80 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. 



can buy the same quality of animals. I do not know why 

 we cannot just as well raise steers for making beef as raise 

 our heifers for cows. 



The matter which was broached in one of the other papers 

 in regard to making beef from milch cows after their time of 

 service as milch cows has passed, I do not take very much 

 stock in. I do not think we ever get very good beef from 

 old milch cows that have done service as dairy cows. Of 

 course they have a value, but it is small. I think our best 

 beef is to be made from young animals, not to exceed three 

 years old. I know in my early life there was a good deal of 

 beef-making in our section of the State. There was a gi-eat 

 deal of beef fattened in Berkshire County and driven to the 

 New York market ; and there is to-day considerable very 

 good beef made in my own and some of the adjoining towns, 

 that goes to the New York market, and is sold at remunera- 

 tive prices. That is made, however, from the best of beef 

 stock, — steers three, four and five years old. There is a 

 great deal of land in Berkshire County, and I believe a good 

 deal in Worcester County, that has been good pasture land, 

 — it has been described somewhat here to-day, — farms that 

 have been abandoned, given over to weeds and brush. 

 There are hundreds of acres in the hill towns of Berkshire 

 County that can be bought for a very small sum, indeed, per 

 acre, that have, within my recollection, been very produc 

 tive lands. I do not know whether they can be brought up 

 to their former state of fertility at a profit or not, but I do 

 not know why they should not be. I apprehend that their 

 loss of fertility has grown out of the fact that they were fed 

 years and years as pasture fields for dairy cattle. Sandis- 

 field, New Marlborough, Otis, and those hill towns of Berk- 

 shire, fifty years ago, were all dairy towns. They made 

 large quantities of cheese and butter, they raised their cattle, 

 and the products of the farm were taken ofi" in that way and 

 not returned, and my impression is that the fields became 

 exhausted as pasture fields, and will need to be renewed by 

 restoring their fertility by some kind of fertilizer. I do not 

 know, as I say, that it can be profitably done, but I think it 

 may be, and I think in those sections particularly the 



