Norwich bulletin., 1916-06-10
LARGE RETURNS sFRoM REDEEMED swAMPs

bushels from the hfty-five acres. Corn was selling at the time for sixty cents. That was. what they could have got, had they sold it. They preferred to feed 1t all to their pig dairy herd ana make cheese because in this way 1t brought them, a good deal more than sixty cents bushel.
 But, allowing that figure as the fair market value of their crop in cash. it draining the whole hundred acres had been $1, 400.
 Fifty-five acres in one year repaid the entire cost, and left tEhen an even thousand dollars to pay for seed, till age, labor, etc.
 which proved very valuable forage for their dairy herd and saved good many dollars in grain and hay.
 This year, they are planning prob-s ably by this time have accomplished, the blowing and planting of the it is harvested, ifgthey have any kind of corn year, they will be able to know what interest their gold mine" as they do not hesitate to call the old muskrat swamp, is paying them and likely to keep on paying them upon their original investment of $1,400.
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 IF it only gays them 100 per cent per annuEn, which is less than what about half of it paid in 1914,-ore would think tSley might be fairly con- tent.
 I don't believe that many connecti-. cut farmers are averaging 100 per lscent off their best uplands,- even ninety-f1ve per cent.
 I strongly suspect that some of them would be much tickled if they could get ten per cent as a regular and sure l thing.
 And yet, don't you suppose, that 1 there's as good chance for making a Connecticut swamp pay it's way as one in Wisconsin, They don't have as i long a growing season nor as warm a summer there as we do. Their win ters are longer and colder. They | have to raise comon farm crops, such as corn, because they are so remote from markets that they can't handle l the more profitable truck crops for which reclaimed swamp lands are es- pecially adapted
 But the Connecticut farmer with a | sizable swamp. if it were drained and reclaimed, ,lcould grow on it such crops as onions, cabbage, caulifiower, tona- toes, sweet corn, asparagus, spinach, etc,-crops for all of which there is a steady demand, almost at his door. and at prices which make the possible returns from field corn look like thirty cents,
 There are dozens of other things which such land is pre- -eminently fitted for and among which the farmer could pick and choose to suit his par tieular conditions. He needn't limit l himself to corn and potatoes and oats and hay, Unless labor conditions are such as to make efficient ti1lage im- I possible. Tn that case even the coarser fartn crops, if they do any, | thing like as well as in this Wiscon- sin case, would be profitable
 At present prices far fertilizers there's another strong argument for the old swamp. While your century titled upIands need and compel you to l give them every year eopions dress l ing of some sort of manure, your re- claimed swamp doesn't need manure and won't call for any Cor years and years unless a little cheap lime is found advisable along at first, as a sweetener.
 j TU1e amount of ready money one l ten acres of drained swamp and ten acres of worn out upland would pay interest on quite an investment for tic and ditch-digging.
 1 That swamp, if it's anything like the average and orthodox swamp, is simply a world old deposit of vege- \ table food, on which the cuItivatol ! may draw at will and with small present danger of having his drafts
 dishonorcd.
 'l Intosit, for untold thousands of years has been draining and settling the