Agriculture of Maine

1916

B. Walker McKeen.

XXII. More Advanced Farm Methods; Maine Dairymen's Association; Maine State Grange; Fryeburg Cheese Factory; Recollections of a Drover.

The annual meeting of the Board of Agriculture for 1874 was held in the court house at Wiscasset, February 10th, 11th and 12th. The attendance of farmers, and others, at these meetings was large and the meetings were of much interest. Organization was effected by to election of Z. A. Gilbert, president, J. W. Lang, vice president and S. L. Boardman, secretary.

A careful review of the published report of the winter and autumn meetings of the Board shows that the papers and lectures given at these meetings contain a fund of scientific and practical information on leading subjects in agriculture, and although more than forty years have passed since these meetings were held, the student of farm methods today can not afford to pass them by. Papers presented by members of the Board covered such topics as Butter or Cheese, Which; The Elevation of Farming; Irrigation; Associated Dairying; A System of Practical Agriculture; Farming as a Profession; No Cattle, no Crops; Co-operation among Farmers; On Labor and Farmers' Experiments.

Scientific papers were given by such eminent men as Prof. W. O. Atwater, Hon. Harris Lewis, Hon. C. L. Flint, Prof. F. L. Scribner and Prof. James Law. It is a pity that there can not be an interest in these old reports started among the students of today as they are rich in the lore of old-time agriculture, much of which could be put in our modern practise to good advantage.

The report shows that there were thirty-four cheese factories incorporated by the legislature during the session for that year. But about one-half of these were put in operation, and there were in operation thirty-six during the year. A little local flavor attaches to these cheese factory items, for on the 20th of February of this year, 1874, a cheese factory was organized at Fryeburg. Immediate steps Were taken to begin operations. A building was erected and equipped, and cheese making begun early in the summer. The Argue Not Inn is the building, the original dimensions of which were 30 by 60. The company was capitalized at $2,500, the shares of stock placed at $25. Alden B. Walker was engaged as cheese maker. The records show that it took 9 1-2 pounds of milk to make one pound of cheese and that the cheese sold for 15 cents per pound. The cost of manufacturing was placed at 2 1-2 cents. This did not prove a very profitable venture. The factory was well equipped, the cheese made was of good quality, but the milk did not net enough to induce farmers to deliver it in sufficient quantities to make it a paying business. As the writer remembers, the factory was not run but two years and the building and outfit were sold at considerable loss.

Farmer's clubs were still flourishing and doing a work that is not being done by any organization that we have today. There were thirty-six of these clubs, many of which held fairs and all of which had libraries.

Here we find the first report of the college of agriculture and find that it has really got a start in its work. It had 120 students and a faculty of eight instructors. The trustees had expended some over one thousand dollars for full blood stock and there were at the farm four Shorthorns, four Ayshires and five Jerseys. The stock was inventoried at $4,388.00.

The importance of commercial fertilizers was becoming more and more apparent and the Secretary had been authorized to investigate the value of fish scrap as a fertilizer. The report which he made was very encouraging. The fact was brought out that the scrap had sold for $11 per ton and enough had been purchased by the farmers to net the factories $631,475 for the year.

We have this year, for the first time, a report of the Maine Dairymen's Association and learn that this Association was incorporated, February 20th, 1874. Its first officers were Seward Dill, president; J. W. Lang, secretary; J. W. North, treasurer. The first meeting was held in Augusta April 10th, 1874. The Association immediately begun active work to promote the interests of dairy farming in the State.

A sufficient number of subordinate granges having been organized to warrant, a State organization was effected at Lewiston April 21, 1874, with Nelson Ham, master; L. B. Dennett, lecturer, and John M. Jackson, secretary. Mr. Ham was the first master of Lewiston grange, number 2. He was a man of ability, and one fully respected by every one who knew him. Mr. Dennett was a Portland lawyer who was interested in farming and in farm organizations. Mr. Jackson was a farmer in his native town and was a strength to the new organization. I knew all of these men, who have now passed on leaving behind them work well done.

For the first time the Board took up the matter of irrigation, and Mr. D. M. Dunham of Bangor read a comprehensive paper on the subject. The discussion which followed the reading of this paper, led by President Gilbert, showed conclusively that the members of the Board had a good grasp on the general principles of irrigation and the effect it would have on crop production. Many years have passed since then, and we are no nearer practising a system of irrigation, nor will it come until the roads are free for the farmer's products to consumers all over the world and he is able to get these products before the consumer without paying undue toll to middle man or transportation company.

To show that there were important matters before the Board at that time other than the growing crops and animals, and that there were men on the Board who could use good, vigorous language as well as a lesson for today. I am quoting at some length from a lecture given before the Board on farming as a profession by J. W. Lang, the member from Waldo county. Let us read this carefully and then seek an answer why we are no further advanced along these lines, after 42 years of toil and self sacrifice than we are at present:

"Will some farmer tell us why more hours of labor should be required to support a family on a farm than anywhere else? Will some one tell us why farm products can not wait for sale until they are wanted as well as all other things? Will some one tell us how it is that those farm products that were all used up, not a pound or bushel was wasted for want of consumption or from poor care, are often so much in excess of demand that they bring next to nothing? Will any one tell us why a business which requires a capital of three to five thousand dollars, with skill and a long apprenticeship to learn it, and 14 hours a day to labor and to look after it, should not pay as much dividend as the hand cart or the wheel barrow with a man behind it?

"Will any one tell us why, when one man holds in his hand that which another man will die for want of if he does not get, that the man who holds it should beg and plead for the other man to take it? Will some one explain why it is that the corner grocer knows so much better what it is worth to raise a bushel of potatoes than the man who did it? It is useless to seek financial success on the farm so long as the incubus of prices made for farm products by other classes is submitted to." And the writer might have added that until financial success does come up the farm, our brightest and our best will be leaving it.

The annual meeting of the Board was closed with a lecture by Charles L. Flint, then secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, on a hundred years progress in agriculture. This meeting was but two years before the Centennial celebration in Philadelphia, and the speaker's thoughts took him along the lines that would be brought to the front by this celebration, and covered the entire history of the agriculture of the country. I wish that much of this very valuable lecture might be reproduced here, but as that is not possible, I can only refer my readers to the report of the Board for 1874 and urge them to study it and learn of the early agriculture of the country.

The secretary, considering that Maine was one of the earliest sections of the new world to attempt an improvement of its breeds of cattle through the introduction of thoroughbred cattle from other countries, includes in his report some notes on Maine cattle which give many interesting details of the introduction of most of the breeds of cattle that are now found in the state. I can not refrain from quoting at some length from these notes. Captain John Mason purchased the rights which Sir Fernando Gorges had in several grants of land, and in 1639 he began bringing cattle onto his lands. The present towns of Kittery and Berwick were included in these grants. The venture of Captain Mason seemed to end disastrously. His death occurred in 1635 and at that time there were some three hundred cattle on his plantations. How they were dispersed and how the lands were divided are best told from the following deposition which was first published by the New Hampshire Agricultural Society in 1854.

"Francis Small, of Piscataqua in New England, planter, aged 65 years, maketh oath that he hath lived in New England upward of 40 years; that he very well knew the plantations Captain Mason had caused to be made at Piscataqua, Strawberry Bank and Newichewanock, and was well acquainted with all the servants employed by Captain Mason upon the said plantations, some of whom are still living; and that there was a great stock at each of these plantations. And this deponent doth very well remember that Captain Mason sent into this country eight Danes to build mills to saw timber and tend them, and to make potashes; and that the first saw and corn mill in New England was erected at Captain Mason's plantation at Newichewanock, upwards of fifty years ago, where was also a large house with all conveniences of out-houses, and well fortified with stores of arms. That about forty years since the said houses and buildings were burnt to the ground, but by what means this deponent doth not know. That about the same time this deponent, with others, was employed by Capt. Francis Norton, (who then lived at Capt. Mason's house at Piscataqua, called the great house) to drive about one hundred head of cattle towards Boston, and the said Capt. Norton did go with the cattle; that said cattle were there usually sold for five and twenty pounds, the head money of England. And the said Norton did settle himself at Charlestown, near Boston, and wholly left Capt. Mason's plantation, upon which the other servants shared the resedue of the goods and stock among them, which was left in that and the other plantations, and possessed themselves of the houses and lands, and this deponent doth verily believe that from cattle sent thither by Capt. Mason, most of the cattle in the provinces of New Hampshire and Maine have been raised for this deponent doth not remember or heard that any one else did bring over any. That Capt. Wannerton, a servant to Capt. Mason, and lived in a fair house at Strawberry Bank, about the year 1644, did carry goods and arms belonging to Capt. Mason's plantation, and did sell them to the French that did inhabit at Port Royal, where the said Thomas Wannerton was slain. That some time after one Sampson Lane came over from England, with power as he pretended, to look after and take care of the said plantations, and did settle himself at the great house at Strawberry Bank, where he continued about three years and then returned to England, upon whose departure, John and Richard Cutts got into possession of the house and lands at Strawberry Bank, but by what right this deponent never heard, and have sold several tracts, upon which many houses have since been built and are now in the possession of the relations of the said Cutts.
"Francis Small.
Sworn to before me the 8th of September, 1685.
B. Chamberlain, Justice P."

As a reminiscence for my older readers and as a curiosity for the younger ones, I am quoting from the recollections of a drover, matter which reminds me of the older times when just such droves of cattle as he describes frequently passed my home in the fall months. The matter quoted was furnished the Secretary, by Seward Dill of Phillips, whom I well remember, and who was engaged in the business as early as 1835:

"My first drove was picked up about this place, Phillips, in the fall of 1835; and I continued in the business for about twenty years, driving from one to three droves a year, which was done in the latter part of summer and fall in droves of from fifty to two hundred head, a large proportion young cattle. These cattle were of as many colors as Jacobs; some with high horns, some with low horns, some up and some down, and some with none at all. The prices paid for the first two years were, for one-year olds, $3 to $5; for two-year olds, $7 to $10; for three-year olds from $10 to $15; cows, $10 to $12; oxen, $35 to $40 per pair, for six feet in girth and sometimes six and one-half feet at that price — and six and one-half feet was considered very large here at that time. In those days, selling cattle at Brighton was dull and hard business for "greenhorns;" many drovers lost money, myself among the rest. Two-year olds were often sold for $7 and sometimes for much less. In 1837 and 1838 prices went up with a rush. For two years cattle had been so low that but few calves had been raised in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. We poor drovers who purchased our droves early in 1837, then got even with the Brighton sharpers, and some one-year old heifers sold as high as $24 each, two-year olds, $30 to $35, and oxen went from $35 and $40 up to $80 and $90. In 1840 cattle were low again, but not down to the price of 1835. I have purchased 7 feet oxen in the towns of Livermore and Turner at $50, (what we called mass and market beef) driven them to Portland and Brighton and then sold them at a very small profit."

The autumn meeting of the Board was held at Orono on the 27th, 28th and 29th of October. Much time was spent by the members and their friends who had gathered for the meeting, in making investigations of the work of the college of agriculture, and much satisfaction was expressed at what was seen. The regular meetings were held in the town hall and were well attended. The papers were of a high order and were listened to with interest by all. Fryeburg people may be interested to know that the Hon. George B. Barrows, then the member of the Board for Oxford county read one of the most interesting papers of the session, on the province of the Board of Agriculture.

—The Fryeburg Post, Fryeburg, Maine, Sept. 26, 1916, p. 5.