278 Our Farming. 



that the bottom and top were both muck, and we used a larger 

 wagon to draw muck on. Thus treated, the manure was rotted 

 without any waste, during the summer, so we could handle it 

 with scoop shovels in the fall. If one must compost, the muck, 

 undoubtedly, did good in the way of saving manure, both from 

 leaching and from the escape of ammonia. Where muck can be 

 used in a yard or stable, so it saves liquid manure that would 

 otherwise go to waste, it is certainly valuable. Theoretically, it 

 w r as very valuable as we used it. Although we more than 

 doubled the amount of manure by adding the muck, science said 

 it was still w r orth about the same, load for load, as the original 

 manure. I say science ; perhaps I should say the chemist. 

 I shaved down from top to bottom of one of these compost piles, 

 so as to get a fair sample of the whole, doing this in the middle of 

 the pile, when we were drawing out, and had it cut down perpen- 

 dicularly. This was thoroughly mixed, and a sample sent to 

 Prof. Lord, the State chemist. He made it worth, on a basis 

 of commercial manure prices, $4.44 per ton. This almost set me 

 wild. If I could make manure in this way of that value, I could 

 get rich. I went into muck hauling at a big rate. But my bump 

 of caution is large, and, after I cooled down a little, I thought it 

 would be well to know more about what I was doing practically. 

 Now, do not understand that I did not have full faith in Prof. 

 Lord's analysis. He was right, from the chemist's standpoint, 

 beyond a doubt, but I did have a doubt w T hether I could, or did, 

 get out of that muck what he found in it. 



Well, I began to experiment some with muck and with use 

 of ashes and also with fresh manure. Now, no farmer who is 

 making his money by his work can carry on such experiments so 

 as to certainly tell exactly what is best. But I went far enough 

 to convince myself that, first, ashes did no sort of good on my 

 land (i. e., there is potash enough in it for the present). Second, 

 that I got about the same immediate results from fresh manure as 

 from the increased quantity of compost and with far less expense. 

 Third, that muck, although it contained a good deal of nitrogen, 

 was very loth to part with it, and there w r as and is a serious 

 question in my mind, whether it does not absorb nitrogen or 

 ammonia from the manure in compost and hold onto that, too. 

 Instead of getting $3.00 or more from a ton of muck what is 

 really in it I doubt whether I got thirty cents during the first 

 two years. Perhaps it may, little by little, give up its substance 

 to the crops, but it is too slow. Prof. Lord has offered to try 

 and find some way to set free the nitrogen in a sample, if I will 

 send it to him. But I hardly believe it can be done practically. 



Plenty of people who lived around these swamps told me 

 there was no money in drawing out the muck, but I was smarter 

 than they, in my own estimation, and paid no attention. They 

 also told me, some of them, that tile draining would not pay and 



