Vol. LXIX. No. 4047 
NEW YORK, MAY 21, 1910. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR. 
FARMING IN EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS. 
Fair Statement of an Unboomed Country. 
As a farmer, whose life has been spent within 
20 miles of Boston, I will say that the advantages 
enjoyed by my own section of country appear greater 
to me year by year. 1 can state this candidly, though 
I have some knowledge of the merits of other parts 
through travel in the South, and a trip west to 
California, always having an observant eye to the 
values in farm and home life of the places visited; 
and I have added to my own experience by reading 
closely the correspondence from all sec¬ 
tions of our country in farm papers and 
other periodicals. All testimony, so far. 
confirms me in the view that our New 
England is favored in most respects, 
speaking comparatively, and that my 
part of New England (Eastern Massa¬ 
chusetts) is especially so favored. No¬ 
where else in the United States (proba¬ 
bly not in the world) are there so 
many and so comfortable homes of the 
middle class. These are around Boston 
by the tens of thousands, and are 
all over our Eastern Massachusetts 
country. Even in the cities there 
are separate, wooden houses, • taste¬ 
ful and artistic, with all the conven¬ 
iences of modern times, and often with 
gardens and trees about them. The 
New England suburban home is an in¬ 
stitution, and shows in its perfection 
here. As from the point of view of the 
book market, our section leads, so have 
we at our door and surrounding us one 
of the best markets for farm produce 
anywhere to be found; a keen demand 
for tile best in all lines and prices to 
correspond. Our social and educational 
advantages are generally admitted; I 
wish t > claim and bring testimony to 
support it, that we are agriculturally 
fortunate too, and have more factors 
favoring home life on our farms than 
most parts of the country enjoy. Our 
facilities for profitable business farming 
are many. We have the markets, the 
transportation, the manure, and much 
good land as well. 
Fine gardening is done about many 
of our northern cities, and that about 
Boston may not surpass what other 
districts can show except in prices re¬ 
ceived for vegetables produced per meas¬ 
ure or per acre; in this respect un¬ 
doubtedly it leads. The gross amount 
of produce from our land here in East¬ 
ern Massachusetts (the most densely 
populated corner of the country, and 
given to commerce and manufacturers 
as it is-) could it be fully tabulated, 
would be a surprise even to ourselves. For over 
hundreds of square miles there are acres given to 
intensive cultivation, and developed to the limit of 
productivity. What the old town of Concord has done 
for history, is no more than she is doing now to feed 
the people, giving them the most and the best in aspara¬ 
gus, strawberries, milk, lettuce, rhubarb and sweet corn. 
Apples within our own town are grown so abundantly 
that some seasons buyers have come here to get them 
for shipment to the Middle West, and we are in the 
20-mile zone out of Boston. Three brothers near 
Lowell, some years ago, doing, together a business 
in vegetable growing that was both extensive and in¬ 
tensive, cleared over $7,000 in a season. Some years 
ago on a market garden north of Boston (and not 
one of the largest) there was grown as part of the 
product for the season, 11,000 bushels of peppers, which 
were sold among the Italians of Boston. A strawberry 
grower near here in 1908 realized $1,900, after paying 
teaming and selling expenses, from three acres of 
berries. Another farmer in our own town, keeping 
account of receipts and expenses of his variety of 
crops that same year, found he had netted over $1,100, 
besides his family's benefit in living from the farm. 
My next neighbor but one sold quinces from four 
bushes last Fall to the value of $33. Such instances 
BUILDINGS ON A NEW ENGLAND FARM. Fig. 23G 
HOME OF A MASSACHUSETTS DAIRY FARMER. Fig. 237. 
as these mentioned can be duplicated in thousands of 
cases in our Eastern New England farming. Could 
the hundreds of teams loaded with vegetables and 
fruit, that crowd the streets about Quincy Market, 
Boston, during late Summer and Fall, be seen, the 
term, ‘‘the sterile soil of New England” would be 
realized as not warranted in fact, or deserved by the 
ground which, with encouragement by fertilizer, yields 
such abundant harvests. 
With our opportunities for successful farming and 
favored living here, the price of land is not pro¬ 
portionally high. Except in special locations, 
or within the 10-mile zone about Boston proper, 
there is much land of fair quality, outside villages, 
held at a valuation of $50 to $100 per acre; and 
taxes are not so excessive as in many less-favored 
locations where there are few public benefits to offset 
them. Compare with these land values for farms 
50 miles from Boston, or less, the $100 per acre valua¬ 
tion I have known put on bottom lands in the 
Carolina's; and consider which, in this respect of 
ground value, is the favored section. These arc of 
course values here given by location. Mafket garden¬ 
ing about Boston is carried on where $1,000 per 
acre is easily the value of the ground. Some garden¬ 
ers of my acquaintance have planted peach trees on 
land of this appraisal, and figure that 
returns will pay for this investment, as 
they are benefited by nearness of market 
and abundance and cheapness of 
manure. While land is so valued there, 
six or eight miles farther out a 
location can be had for $100 per acre, 
in a town that has 25 square 
miles of territory, and about 1,200 
in population. Low values here arc 
owing to distance to a railroad (three 
or four miles to city having 20 trains a 
day) but an electric road passes through 
the east side of the town (fare 15 cents 
to Boston) and a State macadam high¬ 
way runs midway of the township, giv¬ 
ing the finest of driving connections 
with the metropolis and its suburbs. 
Few places in Eastern Massachusetts 
arc more than six miles from a railroad 
at the furthest, and the village that has 
no electric road is an exception. We 
are especially favored by facilities of 
communication in all modes of travel. 
If is a common thing for one of my 
neighbor farmers (who has an auto) 
to send his market team ahead with his 
man or young son to drive, and follow 
later by electric road to meet it and do 
the selling, afterward returning home 
the same way. I once used the street 
railway to hasten my getting back from 
a distant field to attend to a sick horse 
at the barn. For recreation and family 
convenience, too, these everywhere 
present street railways are invaluable. 
Family shopping, calls, neighborhood 
errands, country and seashore excur¬ 
sions; all are facilitated by electric ser¬ 
vice. With a day and a dollar we can 
make a visit to salt water, and enjoy 
some hours at one of the many scenic 
places on our beautiful New England 
coast (whose charms draw thousands 
each Summer from all over the country) 
while for thrice that sum we can visit 
the far-famed hills of Berkshire, the 
western county of our State, on the day 
of some excursion, and enjoy its scenery 
by carriage or trolley or automobile, 
electric connection even to New York, 
service, while it helps our business and 
We have 
and this 
pleasure, contributes again to the communities whom 
it serves with transit, by a corporation and 
franchise tax paid to the towns, the latter 
based upon the relation of its mileage of track 
in each town to its general traffic receipts. Our town 
benefits in this way from its electric roads to the 
amount of $7,000, but we have more miles of road 
than common. On the steam roads our produce can 
be shipped and our supplies of all kinds brought in. 
the freight rate to and from Boston being but 15 
cents per 100 pounds for fertilizer from points as 
far distant as the center of the State. Our railroads 
