IMPROVING WET MEADOWS. 61 



side, and spreading the subsoil on the surface, which, with 

 hay-seed being sown, caused good crops of English hay, with- 

 out manure. 



In 1833, 1 built a new barn, eighty-four by forty feet. The 

 cellar was dug where the old barn had stood for sixty or 

 seventy years. The contents of the cellar, a gravelly loam, 

 were removed into a large heap, mostly by the plough and 

 ox-shovel. The ground was strongly saturated to the depth 

 of four or five feet with the leachings of the manure-heap and 

 the urine from the cattle, where they had been stalled 'for so 

 lon» a time. 



In the fall, and during the next season, the contents of the 

 barn-cellar were spread on the meadow as top-dressing, on 

 which I sowed herdsgrass and red-top seed. The grass soon 

 sprang up rank and strong, and the next year it produced a 

 good crop of hay. For several years after it produced two 

 large crops per year without more top-dressing. 



I think there was more hay produced on that meadow for a 

 series of years, than on any land that I have ever known in 

 the same length of time. I never have known, but once, the 

 amount per acre that it produced at one crop ; that must have 

 been some years after I commenced mowing it. That was 

 sold from the field, and went to the stable in the village. 

 Two loads, about three tons, Avere carried away. I then sur- 

 veyed the land that produced it, and found it less than one 

 acre. I then computed it, and found the product per acre 

 sixty-seven hundred and sixty-five pounds. I thought at the 

 time that the crop was not so heavy as it had produced some 

 previous years. The mud in the meadow has settled one-half 

 since I first commenced draining it, and it requires much 

 more top-dressing now than it did in the early years of its 

 improvement, to produce a like crop. It rarely suffers from 

 drought, as there is usually water in the main dftch coming 

 from a spring not far distant. 



The most of the ditches are kept open. Some of the ditches 

 that I first dug were filled to within about eight inches of the 

 top of the ground Avith small stones, after making a small 

 culvert at the bottom for the water ; then covered the ditch 

 with gravel. The most of the ditches that I have filled with 

 small stones, as above named, have become clogged and filled 



