&I)C .farmer's ittontljln tlisitor. 



69 



nt any time, in the summer season by day and 

 by night through the whole house. The stories 

 should also he sufficiently high to afford a suffi- 

 ciency of air in all the rooms. Nine feet is a 

 good height 'or lower rooms, and eight lor up- 

 per. l$i:d rooms should also be larger than they 

 Commonly are. Great injury to the health is the 

 result ill' sleeping in small, close apartments. 



The third fact is, that a steep roof will not on- 

 ly shed rain and snow tiir better lhau a Hat one, 

 but will last immensely longer. 



The fourth fact is, that a chimney in or near 

 the centre of the building will aid to warm the 

 whole house, while if built at one end or side, 

 the beat will be thrown out and lost. 



The fifth fact is, that a door opening from the 

 outside into any principal room without the in- 

 tervention of a hall or passage, costs much more 

 than it saves, in the free egress of air into it. 



The sixth fact is, that the use of paint is the 

 best economy, in the preservation it affords to 

 oil wood work. 



The seventh fact is, that if the front door is 

 made at one side instead of the middle of the 

 front, a partition will be saved and in small 

 bouses this should not be forgotten, but for large 

 bouses have the main door ami lobby in the 

 middle of the house. — J'alley Farmer. 



®l)c Visitor. 



CONCORD, N. H., MAY 31, 1840. 



j unit 



;||| IHlJ 

 (,1)11111 



|u (If 1 ' 



gecoreoj 



Aid to the Farmer's Monthly Visitor. 



The indefatigable Commissioner of Common 

 Schools in New Hampshire, Professor Rust, is a 

 practical as well as a learned man. Absence 

 and an enfeebled state of health have prevented 

 our personal participation in ibe efforts made 

 within the last few years to improve the com- 

 mon schools of New Hampshire. The forth- 

 coming report of Professor Rust to the Legisla- 

 ture, we understand, will impart much useful in- 

 formation in relation to the progress made and 

 to be made in the system of teaching for the 

 New England youth. The editor of the Visitor 

 is both flattered and gratified at the choice which 

 the Commissioner has proffered to him of mak- 

 ing the Visitor a vehicle of information ta the 

 public in relation to the subject of common 

 schools: be engages to write and furnish for the 

 future successive numbers of this paper articles 

 that may be of great interest to the farmer and 

 mechanic. We will make room for him once a 

 month in our ample columns ; and hope that the 

 value which his aid will impart to them will give 

 us some hundreds of new subscribers, who cer- 

 tainly can afford to take a paper, any single 

 number of which will often give the value of a 

 whole year's cost. 



The Month of May upon the Farm. 



We hope it may he our destiny to finish the 

 personal labor of this life in that occupation in 

 which it was begun. The father of the editor 

 of the Visitor was n filler of the ground, a gar 

 den cultivator, occupying only a few acres with 

 a, single horse as his whole team, doing the work 

 with little else than the aid of his own hands- 

 making his market day af Boston (seven miles 

 distant) ill the vegetable season as often as twice 

 a week. A hard and constant laborer, our earli- 

 er recollections of between filiy and sixty years 

 ago turn to the eight acres of land, which, still 

 continues in the Hill descent in which it has re- 

 gained two hundred years, were then as they 

 were when we visited the place during this 

 month, in amount of production, whether of 

 grass, or vegetables, or fruits, probably exceeded 

 by no other eight acres in the State of Massa- 

 chusetts. 



Working alone mainly in carrying on this 

 beautiful plat of ground lying along the Me- 

 nmomy road from the site of the old meeting 

 house to Walertown directly against the huge 

 elm which branches all the way over the street, 

 in whose elevated limbs hundreds of birds re- 

 turn annually to build their nests, it might be 

 well supposed that all sorts of expedients would 

 be resorted lo for the economy of labor. The 

 pasture for six and seven excellent cows, whose 

 milk was daily despatched lo Boston by a person 

 who carried for several farmers, was full a mile 

 distant. We can scarcely credit the fact that at 

 the time when we drove the cows at five years 

 of age the father was a young man of twenty-six 

 and the mother only twenty-one years ofage. 

 There ran be no mistake in the recollection of 

 this time that at the age of five years the boy, 

 the eldest of three children, then drove and re- 

 turned the cows from pasture morning and night, 

 generally procuring the aid of the larger children 

 of a relative family near the pasture to let down 

 and put up the bars. The pasture went by the 

 name of the Perry pasture from the contiguity 

 of this family ; and in October, 1793, a day on 

 which was the extraordinary military parade of 

 the funeral of John Hancock, James Perry, a 

 young man of the Menotomy train band, pretty 

 early on that morning relurned with us from 

 pasture on his way in military uniform to that 

 greatest funeral occasion that had yet occurred 

 in this country. The people of that lime ap- 

 preciated the merits of John Hancock, whose 

 bold signature stands at the bead of the signers 

 of the glorious Declaration of Independence. 



It was well for us that we had a father and a 

 mother who labored bard with their bands lo 

 make the two ends meet. Afterwards, when the 

 hired lands of a garden farm near Boston were 

 exchanged for a harder farm of more acres by 

 purchase fifty miles further in the country, the 

 editor, lame from an early injury and consequent- 

 ly effeminate, continued to the age of fourteen 

 years to perform quite as much manual labor 

 upon the farm as boys of even greater health 

 and strength. When the master called to invite 

 our services at that age in .the printing office, 

 where we labored in that vocation as an appren- 

 tice for nearly seven years we will undertake to 

 say a greater number of hours than any other 

 boy in this State at that trade ever labored, we 

 were then in a field gathering corn by the side 

 of that father in whose labors we had from in- 

 fancy shared. He taught us to do many things 

 upon the firm, which to this day we can do well: 

 every thing we learned when a child (we hope 

 we then learned among other things to speak 

 the truth) has stuck to us down to this time. 

 What we did not then learn we cannot now well 

 do: an excellent dropper and coverer of corn, 

 we are now no mower and but an indifferent 

 plough-holder. 



With the exception of about three days in the 

 month of May we have been personally employed 

 more or less every week day in the business of 

 planting. Compared with the humble farming 

 in which our parent first initiated us, we are now 

 doing a great business of our own. Our plant- 

 ing is loo extensive to do it with that careful ac- 

 curacy and preparation in which we were in- 

 structed. The corn anil potatoes were ihen all 

 planted in hills wilh the full shovel of well adap- 

 ted manure deposited : now we spread our ma- 

 nures broadcast, and generally find it convenient 

 to furrow only one way. The elbow furrows, out 



of which we cannot well persuade our work- 

 folks, annoy us exceedingly. It comes to us 

 now how we were taught lo make the furrows 

 and checks equi-distant and nearly straight as 

 the shot from an arrow. Seated on the faithful 

 horse's back the object was struck at the oppo- 

 site side of the field, and as upon the sight of the 

 gun ibe eye continually rested central between 

 the animal's ears and that distant object; and 

 except the plough was thrown out by some ob- 

 stacle the furrow came out direct as the shot 

 from a gun. More than once, when the length 

 of the rider astride was not sufficient to reach 

 half over the horse's body, has the arresting of 

 the quick paced animal by striking the point of 

 the share against a fast rock thrown the urchin 

 over the horse's head. "Never mind — up again 

 and take another," with u toss of the bottom 

 hare foot upon the palm to the back of the 

 family hack, restored the rider to his po- 

 sition, generally without hurt from falling into 

 the soft ground prepared for the intended crop. 



Those labors and those feats of youthful days 

 confirmed the editor in his attachment to a call- 

 ing such as will not soon desert him. We are 

 at this age of sixty-one years, after the vicissi- 

 tudes of severe labor as a printer, editor, book- 

 maker and book-seller, and after an elevation to 

 various public stations, now in the full tide of 

 successful experiment as a farmer! As we have 

 arrived at that point where we have raised the 

 last year much hay and potatoes from land that 

 produced very little when we begun upon it, we 

 think we have a right to bluster and even sput- 

 ter iu the boast of our own farming. 



Last year upon fifteen acres we raised over 

 two thousand bushels of potatoes: this crop 

 alone sold in Boston, after paying the expense 

 of transport, with the value of what we sold at 

 home and reserved for use in our own planting, 

 for a greater sum of money than the price of the 

 whole expense of our farm operations for the 

 year. The product of one acre and a half we 

 think exceeded the product of any equal amount 

 of land in the county of Merrimack for the same 

 labor: we had nearly three hundred bushels of 

 the kind of potato called the.Yeu? York reds upon 

 this acre and a half. One hundred and fitly of 

 these bushels, or thereabouts, were sold at Bos- 

 ton, at two dollars and a half the barrel, or one 

 dollar the bushel. 



This year, we completed on the 19th of May 

 thirty-three acres of planting, of which twenty- 

 eight acres are potatoes, and sixteen of these 

 acres of the New York reds, which Maj. Coburn 

 of the Portsmouth Rockingham bouse insists on 

 calling in New Hampshire the Hill potato. They 

 are of that rich kind that secures them a price 

 one-fourth and one-third beyond ibe common 

 kinds of potato. Our crop of the last year ex- 

 ceeded any potato we have ever yet raised : 

 about one hundred bushels — and of these the 

 small ones selected — have been used for our 

 planting. We believe our crop coming in early 

 will enable us lo send to the Boston market for 

 sixiy consecutive days after the first of August a 

 car-load of twenty barrels or fifty bushels of po- 

 tatoes per day. 



But the greatest pleasure of this planting month 

 of May to us has not arisen simply from the an- 

 ticipation of a remunerating crop. The grand 

 effects upon the soil of our method of cultivation 

 has most of all pleased us, because it goes in 

 confirmation of the full belief that deep plough- 

 ing will make our lightest lands the best and 

 most profitable for cultivation. Every acre of 



