34-2 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER, 



MAY 6, 1835. 



BOSTON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 6, 1833. 



PARMER'S WORK FOR MAY, 



Manure is the great indispensable of all successful 

 farming, and without proper attention to this food of 

 p!ants,°you may as well sow the wind and reap the whirl- 

 wind, as cultivate the earth for a livelihood. It is now 

 quite time, (if you have not already done it,) to clear 

 barn yards and other depositee of manure of their fertiliz- 

 ing contents. If you have more dung than you can imme- 

 diately cart, spread and plough in, it will be excellent 

 husbandry to shovel or tip it from carts in heaps, and 

 cover it with inverted turfs, or clods of earth, scrapings 

 of the door yards, the highway, of ditches, or unmixed 

 loam to receive and retain the effluvia, or gaseous part, 

 virhieh would otherwise escape and manure the atmos- 

 phere instead of the farm. Your cattle are or should be 

 still confined mostly to the yard, and it will be good man- 

 agement to rise before the sun, and shovel their drop- 

 pings under a shed or some kind of cover, and give it a 

 coating of sods, or soms of the above mentioned sub- 

 stances. Indeed a'l summer made manure should be 

 mixed, as far as it is practicable without interfering 

 too much with other still more important avocations, 

 with at least an equal quantity of some of the ingre- 

 dients commonly used in composts. You may as well 

 feed aijimals on clear sugar or oil, as plants on unmix- 

 ed dung. The remains of decomposing vegetables, the 

 evacuations of animals, everything capable of undergo- 

 ing the process of putrefaction should be covered with 

 earth or something analogous, and if there is a roof over 

 it, an additional advantage will accrue. 



Farmers too often suffer manure to accumulate and 

 waste in heaps, generating effluvia intolerably noisome, 

 and perpetually pestilential, without fear of fever or fam- 

 ine, both of which are courted by such conduct. Not 

 only dung is too often allowed to waste its lichness on 

 the tainted air, but straw and other litter are suffered to 

 ■rrow mouldy, and consume by what is sometimes called 

 the dry rot, both of which might be prevented, or their 

 bad effects obviated by covering or mixing them with a 

 suitable quantity of earth. Besides dead animals, the 

 contents of privies, the empting of sinks, spoiled provis- 

 ions, the refuse of the dairy, the pantry and the cellar 

 are often allowed to mingle their odors in nauseating and 

 aeleterious profusion. Sometimes tho highway is ren- 

 dered almost impassable in consequence of a dead horse, 

 sheep, or cat undergoing the process of decomposition in 

 a situation correctly calculated to annoy travellers. 

 Some farmers hang dead lambs, cats, dogs, &c. in the 

 forks of apple trees, or throw them on hovels or stumps 

 at some elevation from the ground, to give the pestilen- 

 tial emanations a chance to diffuse themselves without 

 coming in contact with the earth, which might convert 

 them from poison to men and animals into food for plants. 

 If, however, such animal remains are deposited in a 

 barn yard or manure heap, they are too often suffered to 

 ' lie and rot on the surface, offending the senses and in- 

 juring the health of a whole village. Practices of this 

 kind are well reproved by Sir Humphrey Uavy, who 

 says horses, dogs, sheep, deer and other quadrupeds that 

 have died accidentally or of diseases, after their skins 

 are separated, are often suffered to remain exposed to the 

 air, or immersed in water, till tbsy are destroyed by 

 birds or beasts of prey, or entirely decomposed ; and in 

 this case most of their organized matter is lost from tho 

 land on which they lie, and a considerable portion of it 

 employed in giving out noxious gases to the atmosphere. 



" By covering dead animals with five or six times 

 their bulk of soil, mixed with one part of lime, and suf- 

 fering them to remain for a few months, their decompo- 

 sition would impregnate the soil with soluble matters, so 

 as to render it an excellent manure ; and by mixing a 

 little fresh quick lime with it, at the time of its removal 

 the disagreeable effluvia will be in a great measure de- 

 stroyed, anditmighl be employed in the same way as any 

 other manure to crops." 



If however, quick lime cannot readily be procured to 

 accelerate the conversion of dead animals into manure, it 

 is probable that covering the carcasses with a pretty thick 

 coat of unleached ashes, and placing over all a 

 quantity of earth or earthy substance, would hasten 

 dccomp'osition, and secure the gases resulting from pu- 

 trescence. Earth alone will answer a valuable purpose 

 and in time the largest animal will be decomposed in 

 nothing but common soil. 



Dairy House.— The dairy house or room should be 

 kept neat and cool. It should be as little exposed to the 

 sun as possible. An apartment in a sweet well ventila- 

 ted cellar has been recommended for keeping milk and 

 cream in. Cheese should never be put to dry in the 

 same room in which you set milk for obtaining butter, be- 

 cause they communicate an acid taint to the air, which 

 has a tendency to make the milk sour. Tlie milk room 

 and cheese room should, therefore, be separate apart- 

 ments. It will be well to have a milk room placed over 

 a spring or brook, near your dwelling house and so to 

 contrive the inside arrangement that cool, fresh, running 

 water may enter water tight platforms or troughs, and 

 the milk pans be set in that water. It is said that the 

 dairy houses in Pennsylvania are built over springs, and 

 their milk pans are set in cold running water, by which, 

 and other modes of good management, the butter brought 

 to market in Philadelphia, is said to be the finest in the 

 world. This mode of making good butter is not unknown 

 though not common in New England. A writer for the 

 Vermont Journal, in an article, published some years 

 since, gives the following description of a milk room : 



" The shelves are so constructed as to admit the im- 

 mersion of a milk pan in cold water, nearly to the top, 

 resembling a shallow trough. By the advantage of lo- 

 cation, the water is constantly runniug from a spring 

 on atone end of the shelf and off at the other, and may 

 be easily conducted from shelf to shelf through a whole 

 room. The consequence is, the milk keeps perfectly 

 sweet, in the warmest season, until the cream is all 

 risen, which is in a short time,— of course the butter 

 will be sweet. Now are there not hundreds of places 

 that would admit of the same improvement with trifling 

 expense, which would be refunded fourfold in one 

 season .'" 



MASSACHUSETTS HORTICUtTURAt SOCIETY.. 



FLOWERS EXHIBITED. 



Saturday, May 2, 1835. 

 Samuel Sweetser, Cambridgeport, Gazania pavonia. 

 Gladiolus, Cineraria, Roses, Mignonette, Cyclamen, 

 Antirrhinum, Calceolaria, Pelargoniums, Gnapha- 



lium, &c. 



Thomas Mason, Charlestown Vineyard, many superior 

 specimens : the roses were fine, the white and yellow 

 Tea roses, and a new one recently imported, attracted 

 particular attention. A list of them and their names 

 were not received by the committee. 



Ezra Weson, Jr. Esq., sent for exhibition a fine speci- 

 men of the Epiga:a repens. Trailing arbutus. May 

 flower or ground laurel. 



For the Committee, 



JoNA. WiNSUiP, Chairman. 



We have received Transactions of the Essex Agricul- 

 tural Society for 18:>4, vol. ii. No 4. From a hasty glance 

 at its contents (for we have not yet had leisure to peruse 

 the work attentively,) we think this will prove a very 

 useful .and interesting number. It commences with the 

 Address of Col. Moselev, an excellent discourse, plain, 

 practical,andof course useful. This has already been 

 given to our readers, in the columns of the New Eng- 

 land Farmer. Such of the reports as have not been pub- 

 lished in our paper shall be given as soon as practicable. 

 The remarks on Agricultural Implements contain a witty 

 eulogy on Howard's Plough. The Essay on " Coloring'' 

 is worth everything to everybody engaged in the domes- 

 tic manufacture of cloth, &c. 



A number of favors from correspondents must lie in 

 our table-drawer till our next number. 



An Expedition. — A meeting was lately held, consist- 

 ing of the citizens of a number of towns in Addison 

 County, Vt. for the purpose of adopting measures to ex- 

 terminate the wolves which infest the neighboring 

 mountains. Dr V^'illiam Bass was called to the chair. 

 A numerous committee were appointed to prepare a 

 plan of operations, and their report was adopted. It 

 provided for the appointment of a captain in each town, 

 and a subaltern for every ten men, to be armed with 

 guns, pitchforks and axes, and furnished with two days' 

 rations, and prescribed various other arrangements re- 

 lating to the order of the march. Some of the Vermont 

 editors appear to think that the advance of such a formi- 

 dable force will induce the enemy to capitulate.— .M- 

 vocate. 



Florida Coffee. — A writer in the Savannah Repub- 

 lican furnishes an article on the much talked of" Flori- 

 da Coffee" which Mr Dupont has so much extolled of 

 late, the seeds of which lately sold in Charlestown at 

 $2 per pound. It was said to be superior in flavor to the 

 Cuba Coffee— and to promise to be more profitable than 

 any other staple in our country. It is now said that this 

 " promising" plant, which produces this fragrant berry 

 grows in vast abundance in the vicinity of Savannah, 

 and is generally known by the significant appellation of 

 " Stinking Weed," from its peculiar fragrance when in 

 full foliage.— Journal 



The Collector of New Orleans has issued proposals 

 for the erection of a building in that city, to be used as 



a Mint the establishment of which was authorized by. 



a law passed at the last session of Congress. 1l 



■Wool. A wool grower in a neighboring town hagi 



recently sold about 000 pounds of mixed merino and sax- 

 ony wool, for 68 cents per pound. Sixtytwo cents wag 

 the highest offer made to him last summer and autumn, 

 There is an impression among some intelligent wool 

 ■.rowers that extensive manufacturers are about to make 

 Tari-e importations of the foreign article for the sake o) 

 depressing prices here. From what we have seen in tlw 

 papers, we should judge that wool would command ai 

 good a price this year as lust, perhaps better. 



I,AROE Cow. — A cow, four years old, this presen 

 month, weighed 1,100 pounds, when dressed, and 1751 

 pounds when alive, was slaughtered a few days sine. 

 inDracutl, by Wilson and Buttrick. She was raisei 

 in Hillsborough, N. H., by a son of Governor Pierce 

 Lowell Courier. 



A boy in one of the schools in Philadelphia, bein 

 asked what " Easter" meant, said it was " hard boile 

 This is indeed the march of mind. 



