93 



which, Avith hayseed being sowed, caused good crops of Eng- 

 lish Hay without manure. 



In 1833, I built a new barn, 84 by 40 feet. The cellar was 

 dug where the old barn had stood for sixty or seventy years. 

 The contents of the celhir, which was 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 

 long 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 herdgrass 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 meadoAV 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 villajre. Two 

 loads, about three tons, were carried away. I then surveyed 

 the land that produced it, and found it less than one acre. I 

 then computed it, aud found the product per acre sixtj^-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 noAv than it did in the early years of its improvement, 

 to produce a like crop. It rarely suft'ers from drought, as 

 there is usually water in the main ditch coming from a spring 

 not far distant. 



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

 es that I first dug were filled to Avithin about eight inches of 



