MANURES. 57 



no more expense for seed or tillage, but little more for cartage ; 

 the only increase of expense is in harvesting double the crop. 

 Pitching manure and forking it over is very laborious work, 

 but if our plan of mixing with muck, and keeping moist, is 

 followed, it will fork over much more easily, and in the spring 

 will be so thoroughly decomposed that it will readily fall in 

 pieces, and the labor, both of loading and spreading, will be 

 much lessened. There will be no hard, dry lumps to be knocked 

 in pieces, or left like pieces of brick to retard rather than aid 

 the growth of the plants. Try it, if you are incredulous, on a 

 s:nall scale at first, and you will find in it a new source both of 

 pleasure and wealth. 



We wish here to say a few words about pitching and spread- 

 ing manure. Use a long handled dung fork in loading manure, 

 using the handle as a lever across the knee. In distributing 

 it in the field, never dump a, whole load in a place. Many 

 small heaps are better than a few large ones. They should 

 never be more than a rod apart. If the manure is left on the 

 field through the winter, do not leave any where the heap stood 

 in the spring, as enough fertilizing material will have washed 

 into the soil at that spot. If the manure has been composted 

 according to our plan, it can be very evenly distributed, in spread- 

 ing ; but if it has lain and dried hard, the laborer who spreads 

 it must go all over it a second time to knock the lumps in 

 pieces. Once more we say, that, as the barnyard is the farmer's 

 main source of supply, it is his bounden duty, as well as his 

 greatest profit, to save and make the most of it. But there are 

 many other materials on your farms that you must use before 

 you can justify the purchase of fertilizers, and foremost among 

 these is peat or swamp muck. We shall use the term peat 

 as covering swamp muck and marsh mud also. These are a 

 valuable amendment to two entirely opposite kinds of soil, viz: 



