514 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Nov. 



A DAY ON TWO FARMS. 



Bochester, Mass., Oct. 4, 1860. 



Gentlemen : — I came here j^esterday, by re- 

 quest, to look at a couple of farms ; that is, to 

 hold a consultation over them with their proprie- 

 tors, something as physicians do over a sick pa- 

 tient. 



The first farm looked at, is the property of 

 Chart.es H. Leonard, Esq., and consists of some 

 two or three hundred acres, about eighty acres of 

 ■which he has already reclaimed, or is engaged in 

 reclaiming — the other portion is principally in 

 wood. Mr. L. is a New York merchant, but being 

 born upon this soil, and having passed his boyhood 

 here, is expending a portion of his ample fortune 

 in bringing the estate into an atti-active and fertile 

 condition. His object has been up to this time to 

 clear the land of stumps and rocks, surround it 

 •with stone fences, lay permanent roads, underdrain 

 and level, rather than to fertilize and secure crops. 

 Within five years, an immense labor of this sort 

 has been performed, and substantial buildings 

 erected. Two hundred and fifty rods of split stone 

 wall has been laid, some of it over ditches filled 

 •with stones, and intended as drains, and the bal- 

 ance laid upon small stones in trenches. The 

 walls are four and a half feet high, three feet wide 

 at the bottom and eighteen inches at the top, and 

 built thoroughly in straight lines, or in graceful 

 curves, as the nature of their location required. 

 The material used is granite, composed mainly of 

 quartz, black mica and feldspar. 



The rocks were mostly found beneath the sur- 

 face, were dug about, split with wedges, taken 

 out, and the places they occupied, filled with the 

 smaller stones turned out in plowing. This pro- 

 cess results in a pretty thorough trenching of a 

 considerable portion of the fields, so that where 

 the work was first completed, and the land seed- 

 ed to grass, they have secured an average crop of 

 three tons per acre of the best clover and Timothy 

 hay. Some of the land treated in the same man- 

 ner was in corn, and I found it a finer crop than 

 any I have seen this autumn — one small piece 

 must yield, I think, at the rate of a hundred bush- 

 els to the acre. Some splendid ears are now be- 

 fore me of the King Philip variety, and are ten, 

 eleven and twelve inches long. Mr. Leonard's 

 fine green-house, mill-pond, lawns, and many 

 things relating to the farm, are examples of ener- 

 gy, and a progressive spirit, that are creditable to 

 his good taste, and cannot fail to inspire others 

 to profit by them. They may not enter so exten- 

 sively into improvements as he has done, but his 

 thorough-draining, and following crop of three 

 tons of hay per acre year after year, is only an ex- 

 ample that any of his neighbors may follow, that 

 possess the progressive spirit to prompt them to 

 it. In this operation, there is no fancy to be in- 



dulged, but it is one of plain dollars and cents cal- 

 culation, which will probably add ten to twenty 

 per cent, to the value of the crops taken off'. The 

 proprietor of this estate is fortunate in commit- 

 ting the details of its management to the skill 

 and intelligence of Mr. Joseph Coe. 



My next visit was to an adjoining farm belong- 

 ing to the gentleman just named, but who has on- 

 ly recently come into possession, and does not 

 yet reside upon it. It includes one hundred acres 

 of variable soil, and has always been managed in 

 the old routine of corn, rye, pasture, for a few 

 years, where there was nothing to be eaten, and 

 then corn and rye again. 



Mr. Coe's principal object is the culture of cran- 

 berries, and he has already commenced the con- 

 struction of a reservoir for water, whereby he will 

 be able to flow his cranberry meadows whenever 

 frost is anticipated, or when the plants are at- 

 tacked by insects. His contrivances are ingenious, 

 will not be expensive, and we think Avill be effec- 

 tive. He will also enter upon a system of tile 

 drainage, which, conducted by his intelligence 

 and skill, must afford a good example to all around 

 him. At some future day, I hope to see his cran- 

 berry meadows in their prime. He had just made 

 a visit to the Cape to examine the modes of cran- 

 berry culture there, and had learned several im- 

 portant facts which are interesting and valuable. 



Mr. Coe is a skilful, intelligent and progressive 

 farmer ; does not think he knows so much as nev- 

 er to ask a question; believes a great deal in 

 books, but not all that is said in them ; closely 

 observes the practices of others ; and is as willing 

 to impart his own knowledge, as to draw it out 

 of others. Very truly yours, 



Simon Brown. 



Messrs. Nourse, Eaton & Tolman. 



CULTIVATUNTG PEACH TREES. 



The peach formerly succeeded nearly as well in 

 southern New England as in the middle States. 

 Old people tell of the large crops of fine peaches 

 that were common in their youth, and say that 

 the trees were then thrifty and free from disease. 

 But all this is changed now. A healthy peach 

 tree is the exception, disease the rule, and of 

 course it is useless to expect a good crop of fruit 

 from unhealthy trees. 



There has been much speculation as to the 

 cause of this decadence of the peach. Some, not- 

 withstanding the negative evidence of meteorolo- 

 gical tables, attribute it to a change in the cli- 

 mate ; others to the unnatural method of propaga- 

 tion by budding, and others to the ravages of 

 worms and insects. But whatever the cause, the 

 fact is patent to all, and probably the most that 

 can be done by human means will be merely a 

 mitigation of the evil. 



As far as the writer's experience goes, it is de- 

 cidedly against cultivating the ground beneath 

 peach trees. Those in his garden that were under 

 cultivation, have been exceedingly short-lived, 



