Treatment of Compost. 161 
with coarse straw, which, it is said, has been found practically 
unchanged even after lying two years in a dry, loose soil. It is, 
therefore, of the greatest advantage to prepare barnyard manure 
with care for use in this State by some such method as will be 
described below, which includes composting, thereby turning to 
account nearly all organic material likely to be available:— 
Clean up all the manure on hand just before the fall rains, putting the 
same on the land, and either cultivate it in or plowit under. What manure 
accumulates during the winter pile in a snug heap some five or six feet in 
depth, and throw it over some three or four times during the winter to 
keep it from burning, as well as to thoroughly mix it and thereby hasten 
decomposition. Put horse, cow, hog, chicken, and every other kind of 
manure that can be had, all together. Never burn anything that will rot, 
but haul to the pile corn-stalks, roots, and all squash, melon, tomato, and 
potato vines, etc.,as well as weeds of every description, in fact, anything 
and everything that will decay and make vegetable matter. Use fresh 
horse manure mostly to hasten the decomposition of said vines, weeds, 
etc., alternating as the heap is made. Byso doing there will not be a weed 
seed left with vitality enough to germinate. It it well to have manure piles 
under a roof to avoid leaching during the longest and most excessive rains, 
but so situated that some of the rain falling on the barn can be easily con- 
ducted to the piles, giving them just the amount of water necessary to wet 
thoroughly without leaching, and no more.* 
Treatment of Manure without Composting. —Even when com- 
posting all refuse vegetable matter with the manure is not 
thought worth the time and trouble, it is just as important to 
properly treat the manure when stored alone. This can be easily 
done by some such plan as is described below :— 
Collect the stable manure in a large bin and keep it wet enough to 
‘prevent burning or ‘‘fire-fanging.’? With a bin, say ten or twelve feet 
square and five or six’feet high, built convenient to the barn, the manure 
can be placed therein and watered daily with much less trouble than it can 
be composted with other material. This, of course, presupposes the abil- 
ity to run the water in through a hose or by natural flow. Care must, of 
course, be taken that too much water be not supplied, causing the sub- 
stance to be leached from the pile. But in my own experience I find the. 
danger is at the other extreme, and when I open my pile I sometimes 
wish I had used more water. In filling the bin leave one end or side open 
as long as possible, for convenience of filling. 
Barn-yard manure and compost carefully prepared in some 
such way as described, and applied before the rains or early in 
the rainy season, to be turned under at the first plowing, will be 
in condition to be readily assimilated, and will not injure any soil. 
Sheep Manurc.——The proximity of the orange orchards of 
southern California to extensive sheep ranges led to large use of 
the manure from the sheep corrals until supplies were practi- 
cally exhausted. Recently large deposits in the San Joaquin 
*Ira W. Adams, Calistoga. 
+ B.C. Brown. 
