FENCES AND FARM BUILDINGS. 41 



dressing, rolling, or harvesting. If it produces a heavy crop of 

 hay, that is enough to ask of it, and any attempt to get more by 

 pasturing animals upon it will lessen its value for future crops, 

 much more than its use as pasture will be worth. If it has ceased 

 to produce good hay, in paying quantities, it should be renewed, 

 either by being brought into cultivation, or otherwise. 



In giving this advice, I assume that we have no more land under 

 the plow, and in meadow, than we can properly attend to. If we 

 have, it will probably pay best to turn the excess out to pasture. 

 When we go to the expense of plowing, cultivating, and harvesting, 

 we should so manage as to get the largest possible return for our 

 labor, and that we shall get by raising the largest crops that can 

 be got with a reasonable outlay of money and work. Three tons 

 of hay per acre is within the easy possibilities of any ordinarily 

 good land, if it is properly managed ; and it will cost less, and pay 

 better to get it from one acre than from two, to say nothing of 

 its better quality. 



This subject will be discussed more fully hereafter, in consider- 

 ing the rotation of crops, and the treatment of grass lands. 



If the course suggested above is adopted, it will be best not to 

 have the course of the plow and of the mowing-machine inter- 

 rupted by fences, and to have no weed-breeding headlands bordering 

 our plowed fields. Even with a board fence, or an iron one, 

 which occupies but little room, we must leave a space of at least 

 four feet on each side that cannot be well cultivated — a total 

 width of a half-rod given up to weeds, or at least wasted from 

 the field, and an annoyance in many ways. The fence and head- 

 lands around a square field of five acres will occupy nearly three- 

 quarters of an acre. To this loss add the time spent in turning 

 at the ends of furrows, in plowing and in cultivating, and the 

 trampling of the rows in one case, and of the plowed land in the 

 other, and the expense of keeping fences in repair, and we shall 

 have a formidable sum total of the cost of too many fences. 



It would be impossible to establish any universal rule for all 

 farms, and for all farmers, but it may be stated as a good general 

 principle that every farm should have the smallest amount of 



