246 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



bulk of manure. Quantity is more important than the time of applica- 

 tion. Any vegetable matter added to the manure, I find profitable. So I 

 dig much from the swamp, and I have made an accumulation of nearly three 

 feet deep of good compost, in one season, in my barnyard. In some sandy 

 soils, plants can find no substance to live upon, yet will grow well when 

 the necessary pabulum is added. Then it is not worth while to transfer 

 the muck from worthless swamps to worthless sandy plains, to enable them 

 to produce useful vegetation. 



Benjamin F. Pike. — I have used all the muck and scrapings I can obtain, 

 to increase my compost in my barnyard, and I collect all the drainage wa- 

 ter from the road that I can, and hold it in a cistern, to moisten my com- 

 post heap. The overflowing waters of the cistern I convey to a pond, the 

 sediment all being retained in the cistern, and is pumped up on to the 

 manure heaps, and any excess runs back again into the same reservoir, so 

 that nothing is lost. By my pump, too, I can irrigate a portion of my 

 farm with this liquid manure, the value of which I am well satisfied of, 

 having used it for many years. I have never seen as good asparagus any- 

 where, as I have grown by the use of liquid manure. I have also found 

 great advantage from irrigation from a mountain stream. One advantage 

 of my cistern supplied by open drain, is that it washes in a great many 

 seeds of weeds, which are there destroyed. 



Mrs. Elizabeth Langdon, of Long Island, who owns over 300 acres at 

 Thompson, gave a little of her experience in farming. She stated that she 

 had broken up thirty-spven acres of scrub oak land, and tried to demon- 

 strate what a woman could do at farming. I have planted pears, and other 

 fruit trees, and have succeeded admirably. I find no difiiculty in growing 

 anything that 1 wish. My grapes are doing very well, and so are all small 

 fruits, particularly the Lawton blackberry. My potatoes have done well on 

 the scrub oak land, cleared in the February before planting the crop. 

 Clover grows beautifully, and so do all kinds of grass. As soon as the oak 

 roots are rotten, I use the subsoil plow. In plowing out the roots, I use a 

 large plow, that runs near a foot and a half deep. My great object has 

 been to show that a woman can live upon a farm, and conduct her own 

 affairs, and that these cheap lands of Long Island, offer good, healthy 

 situations for making comfortable homes. She thought that some of the 

 feeble women of the city, might improve their health by just such a course 

 as she is pursuing. Mrs. Langdon believed that fruits and flowers could 

 be better managed by ladies than men ; that as much open air exercise in 

 garden and farm would increase the health and strength of the fair sex, 

 she was satisfied as to her own experience. She had expended, in her 

 farm and garden, about ten thousand dollars, and was determined to try 

 the establishment of an agricultural school, or college, for ladies only, at 

 her place. She requested the club to send committees to examine and 

 report on her farm and garden. 



