134 



®l)c Jaritur's iltcmtljto llisttor. 



01 -■ dollar ilie bushel. The field ' 

 and ripe, was dug in [tart the week I left Con- 

 cord, and the result remains to be ascertained. 

 The ground was subsoiled to the depth of about 

 sixteen inches — it was light flowing yellow sand 

 or gravel at bottom, with a thin dark mould 

 upon the top. A bed of manure compost, con- 

 sisting of turfs taken from t lie side of a board 

 fence, some two hundred bushels of leached 

 ashes and perhaps half that quantity of unleach- 

 ed ashes, the two at the cost of twenty-five dol- 

 lars, and ten casks of lime worth twelve dollars, 

 —was laid over the surface of this field. About 

 800 pounds of guano and an equal amount of 

 ground plaster, were sowed over it, and all bar- 

 lowed in : the cost of guano anJ plaster twenty 

 dollars. The hoeing of the field only once, very 

 clean of weeds, was the merest trifle. The ma- 

 nure of this land might cost one hundred dollars: 

 the seeding, ploughing, planting and hoeing, 

 may he fifty dollars more. The product of the 

 whole field must, 1 think, be about five hundred 

 bushels: these at fifty cents the bushel, $250, 

 will give a profit of one half the amount. The 

 land for a second crop, without manure, is better 

 than for the first. Further on another part of 

 this lot I bad five acres of fall-sowed winter rye, 

 of which I am sorry to say has been utterly lost, 

 what might have been a crop of one hundred 

 bushels. In my own absence, during the hurried 

 season to my workmen, this lot laying out of 

 sight, was eaten down to the ground by sheep 

 and cattle turned upon the surrounding plains 

 finding their way through the fence. This field 

 of eighty acres has paid in what has been taken 

 from it a great advance upon the cost of the land 

 and cost of labor and manure. Paying in crops 

 as it is carried along, prepared in the manner of 

 the potato ground, these plains lots in four fifteen 

 acre fields, to be cultivated in a four year shift, 

 with twenty acres up the brook and hollow un- 

 derdrained and cleared of stumps say at the ex- 

 pense of twenty dollars the acre — may be made 

 a farm more productive for the ease with which 

 it may be worked than even the rich intervale of 

 the field number one first described. 



The third field is a lot of ten acres of similar 

 pine plains upon the west side of the river on 

 the turnpike one mile and one fourth from the 

 south end of the village on Concord Main street 

 This lot came into my possession about six years 

 ago in exchange for other property at the price 

 of one bundled dollars for the whole. It might 

 have been dear at that price, as has been a lot of 

 equal size along side of it that has not produced 

 in two or three crops of rye enough to pay for 

 the work done upon it. Four acres of my lot 

 had been ploughed two seasons for rye: the 

 other six acres were covered with pine and 

 white birch trees and bushes. The first four 

 acres were ploughed as well as could be done 

 among the stumps: it was manured with ten 

 loads to the acre of stable dung spread over and 

 ploughed in. Eight hundred bushels of leached 

 ashes, giving a peck to every square rod, were 

 spread on, and harrowed in. The piece was 

 planted with corn, which coming up handsomely 

 in May, was entirely cut down by frost above 

 ground on theGtb of June. In fear that it would 

 not spring up, white beans were planted be- 

 tween the hills: both corn and beans coming 

 forward, in August the whole piece was a 

 swamp. The corn was fifty bushels to the acre, 

 and the beans from twelve to fifteen bushels. 

 From that time to 1847, crops of grain or grass, 

 paying a profit on the labor, were each year, 



lot. The sb 

 Elei ed in corn and 



beans, was cleared of trees and hushes and 

 burned ; and as a work requiring a heavy team, 

 a sharpened giant plough cut through roots to an 

 unusual depth in the earth in the summer. Torn 

 to pieces with the harrow, it was sowed down to 

 rye early in September: the crop of rye next 

 year was tall and stout. Another decent crop 

 of rye succeeded in the second year. Ploughed 

 up a third year, it produced, with the aid of a 

 small quantity of Peruvian guano — a small table 

 spoonful in a bill, killing the seed corn wherever 

 it touched — and the manuring of about ten oX- 

 cart loads of compost and stable manures — an 

 uneven crop of corn, some of it very large ; and 

 a fine lot of marrow squashes on about half an 

 acre. In the fall of 1846, both parts including 

 the entire lot, were ploughed deep with the sub- 

 soil plough following the common plough. With 

 a compost heap of manure exhausted on seven 

 acres, the other three acres were supplied with a 

 dose in each hill of guano mixed in leached 

 ashes. The potato field, with only a single hoe- 

 in ir, produced twelve hundred bushels — worth in 

 cash at the lowest estimate six hundred dollars: 

 not a bushel of these potatoes were defective or 

 subject to the rot. They have lasted, sound and 

 perfect as when first dug, for the daily use of my 

 own family and my neighbors until the last days 

 of the month of July. The subsoil ploughing of 

 this ten acre field has made it like a well culti- 

 vated garden bed: the tread recedes into the 

 ground as you pass over it — and the yellow 

 sand is changed into chocolate mould. A com- 

 post heap— making perhaps fifteen large loads to 

 the acre, comprising two-thirds side-way turfs 

 and black mould gathered around my premises, 

 with one-third stable and yard manure, embrac- 

 ing a limited quantity of leached and unleached 

 ashes, prepared with about fifteen casks of slac- 

 ked lime — drawn to the ground last winter, laid 

 upon this lot in three piles until the last days of 

 May, when farmers were weeding their corn 

 in the fields along-side. My few faithful men 

 having much planting to do in a short time, with 

 half the days rainy when no planting coidd be 

 done, hurried this as the last field with all possi- 

 ble despatch. In four days' time, five men shov- 

 elled and laid out in small piles two hundred full 

 ox-cart loads of the compost: in four days more, 

 two bands spreading, and two hands, one with a 

 pair of horses and the other with our single yoke 

 of oxen, ploughing, the whole piece was turned 

 under. Mixed with a like amount of guano and 

 plaster two hundred pounds were sowed to the 

 acre, and the whole smoothed down with a har- 

 row. On the first day of June the six acres last 

 cleared were planted with corn in deep furrows 

 at three and a half to four feet apart, at intervals 

 from two to three feet between the hills of the 

 row. On the second and third days of June, 

 the remaining four acres were planted with po- 

 tatoes with rows at the like distance apart, a sin- 

 gle potato every eighteen inches. The corn has 

 been hoed twice with no hilling: so easy was 

 the hoeing that each hand went over the ground, 

 after the cultivator, at the rate of about an acre 

 a day. The potatoes have been hoed hut once. 

 On the fifteenth July, the corn of the large Dut- 

 ton kind, from seed raised iiyutii'fciend Blodgett 

 of Canaan in your county, chosen forty mi'es 

 north with two degrees of colder climate from 

 greater elevation, for the earlier product of seed 

 — had beuun to throw out tassels; and on the 

 25th of the month some of the blades were in 







the silk, Jn a dei thy color, this 



field has grown rn 1 1 have ever 



before seen in any vegetation. On the 28th July 

 the field was so much of a swamp as readily to 

 conceal the person : the ears are setting two, 

 three and four to the blade. The potatoes like- 

 wise in their rows, in healthy green, nearly cover 

 the ground: a few rank weeds, in the hasty hoe-^' 

 ing, have made their appearance. Prepared as 

 this ground has been all the time at no expense 

 that a present crop would not warrant, I know 

 not a spot any where that can be likely to pro- 

 duce more for as many as three succeeding I 

 crops: carried out as the season has progressed 

 thus far, the crops of corn and potatoes will pay 

 for the labor and expense in this ground within 

 the year probably three times over. The excel 

 lent state and quality of the land — poorest as it I 

 was thought when begun upon — have been ' 

 brought about by the stimulant manures acting 1 

 with the lime, plaster and ashes of the compost 

 upon the undersoil whether of aluminous or | 

 sandy and gravel texture. The deepened 

 ploughing and strengthened action of the in- | 

 creased mould have made this land as impervi- 

 ous to the effect of continued dry weather as the 

 strongest and best prepared favorite fields of the 

 good farmer upon I lie hills where drought sel- 

 dom reaches, the primeval fountains continually 

 gushing out and covering the fields in living 

 green. 



My mode of treating pine plains, improved as 

 I have the vanity to claim, a little beyond any 

 example I have yet seen, I consider a desidera- 

 tum wanted in many towns of New England 

 where the land has been abandoned from abso- 

 lute barrenness. 1 know of no such land that 

 may he called barren: the meanest, most sterile 

 land, with the means at hand for its renovation 

 lying all around it, may oftentimes be made the 

 best land at the least expense. 



Far different are the impressions now presen- u 

 ted of the diversified scenery of New Hamp- 

 shire, its valleys and hills, its ponds and lakes, its | 

 mountains and rocks, from those which were t 

 made in years gone by on a superficial view. Its •! 

 very unevenness, its underlaying rocky ledges, L 

 its grand granite boulders oiit of place, scattered ^ 

 over its surface, are the elements of a fertility 

 which shall be as enduring as its everlasting hills. 

 There is not a ledge or bed of stone that may 

 not he converted into some useful purpose: the 

 poorest acre of its soil may be made to its owner 1 

 the receptacle of a profitable investment. 



The measure of my ambition would be full ij 

 I could succeed, by example as well as by pre- 

 cept, in demonstrating to my brother farmers the 

 fact that agriculture as a pursuit is hereafter to 

 become as profitable to those who hire all tbiir 

 labor as the best of mechanical and manufacture 

 ing business. If this can become so, how much 

 more healthful and happy must he be who finds 

 it to he his interest to become the New England 

 farmer! All he needs is a sure and a constant 

 market at remunerating prices. This will be in- 

 ducement enough to all the requisite improve- 

 ment: that improvement, looking always to the 

 future as well as the present, may make every 

 cultivated acre produce twice, thrice, four-lol \ 

 in some cases ten fold its present crop. There 

 is no farmer so poor that he may not begin the 

 improving process : if he begin with cultivating 

 less land, soon will be be able to produce more 

 with less land and less labor. 



Railroads are destined speedily to reach 

 through the whole length and breadth of New 



ij 



