36 



&l)t Jmmcr's jUoiit l)lP faisitor. 



ly; cover the trunk of the tree with a mixture of 

 soft or whale oil soap ami potass water or wopd 

 ashes; pour a gallon of boiling water on the 

 trunk near the ground, to kill the peach worm, it 

 any exist in the bark at the surface of the 

 ground; manure the tree with cold manure, 

 muck, or pond mud; and you may have fine 

 fruit and long-lived trees so long as this treat- 

 ment be continued. 



Similar treatment was recommended for the 

 other kinds of trees named above, and numerous 

 instances quoted of the advantages which has 

 arisen from the proposed plan. 



This farmers' club, as I suppose it may be 

 called, forms a useful adjunct to the ordinary 

 means of information to be obtained by farmers. 

 A question is chosen, and each person present 

 states what he may know on the subject; and 

 when the conversation flags, some member asks 

 a question, which is sure to elicit an answer 

 from another member ; and thus the experience 

 of all present is collated by each member. 



&l)c Visitor. 



CONCORD, N. H., MARCH 31, 1849. 



New England Enterprise well rewarded on 



New England soil. A compliment from 



Vermont. 



The editoi of the Visitor is greatly apprehen- 

 sive that protracted engagements at a distance 

 and vexations abroad which he had hoped to be 

 temporary, have produced that neglect of a favo- 

 rite child at home, which will lessen both him 

 and his feebler pet in the estimation of the prac- 

 tical friends and patrons of the soil whose good 

 opinion he most highly prizes. In the progress 

 of the last ten years, as a farmer and improver of 

 the soil, we have abated not a particle of our 

 first zeal: nay, in that time, has the unparalleled 

 pleasure of the growing fruitful field converted 

 from comparative barrenness, been kept up 

 without abatement ; and the hope and wish that 

 the business of the farmer might become not 

 only the more certain but the better business has 

 ended in the conviction that fruition has become 

 the fixed fact. 



Our own experience in this business of farm- 

 ing has not been a failure or a disappointment : 

 the theories that we maintained eight and ten 

 years ago have in nearly every instance, turned 

 out to be every thing that we have predicted. 

 In that ten years the value of our little State — 

 little as one to six and ten to other newly open- 

 ed States in its number of improvable acres- 

 has been doubled in price if it should to-morrow 

 be sold at auction: in that time its intrinsic val- 

 ue, from the profits of production brought to the 

 pockets of the producer, has been increased 

 probably four-fold. Now although such may be 

 "a good State to emigrate from," yet this advan- 

 tage to it results from the value which high in- 

 tellectual and physical education and culture 

 have given to the sons and daughters of our 

 land. Their enterprise, their practical tact, as 

 well in all the common events of life as in the 

 higher emanations of mind and talent and in the 

 development of all the moral excellencies, has 

 been scattered broadcast in the distant new States, 

 where the effects become almost immediately 

 visible. For instance, as of but yesterday, the 

 States of Wisconsin and Iowa were a wilder- 

 ness : this day either of them probably numbers 

 a population nearly as large as our own State. 

 Many times has it been our lot within the last 

 six years to meet men, and some of them dis- 

 tinguished men from these young sisters who 

 have sought us out to be informed that they 

 were born in the Granite State since wo com- 



menced business here forty years ago at the 

 time of this writing, and that they had received 

 their first lessons here ill that school of enter- 

 prise and industry in which we individually 

 claim in all that time to have been a humble 

 laborer. 



What is here said of New Hampshire may be 

 said of all the States of New England. The 

 hardest and severest soil perhaps of the whole 

 present great domain of the Union, New Eng- 

 land is at this time in no particular behind the 

 very best of our land, If other States possess a 

 soil of great spontaneous production, she makes 

 her poor soil equally productive by artificial 

 means; and with our own practice comes along 

 the truism, that capital applied here to increase 

 production upon what is esteemed our poorest 

 lands may he now expended to equal advantage 

 to capital applied in the purchase and cultivation 

 of the richest new countries which the extended 

 settlements of the West and South-west are an- 

 nually opening. 



It has been our pride and our pleasure in the 

 monthly numbers of this paper to open to our 

 full grown men and youth all the blessings and 

 advantages of our own home. More and more 

 are we convinced that these under our hand 

 have suffered no exaggeration : personal obser- 

 vation every where now teaches us thai, wild and 

 enthusiastic as we have appeared, the reality has 

 not yet been attained. The very neglect of what 

 has been esteemed worthless in our State, the 

 mountain forests with more extended valleys be- 

 tween, thousands of whose acres have hardly 

 yet been explored, has contributed to make them 

 the more valuable. We said it a week or two 

 ago to a friend in Grafton county, that the intrin- 

 sic value of that and Coos counties, embracing 

 probably more than half the whole extent of our 

 State, was greater at this moment in their un- 

 cleared lands than in all the cleared farms and 

 personal estate nosv existing within their bounds. 

 The value of these uncleared lands has as yet 

 hardly begun to be developed: it suffices to say 

 of them that after the immense growth of forest 

 upon them shall be taken away they will open 

 to soil as good as the best for all the purposes of 

 agricultural industry and enterprise. 



A letter from our friend J. W. Colburn, Esq., 

 at Morris Flats, bordering on the New Hamp- 

 shire line upon Connecticut river, an original 

 subscriber and patron, feeds not a little the vani- 

 ty which we feel in claiming for New England a 

 place in front with the best States of the Union 

 for producing crops to which her soil may be less 

 congenial. No district of country, (we will haz- 

 ard the assertion) not even the inexhaustible fer- 

 tility of the best Western bottom lands, could 

 show greater than the Indian corn crops raised 

 among the Green mountains of Vermont near 

 the New Hampshire border. 



From a business letter to our publisher, dated 

 at Morris Flats, Jan. 15, 1849, we extract the 

 following: — 



"Now lam writing I will give you a short 

 sketcii of the doings of our Agricultural Society 

 at its annual meeting held at Woodstock, on the 

 10th inst. (I mean the Windsor County Agricul- 

 tural Society) fiom which you can glean some- 

 thing for the Visitor, if you please. 



The Society met for the choice of officers, and 

 to award premiums on best cultivated farms, 



1 10s bushels, 995 bushels, and 95i bushels. For 

 the best managed and best cultivated farm in 

 the county, premium awarded to J. W. Colburn, 

 of Springfield, consisting of 107 acres, only 35 

 of which is in cultivation by mowing and 

 ploughing; the remainder being pasture and 

 woodland. On this thirty-five acres was raised 

 the last season ffty tons English hay, ten hundred 

 and forty bushels grain, and twenty-four bushels 

 potatoes. This is (he way we farmers do up 

 things up here in Vermont. 



" I perceive you have some patrons here in 

 this county, and if there is any thing worth com- 

 municating in the above, you are at liberty to 

 use it. I have in former years in my feeble man- 

 ner, written out some communications for the 

 Visitor, which were published, and some two or 

 three I believe copied into other papers, which 

 was rather flattering, but I am an unlettered 

 man as you will perceive ; what little knowledge 

 1 possess upon farming is mostly from experi- 

 ence, though 1 think 1 have gained something 

 from a constant perusal of the Visitor. It is in- 

 deed a welcome visitor, and ought to adorn the 

 centre table of every farmer in New England. 

 It is cheaper than the cheapest, and I esteem it 

 the best paper for our latitude that is now offer-_ 

 ed. I proposed at the late annual meeting of 

 our County Agricultural Society, that the Society 

 subscribe "and pay lor a copy of the Visitor for 

 every member — about five hundred : it passed 

 by a large majority ; but after getting our treas- 

 urer's report we were, not so strong in funds as 

 we expected. It was found that our list of pre- 

 miums for our next Fair must be essentially cur- 

 tailed by this appropriation: a reconsideration 

 of the vole was called for and sustained, and 

 thus the proposition went overboard. 



"My own opinion is that quite as much benefit 

 would result to the farming community by dif- 

 fusing information among them, such as every 

 intelligent man could obtain by the reading of 

 such a journal as yours, as there is by the stim- 

 ulating process of cash premiums for good ani- 

 mals, good crops, &C. 



"I liope your senior Editor, Mr. Hill, will take 

 the trouble to be present at our next annual Fair 

 to be holden at the town of Windsor, first Wed- 

 nesday and Thursday of Oct. next. I notice that 

 he travels much : it would be a pleasant trip for 

 him now all the way by railroad, but a few hours 

 ride; we will show him what Windsor county 

 can do if he will honor us with his presence. 

 Yours, &c, 



J. W. COLBURN. 



field crops, &c. There was a strong competi- 

 tion on grain crops. On fields of four acres of 

 coin, four premiums were awarded, viz: 1st, 104 

 bushels per acre ; 2d, 98 bushels per acre ; 3d 

 and 4th, about 90 bushels per acre. On single 

 acres of corn, four premiums, viz : 1U24 bushels, 



0J= We will not claim for our Visitor the title 

 of '' the best" even for the purposes of the New 

 England farmer: there are other agricultural 

 papers, in Massachusetts and Maine especially, 

 with information more varied, in whose manage- 

 ment there is more talent, more experience, and 

 more heads concerned than in our unpretending 

 monthly contributor. As the agricultural paper 

 of unsurpassed research and talent, of more use- 

 ful originality than any other in America, we 

 will name that of our persevering friend Tucker, 

 the Albany Cultivator. 



Rearing ol Onions. 



We turn again to the rearing of Onions, 

 wherever the soil and climate are suitable, as a 

 most profitable production. The Essex Trans- 

 actions present the crop of Mr. John Peaslee of 

 Danvers, as "entirely unparalleled," for which he 

 received the Society's premium of six dollars : 

 this crop was four hundred and eleven bushels 

 from one half acre of land. This land Mr. 

 Peaslee describes to be of yellow loam, southern 

 descent. A less crop of onions was taken from 

 the same land the previous year. Well-rotted 

 stable manure, which cost four dollars per cord, 

 was buried in the ground by deep ploughing : 

 about the middle of April, one pound and a half 

 of seed was sowed. The usual method of hoeing 

 with a machine and weeding by hand was pur- 

 sued. The crop was harvested about the last of 

 the month of September and carefully measured 



