fairly well distributed over the two towns. Generally speaking, the idle places 

 were not out of reach of farmers who had indicated that they could travel a 

 few miles to use desirable hay land or young stock pasture. Some farmers 

 had said, however, they could not haul manure far. One difficulty in heavily 

 residential towns, such as Greenland and Stratham, is so many of the old 

 farmsteads are taken up for nonfarmer residential use that there are hardly 

 enough farmsteads left to serve" as operating bases for active farmers who 

 might use the idle land on other places as supplemental acreages. It is diffi- 

 cult to get any very definite idea of just how much land a farmer might need, 

 especially because of differences in the productivity of land. The inter- 

 viewer's estimate is that the operating farmers of Greenland and Stratham 

 who want more land might use half or more of the available unused land. 

 It was encouraging to find in Greenland and Stratham that a few of the 

 better farms had recently been bought by progressive young farmers. These 

 men constitute a considerable part of the demand for supplemental land. 



The problem of matching farmers 1 land needs against unused land in 

 Hopkinton is somewhat more difficult. The greatest number of places with 

 some idle farm land are in parts of the town where there are few active 

 farmers. Most of the active farms are in or near the north central valley 

 area, while most of the inactive places are in the hills of the south and east 

 parts of the town. Generally speaking, farmers showed interest in either large 

 or small pieces nearby but only in the larger, better pieces when they were 

 a few to several miles away. It seems probable that most of the more attrac- 

 tive pieces could be used by the farmers indicating a need for land (assuming 

 they knew of its availability and could agree on terms), but some of the 

 smaller pieces in more isolated areas, agriculturally speaking, may not be 

 used. 



In a town such as Gilmanton we might expect that a large proportion of 

 the idle places will not be used by present active farmers. The active farmers 

 are too few in relation to the number of idle places, and the island-like areas 

 with some farming are too far apart to expect much of the idle land in one 

 area to be used by farmers from another or for the farmers in these "islands'' 

 to go far out into the predominantly nonagricultural area. There may, how- 

 ever, be more places in Gilmanton on which active farmers could become 

 established either on farm units or on farms to be supplemented by outside 

 land. 



Summary of Chapter III 



Most of the idle places are too small for complete dairy farms and suitable 

 buildings often are not available to a renter on the larger places. Hence most 

 of the idle places could be used only as supplemental land for farmers having 

 their farmsteads elsewhere. 



Owners gave these reasons for not currently renting for active farm use 

 I in order of frequency) : there was no demand for land to rent, theirs was 

 already rented for partial use, they were mistrustful of renters, they might 

 farm in the future, they make partial use of their land currently, their place 

 is for sale, they are undecided about the future of their property, it is in an 

 unsettled estate, it is leased to an inactive farmer, or renting is not worth- 

 while. 



About a third of the owners said they were willing to rent and several 



more might be persuaded by assurance that their particular interests would 



be protected. 



38 



