News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1886-11-25
BELLE MEAD FARM.
here Senator Mcpherson Practices Orna.
mental Agriculture.

Senator Mcpherson, of New Jersey,
finds time to look after the improve
ments and novel features he has been
introducing on his farm on the Bound
Brook Railroad known as Belle Mead,
where he has l, 200 acres devoted to a
more than ordinary variety of uses.
Belle Mead has already achieved a
! favorable reputation for its butter and
milk, but its owner intends it to be as
well known for its poultry, fine fruits
and vegetables and its game preserves.
He intends wing peach orchard Of
100 acres and now has several thousand
of the finest peach trees planted and
doing well. There is also a large
straw berry patch. There is an incuba-
tor, which is to hatch at regular inter
walls through six or eight months of the
year spring chickens from eggs laid by
Plymouth Rock hens. Five hundred
eggs can be Matched in batch by this
incubator.
In small wood are kept English
quail, cartridges and pheasants, which
the Senator has imported and for which
large pens have been made, whose walls
and roofs are of wire, lined with net
ting. There are also American birds of
the same species, for which similar pens
are made. The winter quarters for the
English pheasants are in an enclosure
so feet square and 0 feet high, covered
on top and sides by wire and lined with
netting At one end a wooden projec-
ton about one third the height of the
enclosure forms a shelter, where e
birds can protect themselves from wet
weather OF any kind. Their nests are
to be Systematically robbed of eggs,
and some bantam pheasants are kept
only for the purpose of Matching the
eggs of the larger birds.
After the birds are used to their home
they are to be let loose, and in a young
peach orchard has been planted buck
wheat, which is not to be harvested,
but in which the birds are to be allowed
to feed at will. There is q small w cd
with underground, which they can use
as a cover, and in addition there are
plantations of cedar, pine and spruce,
which are being dwarfed by constant
trimming, where the birds can find the
hiding places they like
There are two ponds in a valley on
which many mallard and wood ducks
now swim. One pond has been stocked
with carp. English and German hare
and American rabbits have also been
introduced on the place.
There are one hundred Holstein COWS
and about dozen heifer calves now on
the Belle Mead farm. One Of the COWS
gives eight and half gallons of milk
per day; another eight per day This
breed is preferred by the owner to all
others. Race horses are not to be raised
or bred at Belle Mead, as Senator Nc
Pherson, for his own sake as well as
that of his son, prefers to cultivate ON
his farra nothing which can lead to
hurtful associations.
Having natural taste for a farmers
life, Senator Mcpherson intends 10 make
his Belle Mead property attractive in
every way, and will, at the proper time
for tree-planting plant number of fine
shade trees about his house. This
house is, while very comfortable and
tasteful, quite unpretending, affecting
no special school of architecture Vines
grow over its front porch and more are
are to be planted. Additions are to be
made to the building and telephone
with the railroad station is
to be introduced. Neither mosquitoes
Or malaria are known at Belle Mead.