CHAPTER IV. 



FENCES AND FARM BUILDINGS. 



What fences to have, and how to make them, arc questions 

 which may well engage the attention of the new occupier of a 

 farm, — and of the old occupier too, for that matter. 



There is a great deal said about the advantage of dispensing 

 entirely with fences, as they do in many parts of Europe, — and it 

 is said with much truth. But, unfortunately^ in this respect Eu- 

 rope is not America, and so long as we keep cattle at pasture, and 

 have not pauper children to watch them, so long must we build 

 fences to keep them from encroaching on our neighbor's property, 

 and from straying into our own grain fields. 



It will be a happy day for American farmers when they can 

 escape the necessity for building expensive fences, and can bring 

 into their fields, and into clean cultivation, the weedy headlands 

 which are now worse than wasted ; but that day will not come in 

 many a long year, and, for the present, we must content ourselves 

 with making fences as little expensive, and as little of a nuisance, 

 as is possible. 



There are whole counties in New England, and probably in 

 southern New York, in which all the farms are not worth so 

 much to-day as it would cost to build the fences within their 

 boundaries; and there are whole townships in which the fields 

 will not average two acres in extent. I think I have seen farms 

 in which they average less than one acre. I know some fences, 



