462 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Oct. 



For the New England Farmer. 



LETTER FEOM THE HOMESTEAD. 



BY H. F. FRENCH. 



What kind of a Farm to choose, Hill or Plain — Use of Stone for 

 Fences — Apple Trees destroyed by Mice — Stone Fences best 

 for Pastures, Doubtful as to Fields — Stones a great Nuisance 

 in Tillage, but convenient for Drains — Consolation for those 

 who have hard Farms. 



My Dear Brown : — My sojourn a few weeks on 

 the Homestead shows what perhaps a thoughtful 

 man might know at any time, that there are some 

 things that may be better learned in an old place 

 than on a new one. At Exeter I have wrought, 

 mainly on new land, till I brought my farm, upon 

 which I offered to sell all the hay in 1 848 for twelve 

 dollars, to yield a crop which I sold this year, stand- 

 ing, for $155, besides eight tons which was put m 

 my bam. Most of it grew upon land where I had 

 dug the stumps, cut the bushes, and sowed the 

 grass seed in autumn, without raising any hoed croji 

 or grain. 



There is hardly a stone to throw at a dog on the 

 fifty acres. The buildings are all new there, the 

 trees all yomig, and everything in order. But here, 

 I return to a different scene. Fifty-five years ago 

 this house was built, and the barn and the sheds. 

 All along during the century, from time to time, 

 my father, who M'as one of the progressive farmers 

 of his day, though a lawyer of large jn'actice, was 

 improraig his farm. My first impressions of farm- 

 ing, are made up of laying heavy stone walls and 

 blasting rocks. This was the great feature of the 

 farm operations when I was a boy. To get a few 

 acres clear of stones, and well walled in, was the 

 great thing. What was undertaken, was done, in 

 those days, and you have seen the smooth fields, and 

 the big wall, seven feet high, roimd the barn-yard, 

 built of stones many of them of two tons weight 

 each. It would make a cannon-proof fortification 

 about Sebastopol. Then the fifty-acre cow-pasture, 

 and several larger pastures for the yoimg cattle, 

 were all walled in, and everything made secure. 



Stones or no stones, that is the question. I have 

 thought of it a good deal, as every man should, es 

 pecially if about to purchase a farm. "Commenta- 

 tors differ" upon this, as most other subjects. One 

 man says he would not take the gift of a rocky 

 farm. He would have "easy land," while another 

 does not exactly see how one can get along at all, 

 without stones in abundance, for walls and drains 

 and divers other uses. Having had for some years 

 a farm of each kind under my charge, perhaps a 

 statement of the pros and cons may be useful to 

 some of our readers. 



As to fences — a stone wall is doubtless the cheap- 

 est and most durable of all fences, and where stones 

 are constantly working up in your fields and must 

 be removed, no doubt this is the best use to make 

 of them. But the objections to stone fences around 

 fields and gardens are numerous. They occupy a 



good deal of land, not only by covering it, but their 

 rough points, and the fear which cattle have of 

 touching them in plomng, prevents worlung -within 

 about two feet of the wall. It is a great labor which 

 the crop will not repay, to dig up those spaces by 

 hand, and so it generally happens that briars and 

 bushes occupy them, offending the good taste of all 

 beholders. Then again stone walls furnish excel- 

 lent accommodations for vermin of all descriptions. 

 I remember that either Downing, or one of his 

 correspondents in the Horticulturist, said, that 

 in his neighborhood, people would as much fear 

 that their fruit trees would be eaten by gii-affes, as 

 by mice ! But while the former animal is very 

 rare in this region, it is quite common to find our 

 best apple trees, even of six inches diameter, entire- 

 ly girdled by mice, if the trees stand near an old 

 wall. In an orchard on the Homestead here, we 

 have replanted the row next the wall many times, 

 and now it is not more than half complete, because 

 once In a few years, some hungry mouse has crept 

 out from the wall under the snow, and avoided 

 starvation by gnawing the bark from a tree. 



Many farmers in old times planted a row of apple 

 trees round their fields near the wall, but although 

 the trees grow better near a granite wall, than else- 

 where, for various reasons, yet the ravages of the 

 mice, the difficulty of properly cultivating the trees 

 and of collecting the fruit, settle the question in fa- 

 vor of regular orchards, rather than scattering trees. 



On the whole, I think in most localities, especial- 

 ly where land is valuable, the balance of argument 

 is not greatly, if at all, in favor of stone fences for 

 our fields. For a pasture, there is notliingso cheap, 

 so convenient, so reliable, as a good stone wall. If 

 it falls down occasionally by the action of the frost, 

 you are pretty sure to find the materials close at 

 hand for repairs. If, therefore, one could have just 

 stone enough to comj)lete his walls round his pas- 

 tures, and a few spare ones for drains and the like, 

 and clean fields and gardens, it would be the pretti- 

 est farm in the world. But Providence does not so 

 order things. While I have actually been obliged 

 to send to a neighbor's farm in Exeter to beg stones 

 enough to load a field roller, I should judge from 

 the walls and fragments about the old place here, 

 that the surface might be covered a foot thick if the 

 stones were carefully spread again. And by the 

 way, you remember how one Sunday this very 

 summer, one of my Devon cows, educated in my 

 smooth pasture at Exeter, was caught between two 

 stones here in the pasture, ignorant as the poor 

 thing was of such traps, and how she nearly tore 

 her foot off. I thinlv you cannot have forgotten the 

 profound deference with which 1 bowed to your su- 

 perior dignity, as being principal editor of the Far- 

 mer, and Lieutenant Governor, and stood by and 

 saw you bind up the lacerated foot with tar ! The 

 only wonder to me was, that there was a place in 



