THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



71 



Tliere is no such tliiugas absolutely barren sands ; 

 the raius and snows will deposite something lii- 

 vorable to the vegetable growth wherever they 

 fall. The i)itch pine is best suited to the sandy 

 plains. Our bare and rocky hills would bear 

 the larch. The Duke of Athol has covered 

 10,000 acres of such land with such larch. Our 

 wet marshes or meadows are the most difficult to 

 operate upon, but tliese will bear the white cedar, 

 which may be introduced by simply sowing tlie 

 seed. As the forests are stripped away, the cli- 

 mate becomes dryer. Our streams dry up as the 

 woods — great reservoirs of water— are. removed. 

 These woods prevent the escape of water by 

 evaporation ; they soften the climate. They are 

 conductors of electricity from the clouds, anil 

 thus are contributors to the fertility of the soil. 

 Over a bare country, the winds have nothing to 

 break their force, and consequently sweep with 

 violence. A bare hill gives no protection, while 

 one covered with trees brealis the force of the 

 wind. By their annual deposites of leaves and 

 wood for decomposition, the forests contribute 

 steadily to the fertility of the soil. As fuel, our 

 forests are worth to the Cominonweallh $5,000,- 

 000 annually. 



Farming in the Capital of New Hampshire. 



Soirie of the best Farms in Concord are in that 

 part of the town called the West Parish. This 

 part, the native place of many enterprising men 

 who remain, a great company of Mbots am\ Far- 

 nuni!) and Dows, and not a few of the Carters 

 scattered over the whole town, is located tiot up- 

 on any considerable travelled road — it adjoins, in 

 the north-east section of HopUinton, another fine 

 district of farmers ; and the sections or parts of 

 both towns, as are many, very many of the finest 

 agricultural districts of the State, are seldom visi- 

 ted or seen except by the people who have busi- 

 ness directly with the farmers themselves. The 

 Concord West Parish farmers are more sure of a 

 crop of corn than they are upon the lightest and 

 best cultivated land upon the Concord intervale : 

 their grain crops are better — they sometimes raise 

 good wlieat when that croii upon the intervale is 

 blasted. The land at the West Parish to the 

 north and north-west of Little Pond, lies very 

 Jiandsome for cultivation ; and the farmers from 

 that region sometimes bring us beautiful poaches 

 when none are grown in any otlier direction. 

 This best part of Concord is not often seen and 

 but little known to the hundreds of citizens from 

 almost every other town of the State, legislators 

 and others, "who annually visit us. 



Tiie farming in Concord is not what it ought to 

 be, and what we hope it will be. There are ma- 

 ny hundreds of acres of naturally fertile intervale 

 upon the Merrimack river in this town : some 

 farms originally embraced more than a hundred 

 acres each. This intervale, when overflown by 

 the backing in of the frequent rises of the river, 

 is enriched by a sediment equal to a coating of 

 manure ; and there are many acres that will re- 

 tain their fertility in spite of the successive crop- 

 pings. Other parts of the intervale, more eleva- 

 ted and not often overflov.'ed, require a frequent 

 application of manure to keep up their fertility. 

 We regret to say that the cultivation of this ele- 

 gant tract of land has been but too much neglect- 

 ed — that no inconsiderable portion of it has been 

 cruelly kept from year to year under the skin- 

 ning jjrocess, and has grown poorer and poorer. 



The original farmers of Concord, a sharp and 

 shrewd set of men, who came from Andover and 

 Old Haverhill, then several days' journey into the 

 country, to make a pilch on land they knew to be 

 the very best, soon became " good livers :" they 

 could not well help it, so long as a moderate share 

 of labor gave them abimdance of the fruits of 

 the earth. The sons and grandsons of that gen- 

 erntion, for some cause, have generally taken it 

 into tlieir heads that there were other easier ways 

 of making money than by farming. Some have 

 chosen learned, or mercantile, or mechanical 

 cupations, and settled down in other parts — a few 

 have become distinguished mtn ; but the busi- 

 ness of the farm, whicli was the origin of theii 

 prosperity, has not been advanced as it should 

 lave been. Our intervales do not present that 

 ne.itness and improvement that we see about 

 many other villages. And it is matter of regret 

 to witness men of money and affluence prefer 

 lather to prosper by lending their money on usu- 

 ry and adding to tlieir wjalth by the fruits of ad- 



vantageous mortgages, than by the thrift of doub- 

 ling the value in the increased fruits of the earth 

 which they already possess. That example of a 

 rich man must be pernicious which leaves his 

 farm without improvement rather than ])ay the 

 wages of a laborer who could well earn on it 

 even more than their amount. We have seen the 

 rich man who was too indolent to work himself, 

 and too penurious tohire, let his fine garden grow 

 up to weeds. The doctrines which such rich 

 men preach are decidedly liad ; and their prac- 

 tice is even worse than their preaching. 



In the present enlightened times the story 

 would hardly be believed that not more than half 

 a dozen fanners of the town are at all anxious to 

 pun^hase the great quantities of manure annually 

 itiade at the stables of the several large hotels of 

 this place : there are few who seem to be at all 

 aware that the increase of manure will multiply 

 the caj)acity of their land and its products in a 

 four-fold ratio. There are large piles of manure 

 lying in at least one stable of this town two and 

 three years of age, for want of a purchaser; and 

 this too while some accuse the purchasers at oth- 

 er stables by the year with the design of monop- 

 olizing the manure of the town ! 



We thiuk it a very good sign to see the fanner 

 coming into town in the winter for manure. For 

 several years we had seen Mr. George W. Dow, 

 a West Parisli farmer, coming into the street and 

 going out with his well filled wagon and a strong 

 team. Mr. Dow, also, has been a subscriber to 

 the Monthly Visitor ever since its commence- 

 ment; and the last time he called on us we had 

 the curiosity to inquire what progress he had 

 made in the business of farnpng, and gathered 

 information as follows : 



With little or no means beyond the labor of 

 their own hands, George W. and Thomas J. 

 Dow purchased a woin out finni near the West 

 Parish village of some hundred and more acres, 

 for which they agreed to pay .$1400. On this 

 farm, when it was first purchased, there was pro- 

 duced scarcely sufficient hay to keep a horse and 

 cow. The two brothers improved the farm for 

 foiu- or five years, considerably increasing its pro- 

 duction, and making from it profits with vvhicli to 

 ])ay for the land, when Washington purchased 

 out Jefferson's half giving him $1500 for what 

 oi-iginully cost only ^700. 



As a sample of the increase of production iqi- 

 on this worn out fiirm, Mr. Dow now cuts hay 

 sufficient to keep two horses, four oxen, five or 

 six cows, with young cattle and sheep. The rise 

 in the price of wood alone upon about thirty 

 acres of tliis land n)akes more than the differ- 

 ence between the original price of the farm and 

 that paid Ijis brother. Every cord of standing 

 hardwood is wortii at least one dollar: a ihw 

 years since, wood more than three miles out of 

 the village, was estimated as of little or no value. 

 Mr. Dow brings into the street his load of wood 

 worth from four to five dollar!!, and carries back 

 a load of manme which adds to the production 

 and value of his tarm more than twice the amount 

 of cost. 



Upon five-eighths of an acre of the worn-out 

 finm, Mr. Dow last year raised 740 bushels of ru- 

 ta-baga turnips, after a crop of potatoes had been 

 taken off of the same land. 



Mr. D. three years ago cominenced an exper 

 ment with lime and plaster side by side upon his 

 land. The first year the crop was a little better 

 with the plaster than with the iime. The second 

 year on tlie same ground the crop of wheat was 

 larger with the lime than the jdaster ; and the 

 tliird year large clover with no sorrel grew wher 

 ever the lime was strewed, and small clover mix- 

 ed with sorrel was the produce of the plastered 

 land. 



Mr. Dow is of opinion, from repeated experi- 

 ments, that harrowing with an iron-toothed har- 

 row wheat and o.its after they come out of the 

 ground has a good effect ; and that the growth 

 and crop of oats will be increased by passing a 

 heavy roller over them at any tiirie before they 

 have" gained the height of four inches. Being 

 under a necessity of laying some stone wall on 

 the side of an oat-field, a heavily loaded drag 

 passed over them, and wlierever the drag passed 

 the oats were of increased size. 



It is no compliment to the most wealthy far- 

 mers of Concord to say that to our knowledge 

 there has never been brought here a breeder of 

 cattle or horses of improved blood. We have 



had some very good hogs from the Berkshires in- 

 tcoduced by our more enterprising neighbors, the 

 Shakers. If we have any improved cattle or 

 horses, we think they must have come in by acci- 

 dent. Mr. Dow, we believe, has the best bull 

 that has been kept in town for a number of years. 

 He drew for this animal the third premium at the 

 last Cattle Show of the Merrimack County Agri- 

 cultural Society. The cow which produced him 

 was raised by Mr. Levi Hotchins, and was said 

 to be of the Devonshire or Whiteside breed. The 

 bull weighed at the time he was calved 123 

 pounds: he is now three years old, and weighed 

 last September 1340 pounds. Every good calf to 

 be raised fiom such a bull must be worth, when 

 a year old, several dollars more than if sired by a 

 common bull. 



The farmers in the towns of Weare, Deering 

 and Henniker, have been in the habit of rai.sing 

 as fine cattle as are produced in any part of New 

 England. A few days since we met in the street 

 a Weare farmer who was returning from Canter- 

 bury with a fine Heifer Calf of the Durham blood, 

 (or which he paid the Shakers twenty-five dol- 

 lars. He had already a Durham bull, but wished 

 to obtain a full blood feiTiale, that he might soon- 

 er perfect the blood of his breed of cattle. 



For the Farmer's Monthly Visitor, 



Boston, April 23, 1841. 

 Sir: — Though I am not a subscriber to your 

 paper, I occasionally see it, and besides what my 

 own observation induces me to believe, I leant 

 from others better qualified to judge, that it is do- 

 ing much to improve the farmer and to extend 

 his information upon subjects of an agricultural 

 nature. Doomed from childhood to a city life, it 

 might seem presunqition in me even to hint any 

 thing to the jregularly bred farmer touching his 

 employment. I cannot however refrain fiom 8;.y- 

 ing a word or two, which I would fain believe to 

 lie beneficial to him, or rather to those of his 

 calling who live in your neighborhood. 



You are doubtless aware of the fact that during 

 the summer months this market is scantily sup- 

 plied with good butter, and that the price is then 

 very high, ranging about 2.5 cts. the i)ound. Some- 

 times it is as high as two shillings, (34 cents,) and 

 occasionally it has been as low as twenty cents. 

 1 allude to fresh butter for table use. The great- 

 er part of this quality is supplied by comparative- 

 ly a small district in the immediate vicinity of 

 this city, the county of Worcester. Now, I 

 would suggest to the farmers of your State, who 

 reside within a circuit of fifty or sixty miles 

 around the Rail Road depot at Nashua, whether 

 it would not be for their interest to come in for a 

 share of these high rates, and endeavor to furnish 

 us with butter partly during the summer and 

 partly during the winter, instead of crowding 

 theirwhole product upon us during the winter 

 montlis alone. Surely the transportation by horse 

 power to Nashua would not, in most cases, be 

 greater than that to which the farmers of Wor- 

 cester have been subject in moving their product 

 to Boston. The only diffei-ence therefore in fa- 

 vor of the latter, is the trifling expense to which 

 your farmers are liable on the easy and rapid 

 conveyance from Nashua to Boston. 



This difference of the cost of transportation 

 must, it seems to me, sink into insignificance, 

 when the summer price of butter is compared to 

 that of winter, which the farmers of New Hamp- 

 siiirc now realize only. Even should butter bring 

 no more than the usual winter price — a result 

 that in the nature of the case could not be, as 

 during the winter the market is overstocked with 

 a year's product from your State and Vermont at 

 once — they would gain the advantage of reali- 

 zing their proceeds at an earlier period, and thus 

 have money to use rather than credit, an altera- 

 tion to be warmly embraced by prudent men. 



A few words might he advanced here respect- 

 ins the improvement of the quality of butter gen- 

 erally, even with regard to a very large portion of 

 what is usually received in this place during the 

 winter. Tons and tons are so badly made as to 

 be hardly fit for any other use than for soap- 

 grease, a"sure indication of carelessness or igno- 

 rance in the manufacturer. But I have not lei- 

 sin-o at this moment to say more excepting that 

 the suggestions here so hastily thrown out may 

 lead to such action on the part of farmers, as wil" 

 be mutually beneficial to them and our citizens. 

 Very respectfully, "• 



