136 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



ly occurs. The soil, from its great depth, vetuins 

 its moisture for weeks after the warm, sandy 

 plains to the south are parched and dry, and from 

 its vicinity to mountains, it is refreslied by more 

 frequent lains. The drought of the past season 

 has probably been as severe in all parts of the 

 State, as any one which has occurred for many 

 years. Crops in some regions have been almost 

 entirely destroyed. And yet, we liave tlie satis- 

 faction to learn, that with the single exception of 

 the potatoe crop, the operations of the farmers 

 in the "Coos above the Upper Coos" have been 

 attended with at least tlieir average success. 

 Oats and hay they have in great abundance. 

 Their wheat is more abtnulant in quantity and 

 better in quality tliaii it has been for some years. 

 We believe that very many of our poor people 

 who are emigrating to the west and seeking tor 

 homes beyond even tlie far off waters of the 

 Mississippi, would do better to go to the north 

 part of the State where good land can be bought 

 in its natural state for from one to three dollars 

 per acre, clear up their own lands, and content 

 themselves with the slow but certain earnings of 

 New England industry expended upon New 

 England soil. The sum which it would cost to 

 remove a family of six persons to the banks of 

 the Mississippi would nearly pay the price of a 

 comfortable house and thrifty homestead among 

 the excellent grazing and wheat lands of Coos. 



Visit to a Massachusetts Farm. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



As Agriculture is the foundation of all produc- 

 tion, so is improved Agriculture destined to be- 

 come in this coimtry the most safe and profitable 

 pursuit. Up to this point of time, as a general 

 l)ractice of farmers, the surface has only been 

 skimmed; and the repeated skinuning has left 

 much of om- best lands in the condition of the 

 most worthless. In the business of improvement 

 example may do much ; but in the course of 

 events stern necessity will always be found the 

 better school master. 



There is an innate spirit of enterprise in the 

 body of New England farmers that wants only 

 the knowledge that any useful thing may be done 

 to accomplish every thing that is essential to be 

 done. If any matter tliat we may write or pub- 

 lish shall be instrumental in arousing and bring- 

 ing into action that spirit, we shall find full com- 

 pensation for all we shall undertake. 



Since the first contemplated publication of the 

 Visitor three years ago, it has been our object to 

 gain for ourselves such knowledge as, when given 

 through the press, might be useful to the public. 

 We then believed that much might be done for 

 impj-ovement simply by awakening public atten- 

 tion ; and that the hand which had not been 

 practically usefid in guiding the plough and in 

 bringing into cultivation long neglected fields, 

 might assist to cheer on, if not to enlighten those 

 who had the sinews and the strength to do what- 

 soever their hands find to do. 



If merely to gratify the fancy the flower bed 

 and the arbor pay the amateur for his labor, how 

 high must the enjoyment of him who sees tM 

 flourishing culture of bis hands growing and ma- 

 turing those- products which contribute to human 

 and animal sustenance and to wealth. We cut 

 down the forest that has hitherto been but a use- 

 less cumberer of the ground, or we clear off the 

 brakes and the brieis, the rocks and the hassock; 

 to give place to luxuriant wheat, or rye, or con., 

 or potatoes ; and how great is the pleasure of 

 seeing their growth from the first springing of 

 the infant bud to the maturity which furnishes a 

 stored abundance for man and beast when the 

 fiost has stricken the green fields, and tlie win- 

 try blast howls around our dwellings, and the 

 deep snow shuts out the view of naked mother 

 earth. 



We have made it a point, whenever called to 

 any part of the country, to observe and jireserve 

 whatever usefid information we could gather for 

 the benefit of the farmer; and whenever aught 

 of improvement has struck ns as worthy of ' 

 tation or recital, we have felt a strong an\ietv to 

 impart to others what was gratifving to ourselVes. 

 If we have on any occasion made too free use of 

 the names of those who knew not that they were 

 to be exhibited to the public gaze, the motive by 

 which we have been actuated— a desire to com- 

 mt'iid in the department of Agriculture every 



thing useful and worthy of inaitation — must be 

 our apology. 



We have been surprised at results « liich our 

 own eyes have witnessed. We have seen crops 

 glowing on land that the majority of farmers 

 would reject as useless or worthless — \\t: have 

 seen the very best, the most valuable and product- 

 ive lands made by the labors of man solely what 

 they are from artificial means at a cost so much 

 less Ihau their real value, that we not only wish 

 to inform ourselves but to advertise others of the 

 process. 



THE FARM AND ITS OWNER. 



In a late three-days journey to Boston to which 

 » were unexpectedly called as a witness to a 

 it in the United States court involving the 

 patent right to a great improvement of the 

 plough, the trial being postponed in consequence 

 of the illness of the Judge, on permission of its. 

 proprietor, we visited the farm of Elias Phin- 

 NEY, Esq. at Lexington, ten miles out of Boston ; 

 and during the two hours stride over his grounds 

 e had the advantage of all the information we 

 desired from its intelligent proprietor and owner. 

 Educated to the profession of law and engaged 

 in its practice several years, Mr. Phinney came 

 into the possession and use of this farm from the 

 circumstance of ownership by his venerable 

 father, who is still of his family at the advanced 

 age of ninety-eight years, and who, until within 

 the last two or three years, has continued in ac- 

 tive life. 



The younger Mr. Phinney, although an ama- 

 teur farmer, may justly lay claim to the habitual 

 performance of more daily labor than ninety-nine 

 in a himdred of the farmers of the country who 

 labor on their farms with their own hands. Like 

 any other professional man, lawyer, doctor, min- 

 ister, mechanic or merchant, ivho is obliged to 

 give daily attention to some other calling, and 

 who undertakes experiments not common to all 

 his neighbors, Mr. Phinney has had to encounter 

 the natural prejudice of many who are some- 

 times led to the extreme of condemning what is 

 really useful because they have seen hundreds of 

 experiments tried that were really of no advan- 

 tage. After all, there are few men in his situation 

 who have been more successful in tliis pui 

 than Mr. Phinney ; and the present roiulitioii of 

 his lands tells a story that nmst ccjinpel iliose 

 around him who have thought tlicmsrlvcs w 

 in their generation than Ihey su|)posed him to 

 be — if any such there be — to confess their supe 

 riority, and to adopt many of his modes of im 

 proving and cultivating the land. 



its position, EXTENT AND SOIL. 



Mr. Phinney's farm is situated on the Concord 

 turnpike, five miles from Concord, long the half 

 shire town of old Middlesex, and ten miles fron 

 East Cambridge, at which last place, being in thi 

 office of Clerk of the principal business cour 

 for that extended and important county, he spend 

 five days in each week, and at tlie seat of the 

 courts at Cambridge, Lowell and Concord, 

 present at all times during the sitting of the 

 Court. For the purpose of superintending his 

 farm and numerous family concerns, he ri.ses 

 all seasons of the year at five o'clock in the mor 

 ing, by his own example instructing each and 

 every member of his family {he has reared ten 

 sons and daughters, the youngest of whom is ten 

 years of age) in those habits of^ industry, care and 

 attention to which he is personally so well inur 

 ed. What with the cares and laboi-s of instiuct 

 ing and directing in his family, laying out the 

 daily occupation" of some half a dozen hired 

 men, and the severe duties of a very laborious 

 oflice in the public employment, it may be taken 

 for granted that there are few farmers in the 

 cient Commonwealth who really jierform a more 

 arduous personal labor than Mr. Phinney. Who 

 ever has seen the gentleman might j*idge from 

 his countenance in that green old age which pre 

 sents tlie head to appearance as one of the old 

 fashioned powdered gentlemen of forty years 

 since, that there are few tasks or modes of life 

 severe or diflicult as to disturb his equanimity of 

 tenqier. 



The faini of Mr. Phinney consists of about 

 hundred and fixly acres upon that rough ridge of 

 hiils dividing the waters of the tributary streams 

 which run into Charles river on the one hand 

 and Merrimack river on the other — a much har- 

 der faced soil than is usually found upon the 

 ridgcB faithcr in the interior. "Tho elevations at 



this point are not only full of rocks great and 

 small terminating the sharp points of many hills 

 in mere le<lges, but a great portion of tlie soil is 

 scarcely less hard than the rock itseltl These 

 rough ridges, after their first clearing, were the 

 favorite haunts of the barberry bush, the cedar, 

 the poplar and the birch, indicating not a very 

 strong soil in its crude state. Yet it is not un- 

 common, when the masses of stones have been 

 dug from this ground, to find iqjon it, by the ar- 

 tificial aids of manure and good cultivation, such 

 crops as would do no discredit to the finest and 

 most fertile soil in the country. Such is not the 

 condition of Mr. Phinney's farm alone upon this 

 ground — there are farms all about him at their 

 sides and in the valleys between these elevated 

 ridges, whose productions are creditable to the 

 perseverance and industry of his neighbors. 



Mr. Phinney look the cultivation of this farm 

 from his father when it produced annually not 

 much over ten tons of hay: one hundied tons is_ 

 now its annual product. He then kept a pair of 

 horses, two yokes of oxen, and two or three 

 cows, and was obliged to purchase hay to carry 

 them through tho winter: he now has twenty- 

 four fine milch cows, keeps si.v horses, three or 

 more yokes of o.ten, and two to three hundred 

 sheep; and tlie keeping of this stock is hiit a 

 minor business of the farm, inasmuch as the lar- 

 gest and lucrative share of its product is taken 

 away in the vegetables, roots and fruits sent twice 

 a week or more to the Boston market, and the 

 tons of pork annually raised for sale. 



ADMIXTURE OF SOILS. 



We have of late remarked that generally in the 

 vicinity of land of one prevailing character there 

 is at no very great distance land of an opposite 

 character, in the intermixture of which an ex- 

 tremely sterile may be converted into a produc- 

 tive soil. Ill the midst of arid plains we now and 

 then find swamps in which are beds of black 

 vegetable mould, clay or marl ; and in some in- 

 stances it has been discovered thai the exchange 

 of silex for clay or mould, and clay for sand or 

 gravel, have wrought wonders in cultivation. — 

 The rough ridges of Lexington, in the midst of 

 which Mr. Phinney's farm is situated, are inter- 

 spersed with hog or peat meadows, some of 

 which have a vegetable mould of great depth. 

 The most of these meadows were formerly 

 ponds — some of them have been recently drain- 

 ed of their former fixed surface of water. Oth- 

 ers had so much standing water as to preclude 

 the grov\th of other than coarse iiifhrior hay of 

 the poorest quality. Others, after the first wood 

 had been cut o'Y settling down into more solidi- 

 ty, were dug up for peat. One of these on Mr. 

 Phinney's farm, Irom which thousands of cords 

 of fiiel neariy as valuable as the best bituminous 

 coal had been taken, has been changed into the 

 most jiroductive hay ground upon his premises. 



GRA.ND OPERATION UPON A PEAT MEADOW. 



Passing by this meadow, the traveller would 

 little suspect the quantity or the quality of the 

 hay which it produces: jiassing over it afi(;r its 

 burden had been taken off, he would hardly 

 dream of the extent of the labor or the excel- 

 lence of the preparation of this field of several 

 acres in extent. The original apple orchard of 

 the old farm is situated at the north in a sort of 

 sloping basin coming down to the edge and ter- 

 minating in this peat nieadow. This orchard, 

 with the open space towards the meadow, covers 

 a clear mowing field with now and then a rock 

 100 large to be carried off. The larger portion of 

 the old orchard and field has the benefit of irri- 

 gation from a sunken pond still higher up, out of 

 which the water is annually drawn : this process 

 of simple irrigation, s|>read over the surface of 

 the field, produces an additional yield of several 

 tons of hay, and continues the production year 

 after year without the aid of ploughing or manure. 

 But the i>lain field, a.s well as the new orchard 

 which we shall presently notice, has been clear- 

 ed of limidrejs and thousands of tons of stones ; 

 and all of them are placed beyond the eye or the 

 ken of the stranger; and where are they ? 



In the first pla'cc a dilch has been made at the 

 edge of the whole semi-circle of (he meailow on 

 this side between the soli ground of the meadow 

 and the hard pan of the rising hill just deep 

 enough to cut off the cold springs which former- 

 ly fed the nieadow. This outside ditch filled al 

 the bottom with rocks large and small leaving the 

 water room to percolate between llicm, these arc 



