The average annual value of the vegetable products per acre of the improved land is $4 47 per acre. The average annual product of grain upon the improved acre is three bushels. Reducing the sheep to an equivalent of horses or cattle, being .... 42,152 $403,502 Whole number of neat cattle, or their equivalent in horses and The whole number of improved acres to each head of neat cattle is fortyfive, and to each cow twelve acres. The proportion of cows to the total stock is thirty-eight per cent., and to all the cows in the State fifteen per cent.; but of the neat cattle of the group the proportion of cows is fifty-three per cent. $3,369,817 Also the value of cattle killed, as these would be the product of Total value of animal products, exclusive of animals sold.... 542,370 40,280 585,320 .... 231,000 147,532 Total animal products...... $4,876,319 As this is purely a dairy and grazing group, the products of animals represent the surplus products of its agriculture, except in wheat, flax seed and lint, and in hops and barley. All the other vegetable products are represented in the animal products. Its surplus agricultural products will be as follows, viz: Total surplus products of agriculture...... Which is $3.17 per acre for each of its improved acres. $4,876,319 65,443 97,020 94,463 726,132 $5,859,448 The average number of acres of improved land to each farm being 66, it follows that the average annual surplus of the farm is $209.88, or not far from 6 per cent. upon the capital invested in the farm. Throughout nearly the whole of this region the population present appearances of thrift and prosperity, especially in the agricultural portion of it, near the great lines of traffic. AGRICULTURE. In its agriculture, this group must ever remain a purely grazing district. In St. Lawrence county, along the borders of the river, and inland for some twenty or thirty miles, spring grains may be grown to some extent, though not profitably as compared with dairy and grazing. In some favored localities in Franklin and Clinton, and in the southeastern corner of Saratoga county, and in that portion of Herkimer county south of the Mohawk river, some spring grains may also be grown. But a primary or granitic region does not furnish a grain growing soil. Yet when properly managed, it becomes valuable for pasturage. The vast tract of forest which now covers nearly 75 per cent. of the surface of this group, is being slowly removed. The means of transporting timber and wood to markets are being improved and enlarged, and as long as fuel and lumber bear the remunerating prices they do now, the forest will disappear rapidly in the more accessible portions, and the land thus cleared if judiciously managed, will soon produce annual returns in the profit of its pasturage. A serious mistake has been made heretofore in management of the new lands of this group. The temptation to seed the newly cleared land with grain; as long as it could be made to produce even a scanty crop, could not be resisted by the needy pioneer, and the result has been the land has become so completely impoverished that the third crop has usually exhausted the vegetable matter of the soil, not even grass, or any other vegetation which would support animal life, has been produced, and the land remains worthless for any purposes of cultivation, for it is not in the power of the farmer to furnish the manure necessary to renovate the hungry soil. The true method to be pursued in regard to the lands over nearly all this group, is to seed them down to grass and white clover with the first crop after being cleared. The vegetable matter then in the soil will aid in producing a strong turf, which becomes the more valuable the longer it remains. In the counties of Dutchess and Putnam, they have pastures upon their rocky hills which have been in grass for fifty, sixty, and in some instances, nearly or quite a hundred years, that the owners would not have plowed up, if such a thing were possible, for any reasonable consideration, so valuable have they become by reason of the richness of the food thus furnished to their cattle and sheep. The true policy of the farmers in this region, where the land is newly cleared, is to lay it down to grass as soon as possible, and to make their meadows and pastures perpetual. By so doing, valuable sheep walks may be established, and an otherwise forbidding farming country, by reason of its climate and soil, becomes comparatively prosperous. The great value of this region, after its forests have been converted to lumber, will be in its mines, which are now only partially brought to light. It is already known that iron ore of the richest quality abounds to an inexhaustible extent. Galena has been found, and it is not improbable that silver and other valuable ores will yet be found abundant in its rugged mountains. Chance or science may yet divulge its hidden treasure, and though its soil can only support a very sparse population, the contents of its subsoil will fill it with thriving, populous towns. In the distribution of its improved land, we have seen that 70 per cent. is in grass, whereof 42 per cent. is pasturage. This indicates that the agriculture is that of stock raising and the dairy country, where stall feeding cannot be practiced profitably, but that the surplus animals must be sold rather from the pasture than the yard. |