On Virginia Husbandry, 101 



accurate estimate of the expence of timber fences, mean- 

 ing sawed post and railing, which I have had for some 

 years back, and I am highly in favour of, for though 

 they come high in the beginning, yet I think them the 

 cheapest in the end, as I suppose with tolerable care, 

 they would last fifteen or twenty years. The staking and 

 wattleing is also an expensive fence, but looks neat, and 

 is of considerable duration, say from six to ten years, 

 when well done with trimmed cedar brush, or cedar 

 poles interwoven on the stakes; which last kind of fence 

 I have of late been in the habit of making. 



The cedar succeeds tolerable well here, though we 

 have not yet any live fences in this vicinage. The stock 

 on my farms are, cattle, sheep, and hogs, though the 

 former succeed tolerably well, I think the latter does 

 best. As I generally kill on my estate, from fifty to sixty 

 thousand pounds of pork annually. The hogs arepenned^ 

 and fed on corn and vegetables, for six or eight weeks 

 before the killing season. We have an abundance of na- 

 tive manure, in our low ground-marshes, yet such is 

 the routine of my cropping, the extent of the farms, 

 and certain hands appointed to each, I cannot find lei- 

 sure or means to collect it. I make no artificial manure, 

 except what is made by my cattle in farm yards, which 

 I keep highly littered with straw, marsh hay, corn stalks, 

 &c. through the winter, and spring, and during the 

 summer I have moveable pens, in which 1 put my cattle 

 at night ; these I generally place on my light lands, by 

 which they shortly become equal to tliose of superior 

 native quality. Our pastures are not sufficiently luxu- 

 riant here to make grazing for market an object ; yti I 

 have always tolerable good grass beef in the fall, which is 



