48 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



METHODS OF RENOVATING OUR FARMS. 



By Horace Bodwell, Acton. 



That the most of our farms, throughout the length and 

 breadth of our State, have deteriorated from lack of good 

 husbandry and sufficient labor, as well as from long cropping, 

 without sufficient fertilizers to feed the crops and thereby 

 exhausting the soil of its plant food, I have no good reason 

 to doubt all farmers will agree ; and that there are but few 

 farms in our State, probably, that might not be yearly and 

 completely fertilized and renovated by a regular method of 

 manures, and such other fertilizers as may be found and pro- 

 duced upon the farm. On many farms may be found a low 

 swamp filled with the wash of decayed leaves and mingled 

 mass of rubbish, the accumulation of hundreds of years, con- 

 taining the very elements which the soil has been exhausted, 

 by long and continued croppings, and by digging and carting 

 to the barn yards this mingled mass and composting it with 

 the liquid manures of our stables, after exposing it to the air 

 and sun during one season, will be converted (if not into 

 gold) into a mine of wealth, and in a proper state to cart 

 upon our long exhausted soil. In all of our stables where 

 our horses, cattle and swine are kept, we might and should 

 save, by a little care given their droppings, the ammonia 

 from escaping, thereby saving one of the ingredients of the 

 plant food. Droppings of our fowls, leached ashes, bones 

 and the suds from your wash rooms, saved and rightly com- 

 posted and carted upon our farms, go far toward reclaiming 

 our impoverished soil from its long croppings. Cart sods 

 and wash from the roadsides and leaves from the woods, dig 

 up the rubbish under your walls in the fields and cart to the 

 stables and compost with gypsum, and use lime if your com- 



