1871.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
175 
least 200 tons of manure, containing 15 lbs. of 
nitrogen to the ton. The heap, therefore, should 
contain 3,643 lbs. of " potential '' ammonia ; 
and if treated as I propose to treat it, I do not 
believe a single pound will escape. You must 
recollect that a pound of ammonia would make 
a powerful smell. Litmus paper will detect 
ammonia in an atmosphere containing only one 
seventy-five-thousandth part of it; and Prof. 
Johnson, in an article written for Hearth and 
Hotne, on " Mixing Lime with Manure," says : 
" It is certain that a healthy nose is not far in- 
ferior in delicacy" to litmus paper. And so, even 
if the litmus paper should show— what I do not 
believe — that ammonia is escaping, the loss can 
only be so small that it is not worth while troub- 
ling about it. " But what do you gain by turn- 
ing the heap ? " asks my English friend. In the 
first place, we can reduce the bulk of the ma- 
nure more than one-half, and thus save much 
labor in carting and spreading it; and then, 
manure thoroughly decomposed, will act much 
quicker on the plants ; and this, for cor» or 
roots, is a very important gain. We have a tin 
boat-pump for pumping up the liquid that 
drains from the heap back again on to the ma- 
nure after it is turned over. Without this, the 
manure at the bottom of the basin is so wet 
that it will not ferment, and that at the top so 
dry that it might firefang. But pump up the 
water and keep the whole moderately moist, 
and fermentation will proceed rapidly without 
loss of ammonia. 
These are some of the things we are doing 
just now on the farm. But perhaps my friend 
the Editor meant to ask what J, myself, person- 
ally, was doing on my farm. To-day I got out 
some stones where the men are plowing. I 
iiave a little steel bar for my own use, which I 
have an idea Hie men derisively speak of as my 
Walking-stick. Still it has got out many a stone. 
But my favorite tool is a heavy spade, with 
straps the whole length of the handle. It is 
almost as strong as a crow-bar, and it has the 
advantage of furnishing its own "bate" or 
fulcrum. When a plow strikes a stone, get this 
heavy spade on the side or under the bottom of 
it, aud let the horses pull steadily, prying on 
the spade at the same time, and in three cases 
out of four out comes the stone. To-day I 
worked a couple of hours cleaning out a ditch. 
One of my underdrains discharges into a ditch 
on the Deacon's farm. At the outlet, the uuder- 
drain is not more than fifteen or eighteen inches 
ileep ; but as the land rises the drain is deeper, 
and some of the branch drains are three aud a 
half feet deep. The Deacon's notions of draining 
are somewhat antiquated ; and the open ditch 
through his land is about a foot wide and fifteen 
inches deep, running along the fence by the side 
of his garden. The cattle tread in this ditch 
every summer, and the Deacon is kind enough 
to allow me to clean it out. I do the work my- 
self, so as not to injure the Deacon by cutting 
the ditch any deeper or wider than just enough 
to allow the water from my underdrain to pass 
off. If I should set one of my men, who is 
used to ditching, to clean out this ditch, he 
would probably cut it two or three feet deep, 
and make the land dry and double the erops, 
and the Deacon would thus be put to additional 
expense in harvesting them. And so for the 
sake of good neighborhood I do the work my- 
self; and I do not think I have injured the 
Deacon to any greater extent than removing 
the surface water, and rendering two or three 
acres of his land dry enough to plow a week 
or two earlier than would otherwise be the case. 
Another thing I do occasionally— and, in 
fact, I have done it to-day — is to take a flexible 
gutta percha curry-comb and card the cows and 
pigs. I think this pays as well as any work I 
do on the farm, and I enjoy it full as much as I 
do digging a ditch on the Deacon's laud, but 
not as much as getting out stones. But, at any 
rate, the cows and pigs enjoy it. My English 
friend says he never knew a farmer that was so 
fond of animals as I am, or who gave them so 
much personal attention. 
To be frank, I do not " work " a great deal on 
my farm. I do not think it would pay me to 
go into the woods and chop all day, or go to 
plowing. I think I have men who could beat 
me at a steady day's work ; and Johu Johnston 
once told me that as soon as lie got so old that 
he could not do more work than any man on 
his farm, he worked no more with his men. 
He planned the work and saw that it was done 
properly, but he did not take hold himself. 
Thus I spend my days, except that I have to 
write some hours for the Agriculturist. I get no 
credit for this from my neighbors. " That is 
not work," they say. And yet I would at any 
time rather dig a rod of ditch than write for 
ten minutes. 
The evenings are, with me, the pleasautest 
part of the day. The Deacon drops in, aud we 
talk farming. Or we read the agricultural pa- 
pers, aud comment on the articles. ' Last night 
I read the remarks of a speaker at a Parmer's 
Club, as follows : " Buying cattle to feed is not 
legitimate farming; it may be in England, 
where it is better adapted to the circumstances 
of farmers, but it cannot be done to advantage 
here. It is uncertain business; it is doubtful 
whether stock can be bought, fed and sold, so 
as to make the operation pay. It takes capital ; 
farmers do not always have it to use ; they must 
practice economy. If all adopt this system, 
where will they get stock to feed ? Some must 
raise the stock to sell. Buying to feed and sell 
makes a farmer a commercial man, aud is a 
perfectly hap-hazard busiuess. Legitimate farm- 
ing is raising stock and crops on the farm." 
My English friend thought I was reading an 
article of Mark Twain's, and laughed heartily ; 
but I assured him the man was in earnest. 
" Why," he said, " you have a much better 
chance to make money by fattening stock than 
we have, because you can buy lean stock in the 
fall for much less per lb. than it is worth per 
lb. when fat. In England we cannot do this." 
The Deacon said nothing, but I know he thinks 
it rather a speculating kind of business, that 
farmers had better let alone. In England, farm- 
ing is much more of a commercial business than 
it is here. The farmers have frequently no more 
capital than we have, but ours is locked up in 
the farm, while there they lease the farm and 
use their capital to carry on their operations. 
They buy and sell more than we do — buy ma- 
nure, buy stock, and buy oil-cake and grain to 
fatten it with. They risk more than we do, 
and generally make larger profits. But, of 
course, they sometimes lose heavily. My Eng- 
lish friend says he once lost $3,000 on his sheep 
in a season. " I tried to keep too many," he 
said, " and after a while I saw they were not 
doing well, and I commenced feeding oil-cake 
and grain rather freely, and got the fever into 
them. I lost 150 hoggets in a month or six 
weeks, and those that survived had to be sold at 
a sacrifice." 
It is certain that a farmer who has not had ( 
much experience should not go largely intc 
buying stock to fatten. And in fact, a farmer 
without experience should not go largely into 
any thing. But why a farmer who has acquired 
experience should not use it, I cannot under- 
stand. Such men as Johu Johnston and 
Jurian Wiuue, who have made themselves and 
their farms rich by buying sheep in the fall and 
fattening them, are in no sense speculators. 
They run no more risk in paying four dollars a 
head for a lot of sheep to fatten than the farmer 
who raised them would, if he, instead of selling 
them in the fall at this price, concluded to fat- 
ten them himself. The truth is, it would be 
much better for us all if there was more of a 
commercial element in American farming. 
" I do not see how you get along without 
Fairs or Market-Days," remarked our English 
visitor. "With us they are absolutely essential 
to our system of farming. We always know 
where to buy such stock as we want, and can 
depend on selling it for what it is worth at any 
market-day." He is right. As things now are, 
the farmer who fats fifty or seventy -five sheep is 
at the mercy of some local butcher. He cannot 
send them to New York with advantage, be- 
cause he has not a car-load of them. But if we 
had a Fair once a month, we could sell small 
lots to dealers who were buying to ship, and 
there would be competition enough to secure us 
fair prices. Now, if a farmer has more feed 
than he wants, he does not know where to look 
for stock to eat it. He must spend days travel- 
ing about the country, picking up a few head 
here and there; and it is just as bad if he finds 
himself overstocked. He must sell to some one 
who knows how he is situated, and who will 
try to get them at a bargain. 
The Deacon is still inclined to show fight on the 
corn-planting question. He thinks hills prefer- 
able to drills, both for corn and potatoes. They 
certainly give one a better chance to cultivate 
the land, aud save much labor in hoeing, and 
also in cutting up or digging. We agree on one 
point, that corn is seldom cultivated half as 
thoroughly as it shouKl be. Working the soil 
to kill weeds has been the only means I have 
had to depend on for enriching my land. And 
I am greatly encouraged, especially when we 
come to plow up a clover sod that four years 
ago was in corn, and received such an extra 
amount of cultivating. The texture aud color 
of the soil has completely changed — and vastly 
for the better. In fact, it does not look like the 
same land. The men get quite enthusiastic 
over it, and can hardly believe that such a sim- 
ple thing as cultivating a corn crop, nine or ten 
times in a season, can be the cause of the im- 
provement. But this is all there is to it. 
A Poultry-house and Grapery Combined. 
^ ■ — 
In the fall of 1869, Mr. Johu Warren, of 
Flushing, L. I., put up a structure which was 
intended to serve both as a poultry-house and a 
grapery. It has thus far proved a success, as 
far as the fowls are concerned, aud as the vines 
will come in bearing this year, for the first time, 
the profitableness of the entire establishment 
will be decided this autumn. 
Figure 1 gives a view of a portion of the 
main building, which fronts to the south ; is 140 
feet long, 18 feet wide, and is constructed like 
any ordinary grapery. The great surface of 
glass makes it a warm, dr) r and pleasant day 
run for the fowls. The interior of the graperj' 
'i divided into fourteen separate compartments, 
10 x 18, which accommodate twenty fowls each. 
