PROCEEDINGS OP THE FARMERS' CLUB. 131 



as to cover the butts some inches, and leave the tops out, verj 

 much as one might plant currant cuttings. 



Fortunately, a few hours after we had finished, we had the 

 refreshing and much needed rain of Saturday evening, and I 

 trust that next year, my neighbor won't look upon that bit of a 

 swamp as quite so undesirable a spot as he did last year ; and if 

 it produces fruit, as a great many similar spots in Massachusetts 

 have done, I hope the owners of a great many "bits of swamp ^' 

 in the county where I live, will be induced to change their 

 appearance and fruitfalness. 



Upon Cape Cod, where cranberry culture has been carried to 

 the greatest extent, swampy land, that was a few years ago con- 

 sidered utterly worthless, has now a saleable value of $800 to 

 $1,200 an acre ; and some of the owners of such land have found 

 it a good investment of time and money to expend from $200 to 

 $1,000 upon an acre, to bring it into a condition fit to be planted 

 with cranberries. 



In view of these facts, I make this pertinent inquiry of every 

 farmer in all the Northern States, where cranberries are found 

 growing wild : " Are there no swamps, or wet valleys, or brook 

 borders upon your farm, now, perhaps, unsightly spots, as this of 

 mine was a year ago — wet swamps in winter, and dry and pes- 

 tiferous in summer? If you have such, plant them with cran- 

 berry vines, and tend them one or two years till the vines get 

 well set, aud then they will tend themselves, and produce you on 

 an average more bushels of fruit per acre than you get of pota- 

 toes; and it is not much more work to gather it than it is the 

 tubers, and, generally speaking, you can sell a bushel of cranber- 

 ries for the price of five bushels of potatoes." 



Truth, it is said, lies at the bottom of a well. The well that 

 holds the truth in relation to cranberry culture and its profita- 

 bleness upon many of the worthless bogs that render farms 

 unsaleable, as in the case of mine, and detract from the value of 

 the upland, must be a remarkably deep one, or it would have been 

 dug ont before now, and made to shine in all the rich crimson 

 luster of a field of this ripe fruit. Here upon this little brook, 

 where I have made the first plantation, there is now, above and 

 below, more than a hundred acres, more valuable than my little 

 corner for the purpose, and now of almost no value ; and if all 

 converted into a cranberry plot, the whole could be flooded for a 

 cost of $100 for a dam where the brook cuts through a narrow 



