cators of the number of commercial farms or the amount of agricultural 

 land, however. Because the census includes, as farms, places having as lit- 

 tle as three acres of land or $250 of produce, the census "number of farms" 

 may include many part-time farms or places where the farm is not the main 

 source of income. Also, since 1860 the kind and amount of land required 

 for a farm which is adequate for the main source of a family's income has 

 changed considerably. "Acres of all land in farms" may include the part- 

 time farms, and in addition does not tell whether, within farms, woods 

 and brush have encroached on open pastures and crop land. Some measure 

 of tillable land probably should be more reliable as an indicator of the 

 amount of land used for agriculture. Even this, however, does not reflect the 

 change in untillable pasture where, the shrinkage probably has been great. 

 Acres of tillable land in farms in 1945 was only a little more than one-fifth 

 of what it was in I860 3 . A man past 80. who still owned a hill farm, ex- 

 pressed the change in land use as meaningly as the above statistics. He said, 

 "Do you see the small light patches against the dark green on the opposite 

 mountain? Those are the only open fields that remain among the woods. 



1 can remember when there were only a few patches of woods among the 

 open fields over there." 



A Look Toward the Future 



What caused the decline in New Hampshire farm acreage, where are we 

 now, and what of the future? Those are the practically interesting and for- 

 ward-looking questions. In 1860, when New Hampshire's acreage of till- 

 able land was at its highest, there were few alternatives to farming as an 

 occupation and the hand or ox team methods of production could be used 

 about as well in the small rough fields of upland New England as in the 

 river valleys or even as on the Midwestern prairies. As more jobs became 

 available in industry and commerce, and as farm machinery increased the 

 output per farmer on the more level lands, the material level of living at 

 non-farm jobs and on the farms better adapted to the new machinery pushed 

 ahead of that supplied by the small, rough farms. Those who could, prob- 

 ably mostly the young people as they sought to become self-supporting, 

 left the disadvantaged farms to seek occupations elsewhere which promised 

 higher levels of living. The data in Table 1 suggest that since about 1925 

 the land abandonment situation has somewhat stabilized. The data in Table 



2 indicate that milk production, the. chief use of farm land in New Hamp- 

 shire, has been maintained better than the acreage of improved land. From 

 1900 to 1925 milk production fell about one-third while the acreage of till- 

 able land was falling about two-fifths. Since 1925 milk production has in- 

 creased slightly while acres of improved iand have decreased. Most New 

 Hampshire farming is now in the production of products for which nearness 

 to markets is an advantage; much of New England farm produce is no longer 

 competing directly with that from the more level and more fertile lands far- 

 ther west. Also, many of the more difficult farms have been abandoned; 

 many of the farms that remain are at least fairly well adapted to modern 

 farm machines. However, there is evidence that the process of abandonment 

 and adjustment is still in progress. 



3 See footnote ($) of Table 1 for what census figures were taken to reprsesent 

 tillable land. 



7 



