Vol. X.— No. 45. 



AND HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 



357 



the earth. The evaporation from tlie plo'ighed 

 land was found to decrease rapidly after tlie first 

 and second days, depending on the wind and sun. 

 These e.\])eritneuts were carried on for many 

 months. Tlie evaporation after the most abun- 

 dant rains was not advanced beyond what the 

 earth afforded on being fresh turned up.* 



Few operatious of husbandry among us, are 

 executed in general, in a more slovenly way than 

 ploughing. The half-finished manner in which 

 the soil is turned, the frequent baulks, the ragged 

 and uneven ends of the fields, and the utter disre- 

 gard of all straight lines, show the importance of 

 our ploughing matches, which it is hoped, with 

 the introduction of better constructed ploughs, 

 will eventually correct these habits and introduce 

 neatness, care and regularity, as convenient and 

 useful in saving labor as they are agreeable in the 

 appearance. 



3. I proceed to the third operation upon the 

 land, manuring. Manure is the great means of all 

 successful agriculture. My remarks on this as on 

 other topics, nmst be brief; and will relate to mat- 

 ters which are not generally considered, rather 

 than to those which are familiar. 



The first means of enriching the soil is that to 

 which we have referred, that of ploughing in the 

 vegetable matter, already on the surface. Late 

 ploughing in the spring is doubtless preferable to 

 early, by which means you have the advantage of 

 the early growth of the grass. Ploughing-in green 

 crops, which were sowed expressly for this pur- 

 pose, is another mode of enriching land, success- 

 fully tried and warmly recommended by some 

 persons, but it is little known among us.f It is 

 objected by many persons, that in this way you 

 return to the land no more than what is taken from 

 it ; this would be true, if it were not that plants 

 derive much of their support and growth from the 

 atmosphere. Another object with every farmer, 

 should be his compost heap. Nothing which is 

 susceptible of decay and so of forming manure, 

 should be lost. There are few farms among us 

 which do not contain upon themselves, either by 

 the road-side or in their meadows and swamps, 

 the materials for forming compost manure in great 

 abundance ; and farmers will permit me to remind 

 them, that the summer and autunm are the best 

 seasons for making this provision. The saving of 

 liquid manure upon our farms is little attended to. 

 Universally in Flanders, one of the best agricultu- 

 ral countries in Europe, water-tight vaults are con- 

 structed under all their stables, and their liipiid 

 manure is considered of as much or greater value 

 than their solid manure. Such a practice among 

 us would be of great utility ; and by constructing 

 cisterns under our stables to be filled with mud or 

 loam, and by littering our cattle abundantly, this 

 valuable manure which is now lost, might be turn- 

 ed to the best account. But the great means of 

 obtaining tnanure is from consuming our produce 

 upon the place, in the form of hay or vegetables ; 

 where this can be done, and to the extent to which 

 it can be done, we may be sure of the means of 

 increasing the fertility of our farms. Here we 

 come back again to the great circle of reciprocity 

 and mutual connexion and benefit. 



*Curweii's Hints, p. 273. 



t The iMa'isachu-etts A{;ricultural Society the last year, 

 gave a preinium to Wilham Buckmlnster, ol Friuniti!;- 

 ham, for a successful experiment in turning-in two crops 

 of Buck Wheat to the acre, greally to the improvement 

 of his land. The account is given in their Repository for 

 1831, vol. X. number iii. 



Increasing your products will enable you to 

 increase your stock ; increasing your stock will 

 increase your manure; iif.reasing your manure 

 will help you to increase your cultivation ; increas- 

 ing your cultivation will increase your products. 



This is the golden chain of comfort and wealth 

 which Divine I'rovidence has formed, every link 

 of which is essential to the perfection of the whole. 

 I will remark, in pas.sing, upon the application of 

 manure, it is the opinion of many farmers, that it 

 is better to keep their stable dung until it is a year 

 old and becomes thoroughly rotted ; but this prac- 

 tice is condemned by the fullest experimenls. — 

 Animal mantu'e catmol be applied to the land in 

 too fresh a state, though it woidd often be benefi- 

 cial to mix it with other substances. " By fer- 

 mentation," says Curwen, a practical farmer al- 

 ready quoted, "dung is reduced to one half its 

 bulk, and its quality is reduced in greater propor- 

 tion. The evaporation from dung is five times as 

 much as from earth and is equal on the surface of 

 an acre to 5000 pounds per hour, and this is losing 

 its most valuable gases. By making use of dung 

 in its freshest state, the farmer may extend his 

 cropping to one third more land with the same 

 quantity of manure." " The experiments of Ar- 

 thur Young and other practical and scientific 

 farmers have demonstrated," says Judge Buel, as 

 competent an authority as I can quote, " that animal 

 and vegetable manures, which undergo a complete 

 process of fermentation in the cattle yard, or upon 

 the surface of the ground, lose from thirty to sixty 

 per cent of their fertilizing properties, and if prop- 

 erly spread and buried under the soil, that this 

 loss is ]trevented, and that a decomposition does 

 immediately take place, even of dry straw, sufii- 

 cieut to answer valuable [>urposcs to the first crop." 

 " Experiments show," says Mr Young, " that every 

 atom of vegetable matter in the soil begins to be 

 decomposed immediately, and to want no previous 

 fermentation to enable it to feed plants." The 

 application of fresh stable manures cannot proper- 

 ly be made to crops of small grain, because they 

 tend to increase too much the haulm or stalks of 

 the plant, and expose it to rot and mildew ; and 

 because the seeds of weeds will in this way be 

 carried into the fields. But such manures may 

 be most properly applied to hoed crops, and in a 

 sufficient quantity to prepare the groinid without 

 further applications, for a crop of small grain. 



II. The second great topic to which I ask your 

 attention is the consumption of the produce upon the 

 farm. This should be the object of every farmer. 

 He should produce as much as he can, and should 

 strive so to use up his produce upon his place as 

 to have the means of increasing its productiveness. 

 This suggests two topics of inquiry : the kind of 

 crops to be raised and the mode of applying them. 



1. English hay is considered among us as the 

 great crop. The average yield cannot be rated at 

 more than one ton and a half to the acre ; a ton 

 in the opinion of many farnjers would be a more 

 accurate estimate. This, at the price which it has 

 borne for several years past, can hardly be consid- 

 ered a valuable crop. It is the crop on which 

 most of our farmers in the neighborhood of large 

 towns, depend for obtaining ready money. But 

 the sale of hay from a farm is subject to serious 

 abatements. For every ton of hay sold from the 

 farm, in order to preserve its fertility, the farmer 

 should return a cord of manure ; this, delivered at 

 the farm, cannot be rated at less than two dollars. 

 To this, you are to add the expense of marketing 



the hay, which in any situation is at least a dollar. 

 A ton of hay, then, consumed on the farm, is worth 

 three dollars more than if sold from the place, i. e. 

 if it bring only ten dollars in the market, and by 

 any mode of consimiing it upon i;is place the farm- 

 er can realize that amoimt from ;t at home, ha 

 may consider it as better worth thirli''en dollars 

 on the farm, than ten dollars carried tlom the 

 place ; or, to state the case diflerenily, it is better 

 for the fanner to use it at home, if he can there 

 make it worth seven dollars per ton to him, than 

 to convey it any considerable distance to market 

 and obtain ten for it. At this rate, however, and 

 I can see no fallacy in the calculation, hay at 

 I)resent prices and yielding one or one and a half 

 ton to the acre is not a profitable crop. Indeed, 

 unless where there are extraordinary resources for 

 obtaining manure, such as on the sea-shore or in 

 the vicinity of bog njud, the sale of hay must be 

 considered as a wasteful kind of husbandry. It is, 

 properly speaking, in many cases, killing the hen 

 that lays the gohlen egg. 



To be concludeu next week. 



THE SHIFTLESS FARMER. 



A writer in the Genesee Farmer thus describes 

 some farmers in the western country, " whose on- 

 ly god is the whiskey bottle, and whose sole study 

 is how to live in the most shiftless manner." 



"In describing one or two, it will be a tolerable 

 sample of the whole. In the first place, they all 

 keep an old sow which is suffered to run at large, 

 and of course more than half starved ; about three 

 times a year, and that makes up in the aggregate 

 all the time, she has a litter of coach-backed, 

 sharp-nosed, and long-tailed pigs at her heels, al- 

 ways ready the moment a gate is opened, to drive 

 into my yard and commit any depredation that 

 offers. Ask him why he keeps so many hogs, he 

 will tell you, 'to have pork.' The truth is, he 

 never has any pork in his house. He may have 

 for four months in the year a small quantity of 

 hog-meat, made at much expense, with double the 

 amount of corn that would have fatted and kept 

 constantly in the pen, a hog that would have 

 weighed him twenty score. But he thinks he 

 made a saving, because his hogs were in the street, 

 and plundering a miserable existence out of hiK 

 better neighbors. 



" In most cases, for I have had one each side of 

 me, a paltry cur bitch is kept, and of consequence, 

 a nest of ill-blooded, uimiannerly whelps are 

 prowling about my back door half the time. — 

 The profits of this last trade I need not detail to 

 you. The ill-bred curs will of course sell for 

 nothing; for who ever knew one of these shiftless 

 beings to keep a dog of anything but scoundrel 

 blood .' The same may be said of his chickens, a 

 contemptible, streaked, blue-legged, bug-eating 

 breed, that will scratch up even potato hills faster 

 a common man can plant them ; never fit to eat, 

 and the very eggs which they lay, not half full of 

 meat, from their wretched poverty. Not a coun- 

 try sleigh or wagon can be driven into town or 

 stop near them, but their crooked-backed, sharp- 

 boned cows, are forthwith plundering the vehicle 

 of the little straw or hay within it, put there for 

 the convenience of the driver. If percliance a 

 horse belong to the establishment, and often one 

 of those unfortunate broken down animals gets in- 

 to such hands, he is worried about and beaten over 

 his rattling ribs by the imlicked cubs of boys, that 

 always crib about such a concern. These form 



