THE CULTIVATOR. 23 
bushel ofroots per day, with a little wheat bran, in addi¬ 
tion to their dry fodder. 
Making Manure. —Much attention is given to this 
branch of farming operations. The manure from the 
cattle and horses is pushed through scuttles into the cel¬ 
lar under the barn, and a layer of peat muck thrown 
over it three or four times a week. The barn-yard is so 
formed that none of the manure is wasted. Much ma¬ 
nure is also made from hogs, eighteen or twenty of which 
are kept principally for this purpose. They are fed with 
the waste of public houses, &c., brought from Boston— 
on which food they get very fat. The pork covers all 
the expense of keeping, leaving the manure clear gain. 
The hogs are kept with a full supply of marsh mud, peat, 
&c., which being rooted over and mixed with their ex¬ 
crements, becomes good manure. The pens are mostly 
under roofing. We noticed a contrivance about the sties 
which we do not remember to have seen before, except 
on the farm of J. W. Haines, in Hallowell, Maine. The 
sty consists of an upper and a lower story, and the hogs 
resort to either as they find most conducive to their com¬ 
fort and convenience, by means of an inclined plane , 
across which cleats are fastened to answer the purpose of 
steps and to keep the hogs from slipping down. The up¬ 
per story, which is always dry, is generally used by the 
hogs for a bed-chamber —their work is done below, and in 
very hot weather, they go there to cool their bodies in 
the moist earth. 
Besides availing himself of all the means of making 
manure from his stock, Mr. Newhall has another manu¬ 
factory which is of great importance. From some large 
vats which have been provided at several of the large 
hotels in Boston, he obtains annually about sixty hogs¬ 
heads of urine. The mode of using this, is to make it into 
compost with peat-muck. The muck is kept in the barn 
cellar, and the vehicle in which the urine is brought is 
driven into the barn, and the liquid is conducted by means 
of pipes to the muck below. Each hogshead of urine is 
sufficient to saturate a cord of muck, which is thus made 
—as experience has amply proved—of more value than 
the same quantity of any other manure used on the farm. 
Buildings. —All the buildings are convenient and well 
and substantially made. The barn, (of which we hope 
to give a cut hereafter,) is one of the best we have seen. 
It is 120 feet long and 40 feet wide. The floor runs 
through the whole length, leaving the bay on one side 
and the stalls for cattle and horses on the other. The 
cattle stand on a platform raised a few inches from the 
floor, and slightly sloping backwards, and of such a length 
that the manure drops off behind it; by which means the 
cattle are kept clean and dry. Between the manger from 
which the cattle eat, and the platform on which they 
stand, is the watering-trough, which runs through all 
the stalls. Here the stock, whenever it is desired, are 
watered from a pump which is placed at one end of the 
barn. We omitted to mention, in our notice of Mr. 
French’s farm last month, that his cattle are also watered 
in the same manner. 
There is a deep cellar under the whole barn, a portion 
of which serves for the safe-keeping and manufacture 
of manure as already described, and the remainder as a 
store-house for vegetables. The space assigned for ve¬ 
getables is divided into stalls or bins, arranged along one 
side of an alley, for the convenience of taking out the 
roots. There are scuttles in the barn floor, through 
which the vegetables are dropped directly from carts in¬ 
to the bins. The barn doors are made to slide on iron 
rails, instead of being hung on hinges. This is a plan 
which has prevailed considerably in Massachusetts for a 
few years past, and we think preferable to any we have 
seen. The door rests on cast-iron wheels, which run on 
the rail. The rails are cast with a small ridge in the 
centre, and the wheels with a corresponding groove. 
Thus the door keeps its exact place without any trouble, 
and runs very easily. 
Fences. —From the system pursued with his stock, 
(soiling) Mr. Newhall has need of but few interior fen¬ 
ces. Those required are heavy walls—the stones for 
which are found on the farm, and they were formerly in 
so great abundance that it was necessary to dig them out 
before the land could be tilled. 
Sowing Grass-seed. —Mr. Newhall decidedly prefers 
the fall for sowing grass-seed. He thinks August too 
early for sowing on his farm, as there is sometimes a 
drouth after this time in the year which kills the young 
grass. He has been very successful in late sowing. He 
showed us a beautiful piece of sward which was sowed 
down on the seventh of October, 1843; and the past year 
he has sown still later. We think so late sowing suc¬ 
ceeds better on his gravelly soil, than it would do on 
clay land, or that which is more liable to be thrown by 
frost. 
Fruit-trees. —Fruit, particularly apples and pears, 
is a considerable object on this farm. Besides having 
an abundance for home-consumption, three hundred dol¬ 
lars worth were sold the past year, among which were 
eight barrels of Bartlett pears, which brought fifty dol¬ 
lars. Mr. Newhall has a large collection of cherries, 
plums, grapes, and the smaller fruits. He showed us 
some of the finest Isabella and Catawba grapes we have 
met with in this latitude. Several of his pears are also 
very fine. We were shown specimens of Beurre Diel, 
Seckel, St. Germain, Napoleon, &c., which were excel¬ 
lent. 
Mr. Newhall showed us a lot of pear trees imported 
from France and Germany, grafted on quince stocks, and 
cultivated at the distance of only four by five feet apart. 
The trees are kept trimmed in the shape of a distaff— 
what is called in France the Quenouille form—a mode 
which we are told succeeds well with these dwarf stocks. 
The trees are brought very early to bearing, and it is 
said as much, and as good fruit is obtained in this way 
for a given extent of land, as by standard planting: 
though none of the dwarf trees are as long lived as those 
grafted in their own species and cultivated in the usual 
manner. 
Remarks. —Comment on the above facts seems scarce¬ 
ly necessary, yet we cannot omit to call attention to the 
great amount of products which Mr. Newhall obtains 
compared with many farms containing hundreds of acres 
each. Here is a farm of only sixty acres, which, besides 
affording three hundred dollars worth of fruit annually, 
and leaving a large portion of it for merely ornamental 
grounds, supports more stock than most farms of twice 
or thrice its extent. A striking example is here furnish¬ 
ed of the fallacy of the idea that agriculture cannot be 
prosecuted to any extent or advantage without a large 
farm. 
SUBSOIL PLOWING. 
Col. Sherwood, of Auburn, made use of the subsoil 
plow the past season on fifteen acres. A part of the sub¬ 
soiled land was planted to corn, and a part sown with 
wheat in the fall. The soil was loamy, and the subsoil 
hard clay and gravel. He used the subsoil plow of Bug¬ 
gies, Nourse & Mason. It required four oxen to draw it, 
and to work to the best advantage at the depth it was run 
in this case, which was one foot, Col. Sherwood thinks 
there ought to be six oxen. The team worked over 
from an acre, to an acre and a quarter per day. The 
ground had not been plowed for thirty years. It was na¬ 
turally wet, so much so that in a wet time, the water 
[would stand on it to the injury of the grass. The effect 
| of the subsoiling was to render the soil and subsoil so fri¬ 
able, that the water immediately found its way through, 
and though a portion of the past season was very wet, the 
water at no time remained on or so near the surface as to 
do the least damage to the crop. That part which was 
put to corn, was first planted on the 20th of May, but the 
seed failed, and it was planted again on the last day of 
May and first day of June, and grew so vigorously that it 
got ripe as soon as other corn in the neighborhood. Se¬ 
veral strips of twenty to thirty feet wide were left 
through the field, not subsoiled. The difference in favor 
of the subsoiled portion, was very obvious in the ranker 
growth and larger size of the corn on that part—it was so 
plain that it might be seen to a row. The different por¬ 
tions were not measured separately at harvest time. The 
effect of subsoiling on the wheat crop, cannot be told at 
present. 
