98 FARMS. 



present proprietor, embraces a vast amount of practical agricultu- 

 ral information, and illustrates the value of system on a farm. In 

 its account of ditching, blasting rocks, deep ploughing and building, 

 ■with the importation of cattle and seeds, we can trace the gradual 

 improvement of what in 1818 was an ordinary tract of land, with 

 a fence around a swampy portion of it to prevent the cattle from 

 getting mired. At first, these improvements were looked upon with 

 prejudice, and in 1828 a committee of the Essex County Agricul- 

 tural Society simply alluded to it last among the six farms entered. 

 The underdraining, and the rotation of crops, introduced by a 

 Scotch manager, met with no favor. "While it remains uncertain," 

 says the report, "whether the innovations that have been introduc- 

 ed upon Yankee husbandry^ are not experiments made for display, 

 unmindful of the cost, rather than experiments that will remuner- 

 ate themselves, — your committee feel it to be their duty to hesitate 

 in approving of the same." 



Mr. Poore, as his farm journals show, was not discouraged, but con- 

 tinued the same system, and entered the farm again in 1844, when 

 the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture offered pre- 

 miums for the best cultivated farms. Eleven farms were at that 

 time entered, and the first premium of two hundred dollars was 

 awarded to Indian Hill Farm, with an additional gratuity of fifty 

 dollars for experiments in draining. Long articles from Isaac 

 Hill, John S. Skinner, Henry Colman, and Joseph Breck, in the 

 agricultural journals of the day, endorse the high terms of praise 

 awarded to Mr. Poore, by Mr. Phinney in his report, as the farm 

 *'long noted for its durable and well contrived structures, and for 

 the systematic culture of its grounds." The swamp of 1818 was 

 then thoroughly drained, and produced a heavy burthen of English 

 hay — a remunerative experiment. 



Indian Hill Farm contains 121 3-4 acres, with over 2 DO acres of 

 out-land pasture, woodland, and salt marsh. The entire homestead 

 is under cultivation, with the exception of eight acres, on the 

 steep sides of the hill, covered with thrifty young forest trees. This 

 plantation of trees, which received a gratuity of thirty dollars from 

 the Essex Society in 1843, now contains upwards of four thousand 

 trees, — black and red oak, walnut, scotch fir, and locust. The lo- 

 custs were planted to furnish shade, and they now keep the farm 



