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Vol. LXV. No. 2936. 
NEW YORK. MAY 5, 1906. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PEK YEAR. 
rHE WORK OF A MASSACHUSETTS MAN. 
Reclaiming and Seeding Down Unused Lands. 
A great deal has been said and written of late about the 
possibilities of rural New 
ingland. 
tangle of berry bushes, junipers, tree stumps, hassocks, 
with many a rock to boot. The alders were cut down, 
the roots pulled, the rocks removed, hassocks leveled. 
Then the land was ditched for surface drainage only, 
on a smaller scale, say an acre or two. But with true 
business insight he realized that two acres of such 
land could not be profitably reclaimed. Four years 
from the swamp everything expended in the undertak¬ 
ing had been paid for by 
Much is being 
said concerning the desir¬ 
ability of the “abandoned 
farm” as a Summer home, 
and the agricultural press 
has mentioned repeatedly 
the reasons which made 
such lands available for 
actual farming operations. 
Many of the causes of 
their abandonment would 
no longer hold good, and 
their cheapness, proximity 
to good markets, to 
churches, schools, libraries, 
as well as the electric car 
lines, rural mail delivery 
and telephone have made 
them less objectionable to 
many who formerly would 
have thought them too far 
out of the way. We all 
have read of Prof. San¬ 
born's success on his 
New Hampshire hills, of 
George M. Clark’s remark¬ 
able results, of the Rev. 
Mr. Dietrich’s farming in 
Pennsylvania. Such in¬ 
stances of what can be 
done on eastern farms 
have brought forth many 
comments, objections and 
incredulous remarks, yet 
the undeniable facts re¬ 
main. Men like these are 
doing more for the farmer 
than most readers real¬ 
ize. Whether their exam¬ 
ple can be followed by 
everyone in all particulars 
is not the question; the 
point is, that they showed 
us the possibility of and 
the way towards such re¬ 
sults. Individual judg¬ 
ment must decide the pos¬ 
sibilities of each case. 
Besides the abandoned 
farms and run-down lands 
there are in many sections 
tracts of land that never 
felt the plow, and which 
are yielding nothing but 
bushes, weeds, a few ber¬ 
ries or at best scant pas¬ 
turage. It has always been 
a wonder to me that such 
lands should have re¬ 
mained unimproved. 'I he 
farmers will tell you that 
they have all the land 
they can possibly take care 
of, that they are already 
“land-poor.” In the town 
of Rowley, Mass., N. N. 
ROUGPI LAND DITCHED AND PLOWED. Fig. 151. 
ROUGH NEW ENGLAND LAND BEFORE CLEARING. Fig. 152. 
Dummer has been engaged for several years in reclaim¬ 
ing unused lands, and in making of them rich grass 
fields. He began with 20 acres of a rather unpromis¬ 
ing appearance. The lower part was of the usual 
alder swamp type, under water during many months of 
the year; the rest, a bit higher than the first, was a 
plowed, well manured and seeded to T imothy and Red- 
top. The results have been quite gratifying. Out of 
this wilderness, doing nobody any good, Mr. Dummer 
got a splendid hayfield. He cut last Summer over three 
tons to the acre. At the outset his neighbors ridiculed 
his undertaking, and especially advised him to try it 
the crops. I believe that 
the Essex Agricultural So¬ 
ciety awarded Mr. Dum¬ 
mer a premium for the 
work and improvement of 
that land. 
Last Fall Mr. Dummer 
acquired at a low figure 
88 acres of much the same 
description, adjoining his 
hayfield. This new acquisi¬ 
tion is of a rather varied 
character. Some of it is 
almost level, with just 
enough fall for surface 
drainage, the rest rolling, 
with all kinds of soils, 
ranging from hard clay to 
sandy loam, all of it rough, 
bushy and rocky; some so 
low and wet that it seldom 
freezes hard enough to 
bear the weight of a team. 
Mr. Dummer has erected a 
hasty low dam to flood this 
part and give it a chance 
to freeze over, so as to be 
able to drive over it and 
haul out what fire wood 
there is in the pasture. 
A very few days after pur¬ 
chasing the piece nearly 
20 acres had been cleaned 
of bushes and eight or 
nine plowed, ready for the 
rocks to be removed. It is 
the intention of the owner 
to have 25 acres ready for 
the seed next Fall. He 
will have in this work to 
rely entirely upon the use 
of commercial fertilizers. 
In the course of a few 
years this heretofore use¬ 
less piece of land will have 
been changed into a 120- 
acre field, yielding a better 
income than the average 
professorship in a New 
England college. 
The amount of work to 
be done in order to attain 
such results would fright¬ 
en many a young farmer. 
Mr. Dummer is 77 years 
old this month (March), 
and it is a revelation to 
young men to see with 
what youthful enthusiasm 
and intensity he goes at 
this work. He is very 
much interested in Mr. 
Clark’s method of treating 
grass lands, a modification 
of which he will have now 
to follow. The pictures. 
Figs. 151, 152 and 153, show the present hayfield, a 
section of crop, and the pasture just bought. The 
unpromising field shown in Fig. 152 could be dupli¬ 
cated in a good many places. The crop pictured in 
Fig. 153 shows the result of Mr. Dummer’s work, after 
the thorough tillage shown in Fig. 151. M. l. 
