COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 17 



become relatively so dear, that New England offers advantages 

 to sheep- and cattle-breeders. One acre of New Hampshire hill- 

 side pasture is worth three acres of grazing lands of western 

 Kansas, Colorado or Montana. There is plenty of water, so that 

 one western problem does not exist. Fifty men with whom I 

 talked on my journey agreed that New England is a good cattle 

 country, but no one knew why more cattle are not raised. I be- 

 lieve that the two chief obstacles are : first, the difficulties of pro- 

 viding winter forage, and, second, the small size of the average 

 farm. 



When a man owns a farm of from fifty to one hundred acres, 

 he must plow some of it if he expects to make a living from it, 

 but plowing these steep and rocky hillsides is ruinous, for the 

 rains wash away more fertility than the crops extract. But no 

 farmers ' family can live from the produce of so small a farm if it 

 is used only for pasturing. If the farms ran from 400 to 600 

 acres each, enough stock could be pastured on each one to sup- 

 port in comfort the average farmer's family. There would still 

 remain, however, the question of winter forage, for these hillsides 

 can not even produce hay to advantage that is, hay-making ma- 

 chinery can not be used. Profitable stock-raising on a farm of 

 this kind would therefore be limited by the amount of level 

 land, relatively free from stones, upon which hay-making ma- 

 chinery could be used. 



But there is another possibility. In Europe, wherever stock- 

 breeding has developed on a large scale, cattle are driven from 

 the hills to the valleys in the fall and from the valleys to the hills 

 in the spring. The owners of pasture lands in the hills and 

 mountains buy their stock in the spring, pasture them during 

 the summers, and sell them in the fall to the feeders in the val- 

 leys ; or the feeders in the valleys drive their stock in the spring 

 to the hills and mountains for summer pasturage and bring them 

 back in the fall to be wintered on the forage grown on the valley 

 land. The next fifty years may see the development of a con- 

 siderable industry of this kind in New England. Some experi- 

 ments are already being made. Mr. J. W. Clark, of Wilmot, 

 N.'H., was formerly a sheep-rancher in Montana. He recently 

 sold his interests there and returned to New Hampshire to start 

 a sheep-ranch. He has acquired about one thousand acres of the 



