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A PANEGYRIC ON SWAMP MUCK. 
GEN. W. H. NOBLE, OF BRIDGEPORT, CONN. 
IT’3 GOOD TO REPEAT SOME THINGS. 
I have often thought that a kindly review of 
the many thoughts of many minds in the Ru¬ 
ral would be of value and interest. Of course, 
its editor admits many notes, from whose con¬ 
clusions he would disseut. He starts some 
ideas himself, and generously and wisely asks 
comment, as about the capillarity of the soil. 
This is right. Life in the garden aud life on 
the farm should always be open to test, new 
methods or prove the old. The world doesn't 
know half as much about auimal and vegetable 
life as it ought. A good raauy old things aud 
ways might be unlearnt, and a good many new 
ones taught before the fullness of wisdom 
comes to the tiller of the soil. But keep try¬ 
ing aud studying by experiments iu methods 
and results. By-aud-by some farm Edisou will 
come up to reveal unused forces, aud find new 
workings for the old. In the meantime, let 
me help a little towards the intent of that well- 
told story about your "Poor Farm.” 
RICHES IN SWAMP MUOK. 
The first two chapters of a Poor Farm’s his¬ 
tory in the late Rcrals, delighted me. They 
betoken the brains whose help all poor farms 
sadly need. Sometimes a farm keeps poor, and 
gets run down, out of sloth and lack of means 
to better its belongings. But its poverty is 
about as often due to ignorance of its resources 
aud the methods of its betterment. That 
muck swamp, whose sleeping forces and stored- 
up enrichment its historian puts into such 
clear figures, is the right plane to begiu its 
new life. There, are stored generations of de¬ 
cay, to feed the rootlets of grass or grain, 
courting its nourishment. The boggy hole of 
a swamp is but a youuger branch of that deep 
aud ancient storehouse of enrichment, the peat 
bed. The latter is of the same breed, but of 
older aud larger growth. A swamp is thus a 
lowland water log, whose shallow depth of 
vegetable mold cannot be spared, aud will uot 
pay lor moving to crops in other fields, though 
pleuty for those planted above its drained sur¬ 
face. The peat bed is God’s century-garnered 
store of that same mold, able to nourish not 
only its own, hut to spare for generations, to 
crops on other farm-lauds around its sunken 
area. 
FARMS, FAT OR POOR, A QUESTION OF MANURE. 
A farmer friend of mine, who beats all I 
know, iu field or garden, answers to my notes 
of praise and wonder, " It’s only a question of 
manure.” It is a question, luck or failure, 
whose solution briugs rich fields aud abundant 
crops, or a starving farm. His lauds are uuder 
the highest culture; they are kept so by a full 
supply of manure, made possible by solid cash, 
first laid out iu stock aud sea-drif t-littered yards 
aud stalls. Yet the solution is just as open to 
a poor farm owner’s wits, as to the money of 
my friend. The rich owner s soil tells tbe 
footing of his funds in bank. The poor farm’s 
swamp or peat bed, is an undug gold placer, 
whose water log must be drained aud torn up 
before the glittering ore is reached. The fable 
of the field, made fertile by the son who 
trenched it deep in search for gold which his 
parent dimly told him would thus be fouud, 
might be paraphrased to tbe enrichment of a 
good many other sous, who have no better in¬ 
heritance than a run-down, muck-swamp farm. 
Such may find both wealth aud a solution of 
the manure question at the bottom of a deep 
swamp drain. 
ACRES OF MANURE WITHIN REACH. 
If there is any truth iu chemistry, if the 
soil’s elements aud their record, if all we know 
about how plants feed and about the make¬ 
up of that black decay dug Out of swamp holes, 
are not all myths, the owner of every swamp 
farm has pleuty of manure at hand. In every 
acre of a swamp, whose drained and settled 
muck shows only a loot iu depth of black veg¬ 
etable mold, there are more than 1000 cubic 
yards of mauurial material, equal, load for 
load, to that from the stalls. To be sure, you 
need to tame its acids and help out its dearth 
of salts by a sprinkling of lime aud usbes. 
But tbe cost of these goes into crops on this 
as on other soils. They do more tliau this to 
your drained muck. They make all those 1600 
cubic yards a rich, lasting aud improving 
manure heap. Better than that; it is manure 
carted, spread, and commingled with the soil. 
Yon have not that toilsome job to do. You can¬ 
not exhaust its uutrimeut as a few crops do, in 
the case of a stout dressiug of barn-yard man¬ 
ure. 
A DRAINED SWAMP, A DIVIDEND BANK. 
Those loads of muck are loads of crop mak¬ 
ers that the toil and force of nature, the sun, 
the rains, the breezes and the upland wash 
and wastes, have piled up aud tempered ahead 
for your use. You have but to yield to 
their stored-up forces your toil and wit, to 
yyin their powerful help. Each of those 1000 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER- 
cubic, yards equals in hulk a horse-cart, top- 
board load, well rounded up. If that yard, 
or load, is worth but 30 cents, you have on 
every acre of such laud, $480 worth of en¬ 
richment,—that is a low-down figure. You 
could not shovel and cart and dump a load 
for that, except on a mighty short dray. But 
take off $180 for the changes and chances of 
the seasons; for the cost of land, of drainage 
and culture; for occasionally quiekeuiug and 
rousing its sluggishness with those salts that 
so rouse up vegetation in its first start. Then 
each acre of that swamp laud, so endowed and 
redeemed from water log, is to you as good as. 
yes, far better than $300 in bank. It’s a say¬ 
ings bank right at home ; the fund therein is 
better thau government bonds, or bank stocks 
or bond and mortgage. It’s as solid and un- 
fleeting as the earth. No panics or hard times 
or auy of the perils and chances of trade, can 
shake its solid worth, or cut down its dividends. 
It's as safe as that scriptural house, founded 
ou the solid rock. 
NO DIVIDEND LESS TITAN SIX PER CENT. 
Year by year that $300 in such a bauk, will 
pay to your toil and care, clear net dividends 
of six per cent. Besides, it tvill pay you for 
plautiug and reaping and housing, and for all 
needful enrichmeut. This, doubtless, reads to 
many besides that poor farm’s owner, like ro¬ 
mance, or some book-farmer’s long-bow tale. 
From his boyhood he bus looked out on that 
swamp land at his door, aud thought it worth¬ 
less except for the home and nesting of tiie 
blackbirds, and a few early bites of spring 
grass. But all I here lay down is bottom truth. 
Let him wbo can, gainsay the figures. I am far 
Within the real footiugs of results from such 
swamp land improvement. There is no) guess 
or fancy about it. I know whereof I speak. I 
have seen the right to a good deal stronger 
figures, proved, under no likelier chance than 
is before every owner of a big swamp. 
1 WILL TELL TOU A TALE. 
A few years since, just outside the borders 
of this city, a practical-minded, brainful mau, 
who studied deeper than the surface of things, 
bought twenty acres of miserable, heavy, for¬ 
saken swamp. A sluggish run meandered 
through this, as through most such lands. 
That he widened aud deepened, as his cheapest 
aud ouly drain. The rest of the area he laid out 
iu lauds, running out pretty much at right 
angles to the trend of this run. These lands 
he turnpiked, so that between each rounded 
surface there was a hollow, or little swale, 
through which the overcharge of surface mois¬ 
ture could rid itself into the run. This was 
all, except to seed it down to grass. Now, this 
was a work but half done. He should have 
dug a main drain, six feet, or seven, deep—the 
deeper the better. The more digging there, 
the less needed in other parts of the area. 
AND HOW IT TURNED OUT. 
Yet, in spite of all this cheap aud shallow 
draining, he took from off that redeemed 
swamp, year after year, more thau three tons 
of prime hay per acre. He had to build a big 
barn to store his crop. Some years it ran a 
great deal overthree tons per acre. My friend’s 
swamp was uot the likeliest specimen of such 
lands. Its muck was rather shallow—a good 
deal uuder that foot-deptli on which I have 
figured quautities. What are three tons of 
hay worth year by year P A farmer is a fool 
who sells it for less than $10 per ton. The 
average sales hereabouts for twenty years have 
been a good deal higher. I think it worth 
that to the farmer anywhere and at any time. 
Well, out of that $30, take $18 for your divi¬ 
dend of six per cent, on $300, and you have iu 
baud $12 per acre to cover any kind of call for 
dollars, for barns, and tools, aud toil, cutting 
and carting, and housing, taxes ou land, 
fencing and keeping the area of meadow iu 
good heart. 
What now have you got to say, my doubting 
friend, about our savings bank aud that $300 
snugly there, for every acre of as good out¬ 
cast swamp as that whose history I have writ¬ 
ten about ? But there are lots of such places 
everywhere, more easily saved from the weep¬ 
ing aud guasliiug ot poverty, aud full of eu- 
richment for their own aud other crops. There 
are acres upon acres of such land upon every 
square mile of land around me, that will pay 
better returns for capital outlaid, than any 
bauk stock or old iudustry iu the laud. 
YOUNG FARMER, ‘‘FIGHT IT OUT ON THIS LINE.” 
And yet the cry 5s "Go West, young man : 
go to the orange groves, whose delicious per¬ 
fume and golden fruit will greet your live 
years’ toil: go into stock-breeding or take 
some manufacturing contract; go to the gold 
placers or the silver mines; start a cattle 
ranchc: go anywhere rather than stay in the 
rock-ribbed, swamp-farmed, chill New Eng¬ 
land.” But, young farmer, think it well over 
before you start. I neither decry ncr undervalue 
the enterprise which has pioneered a strip 
along the Atlantic into an empire spanuiug the 
continent. I know thn merit and returns of 
bold adventure, all over this wonderful land. 
But let no mau go away with a bee in his bon¬ 
net. Each should know that which he leaves 
behind in present opportunity, the toils and 
stores of years, and the society and make-up 
of old homes. 
“ ’Tis distance lends enchantment to the 
view.” But when you get up to the glitter 
and glamour, you may be as badly sold, as he 
who hunts the mirage on the sand, but finds 
not a drop to drink. You may strike oil, and 
you may not. A good many bore whose augers 
come up dry. Gold-digging averages about as 
hard as a Louisiana lottery as a way to get 
rich. The orange groves and the cattle ranches, 
have a good big discount on their offer of 
thrift and pleasant pictures, that comes iu the 
shape of mountain fevers, swamp malaria, 
outlaw rubbery, or tbe savage’s swoop. 
Besides, there are not a few uuconsidered 
items of pleasant life uot far off from your 
home, which you will not find at every step of 
your roaming. There is comfort iu a land of 
settled homes and well-kept roads, aud schools, 
and steeples ; in the glimmer of a neighbor’s 
lamp short of a day’s ride. There are a thou¬ 
sand such-like, now unvalued things, to which 
you bid good-bye when you go West. But 
wheu bereft of their worth and comfort, they 
quickly become "to memory dear.” If you are 
out of debt, aud have health aud will, you can 
win a new life for yourself and your laud oil 
that poor farm. Quicken your brain to study 
out and solve by trial this swamp question. 
You can do lots at the trial in the dead of win¬ 
ter, when labor is cheap. Plenty will jump at 
the chauee of such work by the job. If you 
have uot the cash, put the case before some 
rich neighbor; show him your studied-out 
plan aud figures, and you can get all needful 
funds. Be up and doing, and before you know 
it, you will have rolled up to your credit iu 
that home bank $300 for each acre you re¬ 
deem. 
- 4 ♦»- 
JOTTINGS AT KIRBY HOMESTEAD. 
COL. F. D. CURTIS. 
Straw for Horses. 
We have been feeding our horses oat straw 
all winter until now, when the supply is ex¬ 
hausted. We have a lot of barley straw ou 
baud, but we doubt if this would be good for 
horses. There is a good deal of dust iu it; as 
the barley was caught in a long rain, and this, 
with the beards, will, in our judgment, make 
it unsafe to give horses. Horses, especially 
those thal are worked aud driven, should 
always have forage free from dust. We reason 
in this way, aud it is sound logic. If two 
rackfuls of dusty bay will set a heavy horse to 
blowing aud panting so as to be useless, a 
constant diet of this sort of food will damage 
a sound one. It will lay tfcie foundation for, if 
it does not produce, a chronic irritation of the 
lining membranes of the bronchial tubes aud 
of the lungs. We have so much faith iu this 
logic that we shall not risk the experiment, 
(.’lover hay, if dusty, is equally dangerous. 
Bright oat straw is the nicest kind of feed for 
horses. A heavy horse, when led on it, will 
breathe clearly, and any horse so fed is always 
ready for a hard drive, as he will not then fill 
himself as he would ou hay, and so compress 
the action of the lungs by crowding the dia¬ 
phragm against them. Six quarts of oats a 
day and oat straw have kept our horses iu 
good condition, and the stallion and big colt 
are fat, fed on oat straw aud buckwheat bran; 
the former on nine quarts aud the latter ou 
twelve. 
This is a cheap way to winter horses, and a 
most excellent way to utilize straw. Au acre 
of ground will go farther in this way thau in 
meadow. Poor and run-out spots in meadow's 
may be turned over and sown with oats, and 
the volume of available food will not be re¬ 
duced, and they may be re-seeded at the same 
time. Bright timothy hay is the most substan¬ 
tial feed for horses and, next to it, we like oat 
straw. Rye straw, cut short and fed with meal, 
is grand feed for horses, aud they will do as 
much work on this feed as on any, but they 
must have plenty of meal, not less than twelve 
to sixteen quarts. R>c straw lias a market 
value equal almost to hay, and beuoe both are 
costly feed, but oat straw is worth very little 
in market, and if it can be utilized for feed and 
save more costly fodder, it is a good idea. Give 
tbe horses the oat straw and let the cows have 
tbe hay. If our horses worked hard, they 
would require more oats. 
How to Wnrm Hen,Houses. 
Mr. nenry McCormick has his hen-house 
lathed and plastered, aud he says it does not 
freeze. This, in the long run, would not he a 
very expensive way to fit up a hennery, ns the 
plastered walls will be lasliug and cheaper 
thau lining with matched lumber. They would 
be warmer also. Our hen-house is too cold. 
We are satisfied of that fact, aud it is the main 
reason why the hens do uot lay more eggs iu 
winter. They have grain enough, aud bone- 
meal, and lime and meat, but they are too 
cold. We are going to line the inside with 
tarred paper aud try thui to see if it will uot 
make the hennery warm enough. If it does 
not, next summer we will cover the paper with 
lath and plaster. The tarred paper will help 
to keep the lice out of the room. 11 only costs 
three cents a pound, and the. expense is not 
much. Paper is one of the best uon-condue- 
tors aud therefore a very effectual lining to 
keep the heat iu and the cold out. We are 
going to make it a rule to shut the entrance 
every night and not. lo open it uutil the cold ot 
the uight is somewhat modified by the sun— 
not before nine o’clock iu the morning. This 
will help to keep the temperature more even 
day and night. Where there are a warm, south¬ 
ern exposure and a glass frout, the tempera¬ 
ture will rise quite high during the middle of 
the day, and in the night change to be so cold 
as to make au unhealthy difference. Keeping 
out the cold at night will help to make the 
temperature more uniform, and prevent roup 
and other disorders,the results of colds. Fowls 
thus kept comfortable will require less food to 
be kept in good condition, and will lay far 
more eggs. 
Bud Teats. 
There must be great care when cows are 
dried off or there will be permanent injury to 
the milk ducts by the accumulation of curd, 
which will harden and stop up the passages. 
The water of themilkisabsorbedaud so are the 
fatty properties (the butter,); but the easeine 
(cheese) canuot be absorbed, aud unless 
squeezed out of the udder aud teats, remains iu 
them aud in the smaller passages and the 
teats, and forms into a hard mass, aud often 
effectually stops them. Remaining in one spot 
all winter, the glands are often irritated aud a 
sore is formed from which bloody milk, or 
rather blood, is secreted, or a callus is formed 
and the teat being stopped up, that portion of 
the udder dwindles, aud is useless. A good 
cow is often spoiled iu Ibis way. The only 
safety iu drying up cows is frequently to draw 
all of the milk out aud carefully strip the teats 
to make certain that the last drop is forced 
out. This should be done every few days uutil 
no more milk can be obtained. Drying up 
may be hastened by feeding the cow food 
wanting iu succulence, such as dry hay or 
straw. 
Smoking vs. Burns. 
Another man has smoked in his stable aud 
there is one barn less. Ten cows happened to 
be in the yard and were saved. Everything in 
the barn burned. 
-f-M- 
BURNT CLAY AS A FERTILIZER. 
The stiff, yellow-clay sub-soil of our lands, 
full of iron ore, is poisonous to plants and 
vegetation. But it should be remembered that 
for thousands of years this suuie 9ub-soil has 
been tbe grave and repository of countless mil¬ 
lions of reptiles, worms and insects, aud that 
into it have been washed down the inorganic 
remains of myriads ot both birds and beasts. 
How, then, can these inorganic elements be 
utilized so as iu a cheap aud effective way to 
permanently increase the fertility of the soil ? 
By burning. In England I have frequently 
used burnt elay and always with the most 
beneficial effects, particularly ou wheat, clover 
and grass; and among what I might, perhaps, 
style successful and scientific tanners, the 
practice is largely followed. The following is 
the method of performing the operation. 
In very dry weather let a furrow be turned 
over as deeply as possible by a three-horse 
plow. Let this same furrow be again plowed 
up by a following threu-horse plow. By these 
meaus great blocks of bard, stiff clay are 
thrown up, some of them nearly 100 pounds iu 
weight. Let these lumps be collected and built 
iu circles of, say, ten feet iu diameter and sev¬ 
eral feet high. Build up tbe interior of each 
with brush, old roots, slumps, etc., so disposed 
as to ignite easily, and cover the whole with 
lumps of dry clay. After having set fire to 
the heap, let the mass burn for three or four 
days, care beiug takcu to supply fresh clay, so 
as to prevent the fire from burning too furious- 
ly. By these means the stones in the clay will 
be completely pulverized; the silica ol the soil 
will, to a large exteut, be rendered soluble, aud 
the carbonic acid entirely expelled from the 
carbonates of lime aud magnesia iu the rocks. 
All practical farmers are aware that the lack 
ot soluble silica is the cause why wheat aud 
oats are apt to lie down on rich lands, and why 
they refuse to till with seed the heads of grain. 
(?—Eds.) They also know that lime audmague- 
siaas carbouales, do not enrich the soil, whereas 
when rid of the carbonic acid, they are of great 
value both directly as plant-food, and indirect¬ 
ly as means of supplying it, by decomposing 
and thus rendering soluble other unavailable 
constituents of the soil. This burnt elay is ab¬ 
sorbent aud liltrative, and baa a tendency to 
sink into the sub-soil aud amalgamate with it, 
causing it to work more easily aud thus in¬ 
creasing the fertility of the soil. Heavy land 
can thus be cheaply and easily aerated and 
enriched, aud a good part of the hitherto dor¬ 
mant chemicals contained in the great reposi¬ 
tory of Nature rendered fit for food for sus¬ 
taining and stimulating vegetable life. From 
ten to twenty tons per acre of this burnt clay 
will permanently enrich the land, aud farmers 
will find it much cheaper aud more efficacious 
