ESSEX SOCIETY. 65 



that has been very expensive. My house is probably more 

 than a hundred and twenty years old. I have repaired it at a 

 cost of a few hundred dollars ; put a cellar under my barn, 

 built an addition to the barn, and a number of small build- 

 ings. - 



I have usually kept, for the last eight or ten years, one 

 horse, one yoke of oxen, from three to four cows, and some 

 young stock. 



I have made, for the last few years, from thirty to one hun- 

 dred cart-loads of manure yearly. I have formerly used con- 

 siderable meadow mud, but I begin to think that it does not 

 do so well on our heavy moist land, for a compost, as soil, or 

 something that is obtained from dry land ; yet I have no doubt 

 that it is the right thing for many kinds of land. The manner 

 in which I have applied manure, generally, is to spread twenty 

 loads to the acre, when I seed down with grass. I have gen- 

 erally seeded down in the spring, and sowed oats or barley, 

 but sometimes have sow^ed my grain in the spring, and 

 ploughed in the stubble in September and sowed grass. When 

 my grain has a very heavy straw, and falls before it is ripe, 

 much of the grass that has been sown in spring, is destroyed ; 

 this is especially the case with oats. My corn I have always 

 manured in the hill, and spread all that remained after sowing 

 my grass and grain. My crops the present year, are full mid- 

 dling, except the hay ; in that 1 am cut short nearly one-half, — 

 certainly more than one-third, on my ploughed lands. My 

 meadow grass was an average crop. I raised one hundred 

 bushels of corn on two and one-fourth acres of ground ; one 

 acre was grass land, ploughed the last of November, the re- 

 mainder was planted with corn, the year before. The crop 

 on the part that was turned up last fall, was nearly one-third 

 heavier than the former, which is not common on our land. 

 I can assign no reason for this, it being all manured alike, but 

 I think the dry weather must have affected the old ground 

 more sensibly. I do not recollect that my corn crop was ever 

 injured by drought before, but a part of my field, I think, was 

 this year. I raised seventy bushels of barley and oats on two 

 and one-fourth acres ; one acre of oats, forty bushels ; one and 

 one-fourth acres of barley, thirty bushels. My potatoes were 

 sound, but the yield was not great. I planted one-half an 

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