164 THE dairyman's manual. 



years upon a yery poor farm, the former owners of which 

 had starved and had been sold out by the sheriff, we here 

 relate the methods by which a bed of mere shifting sand 

 was brought into a condition of fertility, the soil changed 

 to a dark loam and made capable of j^i'oducing 100 

 bushels of corn and 1,200 bushels of mangels per acre, a 

 with a slight surplus of profit the first year, and a very 

 satisfactory balance after, which kept increasing up to 

 the end of the eighth year, when the farm was disposed 

 of at twice its cost. The farm consisted of seventy 

 acres, of which nearly one-half was unreclaimed swamp 

 meadow, too wet and springy to be safely pastured by 

 cows, but which afforded a large quantity of coarse hay 

 and a small amount of better grass along the borders of 

 the low ground. There was a piece of open beech wood 

 which afforded a little pasture, and an old mossy upland 

 meadow which gave about 300 pounds of hay to the acre 

 from a few grass spots. The rest of the land had been 

 cultivated in rye and corn, until the crops had quite run 

 out and the whole product could be drawn off in a one- 

 horse wagon. Consistently with this condition of things 

 there was a stable and barn in one, about sixteen by 

 eighteen feet, which was empty and not one ounce of 

 manure about the premises. The one poor horse and 

 cow were running in the swamp or on the roadsides to 

 pick up a starvation living. Possibly there never was a 

 much more unpromising case, nor one which offered a 

 better opportunity for making an experimental farm, 

 and testing the question whether a poor farm could be 

 restored to fertility by a judicious course of improve- 

 ment out of its own product and without an extrava- 

 gant outlay of money. 



The first thing done was to purchase fifteen cows in 

 October, and sufficient hay and grain to winter them. 

 The cows were Ayrshires and Jerseys, and some cross- 

 bred ones of these kinds. A commodious stable was 



