1 4r 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 73. 
First and last, I have written a good deal on 
the chemistry of manure. For the past week 
v, T e have been engaged in drawing out manure 
from the barn-yard, and I can but wish that 
some one would write an article on the mechan¬ 
ics of the manure heap. Chemistry tells us how 
to make rich manure and how to preserve it, 
and tins is certainly of very great importance. 
But how to handle the manure with the least 
labor—how to pile it and turn it, how to load 
it and draw it to the field, and how to unload it 
and spread it, are questions of no less import¬ 
ance. At the present price of labor we may 
make our manure cost us more than it is worth. 
Tiie intelligent farmers of the country should 
direct their thoughts to this subject, and see if 
some means of lessening the labor cannot be 
discovered. It will not do to depend on keep¬ 
ing up the fertility of our land by plowing under 
clover. Tiiat day has passed, never, I hope to 
return. We must keep more stock, and learn 
how to make a profit in raising and feeding it. 
The only farmers who have made money the 
past year have been those who have devoted 
more or less attention to the production of 
butter, cheese, pork, beef, or good mutton. To 
raise grain on land worth $100 an acre, to pay 
$2.00 to $3.00 a day for labor in harvesting and 
threshing it; to pay high taxes and high prices 
for every tool and implement and machine that 
we use, and then to pay high rates for freight, 
insurance commissions, and profits on middle¬ 
men in sending it to New York, and thence 
to Europe, where it is sold at the same price as 
grain raised with labor costing not half what 
we are obliged to pay, is a business that does 
not afford any particularly bright prospect of 
large profits. The red winter wheat is less than 
50s. a quarter in England ($1.50 per bushel in 
gold). Not a pound of American wheat should 
be shipped across the Atlantic. If it were not 
for our strong disposition to rush into anything 
that for the moment promised large profits, to 
the neglect of the steady business of fanning, 
we should seldom be obliged to sell our pro¬ 
ducts at a loss. In the average of the last six¬ 
teen years, the United Kingdom of Great Britain 
and Ireland lias imported over 50,000,000 bushels 
of wheat per annum, and she will continue to 
want as much for years to come. She has 
iu some way got the impression that the United 
States can furnish a large amount at low rates. 
She should be disabused of this idea. We have 
a population greater than her own, and it is 
increasing rapidly. We can raise a large 
amount of wheat, provided it will pay. But to 
raise it and sell it at a loss is what she should 
be given to understand we are not willing to do. 
The remedy is in our own hands. No legisla¬ 
tion can help us if we do not help ourselves. 
When wheat falls below the cost of production, 
we must cither hold it or put it into the pork 
barrel or convert it into beef, wool, mutton or 
butter and cheese. Had we been disposed to do 
this the past autumn, we could have had 50 cents 
a bushel more for our wheat, to the advantage 
of all classes, consumers and producers alike. 
But what has this to do with drawing out ma¬ 
nure? It has a good deal to do with the labor 
question—and labor affects every operation on 
the farm. How to render labor more efficient is 
the first problem which the American farmer 
has to solve. It worries me to see a man get 
$3.00 for a day’s work, and then spend another 
day, first and Jast, in getting his money, He 
would have been just as well off if he had 
worked two days at $1.00 a day, and the 
farmer he worked for would have got twice the 
benefit. It is a great loss to farmers and to the 
nation to have men work only eight months iu 
the year. It is a great waste of labor to em¬ 
ploy it in raising 10 or 12 bushels of wheat per 
acre, or 25 or 30 bushels of corn, or 75 or a 100 
bushels of potatoes. Our excuse for raising such 
poor crops is the high price of labor. We waste 
labor because it is high, and it is high because 
we waste it. 
We must employ less labor iu the summer 
and autumn, and more in spring and winter. 
In this section, October and November are the 
busiest months in the year. We have apples to 
pick, potatoes to dig, corn to husk, and a va¬ 
riety of other things to do before winter sets 
in. The days are short, the weather uncertain, 
and much time is necessarily wasted. We must 
plant less land to corn and potatoes. We should 
try to raise as many bushels as we now do, or 
more, but they should be grown on half the 
number of acres. This can certainly be done. 
The digging of a poor crop of potatoes this fall 
has cost more than half what the potatoes would 
sell for, and so in husking a poor crop of corn. 
We must keep more stock, and this will give 
more work for the winter months. Let all the 
straw, and especially the corn stalks, be run 
through a cutting machine. This will add to 
the labor in the winter, but greatly lessen it 
when we come to handle the manure. The 
saving of food may or may not pay for the 
labor of chaffing the fodder. This is perhaps 
an open question, but there can be little 
doubt that we save the labor twice over before 
the manure gets upon the land. The liquid 
from an animal is of more value than the solids, 
and it is with this that the greatest loss usually 
occurs. Chaffed straw and corn stalks, after 
the animals have eaten what they will of them, 
can be thrown from the mangers and used for 
bedding, and they will absorb much more liquid 
than when used uncut; and we can keep our 
animals dry and comfortable on half the litter. 
The manure will be more valuable, because 
there is less straw in it, and from having ab¬ 
sorbed more liquid (not rain), will decompose 
more rapidly, and be sobner in proper condition 
to apply to the land. 
Judging from the manner many farmers treat 
their animals, one would think that the winter 
was the busiest season of the year. The cow 
stables are cleaned out about once a week, and the 
pig-pens when they become so filthy as to be 
unendurable. How many men did any one 
ever see carding a cow ? I do not know how 
it is with others, but I have known my men so 
hurried in winter that they had not time to clean 
out the cow’s manger once a month, or not, in 
fact, until it became the dirtiest part of the stable. 
And does not the pig-trough, to say nothing of 
the pen, often prove that the winter is a very 
busy season on the farm ? How about the 
gentle sheep ? Are their wants properly and 
promptly attended to? I have known men so 
much occupied that the sheep were left to do 
their own foddering. 
It not unfrequently happens that men can be 
had in winter for little more than their board; 
and it is certainly a very short-sighted economy 
to put any work off till spring or summer that 
can bo done at this season. Next spring we 
shall draw out manure when the land is soft 
and the manure more than three-fourths water. 
Can we not sometimes draw it out in winter on 
sloighs or on wide stone boats ? It is not only 
easier to draw, but far easier to load. Manure 
intended for distant parts of the farm could be 
drawn out in winter and piled in the field. But 
when manure is not used in the spring, but is 
piled in the yard and then applied to the land 
the next fall, is there nothing we can do in 
winter that will save labor in the spring and 
summer ? Look at our barn-yards and see. 
Look at mine; look at yours 1 The manure 
from the horse-stable is left near the door; that 
from the cows is back of the barn ; the sheep 
manure is in the sheds and round the straw- 
stack—and the pig manure, where is that ? The 
best half of it has soaked through the planks 
into the ground, and yonder heap of corn-cobs, 
dirt and straw represents the other half. It will 
lie there all winter without fermenting, and 
next spring the man in loading it will spend 
half his time in removing with his foot the corn¬ 
cobs that stick on the tines of the fork. Instead 
of waiting till spring to mix and pile the ma¬ 
nure, wdiy not do this work daily during the 
winter? The early spring is a comparatively 
leisure season on many farms, but there is 
enough to be done without having to do work that 
might as well or better be done in winter. If 
such is not the case, your farm is better drained 
than mine. To relieve the pressure of work in 
summer, much can be done now and in spring. 
Whenever we commence to mow my machine 
always wants something done to it, and so with 
the reaper. And is it not often the case with 
rakes, hay-racks, scythes, cradles, etc. ? If not, 
you are a far better manager than I am. These, 
you say, are little matters. I thank you for 
that excuse. But I cannot accept it. Farm 
life is made up of such little matters, and he is 
the successful farmer who keeps ahead of his 
work and has everything in order. 
But, aside from all this, we can lessen our 
summer’s labor materially by sowing less spring 
crops. We must plow less land and work it 
better. Let the land lie three years in clover 
instead of two, or two instead of one, as the 
case may be. On heavy land, fallow more and 
plant less corn. At first pur aggregate crops 
may be less, but the profits will be greater, and 
in two or three years our labor will be reduced 
one half, and the yield per acre will be doubled. 
It will not be many years before we have 
Chinese laborers by the thousand. But in the 
meantime we can accomplish a great deal more 
with the same labor than we do now. In fact, 
the cities are crowded with able-bodied men 
out of employment. The latter part of Novem¬ 
ber, when thousands of bushels of potatoes were 
still in the ground, and hundreds of fields of corn 
unhusked in whole or in part, and when men 
would not work for less than $1.75, and women 
for less than $1 .25 per day, I was told that when 
a load of coal was taken to a house in the city, 
it would not be half an hour before a dozen men 
and boys wanted the job of carrying it into the 
cellar. In the country, this winter and next 
spring labor will be abundant, but in the sum¬ 
mer, and especially in the fall, it will be as 
scarce as ever, unless we change our system of 
farming. This subject ought to be thoroughly 
discussed by the agricultural press the present 
winter. It is possible in this way to bring about 
a concert of action among farmers. I Ye all feel 
that we have been paying too much for labor, 
and there will be an almost universal disposi¬ 
tion to stop all kinds of extra work. But while 
this may lower wages for the time being, it will 
not permanently euro the evil. TYe want to 
employ more rather than less labor on our 
farms, but it must be distributed \nore evenly 
