WORCESTER SOCIETY. 167 



is deferred till spring, a crop rich in proportion to the soil will 

 be grown, but no seed till a year later. 

 Lancaster, Sept. 11, 1851. 



Compost Manures. 

 T. S^ J. S. Merriarri's Statement. 



We have a cellar under our barn (which every farmer ought 

 to have even if his stock consist of only one cow), for one load 

 of manure made under a barn is worth two made out in the 

 open air, exposed to sun and rain. After cleaning out the 

 manure from the barn and hog yards, we cart a quantity of 

 swamp inud into our barn yard, and loam into the hog yard; 

 and in the spring before planting, we cart our hog manure to 

 our barn yard, and gather all our manure, as much as possible, 

 under the barn and mix it as much as we can, at the same time 

 mixing in plaster sufficient to keep the ammonia in, then shovel 

 it over, mixing and pulverizing it as much as possible, after 

 which we let it lay a iev^ days before applying it to the field. 

 In the same way we prepare our manure again early in the fall 

 for our grass lands with the addition of leached ashes (if we 

 can obtain them reasonably.) We keep our oxen and horses in 

 the barn to hay all summer. 



We also have another method of preparing manure in the 

 spring which we call guano ; we generally gather from our 

 dove house about thirty bushels of manure which we mix with 

 swamp mud and plaster, putting six or seven bushels of dove 

 manure and four or five hundred of plaster to a large cart buck 

 full of swamp mud and mixing them well together. 



For planting, we take up green sward every year, spreading 

 the manure on the grass before ploughing ; we keep a team 

 carting, a man spreading, and another team following with the 

 plough, turning it in as soon as it is spread ; then we follow 

 the plough with the roller and harrow. To prepare the ground 

 for planting we do not furrow at all ; we mark out our grounds 

 with chains attached to a pole, then we drop our corn and put 



