94 , 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[March, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 123. 
My big underdrain works grandly. It is 
pleasant to see a ten-inch pipe discharging 
water to its full capacity. It empties into an 
open ditch on the side of the road. The Dea¬ 
con has a shallow, open drain that runs into 
the same ditch. This drain of the Deacon’s is 
the natural outlet to the drainage of seventy or 
eighty acres of land, and during rainy weather 
and spring thaws there is a great body of water 
running through it; so much so that it spreads 
over several acres, and not unfrequently gets so 
high as to overflow the road. My big under¬ 
drain is the natural outlet to the drainage of 
about twenty acres, and I have diverted into it 
the drainage of some thirty or forty acres 
more, including the Deacon’s “ duck pond.” 
Now, what I want to say is this: The Dea¬ 
con’s open ditch only discharges the surface 
water. It runs for a week or two and then 
stops, leaving more or less water standing on 
the surface of the land, and the whole soil sat¬ 
urated with water, which is only got rid of by 
evaporation. Much of the land is not dry 
enough to plow before May or June, and a few 
hot days will then bake the “ clay spots ” until 
it is impossible to get them into good tilth. 
Said the Deacon when I first commenced to 
drain: “ If everybody should drain their land 
as you propose the rivers could not carry off 
the water, and our cities would be destroyed 
by the floods.” 
I told him that underdraining would do 
much to prevent floods, and this big underdrain 
of mine is an illustration in point. The first 
week of last January we had a great rain. It 
flooded the country and saturated all the land. 
The water came down with a rush from the 
Deacon’s surface drain. From my under¬ 
drained land there was no surface water; it all 
came through the underdrain. But mark the 
difference. In a week or ten days we had 
freezing weather, and not a drop of water came 
from the Deacon’s surface drain ; but my big 
underdrain kept discharging a steady stream 
for days and weeks. The underdrains are from 
to 5 feet deep, and of course they are far 
below the frost. The water from springs and 
from the subsoil continues to flow into these 
drains all winter, or at any rate as long as there 
is any excess of water in the subsoil. On the 
Deacon’s land no water will drain off during 
frosty weather. The land, both on the surface 
aud in the subsoil, will be saturated. 
Next spring, when the rains descend, they 
will fall on this soil, already full of water, and 
will pass ofl in a rush to the streams below. 
On the other hand, the rain on the drained land 
will slowly sink into the dry subsoil and will 
pass off gradually. 
“ I have just got a letter, Deacon,” I said, 
“ that I think will please you. In the fall of 
1872 I sent three bushels of our white wheat to 
A. L. Clark & Son, of Hampshire Co., Mass. 
They sowed it on If acre of land that had 
raised three successive crops of tobacco. It 
was sown September 12th and cut July 21st. 
The yield was 5,250 lbs., or 87f bushels. The 
land was accurately measured, and contained 
289 rods. The yield, therefore, was 48f bush¬ 
els per acre. This is not bad for old 
Massachusetts.” 
“We exhibited the wheat,” they write, “ at 
the Hampshire, Hampden, and Franklin Coun¬ 
ties Fair, held in Northampton, and were 
awarded a premium for it and also for flour 
made from it. We sold 12 bushels for seed at 
$4 per bushel. We are haying the wheat made 
into Graham flour, and selling it at $5.50 per 
100 lbs. We drew five large and one small 
two-horse wagon loads of sheaves from the 
field, and the straw is worth $20 per ton at 
the barn.” 
That is a big story. I told Ellwanger & 
Barry that Massachusetts had beaten them, and 
they said they would try again. It won’t do 
to have New England raise more wheat per 
acre than Western New York. Just figure up 
what this If acre of wheat brought in, assum¬ 
ing that a bushel of wheat would give 100 lbs. 
of straw. 
Receipts from 1% acre of wheat: 
12 bushels, sold for seed, at $-1.$48.00 
75>4 bushels, say 4,379 lbs., Graham flour. 240.84 
8,750 lbs. straw, at $20 per ton. 87.50 
$376.34 
“That is more money,” says the Deacon, 
“ than some of us made last year from our 
whole farm.” 
There is money to be made in farming yet, 
if we only raise big crops. We can raise just 
as good wheat now and as much per acre as 
we ever could, provided we make the land dry, 
rich,’and clean. 
I wish our young farmers would wake up to 
this fact. I wish they could feel that there is 
as much to be learned and as much to be done 
in agriculture as there ever was. There is a 
grand field for all the intelligence, skill, science, 
energy, and experience they can bring to bear. 
Any real improvement in an agricultural im¬ 
plement or machine is welcomed by thousands 
and tens of thousands of farmers. Good breeds 
of horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry are in 
great and increasing demand. 
“But will it continue?” asked the Deacon, 
who seemed to be tired of this kind of talk. 
Certainly it will continue. The demand will 
be greater and greater as the general character 
of our agriculture improves. The world needs 
more and better meat and will be willing to 
pay for it. 
There are on my table some fifty or more let¬ 
ters from farmers in different parts of the 
country. I like to get letters, but I do not like 
to answer them; and I fear a great many of 
my correspondents are offended. 
“Read a few of them,” says the Deacon. 
Here is one from J. G. Smith, of Montana 
Territory: “ What will you charge me for fifty 
head of Cotswold ewes and two rams ? Our 
country here is, I think, peculiarly adapted for 
sheep—a very dry atmosphere, with open win¬ 
ters and abundance of good feed. There is not 
over 10,000 head of sheep in the Territory, and 
they are driven here from Salt Lake and Oregon 
for the butchers, selling at from $8 tD $12 per 
head. The country is overrun with horned 
stock, with no demand except for home con¬ 
sumption. Flour sells for $4 per barrel; oats 
35c., barley 50c., and wheat 40c. per bushel; 
dressed pigs 8c. to 10c. per pound. The trio 
of Essex I got from you are doing well.” 
“ That is a very interesting letter,” says the 
Deacon; “ what did you tell him ? ” 
I told him he had better buy some common 
ewes in the Territory and cross them with a 
well-wooled, rather small Cotswold ram, and 
not go so extensively into the raising of high¬ 
bred sheep. One or two crosses would make 
an immense improvement in the native sheep. 
“ Which is the best way to use the droppings 
from the hen-house?” asks the next letter. 
“ Mix them with ashes and plaster, and put 
them on the hills of corn is my plan,” says the 
Deacon. 
“Mine,” I replied, “is to put them into the 
manure heap.” 
The next letter asks several questions in re¬ 
gard to the management of manure. 
“ I let mine stay in the yards aud sheds until 
spring,” says the Deacon, “ and then draw it on 
to sod land and plow it under for corn. I think 
i I make twice as much manure in proportion to 
| the number of animals as you do.” 
j “ Yes; twice the bulk,” I replied, “ but not 
; half the value. One ton of my manure is 
worth more than four tons of yours. Your 
manure consists principally of rotten straw and 
water—or at least this would be the case if the 
straw was rotten. The way I manage my 
manure the present winter is this: I cut up 
every pound of straw and stalks and hay and 
clover-seed straw with an eight-horse power 
machine. I keep 7 horses, 10 cows. 75 pigs, 
and 120 sheep.” 
I “I thought you had more pigs,” said the 
Deacon. 
These are all I have wintered over. I sell 
my young pigs at two months old, and never 
I sold so close as last fall. If I have good luck 
I shall have over 200 young pigs in the spring. 
The pigs are my best manure makers. The 
great trouble is to get bedding enough. I could 
make a great pile of manure if I could use straw 
as freely as many of our farmers do. My two 
principal objects are to save all the liquid and 
to keep the manure slowly fermenting in a 
heap all winter. The horse-stall is of course 
cleaned out twice every day, but instead of 
throwing the manure out of doors to be wet 
with rain and snow we throw it into an empty 
stall by the door. Here it remains until we 
have a load of it. We then take this dry horse 
manure and use it for bedding the pigs. The 
dry manure from the sheep sheds is used in the 
same way. In the center of the barn-yard is a 
large basin with an old oil-barrel sunk in the 
ground for a tank. In the fall I tell my men 
to “ start a hot-bed ” in the basin. This is an 
important point. If they had their own way 
they would scatter the manure all over the 
basin, where it would be exposed to the rains 
and be frozen in winter. When put in a com¬ 
pact heap, and the manure leveled down every 
day as it is wheeled to the heap, an active fer¬ 
mentation is kept up all winter. The sides and 
top freeze a little, but the center is a mass of 
steaming-hot manure. There is no loss of am¬ 
monia. We put planks from the barn doors 
on to the heap and wheel the manure on top 
and spread it. If you do not spread it at once 
it will freeze. It looks now as though this heap 
of manure would be in splendid condition for 
root crops next spring without turning. I pro¬ 
pose to sow 14 acres of mangel-wurzels where 
I had corn last year, and shall use this manure 
for them. I shall spread the manure on the 
surface, harrow thoroughly so as to mix it with 
the soil, then plow it under and drill in the 
mangels on the flat. 
“Would not the hen manure,” asked the 
Deacon, “be good for mangels?” 
Certainly it would. Nothing better. But it 
is a drop in the bucket. And when I put it in 
the manure pile not a pound of it is lost. It 
finds its way to the field, and I have no trouble 
with it. Besides, it is a capital thing to start 
fermentation in the manure pile or liot-bed. 
Depend upon it, this is the right way to use 
