64 



NEW ENGLAND FAR]\IER. 



Feb. 



WINTER MANAGEMENT OF MANTJBE. 



There are many things necessary to be ob- 

 served in good fanning, many minor details, 

 which, if neglected, are quite sure to result in 

 loss in the crops, rather than profit. There 

 are two things that are absolutely indispensa- 

 ble, without the employment of which we 

 doubt whether profitable crops can be raised 

 on any New England soils, for many years in 

 succession. The first of these and the only 

 one to which we propose to give attention at 

 the present time, is the Winter Management of 

 Manure. 



Considerable change has taken place in this 

 item of farm husbandry during the last twenty 

 years, but there is nothing yet like a system of 

 management in it. On many farms very good 

 practices prevail one year that are utterly neg- 

 lected the next — although it is admitted by 

 the operator, that a system has many advan- 

 tages over a chance practice. Some of the 

 difficulties attending the handling and applica- 

 tion of manures are : — 



1. That it is impleasant and expensive to 

 overhaul and apply manure in a green condi- 

 tion, mingled with refuse fodder, such as com 

 stalks and buts, meadow hay and straw. 



2. Manure in such condition is in a form too 

 adhesive and compact to be used with the 

 greatest advantage. The object should be to 

 get the largest possible crop from the manure, 

 the first year it is applied. In order to secure 

 this, it must be fermented, and made fine and 

 easily separated by that process, or it must be 

 divided by the admixture of some other sub- 

 stance, such as loam, sand, sawdust, or muck 

 — the latter being altogether the best. 



Before proceeding further, let us solve the 

 qnestion, What is Muck? and then we shall 

 be able to decide whether the process which 

 we intend to describe for the winter manage- 

 ment of manure, will commend itself to the 

 judgment of most farmers. Muck is any mass 

 of decaying vegetable matter. Not mud, as 

 some term it, which is a mixture of soil and 

 sand, or gravel. In enlarging the manure 

 heaj)s, we add vegetable matter, in various 

 forms, such as the refuse of the barn, to wliich 

 weeds are added, brakes, rushes, coarse grass, 

 moss leaves, and even small bushes — every- 

 thing that will readily decay and become muck. 



What we atteui{)t to do in our limited and 

 painstaking way. Nature has already done for 

 us on an extended scale. She began her work 



centuries ago, and now has completed it, left 

 it at our hands, and invites us to gather it up 

 and use it. It is scattered over the New Eng- 

 land States in endless quantity, in the mead- 

 ows, in the swamps, and in the valleys be- 

 tween the hills — the muck beds of New Eng- 

 land — and worth more to us than all the gold 

 beds of California. 



Muck is manure. No proverb has more 

 truth than this, that "Muck is the mother of 

 the meal chest.'''' With umvearled pains we fill 

 our barns annually with vegetable matter, not 

 only to sustain our animals, but to convert 

 that mass of vegetable matter into manure, or 

 muck. The process is a quicker one than Na- 

 ture's, but how trifling in extent compared 

 with hers ! The result of that conversion is a 

 heavy, highly-concentrated fertilizer, without 

 the use of which little can be pi'ofitably done 

 In New England farming, or the West either, 

 eventually. 



How much this vegetable matter is "animal- 

 ized," as it is called, if any, bypassing through 

 the cattle, we do not know. But that it has a 

 powerful influence on the condition of the soil 

 and the gi-owth of plants, is established be- 

 yond dispute. 



Nature's process is a slower one, but she 

 comes at last to something like the same re- 

 sults. She sends upon the sandy plain or 

 gravelly knoll, a coarse, scanty herbage, which 

 dies, falls to the ground, decays, and becomes 

 muck, humus, or earth. This quickens the 

 soil, the next crop is larger, and dies and de- 

 cays as did the first; but now the soil has 

 power to germinate seeds which are brought 

 upon it by winds or animals, and soon bushes, 

 or young trees appear. These are partially 

 sustained by the atmosphere, and become 

 clothed with a rank foliage which they annually 

 shed upon and completely cover the surface. 

 This process has been repeated in thousands 

 of instances, when, at length, some flood has 

 covered the surface until all vegetable life was 

 extinct, or some raging fire swept through the 

 forest, burning everything but the larger 

 trunks of the trees. The ravages of Insects 

 and the tooth of time graduall}' bring these to 

 the ground, where they lose all their form and 

 mingle with the common mass. In muck 

 meadows, the accunuilation has been gradually 

 formed by the annual dei'ay of .•<mall bushea 

 and the rank grasses which have grown upon 

 them; though in many Instances there are 



