62 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



point out errors and deficiencies as well as excellences. It 

 was our design to do both more minutely and specifically than 

 we are now able to do. One or two instances have attracted 

 our particular notice, and are of common occurrence. 



Farmers here, as elsewhere, attempt the cultivation of too 

 many acres with inadequate means. Large farms cannot be 

 profitably cultivated without large capital. Both labor and 

 fertilizing matters are lost by expanding them over too large a 

 surface. Many an acre in this county might be made to yield 



double the returns now obtained from two acres cultivated in 



■ 



the usual way, and at much less expense. No error is more 

 common, and none is at this time more hurtful to the farmer, 

 than the endeavor to realize greater profits from many, than 

 from few, acres. 



Comparatively few farmers know the value of their business, 

 or the amount bestowed upon and taken from the land. This 

 results from the fact that they do not keep full and accurate 

 accounts, and, of course, do not know what farming costs nor 

 what it yields. A manufacturer of cotton cloth knows, to a 

 mill, what a yard of cloth costs. Where the profits are small, 

 it concerns him all the more to know this. Few farmers know 

 what a pound of pork or butter costs, or what amount of hay 

 and grain is required to make a hundred weight of beef. They 

 can make a tolerably good guess ; but an exact system of farm 

 accounts would go a great way towards determining such qucs- 

 tions, and, of course, towards settling the matter of the prof- 

 itableness or unprofitableness of their business. Indeed, there 

 is no other way by which a farmer can tell whether his plan of 

 operations is judicious and profitable, and wherein it is defec- 

 tive. As the merchant, at the close of the year, takes an ac- 

 count of stock, charges himself with the interest of his capital, 

 expenses, bad debts, losses, <fec, and credits his business with 

 goods on hand, profits, debts due, &c, so should the farmer, if 

 he would understand precisely the value of his operations. 

 Such a practice would tend to establish habits of order and 

 economy, and furnish an additional source of interest in every 

 operation connected with farming. 



We have in mind an instance of such method and exactness 

 of farm accounts by a young farmer in this county, which re- 



