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opposite side of the road did equally well with new ground. In the same 
neighborhood, farms that have been cropped continually for ten and 
twelve years, and with the buildings attached valued at from five to ten 
thousand dollars, yielded not more than half the quantity of grain that 
these new farms did. The case is far different now here, from what it 
was ten years ago, in making a new farm. The general poverty of the 
settlers—the want of a market at hand—the distance to be travelled to 
dispose of produce, and the low price paid for it, all combined to render 
it the most tedious business undertaken, and the slowest to yield a return 
for the means expended, and labor bestowed. Only think of the task of 
carting grain sixty or even one hundred miles to the lake towns; the 
journey perhaps to be performed by oxen over roads difficult to be travelled 
even without any loading. If a farmer was fortunate enough to get a 
few loads to the market in the course of a year without killing his team, 
or breaking his wagon, he might possibly have money enough left after 
paying some of his expenses, and getting trusted a little at taverns on the 
road, to pay part of his taxes; if unable to do this, money was to be had 
at twenty-five per cent, interest, with good security, of those whose mis¬ 
sion it was to develope the resources of Wisconsin ! 
No wonder that farmers became discouraged under such a state of 
things ; well they might look with indifference upon the nature of their 
improvements, with little to encourage them and much to dishearten. 
The dawning of a brighter and better day for farmers in Wisconsin, 
should now stimulate them to make improvements of a more systematic 
and permanent character, and to endeavor so to cultivate the soil as to 
retain its richness. When a few crops shall have been taken off from a 
new farm, let the ground be seeded down for a few years perhaps, and 
let other portions of the farm be broken up. It should be the aim of 
every farmer to get all the land on his farm plowed as soon as may be 
convenient, with the exception of what he may wish to reserve for timber 
lots. Land can be put to a more profitable use than producing wild 
grass; on a dry soil it grows thin, and is mixed with noxious weeds in 
abundance. Entirely destroyed by the first frosts of autumn, it withers 
and dries away ; and if by accident a fire is started in it, fences, stacks, 
and buildings, are alike in danger of being consumed. 
