72 



«II)C iTarmcr's iHciiitl)lij lliisitor. 



gjj - w -j iv wmtaime^ 



in his fobtsteps ; nfter liaving liiniself iiracliced 

 his svslerii of rotation for thiriy-five ye;iis, with a 

 consiiiiil inipiovenient in the quality of his hind; 

 whicli indeeil had the ntnnislakahle staiii|) of ft r- 

 lility npon it. 



The liirm contained one; hitn(hpd acres, which 

 was divided as nearly as |i(issil)lu into ei;L'lit fields 

 of twelve and a half acres ; eacli of wiiich was 

 carried llMon";h an eiglit years' rotation. 



Coinniencinf,' with a tallow fielil, he 



1st year. Manured and limed : plont'licd ihjee 

 times, in Way, Jnne and Anjiiist; harrowed and 

 seeded one Imshel and tliree pecks per acre of 

 wheat, which was ploughed under. 



2d. Clover seed sown on wheat in the siJrin;.', 

 six quarts to the acre, which was pastured after 

 harvest. 



3d. Plastered clover in the spring, one bushel 

 per aei-e ; cut in Jinie, and ploughed under sec- 

 ond crop, and seede<l again with wheat. 



4lh. Wheat— same as No. 2. 



5th. Pastured early in the sea.son, ploughed un- 

 der second crop in August, and sowed wheat. 



6th. Wheat again, and rye sowed on stiihhle. 



7th. Sowed clover seed in spring on rye. 



8th. Ploughed under clover sod and planted 

 corn ; and next season roconnn''nced. 



It will he observed that there were every year 

 three fields in wheat, one wiili rye, one with corn, 

 two with clover, ami one fidlow. The produce 

 had one season reached as high as 1,400 bushels 

 of wheat, (100 bushels of corn, and 300 bushels 

 of rye. — Hon. .Morris Longstrealh^s Address. 



CONCORD, N. H., MAY 31, 1847. 



What may be made of our Mother Earth for 

 man's present use ! 



That our crops are not what they might be, is 

 universally admitted. Within the last few years, 

 crops of many kinds have increased immensely. 

 A few years since, fifty bushels of Indian corn, 

 to an .'icre, was deemed a large crop. One hun- 

 dred have been frecpienily produced. Thirty 

 bushels of wheat has heretoi'ure been deenjed 

 more than an ordinaiy yield. Fifty is now not 

 iincoinmon. 1 have known sixty, and neatly sev- 

 enty, to have been grown, and over a large (iirm, 

 the crop to have averaged fifty-six bushels. Thir- 

 ty tons of carrots per acre is the ordinary crop of 

 a fiirmer within my knowledge ; and I have on 

 niy talile before me the authenticated stateirient 

 ol eighty-eight tons of inangefl-wurtzel to the 

 acre. I am willing to admit llnit these are rare 

 instances. Some of them may be considered as 

 single instances; hut it is obvious that one well 

 established case is as good as a thousand in 

 denionstraling the practicability of that which is 

 claimed to be done. — Boston Cullivalor. 



Extravagant statements are often made on pa- 

 per of crops produced ; and no doubt nnich al- 

 lowance ought to he made for the enthusiasm felt 

 by the farmer who witnesses great restdls from 

 his eft'orls. 'l"he editor of the Visitor acknowl- 

 edges himself to be of that enthusiastic class 

 disposed to give all its value to the soil : his en- 

 thusiasm has grown into that state which looks 

 ujx)!! all oin- soil as valuable. The talk about 

 raising one hundred bushels ami more of corn to 

 the single acre is thought by many farmers of 

 practical good sense to lie extravagant. We do 

 not doubt this has been done, and that it may be 

 done again. Our friend Cato at Northfield did 

 this last year: the maimer in which he did it 

 with the result was given in the Visitor, lie is 

 a lawyer, and fjirmiiig is not the trade by which 

 he lives. Most farmers would treat his experi- 

 ment as an extravagance wiiich they would think 

 they could not afford — they must begin and car- 

 ry it through with capital and labor, the return ol 

 which they could not expect to realize in the crop 



on the |.rice of rent, until at length he -advanced 



to the six per cent, income upon the price of five 

 hundred dollars the acre. The owner offering to 

 sell at that price, some five or six years ago the 

 land was purchased at five hnmlred dollars the 

 acre as the properly of the Stale for the use of 

 the Hospital. 



Since the publication of the last inindier of the 

 Visitor, we made out of Boston a basly excursion 

 through that part of West Cambridge where our 

 ancestors and contemporaries of the same name 

 have lived for the last two hundred years. We 

 speak in no extravagant terms when we say that 

 there are, not single acres, but tens and hundreds 

 of acres in that one neighborhood wliieli, from 

 cultivation, give an annual profit higher than the 

 use of five hundred dollars to the acre. It is 

 truly astonishing to witness how much art may 

 be made to aid nature in the productions of the 

 soil. The cold east winds near the seaboard had 

 kept vegetation quite as backward .'is it is with us 

 in the interior seventy miles northerly: the elms, 

 the oak.s, and the apple trees were hardly as for- 

 ward there as here. Yet by contrivances the 

 West Cambridge market farmers had their veg- 

 etables — some of them growing in the open air 

 ready for market. Lettuce set forward under 

 cheap glass coverings had for weeks been pro- 

 duced in abundance. Potatoes were above 

 ground, and peas nearly rcatly for blow in the 

 open air: fall sown onions would soon be ready 

 for the market. A method of sowing these Wiis 

 shown to have been very sm-ceseful, of which 

 we had never before been apprised. One pound 

 of seed is thickly strewn upon a very few square 

 feet, where the onions grow through the first sea- 

 son — they are round and of less size than a com- 

 mon walnut. These carefully transplanted in the 

 early spring soon become as the most thrifty 

 growing bottomed onions. Among other novel- 

 ties upon the premises of the West Cambridge 

 Hills, on the iiOtli May, was more than an acre of 

 cabbages transplanted and well under way for 

 heads in Jnne and July. The stimulants put into 

 these grounds with deep trenching works won- 

 ders upon them. 



The science of the West Cambridge farmers 

 has come not from books or other agricullural 

 works in print, hut from their own matured 

 knowledge gained by experience. It is that 

 science which is practical, and is seldom mista- 

 ken in its results. As an instance we remarked 

 the tomatoes which are easily stricken down by 



of a single year. A fiirmer in debt is apt to think 

 he makes his condilion worse if he expends any 

 thing for the benefit of his land beyond what is 

 returned to him in the first crop; and from this 

 habit of treating land comes the skinning process 

 which in the end makes the land good for noth- 

 ing or worn out. In relation to overrating crops 

 upon the ground : our neighbor White of the 

 Boston Express took us last fall to see an acre of 

 corn upon his Bog road tiirni not fiir from this 

 village: the land had the benefit of rich stable 

 manure from the street which he has in abund- 

 ance. The ears of corn were very large — the 

 hills stood alwiit Uiree feet jipart, and there was 

 great weight of corn on every hill. Our enthu- 

 asm led us to juilge the piece would turn out eigh- 

 ty or ninety bushels of shelled corn : Mr. White 

 thought it would be a large crop if there were 

 sixty bushels. Since our return fiom the South 

 this Spring be inlbrms us that the corn shelled 

 upon this ground was over a hundred bushels! 



It wouhl be an almost general 0|iiiiinn that any 

 man was ii fool who paid five hundred dollars an 

 acre for land for cultivation : yet we know there 

 are cases where single acres of cultivated land 

 pay a clear profit, from their use alone after pay- 

 ing all taxes and expenses, of more than thirty 

 dollars the year: other instances of cultivated 

 ap.ple orchards and fruits pay more to the acre 

 than sixty dollars. These make the intrinsic 

 value of the acre five hundred and one thousand 

 dollars. Yet the prevalent opinion of farmers 

 generally is that farming, if it gives any profit at 

 all, yields less than six per cent, on an average 

 cost of ten, fifteen and twenty dollars to the acre. 

 All this is conceivable and easy of illustration. 



Five years ago there accidentally fell into our 

 hands a lot of l<ind one mile and half out of the 

 village at the price of one hundreil dollars, or 

 ten dollars the acre: a part of this land had been 

 cleared of pine wood and had grown two crops 

 of rye. as much as was supposed it could hear 

 until it had rested four or five years — another 

 part of the land was grown over to birch bushes, 

 with now and then a pine. To have paid out 

 one hiindred dollars for this land might be con- 

 sidered a bad bargain : we considered it a had 

 bargain to let it stand still. We went to work 

 and cleared it : we threw round it a cheap spik- 

 ed board lence. We have obtained crops from 

 the latid every year ; and we think the croi>s have 

 at least covered the expenses of the labor of 

 clearing and cultivation with the manure and 

 fence. The ten acres of land, with manuring and the cold : the first sowing had been transplanteil 



subsoiling, are now all planted in potatoes. The 

 land is all there; and if any man would give us 

 to-day, allowing us the taking away of the crop 

 of potatoes whi( h we anticipate may be worth 

 all of fifly dollars to the acre in the field, the 

 price of fifty dollars per acre for the land, we 

 would refuse it. Bad and expensi\eas is om- 

 management of land from necessity, we think we 

 have made a better use of this pine |ilain lot than 

 we should have done to let it rest. 



As to the bighiM- profits llinn six per cent, upon 

 (iirms at a valuation much higher than their pres- 

 ent estimation, we have demonstratiim upon dem- 

 onstration. The Massachusetts Insane Hospital, 

 formerly without, but now siiridimded by, the 

 beaiitifiil and flourishing village of Worcester, at 

 first had oidy a small patch of l.ind. That excel- 

 lent practical man, Doctor Woodward, Ibuiid il 

 useful to cultivate more than their own land, and 

 commenced an addition by hiring for a trillc an 

 adjacent lot. As lie raised the value of this lot 

 by the better cultivation, its owner began to rise 



into pots in the shape of a loaf of bread 

 with the ground adhering. As soon ns the open 

 field could be in readiness to receive them, we 

 have the loaf of soil with the plant in the centre 

 ready to be deposited in its iiltiinate place for 

 growing, nearly ready for blowing without inter 

 ruption at all in the growth until the tomatoes 

 shall arrive at |)erfcction full six weeks before 

 they could have been grown in the common 

 method. 



Much of the grounds used for early crops, as 

 peas, potatoes and cabbages, go to a second crop 

 of something else in the same season. These 

 lands become year after jear so productive that 

 a large number of hands for a small quantity ol 

 land are necessary to cultivate the ground and 

 save and dispose of the products. But the sale 

 <d' the ground at five hundred dollars the acie for 

 ilic^c irnproveil garden lands would be no chject 

 to their owners -if they had not other grmnds 

 that may be treated in the same way. 



The trifling circumstance of u brancli niboad 



|Jiti*#Uiiw. 



