LAND UTILIZATION IN NEW HAMPSHIRE ' 



Table 5. Distribution of summer home properties 

 by amount of farming activity 



Number Per cent 



Amount of farming Water- Open Water- Open 



front country front country 



None 118 52 98 33 



Small home garden 2 17 2 11 



Hay cut or pasture used by others 46 30 



Garden and hay cut or pasture used by others — 24 15 



Other agricultural activity* 17 11 



Total 120 156 100 100 



* Includes 4 acres of vegetables, 650 fruit trees, and 17 animal units of livestock. 



Summer residents usually are satisfied to have fields kept clear with- 

 out cost or income to themselves, and farmers are glad to have a cheap 

 source of roughage, despite low yields and inferior quality. The hay 

 is cut annually until it is too run out to make further cutting profitable. 

 Then the mowing is discontinued or is done as a favor, to retain the good 

 will of the summer people so they will buy farm products. When the 

 farmers are no longer interested in the hay, keeping the fields cleared be- 

 comes an expense which most summer residents do not care to assume and 

 often they cannot get this work done during the farmers' busy months. 

 Run-out hay fields on summer properties rarely have been reseedecl. 



Two Sanbornton dairy farmers had 12 acres of corn and other cul- 

 tivated crops on adjoining summer places and were operating the land 

 within their regular rotations. Three farmers in the same town were 

 renting pastures from summer residents; all were on properties that had 

 been farmed up to the time of transfer to summer use less than five years 

 earlier. Neglected fences hinder pasture renting on many lands. With 

 the exception of the dairyman who rented land to cultivate, local farmers 

 have not made long-term agreements with summer residents for the use 

 of land and have undertaken no permanent improvements. It has been 

 simply a case of getting all the remaining benefits from former invest- 

 ments and then abandoning the land. 



Some farmers could improve their situations by making greater use 

 of land on nearby summer homes, but the declining number of operating 

 farms and the increasing number of summer homes in each town mean 

 more idle land than operating farmers can use. Farmers thus have been 

 able to choose the land best suited to their individual needs. As the 

 number of farmers who own teams has decreased, summer residents have 

 found it increasingly difficult to hire anyone to keep their fields cleared. 



Open country residents have carried on a little farming or followed 

 simple conservation practices. Nearly one-third of the owners raised 

 vegetables for home use, but the total acreage was small. A few had set 

 out plantings of young trees to replace hurricane losses. Others had 

 reseeded or applied commercial fertilizers to run-out fields, thinned for- 

 est stands, or cleaned up hurricane slash (Table 6). Only one owner in 

 nine kept livestock or harvested more than the produce from a small 



