1836.] 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



545 



clayey, and hard to work; but cultivation perse- 

 veringly and judiciously applied, has rendered it 

 comparatively rich and productive. I was curious 

 to come at the amount of crops by some better au- 

 thority than by conjecture; and one of the princi- 

 pal trustees was kind enough to communicate some 

 facts, which I deem instructive. 



From a piece of grass land of twelve acres near 

 the principal dwellings, they usually, and upon an 

 average, obtain twenty-eight tons of hay per year; 

 and in one year they obtained, accurately ascer- 

 tained, thirty-eight tons of good English hay. 

 This land has been forty years uninterruptedly in 

 grass; it is manured regularly and copiously every 

 second year, and a spike roller is used upon it with 

 great, advantage in the spring. Their crop of oats 

 this year, upon ten acres, averaged sixty bushels 

 to the acre; and they spoke with approbation of 

 the Tartarian, or as some call it, the one-sided or 

 horse-mane oat. They have been many years 

 iu the use of the revolving horse rake, which 

 ihey make with admirable neatness, pointing all 

 the teeth with iron; and for the sake of cleaning 

 the field after the horse rake, they use a hand 

 rake, the head of which is about five feet, long, 

 and which is made fast to the handle by two long 

 iron rods. Where the grass is thin this rake is 

 easily managed by one man, and a great deal of 

 work is done by it. 



Their pig-stye is well worth a visit for the 

 neatness, yes, the neatness of a pig-stye! and the 

 admirable and happy condition of its tenants. 

 Twenty or thirty swine, in clean swept styes, 

 whose average weight at killing time will be be- 

 tween four and five hundred pounds, ; s a sight which 

 Parson Trulliber, in Joseph Andrews, would 

 have looked upon with ecstacy. The. whole care 

 of the swine in one building devolves upon one 

 man, whose feeding tubs, and pails, and dippers, 

 and cloths, and brooms, were as exactly arranged 

 as in any lady's kitchen. The troughs are pro- 

 jected in front of the styes; and are closed by a 

 swinging cover. When they are to be fed, this 

 cover is bolted down to the inner side of the trough, 

 so that it may be cleaned, and the food put in, 

 without any interference from the hungry expec- 

 tants, who are not suffered to come to" the table 

 until every thing is ready; when the swinging co- 

 ver is raised and bolted to the outer edge of the 

 trough, to which they then have ready access. I 

 hope I have made this arrangement intelligible, as 

 it is decidedly the most convenient I have ever 

 seen. Intimacy commonly produces attachment; 

 and I was curious to know of the respectable old 

 man, who took care, if he did not become fond of 

 them, and feel some reluctance to having them kill- 

 ed. Nay! nay! says he, from which I was com- 

 pelled to infer that the poor hog is actually beyond 

 the pale of human sympathies. Why is this? 

 have they no virtues? if they have, they remain 

 to be developed; have they no moral sense? it 

 seems to me, nothing which approaches to it; in 

 this respect they appear to stand almost at the 

 lowest round of the ladder in the animal creation; 

 and last of all, whether they have virtues or moral 

 sentiment or not, they certainly, to use the current 

 Yankee phrase, "they certainly have no man- 

 ners." This seems to exclude them from all 

 courtesy, and to shut up even the compassions of 

 a "friend" towards them. I have only to add 

 Vol. Ill— 69 



that the food is always cooked, and that the Sha- 

 kers consider a portion of rye mixed with corn as 

 very much improving their food. Their expe- 

 rience leads them to the conclusion that they 

 would prefer to buy rye at a quarter of a dollar 

 more a bushel than corn, to mix with corn in equal 

 parts, than to give their swine Indian meal alone. 

 Their dairy is extensive, and in its interior ar- 

 rangement is most admirablefbr its order and neat- 

 ness. Their butter was very superior, and their 

 cheese, I am told by those who can judge of it, 

 equally to be commended. A little contrivance 

 for turning their cheeses, which I cannot, I fear, 

 describe so as to render intelligible, but by which 

 the board on which thecheese is placed is sudden- 

 ly inverted by a spring, was ingenious, and made 

 it easy to manage the largest cheeses. I visited 

 at milking, one of their yards of forty or fifty cows, 

 whose appearance and product were good. In 

 i this part of the country, the season has been uni- 

 I vcrsally unfavorable to dairy products, A few 

 j years since, they obtained an improved Durham 

 short-horn bull, reputed of pure blood, and a de- 

 scendant of Admiral; and a large proportion of 

 their cows are half-blood of his stock; but the. 

 cross has not been attended with any particular ad- 

 vantage in respect to milk. 



They have various contrivances for facilitating 

 labor; among others, by means of a windlass, a 

 swinging beam, and some large iron hooks, they 

 are able to take a load of hay from the cart at one 

 lift, and deposite it in the mow. Their situation 

 afforded no natural water power; but by the erec- 

 tion of a dam between two hills, and turning sev- 

 eral springs, they have formed an artificial reser- 

 voir, or head of water, which affords a supply for 

 all their purposes; and this water is used six times 

 before it reaches the foot of the hill. They have 

 on the stream a thrashing mill, saw mill, corn 

 mill, bark mill, and other works. Their thrashing 

 machine is of their own invention, and has evi- 

 dently furnished the model of many of the ma- 

 chinos for which patents have been taken out. 



They have a very fine vegetable garden, and 

 raise a great amount of seeds for sale, and like- 

 wise a botanical and medicinal garden; and dry 

 and press great, quantities of culinary and medi- 

 cinal herbs, which are disposed of in different 

 parts of the country to advantage. These estab- 

 lishments are also managed with exemplary care. 

 Their flock of sheep is comparatively small, chief- 

 ly of the pure and mixed Merino. The yield of 

 wool is over four pounds, but. it is not washed upon 

 the sheep's back, as they deem it injurious to the 

 sheep. They have a small flock of Dishley or 

 Bakewcll sheep, which they are inclined to dis- 

 pose of; as they consider them as less hardy and 

 not so profitable for their purposes as the Merino. 

 I give these opinions of theirs, which perhaps arc 

 mere prejudices, without comment. 



The Shakers' village at Hancock and Pittsfield, 

 Mass. is a smaller village thanlhatat Canterbury; 

 and their operations are chiefly confined to pro- 

 viding for the subsistence of the family, to some 

 few manufactures, and to the raising of garden 

 seeds. In point of soil, the location is not. very 

 eligible; but there are throughout the whole es- 

 tablishment the same order and neatness, the 

 same admirable, and ingenious use of all the means 

 and powers for facilitating labor that come within 



