lOS TALKS ON MANURES. 



and it could be sei-drd down witli liiiiotliy and oilier good grassoa 

 the list of August, or be;,'iiiniiiu' of SfpU'inbcr, and produec agood 

 crop of hay the next year. Or, if thought hetler, it niiglit b.-sown 

 tf) rye and seeded down witli it. In either ease tlie land would be 

 greatly improved, and would be a productive meadow or pasture 

 for years to come — or until our young dairyman could afford to 

 give it one of Harris Lewis' " homceopathie " doses of 40 loads of 

 good manure per :icre. lie would then be able to cut two crops 

 of hay a year — and such hay ! But we are anticipating. 



Tiiat stream wliich runs through tin- farm in the spring, and 

 then dries up, could be made to irrigate several uiri's of the land 

 adjnininu'. Tiiis would doul)le, or tril)le, or cpiadruple, (" hold on," 

 sail! tiie Deacon,) the crops of grass as far as tlie water readied. 

 The Deacon does not seem to credit this statement; but I have 

 seen wonderful ed'ei ts proiluced l)y such a plan. 



What I am endeavoring to show, is, that these and similar means 

 will give us larger crops of hay and grass, and these in turn will 

 enable us to keep more cows, and make more manure, and the 

 manure will enable us to grow larger crops on other portions of 

 tile farm. 



I .'iin .•iware tliat m.iny will object to plowing up old grass land, 

 and I do not wish to be mis inderstood on this point. If a f.irmcr 

 has a meadow tliat will pnnluce two or three tons of h:iv, or support 

 a cow, to tlie acre, it would be folly to lireak it up. It is already 

 doing all, or nearly all, that can be asked or desired. But suppose 

 you have a piece of naturally good land that d les not pn^luce a 

 ton of hay per acre, or pasture a cow <jn three acres, if such land 

 can be plowed without great difBculty, I would break it up as 

 early in the fall as possible, and summer-fallow it thoroiiirhly, :md 

 seed it down again, heavily, with gr.iss seeds the next August. If 

 the land does not need draininir, it will not fori'et this treatment 

 for njany years, and it will be the farmer's own fault if it ever nins 

 down again. 



In this country, where wa-ies are so liiirh, we must raise large 

 crops per acre, or not rai.se any. Where lanil is cheap, it may some- 

 times pay to compel a cow to travel over tliree or four acres to get 

 her food, but we cannot afford to raise our hay in half ton crops; 

 il costs too much to harvest them. High wages, hlu'li taxes, and 

 high-priced land, nocessitate high farminir; and bylii-jh farming, I 

 mean growing lar^'e croi>s every year, and on every portion of the 

 farm ; but high wages and loir-priad hiud i\o not neccssarilv demand 

 hiirli fanning. If the land is chea]) we can sutler it lo lie idle with- 

 out much loss. But when we raise crops, whether on high-priced 



