72 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



wood, and carted on sand and a little horse manure, sowing on 

 a quart or two of herds grass seed, a kind of red top coining 

 up around the bogs. It has produced two heavy crops of grass 

 a year till this year, when the drought so affected the rowen 

 that I have fed it down. In the spring of 1853 I took twenty- 

 seven rods more, cleared off the bogs and wood, and planted 

 with potatoes, putting a little lime in the hill; and I had a fair 

 growth, though a good many potatoes rotted. In July, 1853, I 

 took off the sage grass from the remainder and set fire to it. In 

 about a week it had burned all over, and had also burned about 

 four inches of the muck. I thus entirely cleared the land of 

 bogs, and the stumps were so loose that a yoke of small cattle 

 removed them from the piece without difficulty. With a hoe I 

 levelled down where the roots came out, and, on the 9th of 

 August, sowed about a pint of turnip seed and six quarts' of 

 herds grass seed. There' was a fair crop of turnips, and the 

 grass looked fine in the fall. In May it looked well, and a 

 number of good judges who saw it said it promised fair to be 

 the heaviest crop of herds grass they ever saw. But the dry 

 weather hurt it. Still, a number thought it would yield two 

 tons to the acre ; but, being at quite a distance from any scales 

 it was not weighed. 



The spring being very wet and backward, I did not plant the 

 piece I had potatoes on last year till the 13th of June. I 

 spread on about eight horse-loads of compost, made of muck 

 and sand, two bushels of ashes, one bushel of oyster shell lime, 

 twenty-five pounds of plaster, and half a cord of horse manure. 

 I also put in the hill four loads of sand and muck from the 

 drain. There were no weeds on the piece cither year; so I 

 used no cultivator on it. 



Produce in 1853:— 



Potatoes, (most of them rotting,) . $3 00 



120 bushels of turnips, .... 20 00 

 1,000 pounds of hay, (two crops,) . . 4 50 



$27 50 



Produce in 1854: — 

 3,300 pounds of hay, . . . . $1G 50 



