FARMS. 37 



over witli compost, I use a fine tooth harrow, which breaks the 

 knobs and loosens the surface, giving the compost a better 

 chance at tlie roots of the grass. My crop of grass is usually 

 heav}', producing, unless affected by drought, two to three tons 

 per acre. Managing my land in this way, I am enabled to keep 

 it in good condition, always getting large crops at compara- 

 tively small expenditures. I consider my land worth from 

 fifteen to twenty per cent, more now, than when I commenced 

 this system of culture. 



My barn is one hundred feet long, by forty-two wide, and 

 cost me $1,700. This enables me to house all my crops, 

 including my corn fodder, which, when properly cured, I con- 

 sider of very great importance, and worth to me, $6 per ton, 

 in keeping my young stock. The balance of my farm is in 

 pasture, containing forty acres, and is enclosed with stone wall, 

 and post and rail fence. I have this divided in two nearly 

 equal parts by a fence running through the middle. I pasture 

 only one-half at a time, changing from one to the other as they 

 eat it down. With the assistance of a sprinkling of plaster 

 in the spring, this keeps in fine condition, twenty or thirty head 

 of young cattle. 



I sell only such parcels of my crops as I cannot feed out to 

 my stock advantageously, preferring to return to the soil all I 

 take from it. My plan is, in raising or purchasing stock, to 

 select none but the choicest breeds ; this enables me, in selling, 

 to obtain satisfactory prices, and makes farming a pleasant and 

 profitable recreation. 



Springfield. 



Edmund Ashley's Statement. 



The farm which I offer for examination by your commit- 

 tee, contains sixty acres of rolling, uneven surface, embracing 

 high gravelly knolls, and descending from these points, to low 

 swamp muck beds, or to the margin of running brooks, leaving 

 but a small portion that is level. This profile will exhibit 

 these margins as naturally wet and spongy; and as productive, 

 in its natural state, of little else than the coarse, sour grass 

 and herbage, indigenous to such locations. The higher portions 

 of this farm are evidently an argillaceous soil, well filled with 



