164 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



rooted, separate it from its parent and train it in the place of the 

 last vine. In this way your vineyard will always be kept full of 

 vines — a matter of some importance. But our people will not 

 go into this cultivation unless they can see whether is 



GRAPE GROWING PROFITABLE. 



I trust I have shown that grapes can be grown as easily as 

 • any other crop. I would as soon take care of an acre of grapes 

 as " make " an acre of corn. They find at the West that one 

 man can take care of five acres of vineyard. The same thing 

 can be done here. You plough and cultivate as soon as the 

 frost is out, and again in the summer, to keep down weeds ; 

 you pinch the growing shoots two or three times to consolidate 

 the wood. When you come to the harvest, invalids, old people 

 and children can gather the crop as well as the strong man, 

 and a merry harvest it is. There is nothing like hard labor 

 about it. It does not draw upon the farm labor at seasons when 

 it can ill be spared, nor intercept its profits in other directions. 



It is a fact within my own knowledge that two thousand 

 dollars per acre has been realized for the grape crop this year. 

 The price has steadily advanced for several years (notwithstand- 

 ing the increased supply,) from ten cents per pound to twenty 

 cents, wholesale. At ten cents per pouftd, the full crop of an 

 acre would come to $1,400, and at twenty cents, to $2,800. 

 The crop from a well established vineyard of the Concord grape 

 will be seven tons. This has been exceeded in Massachusetts. 

 Mr. Jode, of Burlington, Iowa, had 8,860 pounds (or nearly nine 

 tons to the acre,) of grapes from a vineyard of one-half acre in 

 extent ; the vines four years old, and the crop the first gathered 

 from them ; the grape was the Concord. A gentleman of your 

 county has gathered from his vineyard, crops, the value of which 

 kas averaged seventeen hundred dollars to the acre. I have 

 raised seven tons to the acre, and I have shown you that others 

 have raised more than that. 



But suppose you do not get but half that crop, and but half 

 that price, you have an income of seven hundred dollars per acre. 

 Suppose, even, you reduce this last sum by one-half, is there any 

 other cultivation which will give you such profits ? 



If the grape crop should ever be so large as to glut the 

 market, — an event wliich cannot occur for many years to 



