 

 it. 



Excellent fruit the reward of care and 

 attention. 



Our head quarters near the place of our nativity 

 has generally been the house of .a friend and rela- 

 tive both of whose parents were of the " kith and 

 kin" of both of ours, and the house of whose birth 

 within a few days was the place where we first 

 drew breath. The son of a successful farmer, he 

 chose an education at Harvard and the profession 

 of law; and in the successful pursuit of this pro- 

 fession he has acquired that wealth which is now 

 beyond our hopes. 



Why is it that those who adorn their gardens 

 and yards ii\ the country with beautiful trees and 

 shrubbery cannot introduce them of the kinds tliat 

 produce fruit ? Seldom do we find yards thus deco- 

 rated and supplied in the interior. The old fash- 

 ioned red cherry and plum trees which formerly 

 stood about farm houses are not now even as com- 

 mon as thev were formerly : pear and peach trees 

 are still more rare. The cause of this declension 

 in part may be sought in the more destructive 

 worms and insects which infest fruit trees; but it 

 is to be feared that the most potent cause is to be 

 found in that indolence and inattention which fail 

 to take measures for growing young trees where 

 the old ones are destroyed'or viorn out in fair ser- 

 vice. 



From the middle of June to the middle of July 

 is the season of early English cherries in the vi- 

 cinity of Boston. The front yard of our friend at 

 West Cambridge has trees which produce bushels 

 of this fruit. Never did we taste fruit of finer fla- 

 vor than the black mazards which were presented 

 soon afler our arrival taken from this yard, a bo.\ 

 full of which were picked from the tree early 

 next morning and carried more than eighty miles 

 to furnish a re past for the inmates of our own home 

 in tile evening. 



Laudable economy of a professional man. 



Our friend who for twenty-five years has practi- 

 ced the economy of rising early, feeding and rub- 

 bin<rdown his own horse before shaving and dres- 

 Bin" for his oflice work, instead of employing ' help' 

 to do it, and who, by the by, always has a good 

 hQr«9 f>!>A corriu^e in oideE — was nt our service af- 



ter breakfast by six o'clock A. M.. to carry us 

 whithersoever inclination called, so as to take the 

 late cars in Boston at eleven o'clock, and arrive 

 home at sundown. 



The "West Cambridge Gardener. 



Our first call was at Mr. George I'ierce's gar- 

 den farm, situated half a mile from West Cam- 

 bridge meetino- house. He had been absent hours 

 before sunrise at his daily marketing in Boston. 

 He occupies the same ground as last year, only v,-it\i 

 the addition of some twenty square rods which he 

 was at his leisure making when we saw him last 

 October by cartini in sand into a cove of Spy 

 pond, converting it into additional land. This soil 

 is made entirely of common quicksand taken from 

 a ridge near the pond, only no very extraordinary 

 quantity of stable or compost manure is laid upon 

 the surface. Upon tliis new made ground were 

 growing the first cucumbers of any respectable 

 size that we had seen upon the vines in any gar- 

 den. 



We were the more anxious now again to view 

 Mr. Pierce's garden to see whether he had avoided 

 and how he had avoided the eftects of the severe 

 drought. We have before stated that this garden 

 is situaled upon a light, sandy, dry pine plain — that 

 kind of land is the first to exhibit the eft'ects of dry 

 weather. The propensity to drought was manifest 

 from the parched state of the grass and other 

 grounds about it : but his garden had apparently 

 suffered no very great inconvenience from drought. 

 Where the strawberry and perennial plants did u'.t 

 grow, a first crop had generally been taken off. 

 Mr. P. in his made sandy ground constructed on the 

 pond raised the first green peas, early in the month 

 of June, that were taken into Boston market. His 

 early radishes had given place to a second crop of 

 cabbages which were mucn in advance of any cab- 

 bages we had seen in the country. Hundreds, if 

 not thousands of boxes had been filled from his 

 strawberry beds, whose annual crop on the vines 

 had been nearly exhausted. The contrivance to 

 prevent the parching and drying up of the ground 

 devoted to strawberry culture was as simple as it 

 was effective. It was simply filling the open spa- 

 ces between the rows with a species of coarse hay 

 called sedffe. This hay is cut from the banks of 

 creeks which abound near salt marshes where the 

 daily tides overflow, and is secured and taken out 

 green between low and high water. This sedge 

 spread over the ground has a three-fold efP'ot : 

 first, it imparts dampness to the roots of plants 

 near it in time of very dry weather; second, the 

 salt which the sedge contains in a great measure 

 prevents the growth of weeds; and third, when it 

 comes rotten it becomes a powerful manure. We 

 observed also that Mr. Pierce made a similar use 

 of dry pea vines that had been picked ; they v.-ere 

 laid at once about tlie open spaces that surrounded 

 tlie fast expanding cucumbers, melons or squashes 

 that were to be raised as a second crop upon the 

 sa.me ground. 



The ground cultivated by Mr. Pierce, all re- 

 claimed from worn-out pine plain, will not proba- 

 bly exceed twelve acres. On it were diligently 

 at work six hands. Such is the confidence in his 

 skill as a practical horticulturist, that an eminent 

 counsellor of Cliarlestown has chosen to place his 

 son with him as an apprentice to be taurrht the art 

 of making barren ground profitable from produc- 

 tion — an art which should give equal eminence 

 with the exercise of high talents in any of the 

 learned professions. 



The earth replenished three for out. 



The grandfatlier of Mr. Pierce had a farm many 

 years since in the high rocky region of West 

 Cambridge near Lexington whieir contained one 

 hundred and eighty acres. More than fifty 3'ears 

 ago he was a market farmer who carried milk and 

 vegetables to Boston. His son inherited the farm; 

 and lK)th father and son, who died se.eral years 

 ago, accumulated their thousands. The home es- 

 tate was left to three sons, brothers of George, 

 and was divided into three farms of sixty acres 

 each. It is said tliat either of the three farms now 

 produces quite as much as th'' whole premi'^es for- 

 merly produced. The brotliers dwell in the same 

 neighborhood in peace and unity. One of them 

 takes the vegetables of the others to market — an- 

 other goes with the milk — and the third superin- 

 tends th£ whole concern at home. 



The yoiins ambition of an almost octo- 

 genuriun. 



From the garden of Mr. Pierce a stop of a few 

 minutes was made upon the premises which liave 

 descended probably a century and a half in the an- 

 cestors of our own maternal line. The present 



owner of these premises, now seventy-six years of 

 age, was at work on that ground which he has cul- 

 tivated as a prolific onion bed with bis own hands 

 every year for as many we think as ten years. Its 

 first dimensions, being a square of about half an 

 acre, have been enlarged to full three-fourths of 

 an acre, the old gentleman feeling his ability to in- 

 crease the amount as he increases in age. The 

 instrument he used was a garden hoe with open 

 blade on one side a.id point upon the other, with 

 which, without stooping, the weeds were effectu- 

 ally cut up and the ground dressed around the 

 growing plants. The rapid and workmanlike man- 

 ner in which the ground was gone over might be 

 a good lesson to many a younger man who should 

 iiave occasion to engage in the same work. 



Our aged friend, although blessed with abund- 

 ance of the world's goods, the fruits of his own 

 enterprise and industry, yet has a keen appetite for 

 the rule of addition. His garden and grass grounds 

 abound in beautiful apple and fruit trees. Tile 

 cherry trees this season had been unnsuailv proli- 

 fic : a large English cherry tree produced, if we 

 remember him aright, five bushels of picked cher- 

 ries. These sold in tlie market at wholesale for 

 three dollars the bushel. He had himself, in the 

 hurry of the liired help, picked cherries from a lad- 

 der suspended to these trees sixteen successive 

 week days, leaving his onion bed that time to gain 

 a more than common head of weeds. The onion 

 bed and cherry trees afford hfin that pastime which 

 enables him to enjoy health and satisfaction in tiie 

 summers of an advanced life. The farm which he 

 owns (he having long ago considered it time to 

 retire from active life) has been let out to the youn- 

 gest son for about twenty-five years. li\ that time, 

 besides the expense of rearing and educating a 

 family, we believe often children, this son iias con- 

 trived to amass a property in cash whose income 

 at simple si.x per cent, interest, now amounts to 

 between three and four dollais a day. The pro- 

 pensity of some men is to accumulate as that of 

 others is to dissipate. The community of farmers 

 at West Cambridge and in that neighborhood are 

 more uniformly of the former character than any 

 other neighborhood which ever fell within our ac- 

 quaintance. The eldest son of the man last men- 

 tioned has but now married and commenced on his 

 ''own hired" farm in the vicinity of the Rynl farm 

 in Medford- He begins with only some little pro- 

 perty for stocking the premises for which he is able 

 in the first year to pav a rent of five hundred dol- 

 lars and to lay up in cash as much more. 



These accumulative farmers live near the mar 

 ket where every thing turns readily for cash, and 

 this probably incites tiiem to greater efforts. But 

 the incentives to industry farther in the interior of 

 late years can be hardly less than on the well im- 

 proved and continually improving farm lands from 

 three to ten miles out of Boston; for how few of 

 the productions of farms every where within the 

 last few years have not commanded the highest 

 prices.^ In the production of cattle, of swine, of 

 tiutter and cheese, t'f siieep and wool, of grains 

 and vegetables, the farmer many miles in the inte- 

 rior has had grand encouragement in the prices 

 these articles have commanded : he may even an- 

 ticipate continued good encouragement. The fault 

 is, not that too much, but that too little has been 

 produced. How can the farmer expect to gain 

 wealth who consumes all he raises and is obliged 

 to go in debt for all that he buys ! 



The Ryal farm and its tenant. 



The next call was upon the " Ryal farm" in 

 Medford, which has lieen so long tenanted by its 

 present occupant, that he cannot help treating the 

 premises as his own. The milk of forty to sixty 

 excellent cows has for thirty-seven j-ears poured 

 in a stream of wealth to the occupant of these pre- 

 mises, after furnishing the means for the payment 

 of rent and generous wages to the hired help. Na- 

 than Adams, Esq. the tenant of this farm, seventy- 

 six or seventy-seven years of age, attend,'- its su- 

 perintendence with only the aid of a grandson who 

 daily drives into the city and deals out the princi- 

 pal article of milk to the customers, some of wliom 

 iiave continued thirty to forty years to receive their 

 supply from the same place. The fine land com- 

 posing the pastures and mowing grounds of this 

 farm is situated upon the north side of Wijiter 

 Hill, kr^own as the encamping ground of Bur- 

 goyne's army after it capitulated at Saratoga. Mr. 

 Adams was absent in Boston on the 7th, it being 

 the return of settling day of his quaiterly accounts. 

 His lady, seventy years of age, but as active as 

 some girls of sixteen in Household affairs, informed 

 us that she had under charge, witli two female as- 

 sistants, ten hired men engaged in haying. These 

 ten men used and were furnislipd with no ardent 



