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If the hay consumed on the farm nets the farmer five dol- 

 lars per ton, and the average product of an acre is two tons, it 

 will pay a remunerating profit. The average value of mowing 

 land in the County of Franklin will hardly range higher, if 

 we judge from the sales within a few years past, than seventy- 

 five dollars per acre. In some cases very choice spots have 

 brought one hundred and fifty dollars per acre. One hundred 

 dollars are occasionally given for several acres in a piece ; but a 

 good deal is sold for fifty dollars per acre, and this is deemed a 

 fair price for the beautiful meadows, for example, in Gill and 

 Northfield. Seventy-five dollars, therefore, will be deemed a 

 very high average. At two tons to the acre the income might 

 be put down at ten dollars. From this, however, is to be de- 

 ducted the cost of getting the hay. Farmers differ considera- 

 bly in the estimate of this expense. A contract for getting 

 both crops of hay at four dollars per acre, is referred to in page 

 8th of this report. Here the yield was at the rate of four 

 thousand four hundred and ninety-four lbs. per acre ; the cost 

 of getting was then less than two dollars per ton, ^nd- the 

 labor would have been considerably reduced if the crop had 

 been obtained at a single cutting. The hay too in this case 

 was required to be carried more than a mile and a half, and a 

 riVer was to be forded on the way. In another case, where an 

 exact and minute account was kept, not only of the days, but 

 of the hours employed, and on a farm where one hundred tons 

 of hay were cropped in the season, allowing man's labor and 

 board at one dollar and a quarter per day, and the labor of a 

 boy at half-price, the expense averaged one dollar and ninety- 

 two cents per ton. In this case the situation of the land and 

 the season were favorable, while at the same time it will be 

 seen that the price of labor was high, and more so than it 

 would have been if estimated by the month. If then we con- 

 sider the cost of getting hay at two dollars per ton, there will 

 be left six dollars as the net return of an acre of land valued 

 at seventy-five dollars. This would be eight per cent on the 

 value. The after-feed would pay the taxes, and perhaps the 

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