MIDDLESEX SOCIETY. 129 



The first year I raised forty bushels of corn, fifty of potatoes, 

 ten of oats, and eight of wheat. My wheat crop was so small 

 that I have never attempted to cultivate any but once since, 

 and then it proved a failure ; I have altogether abandoned the 

 cultivation of it, as the soil seems uncongenial to success. I 

 also made ten barrels of cider, but had no grafted fruit ; my hay 

 enabled me to winter ten head of cattle. 



To show the increase of my productions, and of course the 

 improvement of my land, I will state their average amount for 

 the last two years, and the probable result for the present year. 

 In 1848 and '49, I wintered twenty-nine head of cattle, and 

 shall do the same the present year from my own farm. In 

 1848 and '49, my average amount of Indian corn was one 

 hundred and eighty-three bushels, and if my crop is not dam- 

 aged by early frost, I shall have not short of two hundred bush- 

 els the present year. In 1848 and '49, my average amount of 

 potatoes was one hundred and thirty bushels ; this year I can 

 make no calculation on the return, on account of the disease to 

 which they have been subjected for several seasons past, and 

 which threatens a greater destruction now than ever before. In 

 1848 and '49, I raised from ninety to one hundred bushels of 

 oats, and shall have an equal amount this year ; in the three 

 years past I have also raised yearly, five bushels of white 

 beans, five cart loads of pumpkins, one hundred bushels of tur- 

 nips, fifty bushels of peaches, twenty barrels of selected apples, 

 besides cherries and currants. 



My lands have been improved by the following process ; my 

 barn is suificiently large to shelter from fifty to sixty horses 

 and cattle ; under the buildings appropriated to this purpose, is 

 a cellar seventy-three feet long and thirty feet wide, in which 

 all my barn manure is deposited as it accumulates. For the 

 last three years I have kept in this cellar, during the winter, 

 from five to twenty swine, which have so pulverized the manure 

 as to prevent all undue heat. During this period, the barn and 

 long manures have amounted to two hundred loads a year. In 

 the spring I have spread one hundred loads, in its green state, 

 upon my tillage land, and ploughed it in previously to planting ; 

 the remaining one hundred loads I have removed to manure 

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