The Agricultural Papers of George Washington 



Mud for Compost 



The season is now too far advanced, and too cold, to be 

 engaged in a work, that will expose the hands to wet; but 

 it is of such essential importance, that it should be set about 

 seriously and with spirit next year, for the summer s sun and 

 the winter s frost to prepare it for the corn and other crops 

 of 1801. All the hands of the farm, not indispensably en 

 gaged in the crops, should, so soon as corn-planting is com 

 pleted in the spring, be uninterruptedly employed in raising 

 mud from the pocosons^ and from the bed of the creek, into 

 the scow ; and the carts, so soon as the manure for the corn 

 and potatoes in 1800 is carried out, are to be incessantly 

 drawing it to the compost heaps in the fields, which are to be 

 manured by it. What number of hands can be set apart for 

 this all-important work, remains to be considered and decided 

 upon. 



Penning Cattle and Folding Sheep 



On the fields intended for wheat, from the first of May, 

 when the former should be turned out to pasture, until the 

 first of November, when they ought to be housed, must be 

 practised invariably; and to do it with regularity and pro 

 priety, the pen for the former, and the fold for the latter, 

 should be proportioned to the number of each kind of stock ; 

 and both these to as much ground as they will manure suffi 

 ciently in the space of a week for wheat, beyond which they 

 are not to remain in a place, except on the poorest spots ; 

 and even these had better be aided by litter or something 

 else, than to depart from an established rule, of removing 

 the pens on a certain day in each week. For in this, as in 



i &quot; Pocoson is a word used in Virginia to denote a small swamp or 

 marshy place.&quot; Sparks: &quot;Writings of Washington,&quot; Vol. XII, p. 363. 



