164 



&!)e ^farmer's jtlonthlg Visitor. 



500 hands, 100,000 yards drilling; Tremont 

 mills., 500 hands, 120,000 yards sheeting and 

 shinin?; Lawrence, 1400 hands, 260,000 yards 

 ditto; Boott mills, 1100 hands, 220,000 yards 

 drilling, shirting and printed cloth ; Massachu- 

 setts mills, ItiOO' hands, 470,000 yards sheeting, 

 shirting and drilling; Lowell Bleachery, 420 

 hands, dyeing 1,000,000 yards and bleaching 

 4000 Ihs. annually; Lowell Machine-shop, 700 

 hands. One pound of cotton will make three 

 and two-tenths yards of cloth. The wages of 

 the operatives are paid once a month. The ave- 

 rage pav of females is S2 per week, clear of 

 board, men 80 cents per day. Each corporation 

 has boarding houses to accommodate their own 

 employers. The population of Lowell at pre- 

 sent is 36,000. 



®l)c Visitor. 



CONCORD, N. II., NOVEMBER 30, 1849. 



Work done in November. 



Never was the ground in better condition for 

 ploughing in New England than it has been in 

 November, up to the very last day of the month, 

 since which the Massachusetts Thanksgiving 

 seems to have closed up the ground in ice and 

 snow. Called on business away from home, we 

 have been pleased to see the " long teams" of 

 many farmers employed in breaking up the 

 sward land. With a better subsoil plough (im- 

 proved on our suggestion at the great plough 

 manufactory of Messrs. Rtiggles, Nourse and 

 Mason at Worcester, Ms.) than we had ever be- 

 fore seen, we have given one week's service with 

 our whole team to the breaking up the sward 

 and suhsoiling a hard field on the intervale of 

 five acres. The sward plough was one made by 

 Mr. Robinson of this town, being of a smaller 

 kind than that commonly used in breaking up 

 sward land. Narrowed down to a furrow of 

 about ten inches in width, a team of two yokes 

 of oxen cut the turf to the depth of eight inches 

 with this plough and turned a beautiful furrow. 

 Immediately after, in the open furrow, a team of 

 three horses followed with the subsoil plough, 

 which, without turning over, moved the soil full 

 eight inches below where the plough had ever 

 before reached it. The subsoil -was not hard 

 pan or rocks: it was that alluvion which in ages 

 past has been made and increased by deposits 

 left by the overflow of the Merrimack river — 

 sometimes a streak of clay marl and sometimes 

 a layer of apparently pure sand. Although not 

 as hard as the undersoil upon rocky upland, it 

 required quite as much strength of team to move 

 it as in the team employed to break up the upper 

 surface. Upon the intervales and pine plains 

 land our experience has taught us that the once 

 stirring of the subsoil will be sufficient for the 

 ground which does not require underdraining five 

 or six years. Where there is a natural wetness 

 of the soil, to make suhsoiling of any value, 

 there must be under-draining. 



The fine state of the weather in November 

 has enabled us to do what we had not expected 

 to do, bullied as we have been with avocations 

 and cares other than farming, the present year. 

 We have transplanted apple trees upon a square 

 enclosure of about ten acies, to the number of 

 about four hundred. Of these, two hundred 

 and sixty are Baldwins, fifty Rhode Island Green- 

 ings and fifty Roxhury Russets, and about twenty 

 of other varieties. The trees fell short, leaving 

 a part of two rows in the lot to be completed 

 next spring. The trees, which cost twenty-five 

 cuts each, are two years from the bud ; but they 

 exhibit a healthiness and exuberance of growth 



for the time such as we have seldom before seen 

 in young trees. The distance, never less than 

 one rod from the outside fence, is two rods in 

 the row from tree to tree. In order that one 

 tree shall not shade another, the rows east and 

 west are placed thus: 



o o o o o o o o j,, 

 *"• o o o o o o o 



For this orchard a field has been selected near 

 the confines of the town of Bow, along the road 

 known as the Londonderry turnpike. This en- 

 closure, by cultivation alone with the aid of the 

 subsoil plough, has become the field of hearing 

 crops such as is exceeded by few other fields in 

 the neighborhood. It came into our possession 

 about eight years ago as a field fit to raise an oc- 

 casional crop of rye once in four or five years. 

 The whole ground under cultivation resembles 

 now that of a garden bed : the clover, after a 

 crop of oats, had sprung out from the ground in 

 a luxuriant full growth". In this ground the holes 

 for the trees were excavated to the depth of 

 about eighteen inches in a diameter of three to 

 four feet upon the surface. About half a bushel 

 of oyster shells, intended to supply that defi- 

 ciency in this soil which a hard pan rocky soil 

 furnishes, was placed at the bottom of each ex- 

 cavation: over this the digged up ground was 

 placed to the filling of the hole within a few 

 inches of the surface. Upon this bed the roots 

 of the tree were placed as near their natural po- 

 sition of growth as might be convenient ; the re- 

 maining dirt was then thrown on without much 

 treading. In this way in the course of four days 

 of very fine weather, with our own hands placing 

 and holding the tree, were about one hundred trees 

 transplanted each day. The ground was pre- 

 cisely in the right state to receive them. If not 

 injured by any untoward accident, every one of 

 these trees may, when the frost of winter shall 

 have passed, keep on in their growth of root as 



if they had never been removed from their posi- 



In a portion of this orchard, between the rows, 

 we have added rows of budded peach trees of 

 different varieties, to the number of nearly one 

 hundred, giving them the same treatment as to 

 oyster shells and holeing. These being short- 

 lived, if ever they should grow to bearing, will 

 he out of the way before the apple trees shall 

 come to full bearing. 



Calculating the value of an apple orchard 

 from what we have witnessed in Massachusetts, 

 where it is not uncommon to see a single Bald- 

 win or Porter apple tree yielding a profit of 

 twenty and thirty dollars in a year, we have 

 thought what our orchard might have been. 

 Eight years ago, four acres of this pine plain lot 

 were cleared and had been twice ploughed— the 

 remainder was a waste of small pines and white 

 birch trees. Had we then set out the four open 

 acres with Baldwin apple trees, with the careful 

 attention which might have been bestowed upon 

 them, each tree, worth a dollar in the first year, 

 would have grown in every subsequent year to 

 the value of a dollar more: one hundred and 

 fifty trees upon the four acres at this time might 

 have been worth twelve hundred dollars, which 

 added to the value of the land upon which they 

 stood, would have made the orchard lot of four 

 acres, at an estimate not exceeding that of other 

 lots of the kind, worth sixteen hundred dollars! 

 It has been found that a well cultivated orchard 

 of trees may be made to grow as much in five 

 years as the natural growth in an uncultivated 

 field would be in ten yearB. Our intention U, if 



we live to realize our hopes, to treat this field 

 generally as under the plough, careful not to in- 

 terrupt the rows of trees either with that or to 

 suffer the depredations of cattle. A cart-load of 

 muck for each ro.v of twenty trees will in the 

 opening of spring be placed around them to the 

 amount of two or three bushels to the tree : the 

 muck, which has been anal} zed by Mr. Hoyt, we 

 believe will he just the kind of manure which 

 the trees and the soil will want for the best 

 growth and production of either. In the mean 

 time, while the main attention shall be given to 

 the trees, until they shall grow to bearing, the 

 land may each year be productive of some crop, 

 as corn, potatoes or other vegetables, now and 

 then laid down with oats or other grain to clo- 

 ver: the whole ground to he manured to the ex- 

 tent of five hundred bushels of compost to the 

 acre in every three years, with an annual sprink- 

 ling of a ton of plaster, whether in cultivation 

 for vegetables or grass. 



In a country and neighborhood where the 

 morals of a portion of the people teach them 

 there is nothing criminal in robbing fruit or- 

 chards and carrying off not only apples and 

 melons, but even corn and potatoes ; in such a 

 place, it might be deemed presumption to set out 

 an orchard of ten acres away from, if not out of 

 sight of daily observation. We have calculated 

 that by the time our apple trees shall grow — if 

 we should live to see that time — orchards will 

 be so plenty that it will not be an object for peo- 

 ple calling themselves honest to steal ; or else 

 that here, as in Massachusetts, where fruits hang 

 upon the trees along the roads without disturb- 

 ance, the laws will be enforced to the protection 

 of a man's property that is not under lock and 

 key. At any rate, it is quite probable ten years 

 hence, if we should live to nurse our pet or- 

 chard a portion of that time, that we shall not 

 be in a place to disturb the depredators of fruit 

 fields and orchards, or further to annoy those 

 who insist on the right of keeping their cattle in 

 their neighbors' fields. We hope, however, that 

 some of the generation which succeeds may oc- 

 casionally remember the hand that transplanted 

 near the close of the first half of a century the 

 largest regular apple orchard that had yet been 

 begun in the capital town of the State. 



The Season. Frost and Drought. 



The advantage of a- mild climate will have 

 been realized by the farmers of New England 

 in the exemption of the country from frost ihe 

 whole of two months beyond the usual season. 

 After the first of October, in the three northern 

 States of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, 

 as well as in the hilly interior of Massachusetts, 

 we are not accustomed to look for much vegeta- 

 ble growth: in that time, the present year, the 

 growth of a large portion of the Indian corn 

 and potatoes has been so perfected that those 

 two highly valued products of the farmer have 

 come to a perfection which few of ns anticipa- 

 ted. The larger growth of corn is usually the 

 later: this year it was later in time than usual — 

 its progress had been retarded by the severe 

 drought of midsummer, which for several weeks 

 made vegetation stand still where it did not en- 

 tirely arrest its growth. The latter season, after 

 abundance of rain fell in August succeeding the 

 drought, speedily made up the deficiency to the 

 late planted crops. Cornfields that were entire- 

 ly green in October had six weeks of favorable 

 season afterwards to perfect their ripening. Po- 

 tatoes lute planted, that halted *»-' • 



