The Boston dealers come out to Brighton, and buy the cattle, and have
them slaughtered, and the beef packed and sent away all over the
world. Thus the farmers turn the grass into beef, and in that shape it
can be transported and sold."
"And what else?" asked Marco.
"Why, they raise a great many horses in Vermont," replied Forester.
"These horses live upon grass, eating it as it grows in the pastures
and on the mountains, in the summer, and being fed upon hay in the
barn in the winter. These horses, when they are four or five years
old, are sent away to market to be sold. They can be transported very
easily. A man will ride one, and lead four or five by his side. They
will be worth perhaps seventy-five dollars apiece; so that one man
will easily take along with him, three or four hundred dollars' worth
of the produce of the farm, in the shape of horses; whereas the hay
which had been consumed on the farm to make these horses, it would
have taken forty yoke of oxen to move."
"Forty yoke!" repeated Marco.
"I don't mean to be exact," said Forester. "I mean it would take a
great many. So that, by feeding his hay out to horses, the farmer
gets his produce into a better state to be transported to market. The
Vermont horses go all over the land.
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