ESSEX SOCIETY. 61 



expenses, as I have done for this year. But I believe, and 

 hesitate not to say, that the amount of sales were ample to pay 

 all the labor for carrying on the farm and maintaining the fam- 

 ilies, including the taxes, and the manure and ashes which have 

 been bought. In August 1850, 1 turned over with the plough, 

 five acres of sward land on my home lot, and applied forty cart 

 loads of compost to the acre, made by mixing green manure 

 with an equal part of good loam, meaning always by cart load, 

 about thirty-five bushels. The land was thoroughly harrowed, 

 and I sowed one peck of herds grass, and one bushel of north- 

 ern red-top per acre, and brushed and rolled the same. I think 

 the product this year was full three tons per acre. The first 

 week in October, 1850, I took off a crop of corn from an acre 

 and a half of land adjoining the river, and ploughed in six cords 

 of horse manure, sowed one and a half bushels of rye, and 

 sowed the same with grass seed. In September preceding, I 

 ploughed sixteen acres of land on the island, turned under all 

 the grass that grew on the land during the season, and which 

 would have made about eight or ten hu-.dred of hay to the 

 acre. Two acres of this land was in the low part before re- 

 ferred to, and had never been ploughed. I sowed one acre of 

 this low land with grass seed only, and the other fifteen acres 

 with rye only, giving it no further dressing. 



On the first day of April last, I commenced keeping a daily 

 account of my sales, expenditures, and labor performed on the 

 farm, also the amount of farm produce of every description. 

 On the 24th of April, I sowed one bushel of the Black Sea 

 spring wheat, on two thirds of an acre of land, on the home 

 lot, where potatoes grew the year previous, and seeded the 

 same with red-top and herds grass. On the same and the fol- 

 lowing day, I sowed twenty-four bushels of oats on eight acres 

 of laud on the island, and two bushels of barley on about 

 three quarters of an acre, and seeded the same with ten pounds 

 of southern clover to the acre. This land was in corn, and 

 broom corn the year previous. From the 13th to the 16th of 

 May, I planted three and a half acres of corn, and one and a 

 half acre of potatoes on the home lot. One acre had been 

 planted v/ith corn and potatoes for two years previous, and the 



