The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-08-08
BACK FIELDS OF CONNECTICUT.

BACK FIELDS OF CONNECTICUT.
 What is Being Done in a Litchfield
 County Town.
 "The back fields of Connecticut" is
 the subject Of an interesting letter in
 the Rural New Yorker signed S. M..
 Litchfield county, Conn. The writer | says: Tn regard to the two farms l that rent, years ago one of them was l considered worth ten thousand dollars.
 At the time of the death of the owner, 1 some twelve years ago, 1t was ap-
 praised at fiftv-fve hundred dollars
 The other farm, the party that l rent them both of paid fifty-fve hundred
 dollars cash for They contain about
 three hundred acres. rent them both with teams Give horses) and tools
 of every kind for thirty dollars month. There are two Good houses: outbuildings need hepairing; good creamery with boiler, engine and sep | arator, and everything to make first class butter. I own the stock, average over fifty head, from thirty to thirty | avs SoNoI llle IcSl III SSNtiS' NSA-N'~ ~N
 my own raising. We are making now about six hundred pounds of butter
 month which I send to Derby, Conn.,, at twenty-five cents for last month.
 It will go up now every month until get twenty-eigh cents, where 1t will stand for the winter. l used to pr'nt my butter, but now send it in tubs, the buyers paying the freight, I have 10 go to the depot but once week. There are two farms adjoining these that I rent, one on the east and one on the south About twenty years ago one of the farms was bought for fifty five dollars, and a new barn was built
 "A year ago last March voilng man bought it for a thousand dollars, and in ten months paid all his expenses promptly and four hundred dollars on the principal He told me the other day that he could pay for it all this year, but he wanted to build silo and repair the house, as he thought ne could while owing so little. This oth- CT farm was bought for sixty-five hun dred dollars twenty-five years ago-it contains two hundred and eighty acres. A year ago last April it was sold Tor eighteen hundred dollars, and only one hundred dollars paid down, l know or three farms that were sold at anctson this last spring that did not bring much over e-third Of their original cost, In Warren, a town south of us. proper ty has decreased in value more yet place known all over as very desira- ble one, and containing two hundred T .e,tx- "a large well-kept house and good barns.
 "rrhe reason for all this, l suppose, is that in this back country, there IS Et- tie to attract the young people. They all so away to larger places. The ed people, all very well off, are left alone to the mercy of hired help and when they pass away, the farm is sold at just what they are offered. Another thing, there used to be great demand for charcoal, and all these old mus have been cut oyer several times. In every town from here to the Massachu- setts line were furnaces for making charcoal iron, which made a good market for all the wood the farmer had and brought great many in town. rms business IS dIl SoiiS anu tiV furnaces with all their property are Idle and going to decay. This iron com pany. less than year ago, closed up the business in this district, and sold good wood land for fifty cents an acre
 In regard to the markets, selling milk t0 the New York cooperative milk and cream company is the principal busi- ness. Some twenty years ago milk sold In New York from $1,20 to l4O per can of forty quarts. Now they get from fifty cents to s115 I think last month 1t sold for sixty cents. This company owns craa --ertes at nearly every sta ton on the Housatonic road, and great quantities of milk are produced, about two hundred cans (eorty quarts) going from this station daily. This is a beautiful country. and nowhere IS 1t healthier. The land is somewhere rough and rocky, but very strong and capable of producing enormous crops, and we on this place are nearly as ear lv as some good deal farther south. Although we had a wet spring my corn was planted May 8, and is now six feet tall on a level"