76 PRODUCING ORGANIC MATTER 
While it is conceded by the majority, that manure is 
the best organic matter that can be put into the soil, yet 
we must not forget that the average farm produces 
but a small quantity of manure, not one-tenth part 
enough to keep up its fertility. That the average farmer 
does not have sufficient means to keep sufficient stock 
to furnish the supply of manure needed to rebuild or 
maintain fertility of his farm. 
And we must not forget that worn-out and abandoned 
soils will not produce enough food to feed a sufficient 
number of animals to produce the requisite amount to 
restore their fertility. 
While the author has been a liberal user of manure 
upon his worn soils, yet for years he has felt that 
there is some element lacking in manure that seems to 
be supplied by the use of green manures. Just what 
that element is he does not know, he only knows that 
he gets better results from the plowing under of those 
crops that are best for green manuring than he does 
from the use of ordinary barnyard manure. 
It is said by a high authority that “as an average, 
animals digest and thus destroy two-thirds of the dry 
matter in the food they eat, so that one ton of clover 
hay plowed under will add as much humus to the soil 
as the manure made from three tons of clover hauled 
off and fed, even if all the manure is returned to the 
land without loss of fermentation.” 
All the liquids of any value in barnyard manure 
originally came from the plants and grain fed to stock 
and these liquids are the most valuable part of manure. 
In the usual methods of handling manure nearly the 
