MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 133 



Thus on the eighty acres of cleared land, of which the farm 

 consisted, only four cows were kept in summer, and yet thir- 

 teen acres of corn were planted in a year, and the crop was 

 mostly sold off. Since that time, six to eight acres of the land 

 have been cleared for pasture ground, and the farm now con- 

 sists of nearly ninety acres of cleared land. 



Since I first became the owner, I have built and reset one 

 hundred and eighty rods of good stone wall, — sixty on the 

 county road, — fifty on the saw mill road, — thirty between 

 meadow and pasture, — and thirty of faced wall on two sides of 

 the garden, and ten behind the tool house. Much of this wall 

 cost me one dollar a rod. The wall on the county road was so 

 rebuilt as to make the road half a rod wider for the sixty rods 

 in length. The wall on the saw-mill road was much of it 

 made new, and the whole road, (fifty rods long) and three rods 

 wide was laid out by me and given to the public for a town 

 way. 



On this farm I now keep twenty-five head of cattle, sending 

 off eight to ten young cattle to a distant pasture for four 

 months. From this stock and half a dozen hogs, on the aver- 

 age, I make three hundred loads of manure annually. With 

 this I am fast recruiting the farm that was so hard run for five 

 years. 



I now cut forty to fifty tons of hay, and plant four acres of 

 corn and one of potatoes, besides the acre of garden that has a 

 variety of products for family use, — thus manuring six acres of 

 tillage land, in addition to two acres of nursery trees, and the 

 mowing ground. Of corn, I harvest more than sixty bushels 

 an acre. Of rye, the average is ten bushels, as the ground is 

 not manured. I have three acres of this. 



Within the term of four years, six acres of the low meadow 

 ground, that produced nothing but poor meadow hay, have 

 been converted into good English mowing, where two tons are 

 the average crop per acre, in addition to the rowen, — much of 

 this second crop is half equal in quantity to the first. 



Within the same term, five acres of pine swamp land have 

 been cleared and brought to bear good English grass without 

 the aid of manure. One acre of it has been cleared of the 



