PASTURE LANDS. 147 



The three succeeding seasons some of the best patches in this 

 lot were planted with corn, beans and potatoes, (mostly the 

 latter,) the rest of the piece was ploughed once, and harrowed 

 two or three times at odd jobs, each season ; tlie stones being 

 picked and carted off for making wall, after each harrowing. It 

 was estimated that the crops of potatoes &c., taken off, about 

 paid for labor and seed on the patches which were planted. In 

 the lowest part of the pasture was an old pond, a receptacle for 

 the washings from the land, doubtless from time immemorial. 

 During the drought of the summer of 1855, all the mud was 

 taken out of this pond and lay in heaps through two winters 

 and one summer to pulverize, turning it over once in the mean 

 time, by liauling it on to the upper end of the pasture where I 

 wished to use it. In the spring of 1857, one-half of this mud 

 was mixed with Turk's Island salt and twenty casks of lime 

 (slacking the lime with a saturated solution of the salt) and the 

 other lialf was mixed with about ten tons of residuum from a 

 soap boiler's establishment in Boston. Early in the fall the two 

 heaps were turned over, the better to mix the ingredients 

 together, and the five acres were ploughed and harrowed once 

 more, and another large crop of stones picked off by boys during 

 school vacation, and to their delight it was finally decided that 

 that it was ready to sow down with grass and graui. Before 

 sowing, super-phosphate of lime was spread on to half an acre 

 at the rate of four hundred pounds to the acre. The remainder 

 was divided into three equal parts, on one of which was sown 

 clear Turk's Island salt, at the rate of fifteen bushels to the acre ; 

 on another the compost heap of salt, lime and mud, and on the 

 other the mud and soap boiler's residuum. After harrowing in? 

 it was all sown with grass seed, and about four acres with winter 

 rye also. The rye came up well and pretty uniformly. It was 

 the stoutest where it received the super-phosphate of lime. The 

 grass seed appears to have taken well, except on the driest 

 knolls and one low place which was covered with water late in 

 the spring. On the four acres I have forty bushels of rye, and 

 estimate two tons and a half of rye straw. 



Whether, on the whole, the renovating of this pasture will 

 prove a profitable operation, remains to be seen. All we can 

 say now is, that in 1850 it was a very poor pasture, mostly 

 covered with bushes and moss and very poor fences, with all the 



