ON RECLAIMED MEADOWS. / 5 



below. Ill tliis situation it remained till the autumn of 1847, 

 when I began to reclaim. Two men in ten days, with the 

 common grub hoe and manure fork, pealed the whole top, and 

 threw it into heaps a little larger than common sized haycocks. 

 This was easily accomplished, for the men would often take 

 up a flake a ya;;d square at once with little effort, and leave a 

 surface as smooth as the house floor. I set fire to this topping 

 as soon as it was drj^ enough to burn, but the peaty soil below 

 ignited, and the fire was with difliculty extinguished. It was 

 all removed to the upland, some on handbarrows, but mostly 

 by the ox team after the ground had frozen hard enough to 

 bear, and was used to replenish the hog and cow yards, after 

 selling a very large quantity to my neighbors, sufficient to de- 

 fray all the expenses I had thus far incurred. The first of Au- 

 gust, 1S4S, I hired three robust Irishmen for one dollar and a 

 quarter per day each, and they were to find their own board, 

 and one of my hired men upon the farm worked with them 

 half a month. In forty days, with wheelbarrows and a tier of 

 plank extending half across the meadow from the adjacent bank 

 of gravel on one side, and then from the ridge on the other, 

 they covered the v/hole surface from three to four inches deep. 

 After the middle of September I sowed three bushels of red top 

 and three pecks of herds grass, and two men in one day raked 

 in the seed. For the want of rain and a top dressing of ma- 

 nure, the grass seed made a poor show that fall. In the fol- 

 lowing March, before the ground had thawed, I purchased 

 twelve cords of manure in my neighborhood, which was carted 

 and spread evenly over the meadow. I then sowed twelve 

 pounds of clover seed, and in July following I cut what was 

 estimated by competent judges to be five tons of handsome 

 hay, and hi September two tons of rowen. The meadow was 

 now hard and solid enough to bear the team, and the hay was 

 all carted ofl" without difliculty. In November last, I mixed 

 two cords of stable manure with four cords of loam from a barn 

 cellar I was then digging, and spread the same on about one 

 third of the lot. In March last I spread three and a half cords 

 of stable manure on another third, and upon the remaining 

 third I spread one hundred and fifty bushels of leached ashes. 



