Papers for 1811, communicated to the Massachusetts society for promoting agriculture

Front matter

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Preface

THE Trustees of the Massachusetts Society for promoting Agriculture, present to the Public a new edition of an old and valuable work on the various branches of Agriculture. This Treatise has been out of print many years. It was published by the author, (the Rev. Dr. Jared Eliot, of Killingworth, in Connecticut,) in 1747, under the title of " Essays on Fidd Husbandry, wrote from a Journal of thirty years experience "

The Trustees consider these Essays as highly valuable to the Agricultural Interest of the Northern States. They relate to facts, which have, in many instances, been verified, since the author ceased from his labours. The distribution of them through the Country may be more useful than the communication of extracts from foreign publications, and will preserve the memory of a man, who has deserved well of his country.

These Essays are very diffuse, and state the general practice of Agriculturalists in the author's day. Respecting the culture of foreign and domestic Grasses and Grain, he is verv minute. Millet,

6] though called by the author an ordinary species of grain, is noticed as of much importance, is very productive, and good food for hogs and poultry, and is recommended strongly as a grass crop. It has however been generally neglected, and perhaps for want of fair experiments.

These Essays display, by a variety of experiments, the importance of draining swamps and wet meadow land. It is universally acknowledged, at the present day, that the best and most productive lands are useless from stagnant water. In this condition they contribute greatly, if not principally, to the propagation and continuance of the most fatal autumnal diseases, which this country experiences. W hereas, if those lands were drained and cultivated, thev Would, in a short time, become the most valuable in the country ; the pestilential effluvia, which is so extremely fatal every year, would no longer arise from them, and a noxious waste would thus be converted into fruitful fields.

The very ingenious paper, from the Hon. Samuel Tenny, of New-Hampshire, relative to Orchards, deserves the particular attention of every intelligent farmer, as well as gardener. His advice respecting the cultivation of Apple Trees, which is equally applicable to other fruit trees, cannot be too often read, nor too strongly recommended.

The Trustees are convinced from observation, that Agriculture, in almost every branch, has been much improved since their first publication in 1793. Whether these improvements have been effected by their publications or not, is of little consequence to the members of this Society. The good of the community has been their only aim. No private emolument or advantage has been received, or expected, but in common with the great family of mankind.

The manufacture of Butter and Cheese, has been greatly improved. The breed of Cattle and of Sheep, has been more attended to than formerlv. The Trustees feel the highest satisfaction, in having offered the first premium (ot;0 dollars) for encouraging the importation of Merino Sheep, which, with the high price of the animal in the market, after his value was known, induced merchants to import them into every part of the United States.

The Trustees received last autumn, a small parcel of a new species of Wheat, from a friend in Europe. Its stalk is solid, and is supposed to be proof against the Hessian fly. They have received also from the same hand, a large species of white Rye. Both have been distributed in the country, and will, another year, it is hoped, be found to have succeeded.

Boston, 181 L

ESSAYS

UPON

FIELD-HUSBANDRY.

Part I

IT is not an hundred and thirty years since the first settlement of New- England, and much less than that since the greater part hath been planted.

When we consider the small number of the first settlers, and coming from an old cultivated country, to thick woods, rough unimproved lands ; where all their former experience and knowledge was now of very little service to them : they were destitute of beasts of burthen or carriage ; unskilled in every part of service to be done : it may be said, that in a sort, they began the world anew.

When we consider these things, the progress that hath been made in so short a time is very wonderful.

For some time after the country was settled, they had no cattle at all ; when some were brought over 3 what with bad hay they provided, it being cut upon bog meadow, the multitude of wolves and other beasts of prey, for sundry years they were kept so low and had so few cattle, that the common price for a grown bullock was twenty pounds sterling, which is equalto two hundred pounds old tenor.

I remember when I was a boy, I heard a very ancient woman of good credit say, that she had seen twenty broad pieces paid down for a two year old heifer, which is now equal to two hundred and fifty pounds old tenor.

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Although the progress we have made be very considerable, our country yet needs and is capable of greater improvement in the management of our lands ; of which 1 design to consider in several sorts.

1. Those coves and swamps that are adjoining to salt marsh, which lie so fiat and low that they cannot be drained : I have seen sundry such places upon the sea coast. I have such a piece of ground, which I am obliged to fence in, in order to inclose some other land ; which put me upon thought of trying to make something of it, it being now wholly unprofitable.

Last fall I began upon it and drew a ditch of four feet wide from a large salt creek, and carried it up in the middle of the cove seventy rods, in order to turn it into salt meadow, that being the best that I could do with it. It so far answers the design, that the tide flows regularly into it, to the upper end of it ; the tide now flowing, where I suppose it never reached before. There must be smaller ditches on each side, to cut off the fresh springs, and small grips cut from the great ditch in sundry places, that so the salt water may be spread and communicated to all parts of it.

The lower part next the salt marsh is rushes, the next are reeds, then large brakes and bushes, and last of all a thick swamp. If this land can be converted into salt meadow, it will be much cheaper than to purchase so much salt marsh, and will lie very convenient to my other land.

Salt water will effectually kill trees and bushes where it comes, both root and branch.

2. The second sort of land that I shall consider, is, the low sunken lands, which have no communication with the salt marsh : of this sort there are three kinds, viz. thick swamp, boggy meadow, and smooth, even, shaking meadow ; this last sort is called cramberry marsh : he that would do any thing to effect with either of these sorts, must in the first place sec whether there be deep mire ; if it be shallow and soon come to hard sand, clay, or gravel, it will not be worth while to expend cost upon it.

Again, you must examine what fall there is. If the fall be apparent to the eye, and this for ten or fifteen rods, you may be satisfied ; if you are uncertain, try it with a water level or spirit level. If your marsh be small, the drein long, rocky, and likely to be chargeable, it may be best to let it alone ; but if it be a large swamp or meadow, although the main drain should be a considerable charge, that should be no discouragement.

That low ground which is thick with wood and brush, will be the most chargeable ; the bog meadow the next in charge, because the bogs must be cut up with a bog plough or with a hoe ; either way is chargeable. The shaking meadow has the best surface and is easiest to bring to mowing.

Last August was twelve month I began to drein a pond that lies but a mile from my house ; it was not a natural pond, but made so upon design. Our record informs that it was granted to a man to prevent the miring of cattle ; the owner of it laid it under water about eighty years ago. It was over grown with pond lillies ; it was thought by most that to drein it was impracticable. Some said, that it was as unlikely as to drain the ocean. At the outlet there seemed to be little or no fall ; but trying it with a level, my son and I found that in forty rods there was fall sufficient. We therefore set about dreining it, have succeeded so far that it bids fair to make a good piece of land. It had been under water so long, and was so full of pond lilly roots, that when the water was drawn off and the lilly roots dried and shrunk up, it grew to be puffy, and did not for this reason do so well as we expected : The grass seed did not come up well, nor stand so well as in land that has lain open to the heat of the sISn. The whole pond was about twenty acres, and the soil is eight or ten feet deep ; there are in it many large springs, which are fifteen feet deep.

I began last March to drein another meadow of forty acres, up in Guilford woods ; this was a shaking meadow ; a man standing upon it might shake the ground several rods round him. It seemed to be only a strong sward of grass roots laid over a soft mud of the consistence of Pancake- batter ; there was not abundance of bushes in it, but abundance of cramberry vines, and a great burthen of poor wild grass. The meadow was deemed so poor that none would take it up. I was pitied as being about to waste a great deal of money ; but they comforted' themselves that if I spent it unprofitably, others that stood in need of it would get it. They are noAv of another opinion.

At the only outlet of this meadow, there was fall sufficient, but very rocky ; we must dig four or five feet deep to get the advantage of it.

In March when I went up to make the outlet drein, there was such a torrent of water that we could do nothing. I ordered therefore a tree to be cut down across the brook, and prepared flitches instead of plank which we set aslant, the upper end resting upon the staddle that was fallen across the brook, laid them as close as we could, and stopped the chinks and large chasms with top tow, by which means we shut the water into the meadow, then wrought at the trench or main drein in the day, and let it out at night, till it was in a good measure accomplished. When I ordered the top-tow to be carried, the men wondered what it was designed for, but when they saw how useful it wa^s in making a cheap dam, they were pleased with it. I put them in mind of the Dutch proverb, which says of things that are very mean, Thnt Something is always good for something:

When the weather grew sufficiently warm and the meadow a little settled, we began to ditch. 1 cut a ditch on each side and one in the middle. As far as we went it soon rendered the meadow firm and dry ; I then proceeded to sow grass seei\ such as red clover, foul meadow grass, English spear grass, and herd grass. Of all the sorts of grass seed I sowed, none 6eemed to take hold and come up so well as red clover-; this I found to be the boldest and most hardy grass.

Where the sward was strong, although the clover came up well, yet what with the toughness of the ground and the overtopping growth of the wild natural grass, the clover made but slow progress till the fall of the year, and then it mended considerably* - But where there happened to be no sward to hinder it, the clover grew up to the height of mid thigh, went tc ;>eed, and ripened.

Of the other sorts of grass came up but poorly ; the land I suppose was too new and too tough for iL

Some time in September, I ploughed up a piece of it where I had not sowed any grass seed, it ploughed very tough, and the cattle mired some, but we kept them upon the grass as well a,s we could ; after ail we left many baulks. About a month after I set some men to hoe up the baulks, and was agreeably surprised to find how easy it hoed up. I find the meadow rotted and mellowed more in one month in the fall than it had done in the whole summer. The same I found by the ditch banks. If I had omitted my ploughing till a month later, it had been done with much more ease to man and beast.

In July I sowed a little piece of turnips, they came up but never grew till the ground began to rot in the fail of the year, then grew well in the short time they had left. I expected they would have been rank, but they were good and sweet,

Some are deterred from such an undertaking as that of dreining their land, by reason of the great charge. They terrify themselves without reason* When I was about to cut my main drein, some thought it impossible, but at best it would cost an hunderd pounds. It was a bad place of rocks ; some I dug up, some we broke up with steel wedges, and some we blew up with powder ; but after all it did not cost more than twenty pounds.

As to the great charge of ditching, they do not consider that the outside ditches serve for fence, as well as to cut off the springs and drein the meadow, and it is as cheap fence as any we can make ; so that there is none but the middle or intermediate ditches, that are properly to be considered as a charge in drein - Ing.

Some may think this long history of two pieces of meadow, this tedious detail of so many minute parlars to be needless, trifling and impertinent.

I have been particular in describing the main or on tfet drein of each meadow, that it may be seen that the difficulty of rocks is not insuperable, nor the charge of a long drein intolerable.

I mention the cheap moveable dam which may be made in a few hours, that if they should be incumbered with water to hinder their work, there is a remedy at hand.

I informed you of the growth of one of the meadows that it was moss and pond lillies, which will soon die when the water is gone ; the moss creates the most trouble, but will burn when it is a dry season.

I gave an account of the depth of the soil, because I was when I began, uncertain whether by ditches three feet wide and two and an half deep (such as mine are) would be sufficient to fix the shaking meadow, and render the deep mire firm and dry enough for grass and tillage. I think there is reason to believe that the shaking meadows have been formerly beaver ponds.

I described the extent and bigness of each meadow, because I was uncertain whether the ditches would drien well when they were very long.

Some of mine are an hundred and fifty rods long, and must be yet much longer ; yet as far as we have gone, they draw well. In order to have them draw well and run free, it is absolutely needful, and a main point, to have your outlet drein deep, so that the water run briskly.

If the ditches draw well, there is another advantage ; in the spring, when there is much water, by stopping one ditch, you may shift the water into another, to cleanse it, and so to a third. Hereby you will save the charge of the yearly scouring of them with the shovel, which is a good saving, I find by experience I have that advantage.

I have insisted the longer upon this article, it being an affair of importance. If it should answer our expectation, it will put us into the improvement of land of which as yet we have had no benefit ; nay, it has been rather hurtful. It opens to us a new scene, and time may possibly discover it to be the easiest of tillage, the richest and best land.

By the working of my own mind I judge of others ; however, if I have been mistaken, and that which is uncertain to me, is clear and easy to others, and so have been longer upon this particular than is needful or useful ; I beg pardon of the reader.

When I engaged in this affair, it was with some mistrust and uncertainty. I am sure, last year I should, have been glad of such an history of facts, (as imperfect as it is,) it would have afforded me light, courage and instruction*

As to what remains farther to be done, I should be, glad to meet with an experienced person to give me instruction. Our reasonings and speculations without experience are delusory and uncertain. It used to be the saying of an old man, that an ounce of experience is better than a pound of science.

In a country where such like dreining is become a common practice, such an account as I have given, would be needless.

I find by experience, that such dreined land must have one summer to ferment and rot, so as to becomeproper soil, before it will be fit for grain and every sort of grass. If I had sowed red clover instead of the other sorts of grass, I had saved five pound in seed. Clover outdid my expectation, and the other sorts fell short of it. If others save where I lost, and mend wherein I was mistaken, It answers my design in writing,

By a little experience we have had of these dreined lands, we find they will produce Indian corn, sixty or seventy bushels to the acre, and flax. If life and health be continued, I design to try liquorice roots* barley, Cape Breton wheat, cotton, indigo seed, and wood for dying, which I have sent for, as also water melon seed, which came originally from Archangel, in Russia which is said produces melons which grow to a great size. But what I have principally in view is hemp. New- England doth not, I suppose, expend less than several hundred thousand pounds worth of foreign hemp yearly. If we can raise more than to supply our own occasions, we may send it home. I remember when I was young, a gentleman came from England, sent over by the King, to invite the country into that trade ; he offered in the King's name to find seed to begin with, and four pence sterling per pound, let us raise what we would, (which is three and four pence old tenor,) and if I remember right, forty shillings bounty on every ton.

It is not a mere conjecture that the dreined lands will produce hemp. I am informed by my worthy friend Benjamin Franklin, Esq. of Philadelphia, that they raise hemp upon their dreined lands.

Hemp requires such very strong land to produce it, that it would consume all our dung to raise it in any great quantities ; so that we should not be able to raise bread corn : therefore, how inviting so ever the trade is, and how great so ever the encouragements have been, both from home and by our own governments, we have not as yet engaged in that aifair : we have now a promising prospect of success in these dreined lands ; what may be the issue, time and experience must determine.

The books of husbandry say, that a thousand weight to the acre is an ordinary crop of hemp.

If a man had a small meadow of dreined land, that he could lay under water and draw it off at his pleasure to water his hemp, it would, I fancy, be of great value. I have heard that a man in the Jersies, hath such a meadow of half an acre, which yields him as much hemp yearly, as fetches him fifty pounds York money ; but this seems incredible.

Some think that it is good to lay their low lands under water in the winter to enrich them, and practise accordingly ; but this will kill your English grass after a few years ; for English grass will not subsist without a winter. In the southern colonies the less winter the less grass. In Virginia, North and South Carolina, they have no English grass at all. Where there is no English grass, it is difficult to make cattle truly fat ; so that winter brings its good as well as its evil things.

3. The third sort of land I would speak of, is our old land which we have ivorn out. This is a difficult 3 article without dung, which cannot be had for love or monev : where that is wanting, it may be supplied with other manure. Clay will mend sandy land, especially if the clay be burnt ; and sand will mend clay ground. The clay will fix the too loose contexture of the sand, and sand will open the parts of clay which is too close.

I found at my farm at Guilford, a sort of shell sand, tried it, and found it equal to good dung ; some that I ordered to be carried up on the tilled land, has produced five crops, and is not yet spent ; how long it will last we do not know. They begin to carry it up into the town.

I have carted this fall upon my land at home some loads of creek mud, that had been laid up a rotting two years : I also carted home one load from the dreined pond ; it looks like dung ; also one load of clay, one load of sand, and a load of loam. What all or any of these will do, experience must inform.

Another way to help worn out land, is to sow it with clover seed ; but if the land be too poor it will not grow : therefore, if we can raise our Indian corn upon our dreined land, then we may spare a sprinkling of dung for our old poor land ; then sow it with ten pounds of clover seed, which is five quarts to the acre ; it might cause it to set very thick. Ten pounds is not too much. He that raiseth clover hay, need not be afraid of the expense of seed ; for an acre of clover will yield two bushels of clean seed : the second crop of clover is the best for seed : so that in getting seed, you have no need to spoil your best crop of hay ; as we know what threshing will do, it spoils the hay in a great measure.

If you depend upon the second crop of red clover for your seed, the land must be very rich, and you must mow your first crop eady. There is so much profit in clover grass, that it is strange it is so much neglected. As seed sells now, that is twelve shillings a quart, an acre of good clover will make thirty five pounds old tenor. There is no charge about it but only the price of the seed, mowing and cleansing the seed, which is done with a great deal of ease, in a way that deserves to be made public.

If seeding the land with clover will not make poor land rich, yet it will prevent our better land from being worn out ; and by ploughing in a good coat of white clover, the land would be prepared for a crop of wheat.

Seeding the land when we lay it down is of so much importance for present profit and future advantage, that it is a settled opinion at the Isle of Wight, that if they should Jail but for one year to seed their land for grass, it would be to their damage more than twenty thousand pounds sterling.

Another way of mending poor land, is, by feeding it close a few years with sheep, to destroy the briars, weeds and mangy grass : this hath succeeded to bring in the English grass and make a strong sward.

It will be best to take out the sheep at the latter end of August, that so what English grass there is, may make coat for the ground before winter, and then shut it up that it may not be fed. By the end of August the wild trash has done growing.

In England, to recover their poor land, they direct to sow their land with turnips, and at winter put their sheep upon it ; and they will live a while upon the tops and then scoop out the turnip itself ; by that time the land with the sheep dung will be rich enough for barley in the spring. But our poor land is so poor that it will not bear turnips bigger than buttons. This method looks likely, if tried, to make rich land richer. Some propose to sow oats and when grown up plough them in.

4. I designed to write something concerning our poor rough, stony, uneven land in the woods, which is now of little service to us. I would propose a way how it might be improved so as to become useful and profitable land, which I proposed to submit to the reader's better judgment : but finding that I have already gone a greater length than I at first designed, it must be omitted.

A barrel of cider of sweet apples when made into molasses, will be worth three pounds, abating five shillings for the making, when cider made of common apples, a barrel will be worth but twenty shillings, exclusive of the barrel.

Thave been told that half a peck of the little round white beans mixed with a bushel of rye, will make bread something like wheat ; I have never tried it, but design to see what it will do.

I have been told that summer wheat sowed with barley is not apt to blast, and do well together ; also summer rye and oats : as also oats and peas produce a good crop when sowed together ; the oats bearing up the pea vines prevent their falling to the ground.

I find by experience the best time to fatten swine, is to begin at the first of August ; , if you have old corn : Hogs will fat slowly in very cold weather ; they will eat much and fatten but little : if you make a very warm house they heat in bed and catch cold when they come out into the cold air.

To save corn, steep it in water or swill till the corn grow very soft ; this opens the parts : give them the corn to eat and the water to drink in which the corn has been steeped : the hard dry corn, a great deal of it, passeth through them undigested ; this is the hardest part of the corn and that which principally makes the flour. There is a tradition, that if you feed one hog with corn, the dung of the first hog will fat another hog, and his dung a third.

Although I believe the story to be fabulous, yet it serves to shew that the sense of mankind, is, that in the manner we feed swine, there is a great deal of loss.

I took the hint of steeping corn, from the advantage I once found by some corn I bought that had been ship wrecked, had lain in the water till it was grown soft.

Such is the difference in corn and in swine, that it is impossible to fix it absolutely and know certainly how much there is saved by this method. It is better than grinding, besides what we save in the toll and the time and charge of the carriage : for it is found by experience, that even bran when steeped in water a long time is much the better.

I asked an honest, judicious neighbor of mine, who had leisure to try this method of steeping corn longer and with more exactness than I had done, how much he thought was saved by it ? he said, at least one bushel in seven ; he believed more. But we will suppose it saves but. a tenth part, then see how much it will save in the whole colony ? Suppose there are in this colony, about sixty towns, great and small, new and old : we will suppose two hundred families in each town, one with another, and each family to consume or spend as much pork as will require one with another twenty bushels of corn to make the pork for each family. Sixty towns of two hundred families each, makes twelve thousand families, and twenty bushels of- corn to each family, makes two hundred forty thousand bushels of corn : the tenth part of this is twenty four thousand bushels. If there be not so many towns and families as is supposed, there is much pork fatted and sent away in barrels, and many herds of fat swine drove away that are not consumed in the government, enough to make it up ; and surely the saving of twenty four thousand bushels of corn yearly, is worthy of our care and consideration.