48 



and fruit, which the markets now demand. They ai*e immeasurably 

 superior to everything of their kind produced by our ancestors only a 

 few hundred years ago. 



So many things can be said in regard to raising and feeding of any 

 crop, and yet no't say anything but what has been said before, and 

 with which you are all familiar, that I propose to give you nothing 

 but facts and theories which have come to me in my practice, and the 

 value of which I have confirmed by repeated trial. It is in this way 

 alone that we shall benefit each other, rather than by rehearsing those 

 common ways and methods which have been so largely discussed, and 

 Avhich we all know, are essential to the growth ot vegetable life. 



Fifty years ago the people of this section did not pay much atten- 

 tion to root crops, any farther than to supply a few edible varieties for 

 the use of the family. The live stock in the barn scarcely ever got 

 anything of the kind, from Thanksgiving till May, and the young 

 stock and dry cows being kept almost exclusively on swamp hay and 

 cornstalks, suffered accordingly, and came out in the spring poor, 

 scrawny and hide-bound, with their bowels in the condition to justify 

 the Vermont farmer when he says, "'as tight as a yearling steer in the 

 month'of March." It is true, here and there would be found a far- 

 mer who would raise some English turnips, but most everybody got 

 the idea that they poisoned the land, and in some way rendered it unfit 

 for any other crop for a year or two afterwards. But during the last 

 ten or twenty years a general i-evolution has taken place in regard to 

 root crops, not only in our vicinity but all over our country, and those 

 of our farmers who have learned to grow them with economy of laud 

 and labor, have long since abandoned all doubts Avith regard to their 

 profit, and fully appreciate the benefits they confer on the animals 

 which consume them, and they are now so generally grown in some 

 parts of New England that it is evident that they are beginning to be 

 appreciated somewhat according to their value. If the keeping and 

 feeding of live stock upon our farms is the basis upon which success- 

 ful agriculture must rest, and the health of animals and the capacity 

 to digest other kinds of food, is largely promoted by the liberal use of 

 roots, aside from the actual nourishment they contain, and the amount 

 of other and more expensive food that may be saved, then the impor- 

 tance of root culture is firmly established. In this connection it is 

 well to remember that three tons of roots are equal to one ton of hay, 

 or in other Avords, one ton of hay and three tons of roots, are equiva- 



