166 



®l)c JTarmcr's ilToittl)Ii) Visitor. 



er.upon the common roads, and steam power 

 upon the railroads, is all this. And there is no 

 reason why a lot of land along the Meniriiack 

 river upon the railroad, from fifty to seventy 

 and a hundred miles out of Boston, should not 

 be as profitable for improvement and cultivation 

 as a lot of the same quality and extent off the 

 railroad seven miles out of Boston. 



1 do not know that I can succeed in showing 

 tliat the investment of capital and labor, in bring- 

 ing up the lands of New England to tliejr high- 

 est production, presents at least equal induce- 

 ments to the invesifiieiita in new lands at the 

 west, possessing the temptation of a greater vir- 

 gin fertility: the highly successful example of 

 the young farmer to whom I have alluded — his 

 present independent position in regard to prop- 

 erty, from sinall beginning as the result of 

 about ten year's labor, might be brought in com- 

 parison with that of the most fortunate young 

 man, who purchased lands and set himself down 

 as a farmer ten years ago, in the most inviting 

 parts of Michigan or Illinois. 



In the cultivation of all judicions crops the 

 prospect now is, that the New England farmer 

 cannot produce a surplus that need be wasted 

 or become of no value on his lands. The new 

 facilities of intercommunication are every where 

 bringing to a near level the value of the heavy 

 products heretofore unsaleable: two or three 

 railroads, across the New England states from 

 east to west, will at the most distant points inake 

 even the potato crop valuable for expojtation. 

 The demand for potatoes in the six northern 

 States, for shipping, will preserve to them, in 

 seasons of the greatest plenty when free from 

 rot, their fall market value at our own doors. 



Raising of cattle may be thought here to be a 

 business that will be unable to meet competition 

 from the West, where cattle are fed abroad in 

 the field nearly the whole year. But svith all 

 the severity of manual labor, that requires the 

 cutting and curing of hay for cattle feed five and 

 six months in a year, it is my belief that oiu' 

 carefid nurturing and tending will give us the 

 greater net profit in raising cattle. Our moun- 

 tain lands not adapted to the plough are all ex- 

 cellent for jiasturage in their natural state of 

 clearing. When not over-fed, these pastures 

 need not deteriorate : with clover-seed scattered 

 on the snow in early spring followed by 

 gronud plaster at the rate of half a bushel to the 

 acre in May or June, the most of our pastmage 

 hu\ds may be easily renovated. But see what 

 an advantage in raising cattle we have over the 

 distant States at the West. Kentucky is a great 

 cattle raising Slate: for this business the soil of 

 that State is well adapted. The whole Slate is 

 underlaid with limestone, over which the rich 

 blue glass springs spontaneously. A gentleman 

 informed me that in the vicinity of Lexington 

 lands bore an average price of one hundred dol- 

 lars the acre, on which the business of raising 

 cattle for the market was (nnsued. These cattle 

 are seldom or ever worked as oxen— they are 

 fed and kepi until lour or five years of age, and 

 then either slaughtered at home or driven east- 

 erly, to the cities of the Atlantic coast, where 

 they are purchased and kept by graziers until 

 they are fattened fur the l)Utcher. Mr. Skinner, 

 editor of the Alonthly Journal of Agriculture, 

 inibrms us, that in the month of May of the 

 present year. General Thomas Shelby of Ken- 

 tucky sent four hundred cattle to the New Voik 

 market, which took eighty days to travel there, 

 being eight hundred miles at ten miles a day j 



and at an expense of $6000, or $15 a head on 

 the road : he expected the gross sales to be 

 .f32,000 or $80 per head. The transport of cat- 

 tle over the railroads may be cxpiicted to les- 

 sen the expense of freighting cattle one half; 

 and the saving of wear and tear of flesh while 

 on the way will nearly equal the whole expense. 

 But suppose it costs by railroad seven dollars 

 and a half, instead of fifteen dollars per head, to 

 bring bullocks from Kentucky to New York, 

 still the New England States will have an ad- 

 vantage at these rates which may forever assure 

 our mountain farmers who graze cattle that 

 they need fear no competition from the west. 

 In the month of August I met a drove of some 

 one hundred and fifty fat cattle with a like nn'm- 

 ber of sheej) in Medfurd, on the way to the 

 Brighton market : coming in that way 1 supposed 

 them to be a drove from the State of Maine, 

 but waiting for the cars at Medford depot, the 

 keeper informed me that they had just arrived 

 there in twenty-four cars, having come down 

 ninety-five miles from Franklin in New Haiiq)- 

 shire the afternoon and night previous. They 

 were driven by Messrs. Miller, Stevens and Dur- 

 gin, and had been collected in the towns near 

 Franklin. The cost of transport of these cattle did 

 not exceed one dollar [ler himdred miles each — 

 about one half the expense of the Kentucky 

 drover for an equal distance: the profits to the 

 railroad for doing this business were probably as 

 much as $125; twenty-five dollars being enough 

 to cover the expense of the bands employed 

 fuel and all other items saving only the interest 

 or the cost of the road. 



If the New England farmer can raise cattle 

 to advantage, to be sold as beef in the market, 

 and successfully conq)ete with the richest coun- 

 tries at the west, how great nnist be the induce- 

 ment to go into the business of growing for the 

 markets those articles of necessary consumption 

 with which the west can never supply us ? 



In the production of vegetables and fruits up- 

 on our cultivated fields, and in raising and keep- 

 ing milch cows for the producing of fresh milk 

 and butter for the market, there can be no com- 

 petition to prevent these being as good an in- 

 vestment for labor and capital as can be .made. 



Of the vegetable productions I will inention 

 the potato. It is possible that this almost ne- 

 cessary article for human sustenance may meet 

 with the fate of the present year — that it may 

 become so uncertain a crop as to discourage its 

 growth. I believe, however, that means may be 

 found for averting the rot in potatoes. Generally 

 a potato crop at twenty-five cents the bushel 

 will give the fanner a greater gain for one acre 

 than the bust |)rolits fjom t«o acres of Imlian 

 corn at one dollar the bushel. 



For fresh vegetables, hitherto supplied by the 

 market farmers near by om* principal market 

 towns, and in the sale of which himdreds of them 

 have made ihemselves indepcmlcnt, the demand 

 will he ccjual to any increase of their growth 

 that may be made in the interior of th(! country. 

 Already are these, carried to market fifty and a 

 hundred miles upon the railroatls with no sen- 

 sible discouragement to the near-by marketers. 

 Land (or vegetable cultivation, from three to ten 

 miles out of Boston, was never so high in piiee 

 as it now is, with the knowledge that the same 

 cidtivation has been tinduill be extcmled into 

 the country: from three himdred to five hundred 

 dollars the aero is a conmion price paid for lands 

 iliero with the intention to devote them to veg- 

 etable ami fruit production. 



Of the fruits, I will only instance the apple. — 

 No part of the world can successfully compete 

 with New England in the production of this 

 best of all fruits. There is a flavor and stability 

 in our apples that cannot be fouinl in apples 

 produced further south or in European countries. 

 In no way can the farmer do belter than to de- 

 vote a few acres exclusively to t!ic laising of 

 this fruit. The supply of the belter kind of ap- 

 ples can never be greater than the demand. Of 

 the surplus summer and tall apples, as well as 

 vegetables, whole cargoes may be transmitted in 

 ice to the southern ports and even to the West 

 India islands and South-America in iheir fresh 

 stale. But winter apples are carried to Europe 

 and even to Asia as a fruit more acceptable than 

 the orange or any other tropical production. — 

 Apple orchards frojn the seeds, budded to the 

 choicest fruit, may be made to bear in ten years. 

 Until they are brought to bearing, the land by 

 carefiil cultivation may be devoted to other crops. 

 The apple trees shoidd not only be muimred and 

 ctdtivated, divested of caterpillars and other 

 vermin, but carefully prolecied against the in- 

 roads of cattle. Give the trees a good chance, 

 and they will grow aud bear in half the lime 

 that has been usual where the tree has been left 

 to take care of itself in a common orchard mea- 

 dow. In some neighborhoods of Boston famil- 

 iar to me when a child, the orchards of choice 

 apples at this time cover the ground like a for- 

 est, where I have seen the land more sterile than 

 the poorest pastmes of the interior. From the 

 fruit of these orchards their owners realize 

 year after year a not profit equal to at least the 

 average of a hundred dollars to the acre, as their 

 carefully picked apples seldom bear a price less 

 than two dollars the barrel. The common esti- 

 mate of the value per acre of a thrifiy orcharil 

 ot Baldwin or russet apples in full bearing is one 

 thousand dollars. If the farmer in the interior 

 will make an investment of twenty-five dollars 

 in a year in the purchase of one hundred trees 

 of the better winter apple fruit, tiaus|)lanting 

 them five years from the seed at the distance of 

 forty feet each way from the other, — aud pin'- 

 sue the same business ten years successively, 

 devoting the attention, say of an average of the 

 labor of one person one hour in a day, in the 

 working season, to the protection of the growi;)g 

 trees with a slight expense I'ur mineral or vege- 

 table manures such as the trees may reijuire — 

 he may safely calcillate more than remuneration 

 for all his labor and extra expense in the last 

 three years of the ten ; and that the succeeding 

 ten years will give him u clear net income ami 

 profit grealer than all the income be can gather 

 from his whole farm in its present slate. The 

 time of ten years to those of us advanced in life 

 may seem too long to enable us jiersoiially to re- 

 alize thu benefit of setting out ami* growing 

 young orchards : upon the farm where 1 was born 

 — in a field where since my childhood recollec- 

 tion no Iruii apple trees stood — I have seen the 

 man of eighty-four ycMrs mounted upon his lad- 

 der and carefiilly picking winter apples I'or bar- 

 relling, from trees some of which he had set 

 out and grafted with his own hands at the ago 

 of scvenly years. 



Within the lust ten years the business of agri- 

 culture as you will perceive has become almost 

 a passion, not to leave me even while deprived of 

 that little physical ability which would enable 

 me personally to engage in its pursuit. As a 

 friend to the prosperity and growth of the coun- 

 try, 1 had always looked upon this calling as the 



