1859. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



41 



feeding, if bad, and salting the hay, when put in, 

 with nine parts common salt and one part salt- 

 petre; also, salting cattle thus exposed, with a 

 composition of salt, wood-ashes and sulphur, 

 frequenth' through the winter, and if stabled, 

 keep the floor as clean as possible. — W. PlEKCE, 

 V. S., in Oldo Cultivator. 



aiVEB COTTAGE. 



Joel Nourse, Esq., — Dear Sir : — Tne express 

 has just brought me a very pretty picture of 

 Eiver Cottage, the place where the Editor of the 

 Neio England Farmer, escaping from the turmoil 

 of city life, is accustomed to enjoy his otium cum 

 dignitate, setting us, at the same time, an exam- 

 ple of good taste and good husbandry. The 

 sketch, T understand, is to go into the January 

 number, and if you can somehow arrange with 

 the printer, while the editor is out on his farm, 

 to slip into the number what I am writing, per- 

 haps his modesty will not be very painfully 

 shocked, and our readers may be enabled to find 

 more in the picture than can be seen at first 

 glance. You will see, before long, that 1 know 

 something about River Cottage, and the people 

 that dwell therein. 



To write a perfect history of any event, it has 

 been said, that it is necessary to begin with the 

 garden of Eden, but for the sake of brevity, we 

 will omit some of the "first causes," and come 

 down to about a dozen years ago,when our friend, 

 after several years' residence in the wicked city 

 of Washington, departed therefrom, like righte- 

 ous Lot out of Sodom, determined to seek in 

 some sp-^t nearer the rising sun, the realization 

 of his Lie-long dreams of happiness on a New 

 England farm. 



More fortunate than the good man of old, he 

 left no pillars of salt to mark the spots of look- 

 ing backward in the journey, but brought his 

 small household, //'es/i as ever, back to their na- 

 tive hills. And then, to adopt the style of a 

 modern novel-writer, one beautiful spring morn- 

 ing, two travellers might be seen slowly wending 

 their way among the green hills of the Bay State, 

 in "a one-horse shay," stopping ever and anon, 

 to take an agricultural survey of some field or 

 meadow, some vine or fruit tree, some Shorthorn 

 or Devon, or, perhaps, to make thorough exami- 

 nation of a farm advertised in the papers as "suit- 

 ably divided into mowing, tillage and pasturing, 

 with uncommon school and gospel privileges." 



In these two travellers, the discerning reader 

 will not fail to discover, with very little assistance, 

 the present editor and his humble associate, the 

 one a gentleman in search of a farm, ardent in 

 the faith that he could take off his coat, work all 

 the year like a day-laborer, make a first-rate liv- 

 ing, and be perfectly happy on a New England 



farm, — the other painfully dubious whether his 

 companion's agricultural zeal would not outrun 

 his discretion and his purse, and land him so 

 high that he would never get comfortably off! 



"What do you sell from your farm?" was the 

 test question of profit or loss. Everybody knows 

 what a farmer must buy, such as clothing, groce- 

 ries and implements, and that he must pay taxes 

 and doctor's bills, and a thousand incidentals in 

 cash, and these almost any one may estimate. If, 

 then, the farmer does not sell enough to pay 

 these expenses, he is running in debt. It was, 

 usually, pretty hard work for the man who want- 

 ed to sell his farm, to furnish the items of sales 

 from the produce of it so as to bring out a living 

 balance. 



So we looked the State over, and made no 

 purchase, and the next thing I knew, this indi- 

 vidual, whose interests I had guarded with such 

 watchful care that he could not begin to buy any 

 farm we had examined, had bought his present 

 residence, without even the compliment of ask- 

 ing my advice ! 



Of course, I was determined not to approve of 

 a step so inconsiderate, and when I accepted an 

 invitation to look at the purchase, it was with a 

 fixed resolve to withhold my judgment of dis- 

 approval, and not to find much to praise. 



The cottage and twenty acres of land was pur=- 

 chased in April, 1848, and, except to the eye of 

 faith, it was rather a hopeless establishment to 

 be called a farm. There was the house, to be 

 sure, new, and in much the same style as now, a 

 pretty, snug, convenient dwelling. Then there 

 was an old tumble-down barn, good for nothing 

 but fire wood, and a littlefmeau shed. The land 

 was mostly up-hill or down-hill, and where there 

 was no ledge, there were round stones in abun- 

 dance, varying in weight, from one to twenty 

 tons. The last owner, who was a paper-hanger, 

 had set out some fruit trees, which were strug- 

 gling along at a poor dying rate, and had graft- 

 ed a few of the old apple trees. The land was 

 run out, to the lowest ebb, and its chief recom- 

 mendation seemed to be that "the oldest inhabi- 

 tant" could remember when it bore sixty bush- 

 els of corn to the acre, and other crops to match. 

 The farm then cut hay enough for two cows and 

 a horse, and produced about twenty bushels of 

 cider apples, by way of fruit. 



Now, agriculturally speaking, that was not 

 much of a farm, — but there was another side to 

 the picture, which, after all, is worth looking at. 

 You have seen a young man, sometimes, who had 

 thoughts of marriage. He determines to do the 

 thing in a rational, considerate manner. He will 

 find some discreet girl, who understands house- 

 keeping and accounts, who is sober-minded, and 

 perhaps has a little property of her own, and ar- 



