1868. 



NEW ENGLAND FARRIER. 



283 



three days on the road the shrink on arrival was 

 only one pound. The three at his door weighed 

 56 pounds ; at mine 55 pounds. 

 Piermont, N. H., Feb., 1868. N. Spencer, Jr. 



EXPERIMENT WITH MANURES FOR CORN. 



1 am much Interested in reading the New Eng- 

 land Farmer, particularly the "Extracts and 

 Replies." Willing to do something towards keep- 

 ing up this department of your excellent paper, 

 I send you an account of my experiment with 

 corn. I planted, May 25, five rows — fifty-five hills 

 in a row — four feet apart each way. In No. 1, put 

 a large shovelful of first-rate manure in each hill ; 

 in No. 2, no manure ; in No. 3, 1^ bushels of com- 

 post, being a mixture of plaster ashes and hen 

 manure ; in No. 4, twenty pounds Bradley's XL 

 Phosphate of Lime, thoroughly mixed with the 

 soil ; No. 5, one bushel Lodi Poudrette. Husked 

 the corn on the hill and weighed the ears of each 

 row separately. 



Sound. Unsound. Total. 



No. 1 76 pounds 5 pounds 81 pounds. 



" 2 421 " 6J " 49 " 



"3 60 " 4| " 64)^ " 



"4 69 " a-^ " 11^ " 



"5 59 " 3>^ " 62>^ " 



Land poor, gravelly, moist ; was turned over in 

 September. No manure spread. 



From this experiment it will be seen that the 

 row with manure in the hill yielded the largest 

 quantity, although the one with phosphate had 

 the least unsound corn. j. m. m. 



Raynham, Mass., April 20, 1868. 



PAID rOR A FARM, LOST IT, AND TRYING AGAIN. 



When I was twenty years of age, I bought a 

 farm of sixty-seven acres on credit, in Tionesta, 

 Pa. In the course of a few years I paid the whole, 

 an(i, had a large orchard of apples, pears, peaches, 

 &c., of the choicest varieties, mostly from Mount 

 Hope Nurseries. When the war broke out, I en- 

 listed and was sick for a long time ; in fact, until 

 the expenses took my farm Last fall I went into 

 the lumbering business, but trade has been so dull 

 that I cannot make a living at it. I have now 

 rented or leased a small house and bam at this 

 place, with six acres of land at the small sum of 

 seventeen dollars a year. On this place there is 

 plency of lime, stone coal, and wood. At a saw- 

 mill, half a mile distant, I can get plenty of saw- 

 dust by hauling it away. I hope to make my lit- 

 tle patch produce more money than some of the 

 fifty-acre farms in this vicinity. Please change 

 the direction of the Farmer, accordingly, as 1 

 cannot, though rather poor just now, do without 

 it. D. J. Stow. 



Big Bend P. O., Scrubgrass, 



Venango Co., Pa., March 23, 1868. 



Remarks. — With your experience and pluck, 

 we cannot doubt that you will succeed, if you have 

 recovered your health, which many of your brother 

 soldiers have failed to do. The value of sawdust 

 depends much on the kinds of wood from which it 

 is made. Mr. F. J. Kinney, of Wayland, Mass., 

 who has used it extensively, stated, in the Far- 

 mer, of 1862, that the best was from hard wood, 

 hickory, oak, maple, birch, &c. ; the second qual- 

 ity, from poplar, basswood, chestnut, &c. ; and 

 the poorest from spruce, hemlock, pine, &c. Saw- 

 dust is valuable, first as an absorbent of urine, &c., 

 in stables and yards ; secondly, it is worth some- 

 thing for forming vegetable mould. When used as 

 an absorbent it should be dry ; but when the direct 



object is vegetable mould, it should be subjected to 

 fermentation in the heap. Most likely you can use 

 it in both ways ; by drawing a quantity in dry 

 weather to be housed and used as a bedding for 

 your animals and to keep your privy and house 

 slops sweet and tidy ; and allow a part to ferment 

 and rot in heaps out doors. 



Mr. Kinney used 100 cords in oine months as 

 bedding for two horses, seven cattle, and several 

 swine, and says he never smelt a disagreeable odor 

 about his stables while using the sawdust, unless 

 it was allowed to burn. In the stables, the floor 

 was covered about six inches deep, and as fast as 

 it was saturated it was shoved into the manure 

 cellar, where it was trampled as hard as possible. 

 He soon found that it must be turned, or some- 

 thing else done, to keep it from fire-fanging. 

 After trying several ways, he finally adopted the 

 plan of letting it remain in a solid heap and turn- 

 ing on water enough to keep it moist and cool until 

 it was drawn out to the field, when it was put ia 

 flat heaps about a foot thick after being well trod 

 down. Most of the water used was from the roofs 

 of bams and sheds. In this way from 80 to 100 

 cords of compost was made from the same stock 

 which produced fifteen cords of manure the year 

 before, with ordinary bedding. The value of a 

 part of the sawdust compost which was allowed to 

 lay over the summer and digest or rot, proved to 

 be greatly increased for the purpose of a top-dress- 

 ing for grass land. This compost worked Avell on 

 all parts of the farm. CaiTots, corn, potatoes, 

 wheat, all sorts of roots and gi-ass were alike bene- 

 fitted — the more compost the larger yield, in all 

 cases. Still, sawdust of itself, is rather weak ma- 

 nure, and the more urine, droppings, house-slops, 

 &c., that can be mingled with it, the better it will 

 prove. 



A home-made rock LIFTER. 



Many farmers might cut their grass with a ma- 

 chine if then- fields were not covered with rocks 

 weighing from one to three tons. A good and 

 cheap machine to pull them out maj' be made by 

 any man who has good tools, in the following 

 manner : — Take two sticks, nine feet long and four 

 inches square, these are for the sides ; one stick for 

 the hind end, four inches square and four feet long ; 

 for the rocker a piece six inches wide and four feet 

 long,* set back eighteen inches from the fore end; 

 mortice them together as you would a heavy wagon 

 body, and put a short brace in each corner. Next 

 take two sticks about seven and a half feet long 

 and four inches square, set them up on the side 

 pieces of the body in the form of an inverted ^, 

 half way between the fore and hind axle ; bring 

 the top ends within six inches of each other and 

 fill the space between them with a large tackle- 

 block or pulley, containing two wheels ; fasten the 

 ends together with two large bolts, running one of 

 them through both wheels. The upright part- 

 must be braced with four braces four leet long. 

 For a roller, take a round stick four inches in 

 diameter, and long enough to reach from one 

 side-piece to the other ; bore two holes near each 

 end for the levers; fasten the roller to the side 

 pieces about a foot ahead of the rocker ; get a tackle- 

 block containing two wheels with a large hook 

 in one end ; take forty feet of two-inch rope, pass 



