430 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Sept. 



part of the grain is sold off directly for cash. 

 Now I have the impression that in the long run, 

 all things considered, it might be better to feed 

 out the greater part of the grain along with the 

 hay and other forage, and let the income of the 

 farm be derived mainly from the stock. The 

 grain fed with the forage adds a peculiar essence 

 or strength and activity to the manure heap, is 

 emphatically "the leaven which leavens the whole 

 lump," and has a very marked influence in in- 

 creasing the products of the farm generally. The 

 land will be more productive in every kind of 

 crop than if the grain were sold off, and it only 

 got back the colder and less fertilizing manure 

 made simply from hay and coarse forage. 



After a few years of this kind of feeding, the 

 products of the farm will be so much increased 

 that considerable more stock can be kept on it, 

 which will, in turn, make more manure for the 

 land. These influences will work back and forth 

 one upon the other, so that in fact the business 

 will grow more and more profitable, and the in- 

 come will increase more in proportion than it will 

 be necessary to increase the investment. There 

 are hardly any limits to the productive capacity 

 of our farms, if we will only study out v/ays of 

 expending our crops judiciously, and making the 

 most of the manures they will return to the soil. 

 Sections of country may be pointed out in Eu- 

 rope, not naturally more favored for soil and cli- 

 mate than our own, where the land has been cul- 

 tivated for hundreds of years, and is now more 

 productive than at any former period, and far 

 more so, acre for acre, than the very best virgin 

 soils and lands of our own country. Another 

 thing deserving particular consideration, land 

 that is in high cultivation, and is judiciously 

 cropped, can be kept at a high mark of fertility 

 with ease, as compared with making exhausted 

 land fertile. The very luxuriance of the crops 

 gives back a large mass of roots and stems to the 

 soil. Especially is this the case when a grass 

 sward has been allowed to form ; so that in 

 breaking the sod for a new rotation of crops, we 

 can turn under many tons per acre of matter fer- 

 tilizing to the land, contained in the roots and 

 stems of the sward. Then, too, land in high con- 

 dition is much less injuriously afl'ected by unfa- 

 vorable peculiarities of the season, as to drouth 

 or moisture, cold or heat, than if it were in poor 

 tilth, and indeed is in a good degree independent 

 of these peculiarities. In any season, it will pay 

 a larger profit in proportion to what has been ex- 

 pended to obtain the crop, than can be derived 

 from exhausted land. 



In feeding out the grain crops pretty freely on 

 the farm, there will be some years when the 

 growth of stock, the meats, the wool, the dairy 

 products, &c.,into which the grain has been con- 

 verted, will sell high enough to pay considerably 

 more per bushel for the grain than it would have 

 brought had it been sold off the farm ; other 

 years the grain may perhaps bring a greater im- 

 mediate income if sold off; but taking one year 

 with another, and considering the steady im- 

 provement of the farm, where the cro])s are ex- 

 pended upon it, there will be more profit in feed- 

 ing out the grain than in selling it ofi". In a pe- 

 riod, say of twelve or twenty years, I am inclined 

 to think that seventy-five cents per bushel real- 

 ized for corn, for instance, fed out on the farm, 



and the manure returned to the land, is as good 

 as one dollar per bushel, realized by sending it 

 off to market for cash, and the farm robbed of an 

 equivalent in manure for the corn thus sold off. 



Take, for instance, the whole amount or num- 

 ber of bushels of grain of any kind produced on 

 an acre of land, or on the farm, and place it in a 

 pile together. It makes only a small heap, even 

 though the yield per acre be a very large one. 

 Yet that heap, small as it is, contains a large per 

 cent, of the verj essence of the fertility of the 

 soil that produced it, and has taxed the land far 

 more than if it had only produced the stalk and 

 leaf of the plant, or in other words, a forage crop 

 of any kind. This grain, fed out with the hay 

 and other crops, adds wonderfully to the activity 

 and fertilizing power of the farm-yard manure, 

 and greatly quickens the soil to renewed eflcrts 

 at production. Then, again, by feeding out the 

 grain with the forage crops, and thus making 

 manure abounding in gases and salts, you may 

 compost with it much larger proportions of muck, 

 turf, the rich soil washed into hollow places, or 

 other materials gathered up about the farm to 

 swell the manure heap, and have them all de- 

 composed and sweetened and prepared to become 

 the food of plants, than you could properly use 

 if the cattle-droppings were alone composed of 

 the more lifeless and inactive elements derived 

 only from hay, straw and other forage. 



Mr. Coke, the late Earl of Leicester, once said, 

 "the more meat a poor luiid farmer sent to Smith- 

 field, the more grain he would be enab'ed to sell 

 per acre at Maik Lane. Convert plenty of corn 

 and cake into meat; for the value of farm-yard 

 manure is in proportion to wliat it is made of. 

 If cattle eat straw alone, the dung is straw alone, 

 the cattle are straw, the farm is straw, and the 

 farmer is straw — and they are all straw togeth- 

 er." 



Not long ago, I had four cows come up to the 

 stable in the fall, which I thought might }itld a 

 good supply of milk through the winter, ii well 

 fed. I also had four other animals, cows and 

 heifers, which were not expected to give much 

 milk till the follovt'ing grass season. The first 

 ■ four were tied in the stable side by side, and re- 

 Ictived each, in addition to hay and stalks, four 

 Iquatts of small potatoes each morning, and two 

 quarts of corn and oat meal each evening, through 

 the winter. As was expected, they gave a good 

 mess of milk, and came out well in the spring. 

 The manure of these four cows was thrown out 

 of a stable window, under the cattle shed by it- 

 self. The other four animals were tied in the 

 same stable, next to the first four, and received 

 only hay and corn-fodder. Their manure was 

 thrown out by itself, at the next stable window, 

 and under the same shed, so that the two heaps 

 lay side by side. The heap made by the four 

 cows that were daily messed with potatoes and 

 meal, kept hot and smoking all winter, and was 

 wholly free from Irost. The heap made by the 

 other animals that had only hay and stalks, 

 showed no signs of fermentation, and was some- 

 what frozen. Observing this dift'erence from 

 itime to time, curiosity prompted me in the spring 

 to apply these two heaj)S of manure separately, 

 but in equal quantities, side by side, on a piece 

 of corn ground. The superiority of the corn crop, 

 where the manure from the messed cattle was 



