ESSEX SOCIETY. 4i 



Nathan Tapley^s Statement. 



I herewith send a sample of rye, grown on a piece of ground 

 viewed by you before harvested. The product of the same 

 was thirty-two and one half bushels. The measurement of 

 the land is one acre and fifty-five poles. Onions had been cul- 

 tivated on the land for a number of years, and believing that a 

 change of crop would be beneficial, in the spring, as soon as 

 the land was sufficiently dry to work, I ploughed it, and sowed 

 five pecks of seed on the furrow and harrowed it in. I put a 

 sprinkling of compost manure on about one half of the piece 

 where I thought it most needed. I am aware that the number 

 of bushels per acre, unless there is some distinction between 

 spring and winter rye, does not come up to the requirements 

 for a premium, but the quality I think very fine. I sold it at 

 ninety cents per bushel, except three or four bushels reserved 

 for family use. I have sold thirty-two hundred weight of straw, 

 it being very clear, and good for bunching onions, at fifty cents 

 per hundred at the barn, and have about five hundred weight 

 now on hand, making thirty-seven hundred pounds in all, 

 amounting to eighteen dollars and fifty cents for the straw, and 

 twenty-nine dollars and twenty-five cents for the grain. 



Danvers, Oct. 1, 1851. 



Adino Pagers Statement. 

 I present for your examination, one and a half acres of corn. 

 Where the corn grew, grass was mown in 1850, less than half 

 a ton of poor hay to the acre. After the mowing, I put on 

 eight cords of compost manure, and ploughed it in. In the 

 spring, I cross-ploughed the lot about two inches deeper, than 

 in the fall ; I furrowed it only one way, four feet apart, and 

 planted the hills three feet apart, applying about two cords of 

 fine manure in the hills. At the time of hoeing, it was con- 

 siderably eaten by worms ; I thinned it out to four stocks to 

 the hill. It grew luxuriantly until the drought in the last of 

 July and first of August. It then rolled so much, that I feared 

 the crop would be small. It afterwards revived, and when 

 gathered, it yielded two hundred and twenty-three baskets of 

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