50 



cash-book I take the following items of receipts and expenditures 

 relating to the farm : — 



During the year ending September 20, 1859, I fattened and 



sold 



1 yoke oxen and 9 co^YS, -weighing 6,444 lbs., . ^512.74 



6 hogs, weighing 1.809 lbs., .... 151.54 



1 hog, salted for use, 250 lbs., . . . 20.00 

 Average weidit of cows 500 lbs. 

 Average weight of hogs sold, 301| lbs. 

 Average weight of oxen, 1,944 lbs. 



During the year ending April 1, 1859, sold 



Milk, amounting to $233.32 



Butter, 1,741 lbs., ..... 441.39 



Potatoes, 133 bushels, 105.50 



Cabbages, 48.60 



Turnips, 35.57 



Beets, 9.04 



Eggs, 9.00 



$1,566.66 

 During the same year, ending April 1, bought 



Indian meal and corn, ..... $373.41 



Shorts, 8,139 lbs., 107.22 



Oil meal, 425 lbs., 8.63 



The greater part of the labor on the farm is done by myself 

 and my son. And the work in the house is performed almost 

 entirely by my wife and daughter. I have sometimes hired a 

 man by the month in the summer season. Last year, hired for 

 five and a half months, at a cost, including board, of $133. 



This year, we did our work till haying time, with the help of 

 an aged friend, who has boarded with us much of the time for 

 several years. To him our cultivated fields owe most of their 

 freedom from weeds, he being very sensitive about allowing weeds 

 to go to seed. Since haying, while making improvements on the 

 farm, digging forty-five rods of drain and clearing three acres of 

 land of rocks, I have hired one man eighty days, at seventy-five 

 cents per day, with board, $60. Total expenses, $682.26. 



I regret that a larger number of the Committee could not make 

 it convenient to visit the farm, — not to be shown a " landscape 

 garden," or a " country residence," that is in the least compara- 

 ble with hundreds of beautiful estates to be found scattered all 

 through the lower towns of the county ; — but a farm brought, by 

 means within itself, to a fair state of fertility, from a beginning so 

 small that a friend of my father's, when he heard that he had 

 bought the place, said to him, " What in the world did you buy 

 that for ? It won't produce enough to keep a goose." 



Otis G. Cheever. 



Wrentham, November, 1859, 



