24 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



each year, but I have found it more profitable to raise hay than 

 corn or potatoes. This last June, for thirty cwt. hay delivered 

 in the barn, I received in my grain bins forty bushels of good 

 yellow flat corn : the hay cost me, in labor and all fair charges, 

 twelve dollars ; to raise the corn would have cost me twenty- 

 five dollars at least. 



By recurring to my journal,* (for I have long kept a sort of 

 diary, in which I have noted the employments of each day, the 

 time of planting, hoeing and harvesting, the amount of crops, 

 the cost of animals, current receipts and expenditures, &c.,) I 

 find that, since the 1st of April, I have expended for labor two 

 hundred and five dollars, and one third of this has been in mak- 

 ing walls, ditches and permanent improvements. I have kept 

 two pair of oxen, one horse and ten cows ; one pair of oxen 

 which two years ago cost me fifty dollars, I have sold to the 

 butcher for one hundred and five dollars ; four cows which cost 

 forty-three, I have sold for seventy-eight dollars, and I have 

 received in exchange of cows thirty dollars. I have kept no 

 account of the milk and butter used and sold, which has been 

 less than the usual quantity. I have four fat swine worth sev- 

 enty-five dollars, which, one year ago, cost six dollars ; their 

 manure paid for all the grain they have consumed. I have 

 raised one hundred and fifty-eight bushels of corn, ninety-five 

 bushels of oats, thirty bushels of rye, and one hundred and 

 twenty bushels of potatoes ; of carrots, turnips and beets, about 

 two hundred and fifty bushels, and of other vegetables and fruits 

 an abundance. Some years I have had three or four hundred 

 bushels of good apples, this year not more than thirty. I have 

 cut thirty-one tons of English hay, which was made and se- 

 cured with fifty-five days' labor ; I used a horse-rake, which 

 paid for itself in one week ; my crop was diminished by the 

 drought from one fourth to one third. My meadow hay was a 

 fine crop, and got in, in good order; I have sold twelve loads of 

 meadow hay and straw, and have, by estimation, fodder enough, 



* The advantages of keeping a journal, to a farmer are many. By turning to 

 the pages of past years, he will be reminded of work which should be done in its 

 season ; he will see where he has erred, and profit from his experience ; he 

 will know where his money, sometimes difficult to account for, goes. 



