THE CULTIVATOR. 
April 
106 
A stock of 60 to 70 head of cattle is stabled most 
of the time, night and day, in the winter, and the ma¬ 
nure is thrown into cellars underneath, the bottoms of 
which are covered with peat mud, 2 or 3 feet deep, in 
order fully to absorb all the liquids from the manure. 
The floor upon which the cattle stand, is 4 or 5 inches 
higher than the passage behind, and the planks are 
just long enough for them to stand or lie down com¬ 
fortably, which keeps them perfectly clean. Immedi¬ 
ately behind them, is a trench, some 12 to 16 inches 
wide, and the thickness of a plank lower than the pas¬ 
sage way, which, except in the very coldest weather, 
is filled with peat daily, in order to absorb the urine ; 
and this and the solid excrements go into the cellar to¬ 
gether, by which arrangement the compost is most per¬ 
fectly intermingled. * 
The cellars at the time of my visit, were full to over¬ 
flowing, and the workmen had commenced carting out 
their contents. While doing this, more peat-mud is 
added if thought advisable; the intention being to use 
two parts of this material to one of manure. The 
compost is laid up in square, compact heaps, well cov¬ 
ered with peat or loam, and mostly used when a year 
old ; it being deemed of importance that the gases shall 
be fully developed and absorbed by the peat before it 
is applied to the soil, whereby all evaporation or w^aste 
is prevented. 
The pasturage is deficient for this large stock of cat¬ 
tle, the whole farm containing but 160 acres; and it is 
therefore necessary to feed them through the summer, 
mostly in the barn, and for this purpose, clover, corn, 
early rye, &.C., are sown, to cut and feed green. The 
cattle have, however, a small pasture to range upon a 
few hours daily for exercise. The manure heap is in¬ 
creased greatly by this summer feeding, peat-mud be¬ 
ing thrown into the trenches freely, every day. 
Mr. Phinney had the misfortune to loose his house 
and extensive piggery last summer by fire, and he is 
not doing much just now in the way of breeding and 
rearing hogs. After the new house is finished, he will 
put up a new piggery, and resume this important de¬ 
partment of his farming. He feels out of his element 
about these days, from being deprived of the valuable 
assistance, formerly rendered so cheerfully, by his 
friends the excellent Mackays and Suffolks, in manu¬ 
facturing compost at the rate of eight to ten loads 
each, annually. As it is however, a stranger walking 
over the farm, vronders what is to be done with all that 
manure, as he encounters at every turn a huge pile of 
it. About a thousand loads are made annually on the 
farm, besides an occasional purchase in Boston, as for 
instance: 15 or 20 tons of refuse salt fish—of which 
he showed me a bill just received—which is mixed 
through the heaps. There are some thirty acres under 
the plow, annually, upon which this amount of manure 
is spread. 
Field Cultivation. —The soil of this farm was, 
originally, a thin loam, resting upon a hard, gravelly 
subsoil. Mr. Phinney early became convinced of the 
importance of securing and preserving the vegetable 
matter of the inverted sod, in order to supply, as spee¬ 
dily as possible, that which was most wanting in his 
soil—vegetable substance. It was the universal prac¬ 
tice among farmers, vdien he commenced, to plow, 
cross-plow and harrow their sod-lands, thus exposing 
the vegetable matter of the turf to the dissipating in¬ 
fluence of sun and wind, and almost entirely losing its. 
value. By this means a great part of the object of 
plowing was entirely subverted—what was the surface 
before plowing was brought to the surface again, and 
the lower stratum, which should, by one careful plow¬ 
ing, have been left on the surface to undergo the ameli¬ 
orating and fertilizing action of the atmosphere, was 
returned to its lifeless and unfertile bed, receiving little 
or no benefit by the operation. Believing this to be an 
error in practice, he instituted an accurate experiment 
to ascertain the amount of purely vegetable matter in 
an acre of sward-land, of very moderate fertility. 
This experiment, although made some twenty years 
ago, is still possessed of so much interest, and detailed 
with so much accuracy, and is, withal, so perfect a 
specimen of what the details of farming, for the press, 
should be, that I give below his own account of it:— 
“ In May, 1829, the field having laid three years to 
grass, and the crop of hay so light as to be worth not 
more than the expense of making, with a view of as¬ 
certaining the quantity of vegetable matter upon the 
surface, I took a single foot square of green sward, 
and after separating the roots and tops of the grasses 
from the loam and vegetable mould, it was found, on 
weighing, to contain nine ounces of clear vegetable 
substance, giving, at that rate, over twelve and a quar¬ 
ter tons to the acre. This convinced me of the im¬ 
portance of taking some course by which this valuable 
treasure might be turned to good account. That a 
great part of this mass of vegetable matter is exposed 
to useless waste, by the usual mode of plowing, cross- 
plowing, and harrowing, must be obvious to any one. 
In order, therefore, to secure this, as well as the light 
vegetable mould at and near the surface, which is lia¬ 
ble to waste from the same causes, I had two acres of 
the green-sward of this field turned over with the plow 
as smoothly as possible. After removing the out-side 
furrow slices into the centre of the plow-land, and 
thereby effecting the double purpose of covering the va¬ 
cant space in the middle, and preventing ridges at the 
sides and ends, the field was rolled hard, with a loaded 
roller, by which the uneven parts of the furrow were 
pressed down and the whole made smooth. It was 
then harrowed lengthwise the furrows, with a horse 
harrow, but so lightly as not to disturb the sod. 
Twenty cart loads of compost manure, made by mixing 
two parts of peat-mud, with one of stable dung, were 
then spread on each acre. It was then harrowed again, 
as before, and the poorer part of the soil, which had 
been turned up, and remained upon the surface, was 
thereby mixed with the compost manure. Corn was 
then planted in drills upon the furrow, the rows being 
at the usual distance, and parallel with the furrows. 
At hoeing time the surface was stirred by running a 
light plow between the rows, but not so deep, at this or 
the subsequent hoeing, as to disturb the sod. What 
Mr. Lorain calls the 1 savage practice’of hilling up the 
corn, was cautiously avoided. 
“ As the season advanced, I carefully watched the 
progress of my corn-field. In the early part of the 
season it did not exhibit a very promising appearance; 
but as soon as the roots had extended into the enrich¬ 
ing matter beneath, and began to expand in the decom¬ 
posing sward, which had now become mellow, and 
more minutely divided by the fermentation of the con¬ 
fined vegetable substances beneath, than it possibly 
could have been by plow or hoe, the growth became 
vigorous, and the crop, in the opinion of those who ex¬ 
amined the field, not less than seventy bushels of corn 
to the acre. As soon as the corn was harvested, the 
stubble was loosened up by running a light horse plow 
lengthwise, through the rows, the surface then smoothed 
with a bush-harrow, and one bushel of rye, with a suf¬ 
ficient quantity of herd’s-grass and red-top seed, to the 
acre, was then sowed, the ground again harrowed and 
rolled. The crop of rye was harvested in July follow¬ 
ing, and the two acres yielded sixty-nine and a half 
bushels of excellent grain, and over five tons of straw. 
The grass seed, sowed with the rye, took well, and the 
present season I mowed, what those who secured the 
crop, judged to be two and a half tons of the very best 
of hay from each acre. 
