Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 331 



Many young men who have had no practical experience, have a 

 fancy for farming. Some try it, and too often find that their visions 

 of profit and happiness are not easily realized. Many fail as they 

 would in any other business for which they were not prepared. 

 We are often appealed to in this Club for information. There are 

 valuable works on agriculture. Many of the agricultural journals 

 are very valuable. But none of them would be of much use to 

 men who have had no practical experience. Twelve months appren- 

 ticeship to a Salem county farmer would enable such people to 

 read to advantage. Bat as all cannot be so educated, the committee 

 propose to give an account of the farming operations they saw, 

 premising that as the farming lands in the State of New Jersey, 

 according to the United States census of 1860, were valued at 

 twenty-three dollars and forty cents per acre more than the farming 

 lands of any other State in the Union; and as the lands in Salem 

 county have a higher value than those of any other county in the 

 State of New Jersey, and as the townships we visited are the best 

 of that county, we take it for granted that the farms we saw are 

 suited for models, and that their owners maybe considered pattern 

 agriculturists of our country. And here let it be understood that 

 we are speaking of a part of Salem county alone, and not of New 

 Jersey. The farms and farming of difierent sections difl:er very 

 greatly. Some sections are hilly and stony, others are level and 

 sandy. 



The size of the farms we saw would average about one hundred 

 and fifty acres — divided into fields often, twenty or thirty acres. 



Corn is the most important crop. In our travels we saw some 

 sixty or seventy corn fields, nearly all of which were very much 

 alike. It is planted in rows, from four to four and a half feet apart 

 each way, and three grains to the hill. When grown, the stalks 

 averaged ten or eleven feet high; we saw some fifteen, or even six- 

 teen feet. The average product to the acre of the fields we saw 

 in a day's ride, we estimated at from seventy to eighty bushels of 

 shelled corn. Some seasons it exceeds this, and we were told that 

 fields have yielded from one hundred and ten to one hundred and 

 twenty bushels per acre. One farmer — David Petit (a valued cor- 

 respondent of this Club) — has been experimenting for years to 

 increase the size of the ears of corn, and has succeeded wonder- 

 fully. He has them now so large, that when such seed is planted 

 four feet each way, with two stalks to the hill and but one ear to 

 each stalk, the yield would be one hundred and twenty bushels to 



