THE TIM BUNKER PAPERS. 185 



You gentlemen that edit agricultural papers, attend the 

 fairs, and see almost nobody but the best farmers, who 

 carry out your teachings, think the world is almost con 

 verted to your faith. You have been preaching about 

 muck for a dozen years or more, and you may think that 

 every body understands it, and every body uses it as 

 much as they ought to. You never made a greater mistake 

 in the world. I tell you the millenium hasn t come yet, by 

 a long shot. I guess one-half the farmers in these parts 

 to-day have got Jake Frink s notion about muck, and it 

 rests upon just his sort of trial a single experiment based 

 on an application of ten loads of half-made compost to 

 the acre. No wonder that muck is considered poor stuif. 



Now I am ready to give a reason for the faith that is in 

 me. On my old land I can not make any money at farm 

 ing without manure, and carting muck is the cheapest 

 way I can make it. Indeed, I should not know what to 

 do without swamp muck. Manure, as it is sold in towns 

 and villages in the Northern States, brings from two to 

 three dollars a cord of 103 bushels. As it brings this 

 price it is to be presumed that it is worth this to the cul 

 tivators who buy it. These are generally market garden 

 ers and farmers, who live within four or five miles of 

 market. If manure is worth this to the farmer who has 

 to cart it several miles, it is certainly worth as much, or 

 more, to the farmer who makes it and uses it upon his 

 own farm. 



Now I claim for the muck and peat that I use, that I 

 make a dollar upon every cord that passes through my 

 yard and stables on its way to the plowed fields where it 

 is turned under reckoning its value at the lowest market 

 price, two dollars a cord. The peat as it lies in the bed, 

 yielding no income, is entirely worthless. It can be dug 

 and thrown upon the bank of the ditch for twenty-five 

 cents a cord. If it can lie a year, all the better, but this 

 is not essential, as fresh stable manure will cure it without 



