1858. 
THE CULTIVATOR 
315 
Farming on the Onondaga Shales. 
Eds. Co Gent. —Your short article, “ No Manure,” 
in the Country Gentleman of the 2d of this month, 
seems to call forsome reply—and the conspicuous posi¬ 
tion you have given me, justifies reply that might 
otherwise be considered egotistical. 
I received the first premium on farms for 1S45, (see 
vol. 5, page 170, &c., of Transactions) The commit¬ 
tee made their report at the annual meeting in 18-16, 
and in it was the following remark in regard to the 
quantity of manure applied by the various competitors : 
“No one of these came up to the standard they (the com¬ 
mittee) has wished”—and they add, “they do not 
hesitate to say that in many cases it ought to have been 
greatly increased.” In my report, I had said that I 
made and used from four to five hundred loads annual¬ 
ly. Being present when the report was made, I took 
issue with the committee, and asserted that I used all 
that good farming demanded. Out of this grew a dis¬ 
cussion, that yet goes on, as often as I meet one of my 
old opponents in the argument then commenced, who, 
living on some soil that only pays back the manure put 
on it, has no conception of what good land is. Such 
men cannot see how a farm can be self-sustaining, and 
allow all the grain aDd meat and wool it produces, to 
go off to market. 
In Central and Western New-York are large areas 
of land, that, without any manure whatever, except 
gypsum occasionally sown at the rate of a bushel or so 
to the acre, and a crop of clover now and then turned 
under by the plow, produce crops satisfactory to the 
owners. A large proportion of our own farm has never 
had any other manuring whatever. Some part of it 
has been cropped since the last century in this way, 
and this very year yielded more than two tons of hay 
to the acre—some of it nearer three tons to the acre. 
In 1849, Professor F. W. Johnston, after addressing 
the State Society at Syracuse, visited some of these 
lands, and makes in his book, vol. 2, p. 171, the follow¬ 
ing remarks;— 
“ I walked over two large fields which had never been 
manured for the fifty years, which have elapsed since the 
present owner’s father cleared them ; and he thinks the 
land still as good as it ever was. He reaps from 50 to 60 
bushels of corn; and, the last year (1848) 30 bushels an 
acre of wheat. The soil consists, for the most part, of 
crumbling fragments of the green shale” * * * “On 
land like this extraordinary green shale land, such severe 
—what we should call scourging—treatment may be con¬ 
tinued a great many years with apparent impunity ; al¬ 
though it tells on land of inferior quality.” 
The land that the Professor saw, was bought of the 
State by my father, cleared by him, cultivated by 
him, and by myself, until now it is in my son’s hands, 
and I say with certainty that clover and plaster are 
the only manures ever put on it—and I am confident 
that good barn-yard manure drawn one mile from be¬ 
yond the boundaries of the farm to this field, would 
cost more to handle it from the time it went into the 
yard to the time it was plowed into the land, than it 
would be worth. Now, Messrs. Editors, if you cannot 
see how this can be so, I know of nothing to say, ex¬ 
cept to point to the history of the past, and the facts of 
the present. 
Of this green shale, (one of the rocks of the Onon¬ 
daga salt group,) and the soil made from it—it is safe 
to say that sixty years of constant cultivation have 
resulted in constant improvement, and the application 
of the manure produced by straw and cornstalks and 
the excrements of the farm stock applied only to fields 
nearest the barns—and upon tops of knolls and side 
hills, and the use of clover and plaster, gives the fur¬ 
ther result, that every year more and more loads have 
to be carried from the yards to the fields. Twenty- 
five years since, when we could sell wheat only at pro¬ 
fit—when a fat steer would not bring enough at three 
years old to pay for the labor of feeding him, to say 
nothing about the food he consumed—we had large 
piles of straw very much in our way, about the barns 
—so that at times we threshed grain in fields—and set 
fire to the straw. Now we cover our yards over with 
straw, and use cattle and sheep to trample it under 
foot, and by great exertion, using the snows and rains 
to wet it up—we get it into condition to pile in the 
spring in large heaps, having sufficient moisture to 
ferment and thus become much lessened in bulk. In 
this way, it is brought into condition to spread on our 
wbeatfields the first of September, or later on our 
pastures or meadows. Much has been said about keep¬ 
ing manure undercover to save its valuable parts. We 
clear out our sheds in the spring, and get the manure 
where the rains will fall on it, in order to rot it. I 
have conducted streams of water to piles of straw to 
rot them. Sheds for manure would not pay here. 
In September we sow from four to six quarts of timo¬ 
thy seed to the acre on our wheat; in the spring, eight 
quarts of seed of the medium clover, and a bushel of 
plaster if the ground is not too rich, in which case the 
plaster is put on after the wheat is cut. The next year, 
cut hay early in July, sow a bushel of plaster to the 
acre immediately, and in September cut a crop of 
clover seed. The next year, pasture. The next year, 
corn, or barley or oats. If barley or oats, sow to wheat 
the same year ; if corn, then follow the corn with barley 
or oats, and sow wheat on the stubble. This is our 
rotation. On the poorer fields, we sow six quarts of 
clover seed to the acre on the oats and barley, with a 
bushel of plaster to the acre. The corn is plastered, 
or ashes put on the hill; and sometimes we put piaster 
on the pastures. Now you may not see how land thus 
treated can endure—but it has for more than half a 
century, and when it begins to fail, will be the time to 
buy some of the special manures, if the fields are too 
far from the barns to draw the contents of the yards to 
them. 
Within two hundred feet of our principal yards, is a 
large bed of swamp mud and muck ; we have not yet 
drawn one load into the yards to increase our manure 
piles. We have not thought it would pay; whenever 
the time comes when we think it will, we will draw on 
that deposite. The barn-yard manure goes to the near¬ 
est fields, or on some knoll or hill-side. 
Thus, at some length, you have our practice in keep¬ 
ing a farm improving on the soils we occupy. No 
“cross questioning” is necessary to get at the facts; 
and I do not allege that manure is of no value on our 
lands; I merely s&y that plaster and clover, with a 
judicious course of farming, will keep our land improv¬ 
ing without carting any other manure on the soil. 
As to the ten acre field you saw covered with “ about 
as compact a body of fine wheat as possible :” In 1857 
this field was planted with corn, and the crop totally 
destroyed by grubs; so that after planting twice, and 
having the second growth destroyed, we gave up the 
contest with the grubs, and summer-fallowed the field 
1 and put it into wheat. Bid the manure that we put 
