1863. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



285 



THE BEST WAY TO USE BONES. 



Eds. Co. Gent.— The "best possible way" to 

 make bone phosphate, which J. M. A. inquires for 

 in your paper, and which you say you and many 

 of your readers desire to know, is as follows : 



Take one ton of ground bone (the finer the bet- 

 ter,) and i an ox-cart load load (1 of a cord) of 

 good friable soil, which will not break or cake by 

 drying, and which is free from sods and stones, no 

 matter how wet it may be when used. Place a 

 layer of the soil and a layer of the bone, of about 

 equal thickness, upon each other, (soil at the bot- 

 tom) on the barn floor, or under cover in a shed 

 or outbuilding, leaving a bushel or two of the soil 

 to cover the heap when all the rest is put togeth- 

 er. The heap will be three to four feet wide at 

 the bottom, and about twice as long. In forty- 

 eight hours it will be too hot to hold your hand in. 

 Let it remain undisturbed until the heap begins 

 to cool, which will be in a week or ten days. Then 

 '•throw over" the heap by "chopping it down" 

 •with a shovel and moving it "in end," thoroughly 

 mixing the soil and bone. In a day or two it will 

 heat again. Let it remain until it cools, or for 

 eight or ten days ; then throw it over in the same 

 manner again. In a few days it will heat again, 

 unless the previous fermentations have exhausted 

 all the moisture in the soil and bone. Throw over 

 each ten days until all the moisture is thus ex- 

 hausted and it does not ferment any more ; then 

 it will be fit for use, and can be put away in old 

 barrels, and it will be ready for use, without dete- 

 rioration, for ten years. 



All that is necessary to make bones operate as 

 a manure is decomposition — ^•otthuj ; and to pro- 

 duce this process the bone only needs to be ground 

 or broken 5ne, and to be subjected to moisture in 

 warm weather witli some substance that will ab- 

 sorb or retain the gases evolved during the pro- 

 cess. Soil furnishes the essential requisites, and 

 nothing more is needed to make bones an excel- 

 lent and durable manure. 



This is not a theoretical rule, merely. I have 

 used many tons prepared in this manner during 

 the last twelve to fifteen years. I have tried it 

 upon the same field, and side by side with the su- 

 perphosphates of different manufacturers, and 

 always saw the best and most permanent eftects 

 from the same weight of bone ))repared in this 

 manner, a ton of which costs, exclusive of the la- 

 bor and soil, about half as much as a ton of su- 

 perphosphate. 



I want to say further, that, before treating bones 

 in this manner, I tried several methods recommend- 

 ed by the farming newspapers without much satis- 

 faction. I mixed half a ton of ground bones with 

 twenty bushels of leached ashes, and half a ton 

 with twelve bushels of unleached ashes, and the 

 workmen could not open their eyes in the barn 

 next morning until the doors and windows had 

 been open long enough to let the ammonia out ! 

 As soon as I saw the efl'ect of this process, I sent 

 for a load or two of spent tan to mix with it ; and 

 thus saved a part of the ammonia, but the effect 

 of this compost was not very striking. 



I next mixed a ton of bone with wet yellow 

 sand — a material about half-way between sharp 

 sand and loam. This fermented finely, but it 

 smelt so bad, and was so nasty, that I had to pay 

 an exorbitant price to get it applied to the land. 

 It had a good effect however. 



I then mixed a ton of bone with a ton of 

 ground plaster. I found the plaster was wholly 

 incapable of keeping down the carrion smell, or 

 of absorbing the manure given out in the form of 

 gases. Water had to be added to this heap to 

 support the fermentation, and the plaster dried 

 hard and in lumps, and did not seem to partici- 

 pate in the fermentive process as the soil does. 

 This did not have so good an effect as the bone 

 and sand ; and none of these compounds was 

 equal to that prepared with soil. 



I will also add that the newest bone is the best 

 The old dry bones which are collected after expo- 

 sure to the weather for years, have lost much of 

 their virtue, and will not heat so soon nor so much 

 as those which have not lost their gelatine in that 

 manner. George Haskell. 



— Countn/ Omtleman. 



Remarks. — We like Mr. Haskell's plan of re- 

 ducing bones, as far as he has developed it, but 

 the really difficult part of the matter, he says noth- 

 ing al)out, — and that is, hmo to grind the bones. 

 There are few things of this nature so difficult to 

 accomplish as this. Granite, blue pebble stones 

 from the beach, nay, ten-penny nails, are not half 

 so hard to reduce to powder as a bone ! We have 

 never yet known a mill that will grind a bone in 

 its crude condition. Even the manufacturers of 

 superphosphate are obliged to expel all the ani- 

 mal or fatty matter from the bones before they 

 can grind them. Then the bones are ground, and 

 the matter that was expelled is returned to them 

 in a liquid form. 



Every farmer will feel obliged to Mr. Haskell 

 for making known his process of reducing bones, 

 but will look to him with interest for information 

 how to break or yrind them so that fermentation 

 in them may be secured. 



We co-n purchase what is called "ground bone," 

 — but which is, in fact, broken bone. That, how- 

 ever, is not what is wanted. We all desire to 

 know how to reduce the bones which accumidote 

 upon the farm, so that we can use them annually 

 upon our crops. Will Mr. Haskell be kind 

 enough to inform us how we can accomplish this ? 



Fur the Hew Knglaml Farihtrr. 

 SHALL I BUY A FARMP 

 Mr. Editor : — I am out of business and out 

 of health, and come to you for advice. The whole 

 dream of my life has been to own a farm, and 

 now, after an experience of fifteen years in a store 

 — and most of that time in a poor state of health 

 — I find myself with only about $1.500 — in ready 

 money — no business, and in a quandary as to what 

 ' I shall do. As an offset to some of my troubles, 

 I I have one of the best wives in the world, admir- 

 ' ably calculated for a farm, both by nature and in- 

 clination, (having been brought up on a farm,) 

 and four good children, the eldest a boy of thir- 

 teen, the next a girl of nine, the other two, boys 

 younger. 



I have no practical knowledge of farming, but have 

 for years been a constant student of agricultur- 

 al works — have full bound sets of the N. E. Farm- 



