1854. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



167 



uree, will no doubt add materially to the agricul- 

 tural productions of the country. And no doubt 

 many instimces may be singled out where they 

 have proved a profittiblc individual investment. 

 But the existing high prices, together with the 

 risk of getting a worthless article, renders it ex- 

 tremely questionable whether it will not, in the 

 majority of cases, prove to be a whistle too dearly 

 paid for. j. u. s. 



Colebrook, Ct., Feb. 15, 1854. 



THE SEASONS. 



FUOM THK CEnMAS. 



Hay and corn and buds and flowers, 

 Snow and ice and fruit and wine, — 

 Suns and Seasons, sleets and showers. 

 Bring, in turn, tliese gift divine. 

 Spring blows, Summer glows. 

 Autumn reaps. Winter keeps? 

 Spring prepares, Summer provides, 

 Autumn hoards, and Winter hides. 

 Come, then, friends, their praises sound : 

 Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring, 

 As they run their yearly round. 

 Each in turn with glatlness sing ! 

 Time drops blessings as he flies — 

 Time makes ripe and Time makes wise. 



For the New England Farmer. 



FARMING IN NEW ENGLAND—No. 3. 



Another serious obstacle to successful farming 

 in New England, is, a servile imitation of theiuays 

 of our fathers. Reverence for antiquity is gener- 

 ally a virtue, but that unreflecting imitation of 

 faults and excellencies of our ancestors, is neither 

 consistent with good sense, self-respect, nor pro- 

 gressive improvement. In the vicinity of our cities 

 and larger towns, we see much less of the evil to 

 which I refer, than in the country. But wo need 

 not go very far into the interior, even of Massa- 

 chusetts, before we shall find melancholy evidence 

 that farming is still conducted very much as it 

 wixs a hundred years ago. What our fathers did 

 from necessity, we continue from habit. Though 

 the hum of industry is heard around every water- 

 fall, and smiling villages have sprung up, as it 

 were by enchantment, on those rocky and forbid- 

 ding sites which our fathers thought were "made 

 only to hold the world together," the old farms 

 in the vicinity look as they did half a century 

 since, only a little more desolate from year to 

 year. The house is as innocent of paint as it was 

 the day it was "finished." On one side of it, the 

 builder was just three clapboards short, and they 

 have never been supplied,and the lining boards have 

 always been, and still are, visible to every passer 

 by. Two or three panas of glass were not set in 

 one of the windows, and their places, together 

 with those which "the childnm" have created in 

 other parts of the mansion, are filled with old 

 hats and worn-out comfortables. The brackets 

 which were used for shingling the roof, stand there 

 etill, to answer the treble purpose of exciting the 

 mirth of the traveller, awakening tlie mortifica- 

 tion of every person of taste, and of saving the car- 

 p«inter the trouble, (if perchance they do not be- 

 come too rotten,^ of putting on others, when the 

 house is sliingled again. Instead of a neat and 

 easy-working pump, the old, crazy well-sweep 

 hangs there yet, creaking in the wind, supported 



by a crotch leaning at an angle of forty-five de- 

 grees with, the horizon,and creating an antagonistic 

 combination of forces, which works in all possible 

 directions but the right one : — the whole concern 

 seeming to have been contrived for the especial 

 purpose of taxing to the uttermost the strength 

 and patience of the "good woman," and of set- 

 ting at defiance every principle in mechanics, and 

 all possibility of drawing water. One consola- 

 tion, however, is left to the mistress of the house 

 — the bucket is so old and leaky, though she fills 

 it full at the bottom of the well some forty feet 

 deep, by the time it reaches the curb, half of the 

 water has run out, to the sensible relief of her 

 prc5cn/, if not of hery)//wrc, muscular exertions. 

 A stream of liquid manure runs from the barn- 

 yard into the road, furnishing ammonia gratis to 

 all wlio pass by the premises, but making lean 

 pork for the. owner next winter. His cows would 

 be alarmed at the sight of a turnip or a carrot, 

 and the strong probability is, that it will take 

 more than "four quarts of their milk to make a 

 pound of butter." Like the editor of one of our 

 agricultural papers, and as his OAvn fiither did be- 

 fore him, he throws his manure from the 'lean-to 

 out into the open air, that it may be thoroughly 

 washed and cleansed and dried, before he applies 

 it to his delicate acres. His barn has no cellar, 

 his pigs no shelter. lie raises corn, or rather 

 stalkSjOn the same land, for four successive years. 

 His meadow is not drained, nor his upland favored 

 with a coating of pulverized muck. His farm is 

 growing poorer year by year,and he would gladly 

 sell it and " move to the West. ' ' He wonders why he 

 does not get along as well as his neighbor Thrifty, 

 whose buildings are painted, whose barns and 

 storehouse's are full, and whose cattle cover the 

 surrounding hills. He works as hard as his neigh- 

 l)or, but after all, things will go the wrong way 

 witli him. He is short of money and wishes to 

 borrow, while Thrifty always has some to let — to 

 every body but him. 



Now, there is neither poetry nor caricature in 

 this representation, but simple sol)er truth ; and if 

 it should chance to fall under the notice of any til- 

 ler of the soil, who is conscious that he sat for the 

 picture here sketched, I would in all seriousness 

 ask liim, whether his want of success is not to be 

 attributed to his following //te beaten traek of his 

 fathers? Do you not cultivate the acres they did, 

 in precisely thdr xray? Have you taken the pains 

 to inform yourself, whether some at least of the 

 alleged improvements in farming of the present 

 day, are not real, substantial, improvements, and 

 worthy of your imitation and adoption ? Do you 

 take, pay for, "read and inwardly digest" the 

 "Mio England Farmer,'^ and keep yourself well 

 posted up, in regard to the progress which agricul- 

 ture has made Avithin the last twenty years ? 

 Wallham, Feb., 1854. d. c. 



Rem.vrks. — If we had not seen, with our own 

 eyes, the very evils which our correspondentjiames, 

 we should certainly feel inclined to consider his 

 assertions as extravagant. But it is scarcely a 

 week since we saw a farmer's barn-yard,and that, 

 too, where all the droppings are tlirown into the 

 yard, literally swept by the dissolving snows, and 

 not only "a stream of liquid manurt;," but mani/ 

 streams, coursing their joyful way across the yard 



