MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 127 



I keep constantly on hay, supplying him with muck, litter and 

 similar materials, in an old lean-to, which I clean out but once 

 a year ; here I make twenty-five to thirty loads of excellent 

 manure ; as I have no barn cellar, I take all the liquid manure 

 from my cattle in pails, and deposit it around the roots of my 

 fruit trees. I keep my hog and barn-yards well supplied 

 with muck and other materials, to absorb and save all the ma- 

 nure. * 



I hire from fifty to seventy-five dollars worth of labor a year, 

 doing mechanical and other work myself, separate from carrying 

 on my farm, more than will meet this expense. 



Acton, Sept. 2, 1850. 



L. H. Hildreth's Statement. 



My farm contains nearly one hundred acres, eleven of which 

 is woodland and ten a brook meadow ; the latter yields but lit- 

 tle hay, but from part of it I gather yearly from twenty to forty 

 bushels of cranberries. I purchased the farm in the spring of 

 1843, and was obliged to mortgage it for $4100, nearly the 

 whole purchase money. As the farm was much run down, I 

 found that to pay $250 interest money yearly, was absorbing 

 the income ; but after the first year, in which I went behind 

 hand that amount, I have done it every year, besides paying 

 about $600 of the principal, and making permanent improve- 

 ments on the farm to the amount of $1500. 



I early made up my mind to use on the farm all the hay I 

 raised, and this I have done for the seven years since I bought, 

 and it has been constantly improving. I then kept, summer and 

 winter, only seven cows and a horse ; last winter I kept twenty- 

 nine head of cattle, including four oxen and three horses. I have 

 laid from one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty rods of 

 heavy wall, part double and part single ; nearly all the stones for 

 which, I have taken from the surface or dug out of my plough 

 lands. My barn, twenty-eight by eighty-eight feet, I have raised 

 up four feet and made a cellar under it, at an expense of $250. I 

 compost my stable manure, by mixing in the cellar about two 

 loads of soil to one of manure, for wet land, and the same propor- 

 tion of peat mud for dry soils. Of this, I applied to my cultivated 

 crops last spring, two hundred and seven cart loads, of thirty- 



