30 



the fodder required for -wintering this stock, with the addition of 

 $40 worth of grass bought, and the salt grass of ten acres of 

 marsh. Besides this, it has afforded summer forage sufficient to 

 half support this large stock. The cattle are pastured on a tract 

 that only yields about half grass enough for their support, and 

 they are therefore fed at night, in the barn, with green corn. 



For winter fodder, Mr. Eaton relies much on barley, cut in 

 the milk and dried. The barley hay is run through a cutting ma- 

 chine, and cotton-seed cake or meal is mixed with it at the rate of 

 two quarts per cow, morning and evening. The cows get one 

 foddering of salt hay and one of upland hay, uncut, each day. 

 This is found to be a good mode of feeding. The cotton-seed 

 meal has been used for several months, and Mr. Eaton is well 

 pleased with it. The cattle were in excellent health and condition, 

 in December, when our notes were taken. He formerly fed with 

 brewers' grains to much extent, paying ten cents a bushel for 

 them, which he thought cheap ; but latterly, by a change in the 

 brewers' process, — the grains being cut to pieces — the nutriment 

 is nearly all taken out, and though but eight cents a bushel is the 

 price, Mr. Eaton thinks them entirely too dear at that. 



During the last season, Mr. Eaton has kept 135 hogs, which 

 are fed on the swill collected by the City of Boston. An impor- 

 tant object in the keeping of these hogs, is the increase of manure, 

 to be used in increasing the products of the farm. He top-dresses 

 grass land with ten to fifteen ox-cart loads of manure to the acre, 

 and for tillage crops manures much heavier — sometimes, as for 

 roots, and Indian corn, as high as forty loads to the acre. The 

 root crop is chiefly carrots, which are fed mostly to horses, at the 

 rate of six or seven quarts to each horse per day. 



We have said that an acre and a half of Mr. Eaton's farm is 

 not subject to tillage. It is devoted to a more profitable purpose, 

 as it produces three good crops annually — two in summer and 

 one in winter — the latter, probably, the most profitable. The two 

 summer crops are hay, and the winter crop is ice. In answer to 

 our inquiry as to the effect of winter flowage on the hay crop, Mr. 

 Eaton stated that the crop had rather increased in quantity, and 

 that the quality had not deteriorated. It is not unlikely that the 

 high manuring of some of the surrounding land may have had an 

 influence in these results. We should add, that Mr. Eaton bought 

 this farm eight years ago, giving $300 an acre for some of it, and 

 that it did not then produce hay enough to keep ten cows. 



The farm of J. W. Robertson, Quincy, adjoins that of Mr. 

 Eaton, before noticed. The homestead consists of about 70 acres. 

 He keeps about forty head of cattle — all cows, except one or some- 

 times two yoke of oxen — and seven horses. The main object is 

 milk. He has 140 hogs, Avhich are fed on Boston swill. We 



