MY FARM OF EDGEWOOD 



long to spade husbandry alone, so overstock 

 their gardens with confused and intercepting 

 lines of fruit shrubbery, and perennial herbs, 

 as to forbid any thorough action of the plough. 

 By the simple device, however, of giving to 

 the garden the shape of a long parallelogram, 

 and arranging its trees, shrubbery, and walks, 

 in lines parallel with its length, and by estab- 

 lishing easy modes of ingress and egress at 

 either end, the plough will prove a great econo- 

 mizer; and under careful handling, will leave 

 as even a surface, and as fine a tilth as follows 

 the spade. I make this suggestion in the in- 

 terest of those farmers who are compelled to 

 measure narrowly the cost of tillage, and who 

 cannot indulge in the amateur weakness of 

 wasted labor. 



I have provided also a leafy protection for 

 this garden against the sweep of winds from 

 the northwest : northward, this protection con- 

 sists of a wild belt of tangled growth — sumacs, 

 hickories, cedars, wild-cherries, oaks — sepa- 

 rated from the northern walk of the garden, by 

 a trim hedge-row of hemlock-spruce. This 

 tangled belt is of a spontaneous growth, and 

 has shot up upon a strip of the neglected pas- 

 ture-land, from which, seven years since, I 

 trenched the area of the garden. Thus it 



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