284 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



fruits and products of the dairy, thereby spending their hay and 

 grain on their farms. By farming on this principle, Mr. James 

 Howard, of West Bridgewater, writes that his land produces 

 more than twice the number of bushels of corn and wheat and 

 tons of hay per acre, and sustains twice the number of animals, 

 that it did fifteen years ago. He sold ^240 worth of onions from 

 one-half acre of land, and his cows have yielded him more than 

 one hundred dollars each in calves, milk and butter, in a year. 

 A farmer in West Bridgewater, with a small farm, sold one 

 thousand dollars' worth of one kind of vegetables the past 

 season. In Carver, Hanson, West Bridgewater and Plymouth, 

 some attention has been turned to raising strawberries for the 

 market, and several hundred dollars' worth are raised in each of 

 these towns. 



Few farmers raise corn enough for their own farm consump- 

 tion, although it is probably the most valuable staple crop, and 

 more easily raised here than elsewhere. 



A surplus of potatoes is raised by many farmers, but not. 

 enough to supply the consumption of the county. An average 

 yield of this crop for a few years back would not probably 

 exceed one hundred and twenty-five bushels per acre, and more 

 set it at less than that. The writer raised a crop of six hundred 

 baskets, of seventy pounds each, upon two and three-fourths 

 acres during the last season. This was upon old land, ploughed 

 from sod in 1864, and planted in part with corn and in part with 

 turnips, with stable manure ploughed in, and bone flour and 

 ashes at the first hoeing. The potatoes were planted in drills, 

 stable manure ploughed in. 



It is a disgrace to the county that asparagus, rhubarb and 

 early vegetables should be imported from Boston ; but such is 

 the case. We believe that one hundred farmers might cultivate 

 two acres each of asparagus for the Boston market, with greater 

 ■profit than any farm product. The soil in the southerly section 

 of the county, near Buzzard's Bay, is light and warm, and the 

 :spring climate is much earlier than that of the towns on Massa- 

 chusetts Bay. It feels the warm eddy of the Gulf Stream, for 

 which the cold current down the coast from Maine is substituted 

 for the towns on our eastern shore, Here early vegetables and 

 ithc product of the vine might be raised almost as easily as on 



