660 



NEW ENGLAND FAEMER. 



Dec. 



a monopoly, and many circumstances have 

 geemed to favor specialties, the result has been 

 far from satisfactory. A writer in the Rural 

 Carolinian, in discoursing on this subject says : 



Whether cotton, wheat, or any other crop, is 

 made a specialty for whole States, failure must 

 result. If proper effort is put forth the market is 

 glutted and the price low, while the cost of every- 

 thing else will bs enhanced many fold by the labor 

 and cupidity of our army of producers and carri- 

 ers. The old cotton crops, with very few excep- 

 tions, never commanded $200,000,000 ; the present 

 crop, half as large as the largest ever made, is 

 worth more than )S?150,000,000 in gold to-day, while 

 corn is becoming plenty, wheat increasing, and the 

 people more self-reliant and nearer self-supporting 

 than ever before. 



While cotton may ever be a prominent crop, it 

 should only be cultivated as one of several pro- 

 ducts for exportation, and an ample sufficiency of 

 everything consumed upon the farm should be 

 grown at home. The idea that Southern horses 

 should be obtained in K^ntucky, flour from Mis- 

 souri, and part of the corn supply from Illinois, 

 has been a curse to the cotton States.- Specious 

 and false was the theory of reciprocity of material 

 inK'i-ests ; it never can be profital)le to carry bulky 

 agricultural products a thousand miles, to be used 

 on soils as rich and cheap as any in the world, at 

 an expense for transportation far exceeding the cost 

 of production at the place of consumption. The 

 variety of which this region is capable is truly 

 wonderful ; embracing all the cereals, grasses, vtg- 

 eiables, and fruits of the temperafe zone, with 

 many of the productions of the tropics. A belt 

 extending from twenty-tive degrees to thirty-nine 

 degrees north latitude, including a range of eleva- 

 tions amounting to 6000 feet, and geological for- 

 mations from the primitive granite to alluvium now 

 in the process of deposition, cannot become a 

 wealthy region by persistence in the culture of a 

 single product. 



For the Kew England Farmer, 



FARMING IN LEXINGTON, MASS. 



Rosedale Farm. — Ilomemade and Commercial ManureB. 

 — Salt and Lime with Muck — Wheat and Oats. — Im- 

 provement of an old Wet Meadow. 



In introducing myself as an "Old Young 

 Farmer," it may be proper for me to say that I 

 was raised in the interior of New Hampshire, 

 and worked on the old homestead until I was 

 seventeen vears old ; that I then spent forty 

 years in business in Boston., and have recently 

 bought and moved on to a farm in Lexington, 

 Mass., of one hundred acres. Consequently, 

 though I am old in years, as I look over my 

 fields and attempt to decide' on definite plans 

 for their management and improvement, I find 

 I am a young farmer, and need the counsel of 

 those more experienced in farming, though 

 perhaps younger in years. That this counsel 

 may be given intelligently, I will attempt to 

 draw up a description of my farm, and give 

 some idea of what I wish to accomplish. The 

 one hundred acres comprise a great variety of 

 soil. While a large part of my firm consists 

 of a light sandy land, there is considerable 

 heavy loam of good quality, and not a little 

 wet muck meadow. A brook passes 'through 



the farm, forming a valley some twenty-five 

 feet below the table land, with several acres 

 of rich intervale skirting the stream. From 

 the banks of this valley several springs issue, 

 and here I wish to cultivate trout. In this 

 valley and near my house, there is a mineral 

 spring strongly impregnated with sulphur and 

 iron. Having been an invalid for ten years, 

 I have realized more benefit from the use of 

 this water for the last month or two than from 

 all the medicine I have ever taken. This 

 whole region appears to be filled with iron. 



My barn is situated on the bank of this val- 

 ley, the front part being level with the main 

 land, and rear sixteen feet above the ground. 

 This basement is divided into two stories ; 

 about one-half of the first floor being above 

 ground, and one-fourth of the lower. The 

 first floor or story is occupied by stables for 

 my stock, and the lower is devoted to hogs, 

 and ordinary basement purposes. Both are 

 well lighted and ventilated, and face the south. 

 All the manure from the stock passes below 

 for the swine to work over. A six inch drain 

 pipe leads from the water closets in the house 

 to the lower part of the barn, where it is ab- 

 sorbed by muck which is daily applied for this 

 purpose. 



In the rear of my barn, and within a hun- 

 dred feet of it, there is an extensive bed of 

 rich muck. From the teachings of the New 

 England Farmer, and from that of my own 

 experience, I place a high estimate upon the 

 value of this deposit. During the past season 

 I have experimented with several of the com- 

 mercial manures on different crops, side by 

 side with my home-made manures, and in every 

 case the latter has proved far superior to the 

 dear-bought, far-fetched, and much puffed 

 fertilizers. I believe farmers are terribly 

 humbugged by the great noise made by the 

 manufacturers of artificial manures, and am 

 Avell satisfied that I can manufacture manure 

 that will give better satisfaction at far less than 

 half the cost of the commercial articles, and 

 believe every other farmer can also. 



I am now getting out muck for another 

 year's use, and as I intend to make a large 

 pile of manure, I wish to be informed whether 

 lime, salt or any other substance can be eco- 

 nomically mixed with the muck, — will it help 

 enough to pay expenses? Manure I find to 

 be the great secret of successful farming, but 

 still most of us must study economy in the 

 cost of our fertilizers. 



I was told when I commenced farming this 

 spring, that it was no use to undertake to raise 

 wheat. I replied that I was going to try it 

 on a small scale to satisfy myself, as I believed 

 wheat could be raised here as well as in other 

 places. I procured half a bushel of spring 

 wheat and sowed it on about half an acre of 

 rich soil that had been well manured and 

 planted for two or three years. I put on the 

 land about a buthel of salt and about two 



