520 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Nov. 



tain, we improved the opportunity to visit the 

 spot where the contemplated tunnel is to be com- 

 menced, and in so doing saw many things agricul- 

 tural, which we may speak of hereafter. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 FALL PLOWING. 

 MAKING AND APPLICATION OF MANURE— PULVER- 

 IZATION OF THE SOIL. 



BY F. IIOLBROO5. 



Mr. Brown : — From the last of October to the 

 middle or later of November is a good time for 

 plowing land preparatory to sowing or planting it 

 the following spring. The autumnal weather is 

 cool and bracing, and the oxen and horses ai"e 

 strong and hearty for the work ; while the tem- 

 perature of the spring season is more relaxing, and 

 the animals of draught are then apt to become 

 laggard and faint, — particularly at the business of 

 overturning green -sward. To be seasonable, spring 

 work must at best be despatched in a great hurry, 

 and it is a relief and advantage to have the plow- 

 ing done in the fall. If land in corn-stubble is 

 first well harrowed, so as to pull open, and level 

 down the hills and scatter the stubs about, then 

 plowed in the fall, tha stubble, lying beneath the 

 furrows through the winter ,will not be apt to come 

 to the surface by harrowing in the spring; the 

 grain and grass seeds can be committed to the al- 

 ready prepared ground, at the earliest suitable 

 day in the spring, the surface of the newly-stocked 

 land will be smooth, the seeds equally distributed 

 in harrowing, the crop of grain will be early and 

 thereby luxuriant, and the young grass, having 

 the benefit of the early rains, will get good root, 

 be more likely to survive the heat and drought of 

 summer, yielding a full bite of aftermath in the 

 fall, and good succeeding crops of hay. Sod-land 

 plowed in November, will be free from growing 

 grass in the spring, the roots of the late overturned 

 sward being too far deadened by the immediately 

 succeeding winter to spring very readily to the 

 surface. The plowed land, after being subjected 

 to the frosts of winter, will readilj disintegrate and 

 crumble down in fine particles when harrowed in 

 spring, — yielding a mellow seed-bed and facilita- 

 ting the business of planting and the first hoeing, 

 and the manure applied can be readily and nicely 

 mingled with the kindly soil. Corn planted on 

 sod furrows turned the fall previous, will not be 

 so liable to injury from the copper-heads or cut 

 worms which eat off the young stalk at the sur- 

 face of the ground, as though the land had been 

 plowed in spring. So great heretofore have been 

 the depredations of these worms on my young 

 corn, when planted on the sandy intervales which 

 were broken up from grass in the spring, that now 

 the meadow-land which is to be made ready for a 

 • corn crop, is invariably plowed late in the fall. By 

 means of this precaution the ravages of the worms 

 have been pretty much prevented, but few hills of 

 corn being entirely destroyed, — indeed, in passing 

 through seven acres of corn to-day, vaciint hills 

 were not discovered, though looked for, and I 

 think there cannot be enough loss of crop from 

 this cause to be of much account. 



I have a piece of old sod, of seven or eight acres, 

 which I intend to plant to various hoed crops next 

 spring, and which I shall plow about ten inches 



deep this coming November. Fifteen years ago, 

 the soil (jf this field was not more than four or five 

 inches deep; and now, friend Brown, I can plow 

 ten inches deep and show you better soil, at that, 

 than you could have found in the field at the for- 

 mer period ; and the crops are larger than former- 

 ly, as well as much surer of becoming sound and 

 ripe — being less injuriously affected by unpropi- 

 tious peculiarities of the season. These results 

 have been realized by means of a systematic rota- 

 tion of crops, along with a gradual increase in the 

 depth of plowing at each rotation, and the appli- 

 cation of stout dressings of compost manure. They 

 could not, in my opinion, have been attained with- 

 out the deep plowing, nor without the making of 

 manure by composting ; for enough of the elements 

 of fertility, and particularly of vegetable substance, 

 could not have been supplied to the land to make 

 the deep and healthy soil, if nothing more than 

 simply the excrements of the animals, and the re- 

 fuse of the Qfops had been returned to it, and if 

 the plowing had been no deeper than the origiqjil 

 soil. The soil is now unctuous, fine-grained, pro- 

 ductive, standing a drought well, Avhere before it 

 was coarse, porous, dry and poor. 



Perhaps you would like to know where the ma- 

 nure is to come from, for these seven or eight 

 acres. The manure made since last April, by two 

 horses kept to hay and grain during the time, has 

 been thrown into a covered hog-yard beside the 

 horse-barn, where three or four shoats are kept. 

 Regularly once a fortnight, two loads, or about a 

 cord of either muck, vegetable mould from the 

 woodlands, or thickly-matted turf, has been hauled 

 home and placed in the pen — first spreading the 

 manure equally about. The hogs have tumbled 

 the materials over and over, and prevented the 

 horse-manure from unduly heating ; and the yard 

 being covered, and of dimensions only about 

 twelve feet wide by sixteen or eighteen long, the 

 manure has been kept in a small compass, has not 

 been subject to much loss by evaporation, and is 

 now a solid pile, five or six feet deep. The com- 

 post will be removed to the field this fall, there 

 covered with muck, and its quality, for corn parti- 

 cularly, can rarely be surpassed. 



In October, 1852, the barn-yard was cleaned 

 out, and the bottom of the yard covered with 

 muck and loam, a foot deep. Pleasant days dur- 

 ing last winter, corn and other coarse fodder was 

 fed to the cattle in the yard ; and the refuse fodder, 

 with the cattle- droppings during those days, are 

 now there, above the muck. The whole was well 

 covered last spring with muck and sods, and the 

 cows have since been kept in the yard nights. The 

 contents of the yard will be taken out and.piled a 

 few rods from the barn, and the pile drawn to the 

 field by seldding in the winter. 



My system of making compost in the cattle stalls, 

 gives a somewhat unusually large quantity of ma- 

 nure, considering the number of cattle wintered. 

 I have heretofore described the process pretty mi- 

 nutely in the N. E. Farmer, and have received' 

 several communications from brotlier farmers, 

 stating that they had tried the same as recommend- 

 ed, and with satisfactory results. During the 

 present month, the leaves and vegetable mould 

 collected in little hollows in the woodlands, will 

 be dug up with stout hoes made for the purpose, 

 and piled in a convenient place near a sled-road 

 through the woods, and drawn to the barn a few 



