160 



itiE FARMER'S MOiNTHLV VISITOR. 



township, like many of tlwse iu Vermont, are in 

 those elegant swells neitlier too steep lor conve- 

 nient cultivation, nor so flat as to leave the stand- 

 ing water an obstacle to the profitable cultivation 

 of the soil. This town, n wilderness one hun- 

 dred years ago, containing now little more than 

 a thousand inhabitants, has sent forth its two 

 score of liberally educated men, some of wlioni 

 are eminent as lawyers, divines or physicians: it 

 furnished its half a hiuidred men lor the war of 

 the Revolution at different times, some of whom 

 bled and died upon the field, and others of whom 

 returned to enjoy the fruits of an after life spent 

 in diligence andindustry. Two only of the vet- 

 erans of the Revolution survive, and one of these, 

 while passing, I saw upon his well tilled, produc- 

 tive farm where he has lived and enjoyed life 

 since his return from the wars for nearly sixty 

 years. Although the soil of this township is more 

 hard than that of your hills in Vermont, there 

 was scarcely a family within its limits that could 

 be called really poor. 



I went out of my way three miles, at the invi- 

 tation of an old friend now sixty-three years of 

 age who lived nipon the highest hills near the 

 mountain at tlie north-west section of this town. 

 His premises had been described to me as beau- 

 tiful and highly productive. He married the 

 daughter of a neiglibor to his father who lived at 

 no great distance from his present premises in 

 another town forty years ago. His first pitch at 

 that time was upon an eighty acre lot that had 

 been poorly cleared by some indifferent husband, 

 and which he took in a worse condition if jiossi- 

 ble than if it had been the original forest. He 

 began by improving that, and adding another lot 

 so that in the space of five years he kept fifteen 

 cows. He soon raised upon this so as to double 

 the number, and for the last thirty years up to 

 the year 1838 he has kept each year from thirty- 

 five to forty and fifty cows. Thirty-six years ago 

 the making of new milch cheese for sale was 

 scarcely known north of the Connecticut. The 

 gentleman of Hillsborough near the mountains 

 was the first in New Hampshire to make this man- 

 ufacture of cheese a business for the summer. He 

 has increased in wealth so as to become the own- 

 er of an extensive fiirm of five hundred acres of 

 most excellent upland soil. The westerly line of 

 his farm extends nearly three miles on the out- 

 side limit of his town : on this farm are seven 

 hundred rods of stone wall, extending along the 

 roads which run by it in different directions, and 

 he has more than one thousand rods of durable 

 stone fence. He is besides the owner of other 

 property than liis farm ; he has purchased first 

 and last real estate for which he has paid forty 

 thousand dollars, being at the rate of one thou- 

 sand dollars a year. Some of this he had 

 sold — but he said he never took a dollar from a 

 bank in his life, and never paid so much as fitly 

 dollars for the use of money. He pointed to a 

 beautiful white pine timber grove of twenty acres, 

 being the only grove of equal extent within many 

 miles of the original growth. This lot he pur- 

 chased twenty years ago at seventeen dollars the 

 acre ; he had sometimes sold a single tree from 

 the lot for the price of the cost of an acre ; but 

 there was more timber upon the lot now than 

 when be bought it. Some of the acres were 

 worth at least five hundred dollars. 



It was nearly nine o'clock m tlie evening on 

 the night of last Thursday, when clinibing up tlie 

 hill nearly two miles before we arrived at the 

 premises, I accompanied this man to his house to 

 spend the night. An only son with two unmar- 

 ried daughters are all his children living. The 

 son, for the last year, having a young family, oc- 

 cupies the brick mansion at the principal tarm, as 

 more convenient for carrying on the farm ; and 

 the elder gentleman has changed places with 

 him going into a one story house half a mile dis- 

 tant The moment I entered this dwelling I dis- 

 covered that there was a cause of thrill as well 

 within doors as there could be without. The 

 lady with her daughter sat by the kitchen fire to 

 which I chose to be conducted, plying the blades 

 from which she was winding her fine woolen 

 yarn. Beside the room stood the woolen wheel 

 itself which had been used during the day ; and 

 the fair-faced daughter apparently some twenty 

 years of age, rising from her seat at the entrance 

 of her father to introduce him to a chair, instant- 

 ly returned to her knitting the nioment that ob- 

 ject was effected. Around the house hunc the 



Birings of pared apples for drying, which next 

 morning «ere exposed to the early sun. The 

 morning's breakfast presented us, not with cof- 

 fee, but with such a cup of tea as seldom can be 

 found in the most expensive boarding houses; 

 the hard yellow butter taken from the bottom of 

 the cool cellar hardly needed ice to preserve it in 

 the warmest weather; and the beautiful cream 

 toast, now not so much in fashion, brought to me 

 all the ardent appetite of childhood forty years 

 ago. The good lady, three months only younger 

 than her husband, and scarcely five feet in height, 

 had for many years personally superintended the 

 dairy with the help of the hired men to milk 

 morning and evening; and this dairy had turned 

 out for sale in some seasons five tons of new 

 milch cheese as one article of profit upon this ex- 

 cellent farm. 



The ways of Providence are dark and inscru- 

 table. I have mentioned that my friend's fanii 

 had kept up his number of cows until the year 

 1838. That year, in the midst of the highest "feed 

 of the sinr.mer, without any premonition of ap- 

 proaching sickness, the cattle upon this favorite 

 farm began to die one alter another. One crea- 

 ture would begin to droop as another dead body 

 had been disposed of until several oxen and twen- 

 ty cows had died. This untoward event in the 

 course of a few weeks blighted the successful 

 dairy which had continued so many years : and 

 from that time to this the farm has sustained oidy 

 a few cows. In the course of this season two 

 more cows have died of the same disorder. The 

 brother of this gentleman residing on a farm 

 which keeps thirty cows, has lost none by the 

 same disorder ; and none have been lost on the 

 land of a similar quality upon the hills in the 

 neighborhood. 



My fiiend who has encoimtered this calamity, 

 who not only entertained us at his house and con- 

 ducted me to a high hill upon his premises over- 

 looking the distant towns far and wide, but \vho 

 likewise accompanied my contpanion and me on 

 our way home through a mountain road neither 

 of us had before travelled had evidently beei; af- 

 fected in his health. His left arm trembled from 

 the shoulder to theenti of his fingers from some 

 cause allied to palsy ; he supj)Osed it to be from 

 a disorder of the spine, and he attributed it to the 

 excitement which came over him at the time his 

 cattle were dying. He said he could not rise in 

 the morning without tremblingin the expectation 

 of finding those cuttle he had left well of a pre- 

 vious evening dying or dead; and the idea filled 

 him with the same horror that he would feel at 

 the premature death of so many human beings. 



The cause of this mortality of cattle is yet un- 

 explained. If death had been produced from 

 any common disorder.it would seem as if the 

 cattle of the neighborhood had been similarly af- 

 fected. The conjecture was that the cause was 

 local. The yard adjaiient to the barn in wliich 

 the cows were folded in sunmier and winter was 

 originally so low and wet as to be inconvenient 

 for keeping or milking them in it. To remedy 

 this inconvenience the surface had been covered 

 with a layer of small stones and the top of these 

 had been overlaid witli soil eighteen inches to two 

 feet deep. All the cattle that had died had re- 

 cently been in this yard more or less ; no cattle 

 kept constantly in the surrounding pastures had 

 been similarly atfeeted. It was conjectured that 

 the nitre of tliis yard coming up from the small 

 stones under grouml might be tlie cause of the 

 disorder ; and in consequence the worknion were 

 digging ii|i and carrying to the grass ground the 

 upper soil, and disposing of the small rocks at 

 the bottom in other places. 



I have introduced the facts in this case because 

 they have been before me so recently that I was 

 anxious to take them down together. The mor- 

 tality of the cattle at this peculiar spot and in 

 this manner, is a subject interesting to the far- 

 mer; and the more extensively a knowledge of 

 the facts shall be diffused, the more likely will it 

 be that the causes of it may become develojied. 



Our broken soil in New Hampshire will not 

 permit our dairies to grow to the extent of those 

 in many parts of Vermont. Instead of farmers 

 of forty and fifty cows, I am aware that you ha\e 

 them with a hundred and a hundred and fifty 

 cows. The cattle upon our thousand hills may 

 be sometimes found equal to yours. Twenty 

 yokes of oxen in the immediate neighborhood of 

 my last week's visit were equal in size, color, 



shape and beauty to any I have ever seen. The 

 hard, high mountain ground which raiely if ever 

 suffers irom drought, the more rocky the better 

 if the stones do not cover more ihan half the sur- 

 face, is the most sure ground for rearing and sus- 

 taining the best cattle. 



The substantial evidence of prosperity in ma- 

 ny neighborhoods of New England, the neat and 

 comfortable cottage painted red or white, and 

 frequently the spacious house of two stories built 

 either of brick or wood and painted, the ample 

 and substantial barns, the new and better every 

 year supplying the place of the older, the impro- 

 ved and injproving crops upon the fields in the 

 vicinity, the thriving orchards bearing choice and 

 select apples and other fruits, the ornamental 

 shrubbery and flowers decking the neat front 

 yards about the dwellings ; the sleek looking cattle, 

 the stately and gay horses, the fat weathers and 

 ewes with their young studding the pastures Up- 

 on the hills — all, all is gratifying to the lover of 

 improvement even though he be journeying in a 

 land of total and entire strangers ; and the gen- 

 tlemen of this society and others present will 

 pardon me if, instead of a more learned disserta- 

 tion upon agriculture, I have oftcred merely a 

 simple narrative of farming as it has been follow- 

 ed in one of the New Hampshire granite towns 

 that claims no superiority to other towns which 

 surround it. 



The pursuit of agriculture and horticulture 

 has attractions and fascinations beyond every 

 other pursuit. When taken up from mere plea- 

 sure, without regard to profit, how is the ardor of 

 the devotee increased by the progress which na- 

 ture makes daily under the cultivation of his 

 hand in the growth of such trees and flowers as 

 merely please the eye ? Still more is he delight- 

 ed that the work of his hand brings forth rich 

 fruit from trees on ^vhich a worthless kind of the 

 same species only had been produced, and that in 

 the lapse of only a few seasons, or perhaps from 

 the growth of a single season, he is furnished 

 v^'itli what regales at the same time the eye, and 

 the appetite. 



To their owner the clean fields of growing 

 corn, or rye, or wheat, or grass, are scarcely less 

 beautiful and attractive than the fair innocent 

 faces of his children « ho gradually unfold the 

 powers of mind under the instruction which dai- 

 ly wants afford them, as the leaves of the grow- 

 ing vegetable are opened. Every time he visits 

 such fields he sees them with renewed interest. 

 The lilies of the field which toil not for them- 

 selves, are arrayed in beauty such as the most fa- 

 vored monarch of the world in the Jays of his 

 youth and gloiT, could not attain. The employ- 

 ment of gathering the fields of golden grain thf.t 

 have grown up under our own eyes and watchful 

 attention, wheru no useless tares or weeds have 

 been suffered to usurp any portion of the earth's 

 strength, we all can realize must be grateful to 

 the best feelings of the heart. 



In this republican country and government, the 

 ambitious politician ought to realize that he may 

 not expect uninterrupted public employment in 

 places where hundreds are equally qualified for 

 office with himself; for the man who cannot un- 

 derstand that here the claim to office is not per- 

 petual, deserves at no time to hold an office. So 

 the jirofessional man, the clergyman, the lawyer, 

 and the jihysieian, whether successful or not, 

 sometimes finds it convenient or necessary to lay 

 down his calling. So the merchant or mechanic 

 who has or has not laid up an ample fortune, re- 

 tires from the city to the countiy. And the man 

 of leisure and fortune is sometimes brought to 

 realize that he will be unhappy if he shall not 

 take up some active einploymenf. What better 

 can all these men do than turn farmers ? AVhat 

 better or more pleasing business can they under- 

 take than to lay out a tract of land and dress it, 

 and to cause the deserted waste now producing 

 thorns and briars, to become the fruitful field ? 



Much is the world indebted to wealthy men 

 and to the scientific and the curious for their im 

 provements in Agriculture : much is this country 

 indebted to a Humphreys, a Livingston, a Lowell, 

 and hundreds of others for the introduction of 

 improved breeds of animals, and for many inter- 

 esting experiments in the production of various 

 grains, roots, fruits and grasses. Much are our 

 common farmers indebted to those experimenters 

 who have from time to time communicated facts 

 tluough the press to the public eye. But there 



