408 [Assembly 



crop. My ru:e has always been to cultivate thoroughly till the 

 soil was clear of grass and Tvecds, before stocking with grass. In 

 seeding, I sow 2 bushels of wheat per acre ; 3 J bushels of barley, 

 3| bushels of oats, oDC-quarter bushel of corn. For seeding I wet 

 my grain before sowing, and mix 6 quarts of lime and 6 quarts of 

 salt with the seed for each acre; and for seeding to grass, I mix 8 

 quarts of timothy and 2 quarts of clover with the seed grain for 

 each acre, and sow it with the grain ; I drag before and after sow- 

 ing, and have never failed in seeding in this w^ay. 



I give my soil a top dressing of manure, and drag thoroughly 

 after it, which helps seeding very much. I have the befet success in 

 seeding grass with barley ; I mix my grass seed and grain together, 

 and soak them 12 hours and then sow. My attention has been 

 turned more to grazing and dairying for ten years past than for- 

 merly, by which I find my farm improving in productiveness. 

 I practice hauling my manure and spreading it at once, so that a 

 portion of the land where the heaps are diopped, shall not re- 

 ceive so much soakage from the heaps as to cause the grain or 

 grass to lodge in spots and make the grain crop spotted, and ripen 

 unequally. I usually bush the manured portion of my meadows 



early in the spring after a rain, and again the last of May or first 



If 



of June. I have never tried any other than barn-yard manure 

 and gypsum. I think gypsum is good on grass land. The aver- 

 age yield of hay per acre this season on my meadows is estimated 

 at 2J tons per acre. I have cultivated 32 acres of land this sea- 

 son ; \\ to winter wheat ; 3 acres of spring wheat, (black sea 

 wheat) ; 7 acres of barley; 3 acres of oats, and the remainder to 

 corn and potatoes. The average cost of producing and fitting 

 wheat for market is 47^ cents per bushel ; barley 32i cents per 

 bushel; oats 18 cents per bushel; corn 32 cents per bushel. 



My manner of manuring cultivated land is to apply 30 loads 

 per acre, and plow^ it in and work it in with the soil, and such 

 manure as I can not carry on to the land in the spring, I pile in 

 the yard and haul it out in the fall. My land produces now five 

 times the amount of grass annually per acre that it did when I 

 commenced upon it, and much more of all kinds of grain, and 

 the chief causes I attribute to deep plowing and manuring. The 



