January, 1842. 



THE FARMER'S MONTHLY VISITOR. 



attention to the selection, as if tbey weio design- 

 ed to be kept longer. Tlie average cost of his 

 new milch cows is twenty-five dollars; and their 

 value when turned off in the spring is estimated 

 at fifteen dollars. He fats a«inuaily about one 

 thousand pouuds of pork. 



The returns which he has given me of some 

 of his crops are as follows : English hay, seventy- 

 five tons, of which he sells about forty tons ; salt 

 hay six tons; fresh meadow hay thirty-five tons; 

 pease sold green, two hundred and seventy-five 

 bushels; potatoes, one thousand bushels; onions, 

 two hundred bushels; beets, two hundred and 

 fifty bushels ; ruta baga, four hundred bushels : 

 winter apples, three hundred and fifty barrels; 

 cider, ten barrels ; asparagus, squashes and mel- 

 ons, five, hundred dollars' worth ; horseradish, 

 one hundred dollars; celery, one hundred and 

 fifty dollars; five acres of cabbages, savoy and 

 drumhead. These are principally drumhead, 

 which are sold to coasters and ships, and bring 

 from four to seven dollars per hundred ; the price 

 at the present time is ten dollars per hundred. 

 His sales of cucumbers for pickling this year 

 amounted to one thousand dollars. There are 

 many small items which it is unnecessary to par- 

 ticularize. 



Mr. Hill has usually six or seven acres in 

 squashes and melons, and one acre in asparagus. 

 His melons are planted in the rows of his pease. 

 Tlie pease are sowed in rows five feet apart. The 

 melons in every other row of pease, in hills ten 

 feel apart. The hills lor the melons aire manur- 

 ed with two good shovelfuls of manure when the 

 pease are sown, though the melons are not plant- 

 ed until some weeks after the pease. 



The cultivation of asparagus was formerly a 

 laborious and expensive affair. It has ceased to 

 be so. Mr. Hill deems his lightest and most 

 sandy soil best suited to this crop. The land 

 after being well tilled, is laid out in furrows or 

 trenches, three feet apart and about a foot deep ; 

 the |)lants are then set in the trenches; and the 

 land kept clean and well manured. In this way 

 it is us easily cultivated as Indian corn, and is a 

 very profitable crop. Horse-radish is cultivated 

 much in the same way ; the land requires very 

 high manuring, and the plants are set out by cut- 

 tings in narrow rows. As the root is taken up, 

 this requires a frequent planting. I have known 

 two square rods of horse-radish to produce sixty 

 dollars in one season in the market. 



Mr. Hill's cabbages are set out in rows three 

 feet apart, and the plants two feet apart in the 

 rows. This would give seven thousand two 

 hundred and sixty plants; but of these a great 

 many must be expected to fail. 



From an acre in apples Mr. Hill in one case 

 obtained three hundred barrels. As a wash for 

 his trees, he uses a composition of one pound of 

 potash to one gallon of water ; but is of^ opinion 

 that this or any application to the bark will sel- 

 dom be required, where the land is well manured 

 and cultivated. 



Mr. Hill differs from many farmers, in prefer- 

 ring to feed his meadows in the autumn ; as he 

 thinks they will produce more hay than when 

 the " old fog" is left upon them. Where the 

 grass is cut early, this may be the case ; but 

 where a late haying is practised, and an opportu- 

 nity is given for the thorough decay of the old 

 vegetation, I apprehend a different result would 

 be found. At any rate, the poaching of the mea- 

 dows by cattle, where the land is soft and clayey, 

 so as to leave many holes for the water to stand 

 in, must be prejudicial. The observations and 

 experience of so successful a fanner, who has 

 been exclusively devoted to agriculture for thirty- 

 seven years, and, in that time, has sold nnich 

 more than seventy-five thousand dollars' worth 

 of produce from his place, exclusive of the con- 

 sumption of his family, are highly valuable, and 

 I, therefore, make no apology forgoing into these 

 details. 



Here is the encouraging example of a man 

 making himself rich and independent by farm- 

 ing, unassisted but by his own labor and the re- 

 sources of his own farm, which his improvements 

 have continually multiplied and enlarged. He 

 began before the mast, and now walks tlie quar- 

 ter deck. Many men think it extraordinary that 

 they cannot walk the quarter-deck without know- 

 ing, far less pulling, a single rope in the ship. 

 Tiiey are afraid of getting tar u[)on their hands. 

 A^'riculture i^^ a trailo or profession to be studied 



and learnt as much as any other trade or profes- 

 sion. The general opinion is, that any dunce 

 may he made a farmer ; so any dunce may be 

 made a merchant, or a lawyer, or a minister ; but 

 what sort of merchants, or lawyers, or ministers 

 will dunces make ? Not long since, in one of 

 my exclusions, I visited a gentleman brought up 

 in city habits from his childhood, who had re- 

 cently removed into the country with a view to 

 farm for profit. As a farmer, he had not got a 

 single wrinkle upon his horns, for he was then 

 only about six months old. He showed me his 

 plantations, his buildings and multiform conven- 

 iences, and above all, his Berkshire pigs, which 

 he proposed to tat upon ruta-baga and hay-tea. 

 He then told me, with admirable self-complacen- 

 cy, that he had thought there was some mystery 

 in farming ; but he had found none, and in three 

 months had learnt all that there was to be known 

 about it. Had he said all that he could learn of 

 it, I should have agreed with him. It would 

 have been hopeless in me to have allempted to 

 undeceive him ; but the barrenness of his pro- 

 ducts, and the bottom of an empty purse, soon 

 brought home the conviction of a too common 

 error; and, I am sorry to add, provoked some 

 curses upon farming, which belonged entirely to 

 his own ignorance and indiscretion. He was not 

 the man who. because his beans came up the 

 wrong way, caused them to be turned and plant- 

 ed with the top down; but he was first cousin in 

 the same family. 



Mr. Hill employs five men in the winter, and 

 twelve through tlie sunmier. He pays high wa- 

 , because the best services are required, and 

 men work more hours in a day than men em- 

 ployed by the farmers in the vicinity of the cap- 

 ital, why supply the market. 



Mr. Hill purchases the right for a portion of 

 the lime, of clearing the refuse from the plat- 

 forms in the hog-establishment in his neighbor- 

 hood, which I have described. He knows no 

 manure so efficacious as this wherever applied. 

 It is always composted. Next to this, he ranks 



ght-soil, which is likewise mixed with mould 

 or peat mud. 



Sandy Soil. 



There is more value in every dry sand bank 

 than those who regard them to be entirely use- 

 less suppose. We often come in sight of vacant 

 naked spots of sand where no vegetation springs 

 because the wind is continually moving the sur- 

 face. The difiiculty with this land is not more 

 in its sterility than in the operation of the wind 

 blowing upon it. Could the surface remain still, 

 there probably would be sufficient strength in 

 much of this ground for vegetation. 



There are hundreds and thousands of acres 

 of dry sand near the, sea, embracing whole inlands 

 s, and much of the main land in 

 others. A large portion of the towns on the 

 lower end of Cape Cod in Massachusetts is land 

 of this description. The wind moves this land 

 in many places as it moves a bed of light snow. 



id it banks up high vvhere\ 



any 



obstacle in- 



tercepts it. It is proved that wherever a location 

 can be made so as to arrest and fix in any one 

 point the moving sand, the ground can be made 

 )roductive. The quantity of alumina or vegeta- 

 ble matter necessary to change the appearance 

 of the flowing sand is scarcely equal to ten per 

 cent, of the soil made. 



In a former number of the Visitor we men- 

 tioned, on the authority of a gentleman living in 

 South Carolina, that Edisto island, situated near 

 the (lort of Charleston, had been converted from 

 fields of flowing sand into plantations producing 

 the beautiful sea-island cotton, simply by the 

 application of marsh mud and muscle shells 

 found on the mouths of inlets and about the 

 shores of the island ; and that the value of the 

 improved land much exceeded the expense laid 

 out upon it. 



The Hand of the soa-islands probably possess- 

 es more powerful innate properties of fertility 

 than the sand banks formed from tlie flowage of 

 fresh water rivers ; and the sand banks of the 

 rivers are yet more valuable perhaps than the 

 sand of light hard pine plain lands. 



The sand-banks of the higher intervales on 

 the Merrimack nearest the river are often treated 

 as too sterile for cultivation. With the applica- 

 tion of no very great quantity of compost, in a 

 pan of which slaked liino w,"is niixcl, ijio editor 



of the Visitor has succeeded in changing entirely 

 the complexion and texture of a portion of flow- 

 ing sand. Some of this ground, partaking slight- 

 ly of the sediment which sometimes accompanies 

 sand brought on in a freshet, sprung up sponta- 

 neously in white clover and redtop. Water wil- 

 lows, standing where the sand washed, have not 

 prevented rank grass growing almost in the 

 shade. 



Isaac Hale, Esq. of Franklin, lately mention- 

 ed to us the unexpected success he had on about 

 two acres of light sandy land upon the bank of 

 the Merrimack river above. In a lime of leisure 

 in winter he carried upon this ground about one 

 hundred and fifty half cart fulls from a clay-bank 

 at no great distance. This he spread over the 

 ground five years ago, and ploughed in deeper 

 than common, afterwards sowing down with oats 

 in expectation of ploughing in the green crop 

 preparatory to a crop of rye the ensuing fall. 

 The oats came up and grew so rank that he took 

 them off as a very decent crop. The crop of rye 

 followed much greater than usual on that kind of 

 land ; and the whole five years have been follow- 

 ed up with alternate crops of potatoes and corn 

 under a slight manuring, succeeded by grain 

 without manure — the land holding well its 

 strength and against drought. Mr. Hale, since 

 the last crop was taken off, has made a new ap- 

 plication of over two hundred loads of the same 

 clay ; and is full in the confidence that this will 

 do the land quite as much benefit as an equal 

 quantity of good stable tiianure. 



Young Farmers in Concord. 



We have observed the progress made by sev- 

 eral young men of Concord within the last five 

 years in renovating and adding much to tlie value 

 of their farms. Of these, without their knowl- 

 edge, we will name a few. 



Mr. Charles Hall, on the farm formerly 

 owned by his grandfather, Samuel Bradley, 

 westerly of Mill Village, has, at the least calcula- 

 tion, doubled its products in the course of the 

 last eight years. Our attention was first called 

 to his imiirovements five years ago, where be 

 had torn away rocks nearly covering the ground 

 and inveterate bushes and briars, making the 

 rank grass grow where none grew before. He 

 keeps two large yoke of oxen and many cattle, 

 and still brings the best hay to market when it 

 will sell in the street for $18 per ton— taking 

 good care not to return without a full load of 

 manure. He is both a manure maker and a ma- 

 nure buyer. 



Jeremiah S. Noyes, Esq., half a mile out of 

 the main street, left trade and commenced upon 

 a farm of white pine plain land a few years ago. 

 This land, when he came upon it, was so poor that 

 in a tract of forty acres, one of his neighbors 

 told him if a strfped snake should set out to 

 cross it he must starve before he got over. Mr. 

 Noyes has brought this land to produce fifty 

 bushels of corn to the acre, and has increased 

 the product of the ground four-fold. He keeps 

 up about his |)reniiscs constantly a herd of swine 

 as manure makers ; and he increases the quanti- 

 ty and quality by the use of mud and lime, and 

 composting in his yards. 



We have before alluded to Mr. Washi.ngton 

 Dow, whose farm is near the West Parish vil- 

 lage. He has literally made a new farm out of 

 an old one ; and now" obtains four and five times 

 the produce of hay and grain that the land yield- 

 ed when he first commenced. He brings grain 

 to market, and carries home manure— a practice 

 which he has stuck to for years. They have a 

 set of good and thriving farmers in the West 

 Parish of Concord : some of them have thought 

 Mr. Dow goes too far in buying manure, that he 

 has ploughed too deep, raised too much ruta-baga 

 and root feed for his cattle, and attempted other 

 improvements which will not " pay the vv-ay. 

 But some of them are becoming convinced at 

 last that they have labored under a greater mis- 

 take than ho has. 



Mr. J. B. Knowles, on the plam about a mile 

 from the West Parish village, has done wonders 

 in the cultivation and reclamation of a farm of 

 the light pine plain soil : h(i has brought new 

 land into use, and doubled, trebled and more, the 

 produce of the old land. He too understands 

 the value of manure, and know..^ how to make it. 

 Within n year past he has purchased a lot of six- 

 teen acres from which the wood and timber liad 



