SWIiSTE UPON THE FARM. ' Ql 



deep-chested, deep-sided, ]ong-hipped, short-faced, thin-skinned, 

 intelligent quadruped, of thebreed known as the White Chester, or 

 some grade in which this blood predominates ; and which are to be 

 comfortably housed at all times, with plenty of food and a dry bed 

 at night ; and not the gaunt, long-legged, long-nosed, slab-sided, 

 thick-skinned, big-eared land sharks which in our boyhood days 

 were turned into the highway to shirk for themselves as best they 

 might, their owners taking care to ornament them with — now relic 

 of the past — a hog-yoke, unless they adopted the other alternative 

 of tying a knot in their tail to keep them from running through the 

 fence. 



. The subject of " Swine upon the Farm," is necessarily connected 

 with all the branches that go to make up what is known as "mixed 

 husbandly," for without manure we can do nothing at farming in 

 Kennebec county in any direction ; and unless we keep hogs I 

 know not how we are to have the big piles of rich and valuable 

 compost which we now have ; and I know not how we can profit- 

 ably keep hogs unless we also keep cows, upon the skimmed milk 

 of which we almost wholly keep our hogs through the summer. 

 We certainly cannot keep cows unless we cut hay, and we in Ken- 

 nebec county have not learned to raise hay to any considerable 

 extent, without plowing up our mowing fields as often as they fail 

 or "runout," and manuring and re-seeding them. So it would 

 seem that the hog, in a large portion of our State, is like the negro 

 in American politics, irrepressible. That being the case, it becomes 

 alike our duty and our interest to make him pay the best possible 

 price for his board and lodging, or in other words, the greatest net 

 profit on the investment, and the man who owns one of the old 

 worn-out farms of Kennebec, and cannot make it pay 7 3-10 inter- 

 est may make up his mind that farming is not his forte. 



I would have the farmer who keeps four or five good cows, com- 

 mence the spring with two, which have been wintered, both of them 

 breeding sows. I would have him sell all the pigs he raises except 

 two barrows, to fat and kill in the fall or early winter, and two 

 sows to keep over. I would have all the pens and yards securely 

 covered from the rain, with a tight floor, stone if possible. I would 

 have a surface of about 500 feet, with the floor slanting, the side 

 where the feeding troughs are being about a foot and a half higher 

 than the other, so as the more easily to keep them free from dirt. 

 About ten days before planting corn, or rather before the manure 

 is to be used, I would have it thrown out into piles, mixing in a 



