REPORTS

OF THE

Esser Agricultural Society in 1830.

I. ON THE MANAGEMENT OF FARMS.

THE Committee of the Essex Agricultural Society on farms beg leave to submit the following

REPORT.

They regret to state that there were but two claimants for the Premiums of the Society for the best cultivated farms. Essex County, though inferior perhaps as a whole for the quality of its soil, might exhibit with a reasonable pride many examples of an intelligent, skilful, industrious, and successful husbandry; and it would have given your Committee great pleasure had they been invited to visit several establishments in the county which do honor to their cultivators, who, we regret to think, are deterred by an improper diffidence from becoming competitors for the premiums of your Society. Agriculture presents one of those singular cases in which competition however excited can do no harm; we see not what evil can result from it; but on the contrary it may be productive of the greatest benefits both of an individual and a public nature. Experiment is always the best teacher. Competition leads to experiments: It promotes improvements, and extends them after they have been discovered. In an honorable competition no generous mind should feel mortified with ill success. The attempt to excel brings its own reward with it; and a public-spirited mind will see that a successful competition inevitably contributes to advance the great cause itself, and reflects back upon the community advantages greater than it could receive from the acquisition of the most liberal premiums. Great benefits must arise from bringing our farms into comparison with each other; from seeing what can be

done; from the knowledge of each other's improvements however humble; from habits of exactness, experiment, and observation; and especially from that strong interest in cultivation and improvement, which an extended competition cannot fail to excite and maintain. Your Committee know no better mode of applying the funds of the Society than in premiums for the best cultivated farms, which are found entitled to an honorary notice upon personal inspection; and they express to their brother-farmers their earnest desire that another year may find the list of competitors for these prizes greatly enlarged. It is not the most extensive, showy, fertile, productive, nor expensive farms, which they would deem best entitled to their approbation; but those which present the fairest examples of industry, perseverance, economy, neatness, skill, and constant improvement; virtues within the reach of all, and which in their just combination constitute the true excellence of husbandry.

Your Committee are unanimous in awarding the first premium of thirty dollars to Erastus Ware of Salem, tenant on what is known as the Pickman farm in the Southeasterly part of the town. His full statement of his management and products is subjoined, and will be read with interest and pleasure. The farm owes many of its improvements to the labor and skill of its former tenant, the late Mr. Paul Upton, for several years the successful manager of the Salem Alms-House farm. Mr. Ware is entitled to the credit of extending its improvements and maintaining its excellent condition. The general appearance of his fields, the good order of his fences and buildings, the condition and productiveness of his nursery and orchards, the neatness prevailing in every department, and the exemplary temperance with which the labors of so extensive an estab. lishment have been conducted, entitle him to the highest credit.Making proper allowances for the amount of land occupied in pasturing, the greater part of which is incapable of cultivation, your committee deem the product of the farm very great; and especially when compared with the actual expense of labor. This seems small in any view, and must have been applied with much skill and fidelity; though your committee would have been able to judge more satisfactorily on the subject, and it would have been much more advantageous to the public, had the claimant stated the number of days work done, or the number of hands and the time for which they were employed, rather than the pecuniary cost of the labor, which for obvious reasons can hardly form a rule by which

others may govern themselves. The price of labor by the day or month differs much in different parts of the county, and, where sev eral hands are employed, on the same farm. The rate too at which the work performed away from the farm for hire was done is not known to the Committee; but that done for the town may be supposed to exceed the rate paid for labor at home. Still however the amount paid for labor on this farm, compared with the quantity of produce raised and marketed, and the amount of Live Stock kept, on any common estimate, must be considered as very small, and shows that it must have been faithfully exerted and judiciously applied.

Mr. Ware's farm is not an experimental farm; his main object being to obtain the greatest pecuniary profit from the place consistently with a just regard to the interests of his landlord. The condition of the farm shows that the landlord can have little grounds for complaint; and it is highly gratifying to find an example, rare enough we must allow, in which the pecuniary interests of the tenant are successfully pursued, not only without detriment but with advantage to the interests and rights of the owner. The contrary course, however dishonorable and dishonest, is but too common; so that in general where a man lets his farm he must despair of its improvement; and a lease upon what is termed shares is too frequently a virtual renunciation of all claims to any thing.

Though not an experimental farm, yet the observations of Mr. Ware being the result of intelligent and long experience are entitled to great consideration. His opinion against the practice of hilling Indian corn confirms the suggestions, which were made to the Society on former occasions on this subject. His success in laying down his land to grass in the fall after taking off a crop of early Potatoes deserves notice. There is an obvious convenience and there are many advantages in this management; we believe it the most eligible course; though it must be allowed, especially if the sowing in the fall is very late, that there will be many weeds in the next year's crop of grass; and the hay will not be of that substantial quality that it would be, if the grass seed were sowed in the spring with English grain, as was formerly the universal custom.

Mr. Ware has singular advantages in his nearness to a market, and especially in being able to sell the greater part of his produce in the form of milk. It should be the great object of every farmer to convert his produce into a condition that it may be disposed of without injury to the place. This may be done in the form of milk,

butter, cheese, beef, pork, mutton, wool, grain; but never in that of hay, straw, or vegetables. We believe that leases are seldom given in England without an express condition, that all the hay and straw raised shall be consumed on the place; and it is respectfully submitted to the consideration of the Society, whether some of their premiums could be more advantageously bestowed than in the encouragement of careful and exact experiments upon the value of any article of agricultural produce in the fattening of hogs, sheep, or cattle; experiments, that should go to show not merely the pecuniary results which must of course be affected by many contingencies, that could neither be foreseen nor controled, but the best course of feeding; the actual amount of food consumed and of flesh produced; and as far as it can be ascertained the comparative value of different kinds of vegetable food in its application to the stallfeeding of animals. From the value received for the sale of hay or straw is obviously to be deducted the labor and expense of marketing and a sum equivalent to the value of the manure, which would be furnished to the farm by the consumption of such hay or straw at home. These are pretty serious deductions; and if any mode of applying a portion of our produce could be discovered, by which we might derive an equal advantage, as from the sale of it in the form of hay or straw, a most important point would be gained. Experiments on this subject, though on a small scale, are earnestly urged upon the Farmers of Essex, under the persuasion that any such experiments well and exactly conducted and detailed, though no specific premiums should be promised, would receive the particular notice and approbation of the Society.

Your Committee have thought proper, and particularly with a view of encouraging a competition for these premiums, to award the fifth premium of eighteen dollars to John Adams, Esq. of Andover. Mr. Adams' statement is subjoined, in which they have to regret an almost total want of that exactness which the Committee deem highly important. Mr. Adams' husbandry is respectable and the Committee were gratified with the general appearance of his farm; but they would have been much better satisfied to have been told the particular amount of his butter, cheese, pork, and hay, as near as it could be ascertained and the number of cows kept, &c. than to have received the very general statement of his keeping "from twenty to twenty-five cattle and selling about three hundred weight of butter and some cheese, and about teu hundred weight of

pork besides what he consumes in his family, and from ten to fifteen tons of English hay." In the disposal of these premiums the Committee feel that they are 'responsible to the Society and to the State; and they therefore should deem it indispensable in regard to all claims for premiums that the statements of those who apply for them should be given with as much exactness as possible. Butter, cheese, pork, vegetables, and grain are all easily measured. Hay sold is of course weighed; and when not sold, the number of loads when carried from the field should be counted, and as fair an estimation of their weight as possible should be made and recorded at the time.

farm of Mr. Adams is This is very small comtake the occasion to re

The amount of labor expended on the equal to that of two men through the year. pared with the extent of the farm; and we mark that farmers as often mistake their true interest in employing too little as too much labor. Every farmer who keeps a team ought we think to keep a teamster, whose business should be to use that team constantly that none of the labor which it can perform should be lost. Few of our farmers seem to think that they may as well for their own interest let their men be idle as to let their team be idle without necessity; and on a farm of a hundred acres or even fifty, in the condition in which most of our farms are found, there can seldom be any want of profitable employment for a team. Again the profit of farming, if there is any such thing, must depend on cultivation. The amount of cultivation should depend it is true on the quantity of manure, which you have it your power to apply; but the quantity of manure will on the other hand depend on the amount of land cultivated and of produce grown.-The more land we cultivate, the more produce we raise; the more produce we raise the more stock we keep or fatten; the more stock the more manure to enrich the place. If our land is too poor to pay the expense of cultivation, then let it be abandoned. But where it will do but little more than pay the expenses of cultivation, it would be better to cultivate it, because judicious cultivation and improvement will not fail ultimately to make it profitable. Expensive as labor is among us there certainly may be too many hands employed, who may interfere with and embarrass each other; and from a neglect of constant oversight and the judicious division of labor among the men, assigning every man his place and duty and as far as possible obliging him to attend in that place and perform that duty, there is much