APPENDIX A 



THE FARM, 



PROFITABLE farming requires that such manures as embody 

 all the deficient elements in the soil should be added to it in 

 sufficient quantities to develop fully and rapidly such crops 

 as are sought from it. It becomes, then, a matter of the highest 

 consequence to the farmer to understand not only what substances 

 may be useful as manures, but also how to apply them in the best 

 manner to his crops so far as they may be made profitable. 



Barn-yard Manure. — The bulk, solubility, and peculiar tendency 

 to fermentation of barn-yard manure, renders it a matter of no little 

 study so to arrange it as to preserve all its ,good qualities, and apply 

 it undiminished to the soil. A part of the droppings of the cattle 

 are necessarily left in the pastures, or about the stacks where the anir 

 mals are fed ; though it is better, for various reasons, that cattle should 

 never receive their food from the stack. The manure thus left in 

 the fields should be beaten up, and scattered with light, long- 

 handled mallets, immediately after, the grass starts in the spring, 

 and again before the rains in the autumnl With these exceptions, 

 and the slight waste which may occur in driving cattle to and from 

 the pasture, all the manure should be dropped either in the stables 

 or in the yards. These should be so arranged that cattle may pass 

 from one directly into the other ; and the yard should, if possible, 

 be furnished with wells, cisterns, or running water. There is twice 

 the value of manure wasted annually on some farms in sending the 

 cattle abroad to water, that would be required to provide water for 

 them in the yard for fifty years. 



The premises where the manure is dropped should be kept as 

 dry as possible ; and the eaves should project several feet beyond the 

 side of the building, so as to protect the manure thrown out of the 

 stables from the wash of rains. The barns and all the sheds should 

 have eaves-troughs to parry off the water, which, if sayed in a suffi- 

 ciently capacious cistern, would furnish a supply for the cattle. The 

 form of the yard ought to be dishing toward the center ; and if on 

 «» ~ (1129) 



