54 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
[February, 
the spring and sow tt with oats, but not too late, 
for the sod is so tough that it is impossible to har¬ 
row or drag the oats in well, and as much is left on 
the surface it is necessary to have rain after sowing 
In order to make it sprout. If the plowing is well 
done, and all the sod turned over well and flat, it 
will produce a big crop of oats, and will annihilate 
the salt grass and weeds entirely, but what crop is 
most profitable to raise after the oats I have not 
yet determined. This method has another great 
advantage. As salt marshes are generally much 
broken by sloughs and mud-holes, many of those 
can be filled up by throwing the nearest sods into 
them. The ground ought not to be plowed very 
long before the time of sowing, for if the salt grass 
begins to grow before the oats, it is likely to keep 
the advantage and spoil the crop. 
You mention timothy plumes on a reclaimed 
marsh five and six inches long. When I used to 
raise timothy on my marsh without plowing, plumes 
from ten to twelve inches were not uncommon, yet 
the timothy never grew thick, and the salt grass 
always run it out. That part of my marsh which 
has not been plowed, now produces a mixture of 
salt and tame grasses and considerable clover. The 
hay is of a fair quality, and the yield from two to 
three tons to the acre, yet I am convinced that it 
is by far the best policy to plow the marsh up. 
I should like to know if your salt marshes and 
ours are composed of similar materials. I send 
you two grasses. No. 1 dies out, and No. 2 grows 
all the better when the marsh gets fresh. 
[Of the specimens sent, No. 1 is not a grass 
proper, but a glasswort ( Salicornia ), which is also 
common on the Atlantic coast of both continents, 
and is one of the plants formerly burned to obtain 
soda. No. 2 comprises two grasses, one of which, 
very rigid, is Brizopijrum spicatum, also common at 
the East, but the mass of the sample is of another 
species, which, being without flowers, could not be 
identified.—E d.] 
Walks and Talks on the Farm,—No. 134. 
[COPYRIGHT SECURED.] 
I have just got home from a short visit to Massa¬ 
chusetts, and the Deacon came up to have a talk. 
“I wish you had been with me, Deacon,” I said. 
“ Several people, -whom I had never seen before, 
asked, ‘ How’s the Deacon.’ As I was going from 
Albany to Westfield, I sat in the same seat with an 
intelligent, farmer-looking man. We talked a little 
about the weather, and looked through the window 
a good deal. Finally some agricultural topic was 
alluded to, and he asked if I was a farmer and 
where I was from ? ‘ Why,’ he exclaimed, ‘ can 
this be ‘Walks and Talks’” I could not deny it. 
‘Give me your hand,’ said he, ‘and how is the 
Deacon ? ’ It was T. S. Gold, Secretary of the 
Conn. State Board of Agriculture, and we talked 
lively during the rest of the journey.” 
I visited three or four of the most celebrated 
farms in Massachusetts. It is very different farm¬ 
ing from ours. I saw no straw stacks and no sheep. 
Hay and milk are the chief products on the farms 
I visited. Com fodder on one farm is raised ex¬ 
tensively, and on another oats are grown and cut 
soon after the grain is formed and made into hay. 
The land was seeded down with this crop, and I 
never saw a better catch. It seemed to be quite 
common, too, to fallow a field and then seed it 
down with timothy and clover in the autumn with¬ 
out any other crop. This is a pet recommendation 
of my own, and I was glad to hear that it worked 
admirably. 
I would give a good deal for one of these Massa¬ 
chusetts barns—that is, if I had money enough, I 
would give, say from one-third to one-half what 
they cost. I could use them to great advan¬ 
tage. One barn, built by the former owner of 
the farm, at a cost probably little less than what he 
afterwards sold the farm for, was about 120 feet 
long and 40 feet wide—the barn-floor running 
through the center, the long way of the barn. 
There was an ell to this main barn, about 80 feet 
long and perhaps 36*fceet wide. It was occupied by 
i two rows of cows, facing a wide passage in the 
j center, and there were several loose boxes for calves 
! and for cows about to calve. The arrangements 
were excellent. ‘‘This is magnificent,” said I, 
| “ but what is the use of this wide passage between 
the cows. It seems a great waste of room.”— 
“ That is horrible heresy here,” replied my friend. 
—But he gave me no satisfactory reason. Under¬ 
neath the whole of this large barn is a splendid cel¬ 
lar. It is dry, warm, well lighted, and well venti¬ 
lated. If I had such a cellar, I think I could find 
ample room in it, with open yards attached, for a 
flock of two hundred long-wool sheep, fifty or more 
head of cattle, one hundred or more pigs, a stable 
for all my horses, and a cellar capable of holding 
10,000 bushels of roots. All this room is sacrificed, 
at any rate to a great extent, apparently for no 
other reason but to secure a manure cellar! The 
advantages of this system of handling manure must 
be very great, to pay for such a large and costly re¬ 
ceptacle. One-fifth of the room would be sufficient 
to hold all the manure for six months, and the 
labor of putting the manure into a barrow and 
wheeling it to one end of the building and dumping 
it into the cellar, would not be much more than 
opening and shutting so many trap-doors behind 
the animals. 
I got several capital ideas from my short visit— 
one of which I have adopted since I came back. I 
always knew it was a good plan, but there is 
nothing like seeing the thing carried out on an ex¬ 
tensive scale in practice. When I came home, I 
said to my men, “You recollect those three gentle¬ 
men who where here during the State Fair. They 
live near Boston, and I have just been to see their 
farms. And I wish you could see them too. I do 
not think I ever saw more active, enterprising, and 
intelligent farmers in this or any other county. 
One of them keeps 200 pigs, and I was on another 
farm where 150 were kept.”—“We’ve got pretty 
near as many,” said Willie.”—-“Yes, but do you 
see yonder big straw stack,” I replied. “ Big as it 
looks, we shall have to be very saving of it, or we 
shall be short of bedding before next harvest. 
Now, these gentlemen do not have one-tenth as 
much straw, and yet they manage to keep their 
cow stables and pig pens as clean as we do, and let 
none of the liquid run to waste.”—“Perhaps,” 
suggested Willie, “ they use corn-stalks, or potato 
tops, or horse litter, or ”—after a little whispered 
prompting from the Deacon—“ or dried muck from 
the swamp.”—“No,” I replied, “it is something 
that we have plenty of. There are loads of it close 
at hand.”—“I know what it is,” said Charley; 
“ it's dirt.' ’—“ Charley has guessed it,” I said. “In 
the summer they draw a quantity of dry earth from 
the roads, or from anywhere most convenient, and 
store it up in the barn ready for use. And every 
day they scatter a few shovelfuls of this dry dirt 
about the pens and stables. And now,” I continued, 
“ right under that barn, where we are making the 
new cellar, is all the dry earth we need. Fill that 
empty pig-pen with it, and use as much of it every 
day as you want in the cow stable and in the pig 
pens to keep them dry and sweet. Scatter a little 
of it on at a time. You will find a wheelbarrowful 
will go a good way.” 
This is a long story about a very simple matter. 
But it had the desired effect. It carried conviction. 
And now, if I was writing an article for the papers, 
I should say we are using “ dry earth as an absor¬ 
bent and disinfectant.” Butin these plain “ talks ” 
I say, we are using dirt to keep the pig pens clean. 
“ You must be making a pile of money out of 
your pigs this winter,” remarked the Squire.—“I 
am making a pile of manure,” I replied, “and hope 
to get a little money from the old farm by and by. 
I have had the men and teams drawing out manure 
for over a week, and putting it in a pile in the field 
where I am going to sow mangels next spring.”— 
“ I see,” said the Squire, “ you have got three ex¬ 
tra day hands. The Deacon and I think it does not 
pay to employ so much labor during the winter.”— 
“You are both of you men whose opinion,” I re¬ 
plied, “is worthy of consideration. Still, every 
man must do his own thinking. I keep eight 
horses. They cost me at least $16 a week. I want 
to make them earn their living. As long as I can 
find work for the teams that ought to be done, I 
think it pays to hire extra men enough to keep the 
teams busy. This is all I am doing. Every spring, 
summer, and autumn, we have to leave something 
undone that we want to do, because men and teams 
are pressed with work that can not be put off. The 
only remedy is to push things now. We are draw¬ 
ing out manure. When this is done, we shall draw 
stones from the heaps to build a stone wall next 
spring. Then there is wood to haul, and straw and 
hay to chaff. We have ten tons of plaster to draw 
nine miles from the mill, and draining tiles an equal 
distance. And as fast as we get spare barn room, 
we can draw in a stack of hay from the field.”— 
“ You ought to build a new barn,” said the Squire. 
—“ When I do, I shall aim to draw the materials in 
the winter,” I replied, “ and not be compelled to 
neglect farm work in summer. I tell you, if you 
only go at it, you can find plenty of work for your 
team's to do in winter. And if by hiring a man you 
can keep a team busy, that would otherwise be do¬ 
ing nothing but eating hay in the stable, it will pay 
to do so.” 
“Perhaps you are right,” said the Squire, “but 
the days are very short, and you want men who will 
fly round in a momiDg.”—“ Begging your pardon,” 
said I, “that is precisely what I don’t want. I 
want a man who will work after dark at night, 
rather than a man who is poking round before light 
in a morning. When we are drawing out manure, 
1 like to see a man fill his load at night, and have it 
all ready to hitch on to the first thing in the morn¬ 
ing. Your sluggish ‘ early bird ’ will not do this. 
He will be up at 4 o’clock in the morning. He will 
be watching the clouds and speculating about the 
weather. It will be too cold, or too wet, the road 
will be slippery, or too rough, or there will be too 
little snow, or it will be drifted. There will be a 
lion in the way, and he will have to wait until broad 
daylight before he can make up his mind whether 
to go to work or not. Finally he will get out his 
horses, and let them stand shivering while he fills 
his load. The other man, who got all ready the 
night before, brings out his horses cheerfully and 
promptly, hitches them to the load, and is off to 
the field, whistling merrily in the frosty air. He 
warms himself up by throwing off his load with a 
will, and is back again before the other has made a 
beginning. It is so with everything we do. The 
great thing is to get an early start.”—“ That is pre¬ 
cisely what I say,” broke in the Squire.—“Exact¬ 
ly, but you want to begin the day in the morning, 
while I want to begin it in the evening. ‘ The even¬ 
ing and the morning were the first day.’ ‘ Give not 
sleep to thine eyes, nor slumber to thine eyelids, 
till you have done all that you ought to do.’ It is 
bad enough to lie abed late in a morning. It is 
worse to lock up the stable door soon after sun¬ 
down, leaving the horses hastily fed and poorly 
groomed, that you may spend the long evening 
yawning over a hot stove.” 
I am always sorry for a young farmer, who thinks 
he is going to get rich by adopting some scientific 
suggestion, or some mechanical invention, or by 
raising some new variety of grain or fruit, or keep¬ 
ing some lauded breed of cattle, sheep, or swine. 
It won’t do. It is beginning at the wrong end. 
Better at first follow the practice adopted by the 
best farmers in the neighborhood, and then, after 
a few years’ experience, gradually adopt auy im¬ 
provement you may see, or hear of, or read about. 
In the meantime, the real aim of the farmer should 
be, to get his work done as promptly, as effective¬ 
ly, and as cheaply as possible. An English farmer 
has recently suggested a plan, which the Deacon 
and I have often talked about. He keeps 12 horses. 
He would, therefore, require six men to take care 
of and work them. He proposes to use three-horse 
teams and double plows. There is nothing new in 
this. But he proposes to have one man take 
charge of the 12 horses. This is to be his business. 
Then he would keep only two plowmen, and let 
them, as far as possible, do the plowing, harrow¬ 
ing, cultivating, rolling, drilling, etc., at a certain 
