22 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



MANAGEMENT OF FAEMS. 



From an Address before the Berkshire Agricultural Society. 



BY EICHARD LATHEES. 



The farmer, in spreading the manures from his stable, per- 

 forms, perhaps, one of the less dignified operations of his 

 calling ; but his olfactories are subjected to but the same 

 ordeal from the escape of the ammonia in the dung, as the 

 chemist is subjected to when the same gas is generated under 

 professional operations in the laboratory. 



Lands in this county, to be made profitable, must be worked 

 economically, — not as gardens or English parks, but well- 

 drained, cleanly-cultivated farms, with plenty of fertilizers 

 used to increase the crop as an economical way to utilize 

 labor. The cost of planting and tilling and reaping the crop 

 is the same without as with manure, and the profit consists in 

 a larger yield. One ton of hay to the acre may yield a profit 

 of $5, but two tons very little increases the cost of labor, and 

 we have $20 profit on the acre instead of $5. A field has six 

 acres of wet land, producing a kind of sour grass, only fit for 

 bedding. A tile-drain, costing $10 to $20, renders it fit to 

 produce ten tons of timothy, worth $150, — for these wet lands 

 I have found to be the most fertile when drained. A ten-acre 

 lot is mowed, year after year, by careless farmers, leaving an 

 increasing margin of weeds and briars around the fences, till 

 the lot is practically reduced to eight acres, and the hay-crop 

 reduced in the same ratio. An economical farmer mows off 

 the weeds and grubs up the briars, top-dresses the whole with 

 bone-dust or other fertilizers, which adds to his next year's 

 crops such additional yield as to pay for the labor and the 



