MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 137 



planting it on the same ground, two years in succession ; pre- 

 ferring potatoes, the second year. For potatoes, using the same 

 quantity of manure as for corn, furrowing it out only one way, 

 dropping the potatoes about a foot apart, in drills ; by this 

 method, I have from one hundred and seventy-five to two hun- 

 dred bushels to the acre. I plant from five to six acres a year. 

 I have an asparagus bed, the produce of which amounts to be- 

 tween forty and fifty dollars a year. Also, a strawberry bed, 

 consisting of about a quarter of an acre, yielding from seventy- 

 five to one hundred dollars a year. I have three hundred peach 

 trees, one hundred and fifty of which are in fruit this year ; 

 probably between two and three hundred bushels will be ob- 

 tained from them this year, worth from three to four hundred 

 dollars ; two hundred and forty engrafted apple trees, averaging 

 one hundred barrels a year. Also, one hundred quince bushes, 

 producing about ten bushels a year. I have forty-two Bartlett 

 pear trees, part of them in a bearing state, and thirty Green 

 Gage plum trees, but have not much profit from pear or plum 

 trees at present, they being young. My method of cultivating 

 fruit, is to keep the ground tilled ; planting, when the trees are 

 small, either corn, potatoes, or beans, and manuring freely. I 

 keep upon my farm, eight cows, one yoke of oxen, and one 

 horse, during the summer season. In winter, seventeen head 

 of cattle, selling my milk the year round, which amounts to 

 three or four hundred dollars a year. The labor upon my farm, 

 for the last eight years, has been performed by myself and son, 

 excepting one man through haying, which takes from twenty 

 to twenty-five days. In addition to this, seventy days of my 

 time is taken up in going to market. 



Eight years since, I commenced reclaiming about ten acres 

 of meadow land, producing only sour kinds of grass, beaver 

 gray, and buckhorn. I commenced upon about three acres, by 

 carting on yellow loam, after digging a ditch around, and 

 through the centre, — covering it three inches deep, and carting 

 on compost manure, and seeding it down in the fall. I very 

 soon found, that this method was not a good one ; the loam 

 making a hard body, it held the surface water, by that means 

 killing out the grass. In a few years, I found it necessary to 

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