No. 2. 



Book Farming. 



53 



shingle mill, and leather shavings from the 

 currier's, for the purpose of bedding, and 

 soaking up the urine. The hovels were 

 daily cleared out by wheeling the manure 

 and litter into the centre of the yard, — which 

 is dishing, — and piling it up in a snug heap, 

 His bar.i is so situated he cannot dig a cel- 

 lar under it, but intends the coming season 

 to build a shed for the purpose of keeping 

 his manure under cover in future. The 

 floors of his horse stables are tight : every 

 day they are cleared, and the manure and 

 litter are spread under a shed, and by being 

 trodden by his stock, it does not heat and 

 fire-fang, as is too often the case. Most of 

 his winter manure will be mixed with swamp 

 mud, to compost through the summer. I 

 inquired respecting a heap near his barn : 

 he said there were two cartloads of lime- 

 mortar, that he bought for a trifle, of a man 

 wlio had taken down a large house : it was 

 mixed with about four loads of brake-root 



composted. He had a number of casks of 

 fleshings that were obtained at the tanner's, 

 which would be mixed with vegetable mould 

 soon as the snow was off', and he could ob- 

 tain it; he has also taken the hair, lime, and 

 piths of horns from the tan-yard ; the bones 

 are broken up by the hammer and mi.xed 

 with the manure and ploughed in; they will 

 slowly decompose, and supply phosphate of 

 lime to his land : he had about two barrels 

 of the settlings of salts from the pearlash 

 factory — similar, he thought, to the material 

 known as glass factory manure; an account 

 of its use and value is given in Mr. Colman's 

 Fourth Report, pages 344-5, by a Mr. Jar- 

 vis. There were a few inches of lye upon 

 the top of the salts in tiie barrels, so strong 

 as to float an egg with nearly one half its 

 surface above the lye. This, he assured me, 

 according to Mr. Jarvis' statement, would 

 convert 10 or 15 loads of loam or muck into 



a compost equal to the same amount of good 

 turf, about eighteen months ago; it had been ij stable manure. All these materials, saw- 

 left this length of .time for the purpose of j dust, wool, fleshings, hair, lime, piths of 

 having the plaster come to pieces, and rot-ji horns, and salts from the potash, he had for 

 ting the turf Last fall it was shovelled |, removing, as they were considered a nui- 

 over, and two lime casks of fleshings pro-| sance, and of no value by the manufacturers 

 cured at the tanner's, mixed with it. He: or owners. The droppino-s of the fowls are 

 thought while this animal matter was de-! occasionally scraped from the boards, over 

 composing, there would be a large amount: which the hens roosted, and put in old 



of nitrogen generated, and give him a large 

 amount of nitrate of lime by spring, when 

 it would be again shovelled over, and 35 



casks: in the spring it will be' moistened 

 with urine and ground to pieces with a hoe, 

 and mixed with plaster of Paris, to be ap- 



bushels of good ashes mixed, and then ap-iiplied to grass land, or put about the corn 

 plied to an acre and a half of ground, upon; and potatoe hills, at the first or second hoe- 

 which he should sow wheat: I think he said], ing; — he styles it "Yankee Guano." He 

 the compost was to be put on after the j has a strong tight box under his back house, 



in which is frequently thrown gypsum, or 



ground was ploughed, and to be harrowed 

 in with the wheat. The ashes he had pur- 

 chased at ten cents per bushel. 



He had a cart-load of tlie waste wool, or 

 flyings, fiom the wool carder's; this was to 

 be boiled for a short time in lye,* to cleanse 

 the oil and .grease, and to render the wool 

 more deconjposable. By way of experiment, 

 a part of it would be used to manure some 

 of his corn and potatoes in the hill, the rest 

 would be mixed in the compost heap, to re- 

 main a year or so. He also had a large 

 quantity of old woollen rags, that he bougjit 

 of a store-keeper for a trifle — having, he 

 said, read in some book, that 100 lbs. of 

 woollen rags contained as much nitrogen as 

 300 lbs. of cow manure. Some of these 

 rags ^vere to be chopped up and steeped in 

 urine for a few days, then to be partially 



[charcoal dust obtained from the coal-pen of 

 the village blacksmith: it absorbs the smell, 

 and once in a w^eek or two, the contents of 

 the box are mixed with dry peat or saw- 

 dust, or some other material, to absorb the 

 liquid part, and put into old tight barrels. 

 This is home-manufactured poitdretle. His 

 hog-yard is of good size, has been dug to the 

 depth of 18 inches, and a good plank floor 

 over the whole, which makes it easy shovel- 

 ling out the manure. The suds from the 

 wash are conveyed to it by a spt^t, which 

 with the manure of his hogs, mixed with 

 the loam, muck, and other materials, make 

 many loads of valuable manure. He has 

 tried many experiments that he has seen 

 recommended in the agricultural books and 

 papers that he has read ; says, after he be- 



dried and sprinkled with gypsum, and used 1 1 came "one and twenty," he did not feei 



as manure in the corn and potatoe hills; the 

 other part would, like the waste wool, be 



* We hope he did not pour this liquor into his gut-- 

 ter, to run off and be wasted.— W. S. 



obliged in all things to follow in the "foot- 

 steps of his worthy predecessor," his father, 

 and sometimes pursued a new track, and 

 went upon his own hook. He intends get- 

 ting a small quantity of guano and ground 



