306 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



In such " middling" farmers, so thriftj-^ and so independent, no country in the 

 world abounds as docs New-England. The best s)'^stenis, however, may be car- 

 ried to extremes ; and, truth to tell, there are defects in the domestic arrange- 

 ments and economy of these farmers in the "Free States," which the cause of 

 truth, and the duty of impartial inquirers after it, require to be noticed, and to 

 which we now can only incidentally refer — intending, if not presently, on some 

 future occasion, to speak of them more at length and more explicitly. Suffice it 

 here to say that, in their eagerness to accumulate, and to make everything tell 

 as much, or more, by saving than by making, labors too onerous, and cares too 

 multiplied, are thrown upon the good houscivife ; while the children are stinted 

 in their education from the time that the value of tlieir labor in the field can be 

 counted with precision. 



Well are we aware how we expose ourselves to resentful animadversions for 

 what is here hazarded, without meaning any particular application, much less to 

 the case in hand. We know that such a charge should be followed at once by 

 specification, and sustained by argument, lest a wound, that might now be as- 

 suaged, be left to fester in proud and jealous minds ; but, leaving ourselves for 

 the present in the hands of the skillful and accomplished Physician of the Hart- 

 ford (Ct.) Infirmary or "Retreat" for the Insane, so renowned for its excellent 

 management, we must proceed to our already long-neglected purpose of giving 

 some account of a breakfast-table conversation, in September last, with Mr. B. 

 A. Hall, whose farm and residence are in that beautiful valley which is over- 

 looked from the southern piazza of the principal hotel at Lebanon Springs — as 

 it is, indeed, from any one of the hundred eminences which there command a 

 view of some thousand acres (including the Shaker village), all checkered with 

 numerous well-cultivated little farms, and limited by a serrated line of well-de- 

 fined mountain scenery — the whole scene reminding one of the famous " valley 

 of Abyssinia." 



Mr. Hall's farm consists of 200 acres of land — 20 in wood, and ISO arable. Of 

 these, about 50 are kept constantly under the plow — the residue being in grass. 

 His staples are butter and pork. Of the fomier he sells about 4,000 pounds a 

 year, and of the latter some 15,000 pounds. 



Those of our patrons who take this journal for the sake of reading it, as we 

 would fain persuade ourselves all of them do, may remember that, with the aid 

 of a certain Mr. Nemo, an account has been given of a visit made by the Editor 

 of The Farmers' Library, last summer, in company with Col. F. W. Pickens, of 

 South Carolina, to Col. Chapman, the President of an Agricultural Society, near 

 Saratoga Springs. By the aid of that same good and ever present friend Nefno, 

 will we endeavor now to relate what was learned on this occasion of Mr. Hall, 

 as to the management of his farm of 200 acres. The sketch must, however, be 

 quite imperfect, and can only assume the ill-arranged form of the skeleton of 

 notes and remembrances of an unstudied catechism on the one side, and olf-hand 

 responses on the other. But, even such as it is, it may prove to have some inter- 

 est, especially for our friends in the South, who are wont to ask, " How do these 

 northern people contrive to hire their force — to rear and educate their families, 

 keep out of debt, and even lay up something out of their wee-wee farms at the 

 end of the year ?" Well, to proceed : 



Having heard the common rumor of IMr. Hall's well-conducted dairy establish- 

 ment and piggery, and that he was going ahead and improving his land at the 

 same time, riding by one afternoon at twilight, Ave halted, "hitched" our horse 



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