1875.' 
AMERICAN AG-RICaLTURIST. 
-419 
it will certainly pay to farm well. It is slow work 
improving a farm, but stick to it, and every year tlie 
work becomes easier and the progress more rapid. 
We must make more manure. Manure is the 
farmer's capital. Capital is accumulated earnings. 
If I work for .?1,000 a year and spend .<1,000, I am 
no better off at the end of the year than at the be- 
ginning. But if I can, by working a little harder, 
earn .$1,300 a year, and by practicing a little econ- 
omy, live on §800, I can lay up $400. This four 
hundred dollars is capita!, and begins at once to 
earn money for iLself. Capital ia accumulated 
earnings. It is what is left of our profits or wages 
after deducting the expenses of living. Manure is 
accumulated plant-food. It is what is left after 
raising and disposing of a crop. If your laud, as 
now worked, is capable of paying you 30 bushels 
of corn and a ton of stalks per acre every year, and 
you sell the whole, your land is no richer in availa- 
ble plant-food. You are making no manure. Tou 
spend all your wages. But if by extra cultivation, 
by setting free more plant-food from the soil, you 
can make your land pay you 40 bushels of corn and 
two tons of stalks, and instead of selling it you 
feed it out to your cows or sheep and pigs, and are 
careful to save all the manure, then your 40 bushels 
of corn and two tons of stalks, less about 10 per 
cent removed by the animals, becomes capital, and 
begins at once to earn money for itself. 
It is worth while making a great effort to get a 
little capital, in the f oi'm of manure, and not always 
to be dependent on the yearly wages which the 
soil alone can pay us. How this can best be done, 
depends on circumstances. I think it will some- 
times pay to gather leaves for bedding. I am sure 
it ivill pay to scrape up the barn-yards and not let 
the droppings of our animals lie exposed over a 
large surface, for the rains to leach out all the 
soluble matter. On my own farm I gather all the 
potato tops, and use them for bedding the store 
hogs. If not required for tlds purpose, I should 
put them in a heap and mix them with manure. 
Several farmers have written me, asking how I 
manage to keep my manure heap fermenting all 
winter. They have tried the plan, but the manure 
freezes as soon as it is wheeled on to the heap. Tliis 
is probably because the heap is not started early 
Fig. 1. — WKONO AND RIGHT SHAPE OF PILE. 
enough, and is not kept sufficiently compact. If 
you have ever made a hot -bed, you will know how 
to start the heap. Get all the horse, sheep, cow 
and pig manure you can scrape together, and place 
it in some spot to which it will be convenient to 
wheel all your manure as it is made during the win- 
ter. If you set a man to do this work, he will be 
sure to scatter the manure too much and draw it in 
like the root of a stack, as shown in the diagram, 
figure 1. If so, the top of the heap should be 
leveled down, and the bottom narrowed in by 
throwing the manure on top until the heap is 
oblong or square, as shown in the figure. The ob- 
ject of this is to keep the top from freezing. If 
left narrow at top, the wind will blow through and 
you will have a foot or two of frozen manure. 
Tliis square shape must be kept during the winter. 
You will have to attend to this matter yourself, or 
it will not be done. And it will require constant 
attention during the winter, or your heap will soon 
be scattered, and the frost will get in. I place a 
plank on the heap, and as the st;>bles and pig-pens 
are cleaned out, wheel the manure on top and 
spread it. Do not forget this latter point. And if 
your man neglects it, do not get too angry. After 
years of experience I have not found a man who 
did not need to be told again and again not to leave 
the barrowfiil uusprcad and exposed to the frost. 
When it becomes necessary to enlarge the heap, 
the better plan is to take the manure from the old 
heap down to a (flg. 3), and commence a new heap 
with it (6, c) at the cud of the old heap. It would 
be well to get the manure from the center of the 
old heap, where it is fermeutiug, and then fill up 
from the sides, and make tlie top level and square. 
Do this yourself and it will be well done. The new 
part of the heap, if started with barn manure, will 
keep on fermenting, and you can add to it from 
day to day the fresh manure from the stables, pig- 
pens and yards. The whole heap will keep on fer- 
menting slowly, and you can add anytldiHj to it 
that will malce manure. The richer you make it, 
the better it will ferment. If you have any bioken 
bones, or bone-dust, or blood, hair, skin, or any re- 
fuse animal matters, mix them with the manure in 
the heap. They will add greatly to the value of 
the manure and favor fermentation. 
The heap can be extended on all sides in the way 
A MAMBE PILE. 
recommended above. The larger it is, the less 
danger there is of the frost getting in and arresting 
the fermentation. Great pains should be taken to 
save all the liquid from the animals. It is the most 
valuable part of the manure. If this is done, the 
heap will be moist, and there will be no danger of 
fire-fang. In a heap so managed, there is little or 
no danger of any ammonia escaping. The manure 
will be in prime order for use in the spring, and 
will have a far greater effect on the crop than if 
it was not fermented. 
Last winter we cut all our corn-stalks, hay and 
straw with a feed-cutter. It saves much fodder. 
It is more convenient, for me, in feeding. I do not 
try to compel the cows and sheep to eat up all the 
straw or stalks clean. Let them pick out the best 
of it and use what is left for bedding. The ease 
with which the manure can be handled in the 
spring, will compensate for the labor of cutting the 
stalks into chaff. The butts of the stalks, when 
cut into short lengths of an inch or so, will absorb 
much liquid, and with a little straw make good 
bedding. I cut mine usually with a two-horse 
tread-power, but am inclined to think, when there 
are men who go round cutting with an eight or ten 
horse power machine, that this is the better plan. 
The job of cutting is soon done, and it leaves the 
farmer more time to attend to his stock. 
A farmer should always keep in mind the fact, 
that his own time is worth far more than that of 
any men he can hire to work for him. He must be 
very careful that his men do not waste their time 
or strength ; but he should be stUl more economic- 
al of his own mental and physical energy. 1 find 
no difficulty in getting men who can chop wood by 
the cord, or pile manure, or thrash, or turn a fan- 
ning mill, or pump water, or throw sheaves to a 
thrashing machine, or cut bands, or drive teams ; 
but how rare it is to find a man who can take care 
of the team, or feed sheep, or bed them properly, 
or milk cows and feed and water them regularly 
and judiciously. I have never yet found a man 
who could feed pigs properly — never one who 
could cook the food and feed it without waste. If 
you do not keep a constant watch, the food wiU 
sometimes go into the troughs scalding hot, or you 
will wake up some morning to find the warm food 
intended for the pigs' breakfast frozen solid. If 
you are very fond of chopping, you may go to the 
woods an hour or two oecasionally, by way of re- 
creation, but you will find your work in the bams, 
stables, and yards, or in the house, doing that 
which you cannot hire others to do for you. I do 
not think I ever saw my successful Germau neigh- 
bor, to whom I have several times alluded, plowing 
himself. But when the boys are plowing, he is 
usually not far off, fixiug up the fence around the 
lot, getting out a stone, or hanging a gate, and put- 
ting everything in order. He is always busy doing 
something, but it is something that will allow him 
to direct all the operations of the farm while he is 
doing it. 
Wind Power— Wind Engines. 
The cheapest motive power in existence is the 
force of the wind. It can be utilized without 
pi-eparation ; no reservoirs, dams, or flumes are 
needed to apply it to our machinery, and the proper 
engine alone is to be provided. In some countries 
wind-power is extensively used. The traveler in 
Europe scarcely loses sight of a wind-mill in his 
journeys, and in places the landscape is thickly 
dotted with them. Substantial gristmills, which 
have faced the breezes for centuries, still wave 
their arms and promise to do so for centuries more. 
Much pumping and drawing is done by these mUls, 
and thousands of acres are either watered by irri- 
gation or dried by drainage, and rendered valuable 
and productive by their help. A few years ago a 
wind-mill was an unusual sight in this country, 
except in the vei-y oldest portions. We were not a 
sufficiently settled people, and did not remain long 
enough in one place to make it profitable to build 
such substantial mills as have been so long in use 
in other countries ; we needed cheaper and more 
quickly constructed mills. Those which we could 
then procure, were not satisfactory, they were 
slightly built, and were not able to take care of 
themselves when the breeze became a gale or a 
hurricane. Recently our mechanics have turned 
their attention to wind-engines, and great improve- 
ments have been made in their construction. We 
have now a choice of several kinds of them, all of 
them useful, but differing chiefly iu their degree of 
adaptation to varying circumstances. At the recent 
Illinois State Fair there were no less than thirteen 
different wind-engines on exhibition, from the 
small one, eight feet in diameter, costing but $100, 
of halt a horse-power, and fitted for pumping stock- 
water or churning, up to those of 30 or 40 horse- 
power, costing 83,000, and able to run a grist mill 
or a woolen factory. Between these extremes there 
are a number of mills capable of adaptation to al- 
most every purpose for which power is needed on the 
farm or in the workshop. A mill 22 feet in diame- 
ter, costing about ?500, has a power of five horses ; 
a two-horse-power mill is about 16 feet in diameter, 
and costs about $33.5. This cost is less than that 
of a steam engine, and a wind-eugine needs neither 
fuel nor skilled attendance. Neither is there dan- 
ger of fire or explosion from accident or careless- 
ness. The wind engines are now made self-regulat- 
ing, and in a sudden storm close themselves. They 
are also made to change their position as the wind 
changes, facing the wind at all times. With these 
engines one may saw wood or lumber, thrash, 
pump, hoist hay or straw with the hay fork, shell 
com, grind or cut feed, plane lumber, make sash 
or doors, or run any machinery whatever. There 
is but one drawback, when the wind stops the mill 
stops. For work that may be done when it is con- 
venient to do it, as most of the mechanical work 
on a farm is done, these engines are exactly what 
is wanted. On the western prairies, and almost 
everywhere, except in sheltered vallies in the east, 
we have wind enough and to spare, which offers to 
us a power that is practically incalculable and 
illimitable, and the means of utilizing this power 
is cheaply given to us in the numerous excellent 
wind-engines now manufactured. In fact so cheap- 
ly can these mills be procured, that it will not pay 
for any person to spend his time in making one, 
although he may be a sufficiently good mechanic to 
do it. Where there are several nearly perfect ma- 
chines, we can not undertake to say which is the 
best. Those intending to purchase, should send for 
descriptive circulars to the parties who advertise. 
