23 



The expense of doing what I have dono to my meadows, would 

 have cost me one hundred dollars an acre if I had have hired it 

 done, and had to pay for the labour. But I have done it, at such 

 times as I had leisure for my workmen and teams; and when I could 

 not have earned more than fifty dollars, in any other way. I there- 

 fore estimate the expense to me about fifty dollars an acre. And I 

 think the net income of this land has averaged at least twelve dollars 

 an acre annually. I have found my labour as well applied here, as 

 in any part of my farm. 



JESSE PUTNAM. 



Danvers, December 28, 1829. 



Essex, ss. Dec. 28, 1829, — Subscribed and sworn to before me, 

 John W. Proctor, Justice of the Peace. 



JACOB OSGOOD'S STATEMENT. 



To the Committee of the Essex Agricultural Society on Farms. 

 Gentlemen — 



I have on my farm about two acres of improved meadow land, 

 which at the time I began to cultivate, it was merely a bog meadow, 

 so spungy and soft, that one could not walk over it but with the 

 greatest caution, without sinking in the miie. The produce was 

 of little or no value. I commenced about fifty years since my im- 

 provement of this meadow land by draining it ; after which I carted 

 on sand about one inch and a half in depth, and then put a small 

 quantity of manure upon it, and sowed in redtop, herdsgrass 

 and some clover seed, and so continued to do until it was well cov- 

 ered with English grass. The manure I used was sand, which 

 had lain one year in a yard, where I had some dry cattle. As I 

 have no cellar under my barn, I put sand where I throw out my 

 winter dung. My sheep house and yard are well supplied with 

 sand — all of which I annually cart on to my cultivated meadow 

 land. The labour of improving this land has been performed, at a 

 season of the year when other labour on the farm is not pressing, to 

 wit, in the winter, after the meadow is frozen enough for carting 

 over, and before the earth is covered with snow. The expence of 

 the cultivation cannot therefore be accurately estimated. But after 

 two or three of the first years, the annual improvement of the pro- 



