268 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



due, requires a large amount of teaming to carry it on ; but it 

 will carry out a better crop than any land with which I am 

 conversant^— certainly it will give better returns for any in- 

 vestments made upon it than any land I ever worked upon. 

 Some twenty-five acres are covered with a growth of wood, 

 a little over twenty were under the plough this year, eighty- 

 five were under the scythe and one hundred in pasturage. 



The mowing and tillage lands in the valley and on the hill- 

 sides are divided into lots of five, seven, ten and twenty 

 acres each, and surrounded by stone walls, while the pastures 

 extend further back on the hills, afibrding an eastern and 

 western declivity and an early growth of feed on the one 

 side and a later one on the other side. 



» 



MANAGEMENT. 



All the products of the farm are consumed on the premises. 

 About seventy tons of flour, fifty tons of grain and feed and 

 twenty tons of straw are purchased and used on the farm. 

 From three to four tons of bones are saved, ground and 

 manufactured into phosphates on the premises. 



To make farming profitable this rule must be rigidly ad- 

 hered to, " Improve rather than exhaust your soil," "Return 

 more than you take from your land." 



All the manure that can be manufiictured from all sources, 

 from the time of planting till the cattle are housed in Novem- 

 ber, is devoted to top-dressing the grass-lands. The stables, 

 cow-yards and hog-stys are supplied with loam and muck as 

 absorbents of the urine, which also furnish top-dressing for 

 the grass-land. The washing from the laundry and the water- 

 closets are all turned on the mowings, while the privies are 

 daily supplied with coal-ashes or loam in sufficient quantities 

 to absorb the urine and render them nearly odorless. 



The droppings from the cattle, horses and hogs during the 

 winter are hauled directly to the fields where they are to be 

 used the next season, to be composted with the soil itself. 



The pastures have a yearly dressing of one hundred pounds 

 of gypsum to the acre, and all mowings not otherwise top- 

 dressed are served in the same manner. In this way our 

 pastures improve rather than deteriorate ; bushes and mosses 

 die out, while white-clover comes in. No fertilizer pays so 

 well on this land as gypsum. 



