32 



August ; both crops were well headed out and considerably lodged, 

 and were worth much more than a crop of oats or barley would 

 have been, besides I think the land is seeded a great deal better 

 than it would have been, if grain had been sowed in connection 

 with it. 



I have this year kept about eight cows. They are stabled 

 every night, and, except in the best of the pasturing season, much 

 of the day. They have full feedings of hay every morning and 

 night, also, five or six quarts of grain each, every morning. In 

 the season of it, green corn takes the place of hay, in part. 

 Have this year grown over half an acre of very heavy corn fod- 

 der, planted in drills and worked out with Nourse's New Horse 

 Hoe. The cows stand on a platform four feet and eight inches 

 long, and directly behind there is a gutter in the floor twenty 

 inches wide by six deep, into which sandy loam enough is thrown 

 every day to absorb all the urine ; I have iio further expense for 

 composting. When the loam and droppings are together hauled 

 down through the floor into the hog pens, it is in excellent con- 

 dition to be drawn to the potato field, or to use as top dressing 

 for grass. 



I draw no more manure for top dressing in one day than I can 

 well bush down the same day, before the lumps get dried and 

 hard. I find the best time is immediately after cutting the grass. 

 On land moist enough to be profitably treated in that way, the 

 grass will at that time soon start up and Cover the manure with 

 the second crop. I commenced cutting lodged grass this year 

 the last day of May, and finished mowing, with the machine, my 

 first crop on twenty acres the last day of June. This early cut- 

 ting makes my hay almost as good as rowen. On about ten acres 

 I obtained a very good second crop, which was cut in August. 



At the time I commenced the management of the farm, there 

 were several jobs that had been started and left in an unfinished 

 condition. One acre of pasture, thickly covered with fast rocks, 

 and surrounded on three sides by half fallen old walls, the whole 

 lot jutting out into the middle of the largest mowing field, has 

 been brought under a reformatory process. The walls have been 

 used to fill a mud hole in the meadow below, and the rocks have 

 been blasted or sunk, the whole planted with potatoes and made 

 ready for grass seed, after which it will become a part of the 

 mowing and tillage of the farm. Eight or ten rods of an old, 

 dilapidated wall have been sunk, as being the best way of getting 

 rid of it. An old causeway, built of small stones, from one to 

 three feet deep, and wide enough for two or three teams to pass 

 abreast, which was commenced by my grandfather, and several 

 times added to by my father, has this fall been buried several 

 feet below where it was before. The meadow over which it was 



