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SEED CORN, New York State grown from se¬ 
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American Agriculturist, January 27, 19^ 
Lowly, It’s True, Yet Fundamental • 
The Handling and Use of Farm Manure—By Jared Van Wagenen, Jr, 
Gnat Norttiern Seed Go. 
I AM moved to write briefly regarding 
one of the lowliest and yet orie of 
the most important and fundamental 
of agricultural labors, viz., the handling 
and use of manure. I approach this 
topic ndt as one giving proper informa¬ 
tion, but rather 
as one who has 
become a little 
shaky and uncer¬ 
tain as to his 
-own practice and 
preaching, and 
who would frank¬ 
ly like to ask the 
advice and expe¬ 
rience ’ of other 
men. If there is 
one phase of 
farm manage¬ 
ment for which, 
both by paternal 
training and by 
experience, I have 
a vast liking and 
J. VAN WAGENEN, JR. interest, it is this 
very humble sub¬ 
ject. My father was a good farmer, 
and from my earliest youth, by precept 
and example, he impressed upon me the 
Doctrine (he didn’t call it by that 
name) of the Conservation of Manure. 
It is a homely tale, but absolutely 
true, that in dry, snappy winter weath¬ 
er, I was frequently detailed to go into 
the snow - covered, 
hard - packed barn - 
yard with a mattock 
or ax and loosen up 
the fresh, frozen 
cow di’opping, so 
that they might be 
loaded on the sleigh. 
Anyone who has ever- 
engaged in this low¬ 
ly occupation, will 
remember how a 
single sharp crack 
of the ax will result 
in a clear-cut sep¬ 
aration of the fro- . 
zen mass from the 
icy bed below. More¬ 
over, the job has in 
it certain elements 
of sport, a sort of 
game, if you will, ever so much more 
inspiring than, say, running a buck¬ 
saw or turning grindstone. I think it 
might be reckoned a sort of barnyard 
polo played on foot instead of horse¬ 
back. 
One Way to Measure Its Value 
I believe my father used to assure 
me that each one of these frozen 
mounds would grow a hill of corn, an 
estimate of their value a good deal 
higher than would be borne out by the 
cold findings of chemical analysis. With 
a boyhood training of that kind regard¬ 
ing manure, it is small wonder that I 
still have a very great regard for the 
humble material, and like to spell it 
with a capital M. I sometimes say that 
the corner-stone of American agricul¬ 
ture is represented, not by a bag of 
commercial fertilizer, but by a pile of 
manure. 
I think it must have been at least a 
dozen years ago, when Dean Cook 
raised a veritable furor by somewhere 
declaring in a public address that in 
the mind of many dairymen, the real 
object of keeping a cow is her manure, 
and that her milk is only a by-product. 
It was one of those striking epigrams 
that carry far, and later he had to do 
a good deal of explaining. It seems to 
me that very few agricultural state¬ 
ments ever aroused as much comment 
and interest and resentment as did this 
happy flash of the Dean’s. Well, I must 
confess that my own mental outlook al¬ 
most puts me in the class of dairymen 
to whom Cook referred. 
My memory and experience in agri¬ 
cultural audiences goes back to the 
days when the manure pile under the 
barn eaves was the favorite mark of 
every agricultural exhorter. We never 
failed to wallop it soundly. We used 
it as did the old-time temperance lec¬ 
turer who was accustomed to hire the 
village drunkard to sit on the platform 
with him and be held up before 
the audience as a “horrible example.” 
Even good Professor Roberts used to 
tell of the farms he had seen where it 
was an open question if it would be 
easier to move the manure pile or 
move the barn. 
One Good From Sanitary Inspection 
Well, this one-time pertinent matter 
has largely lost its importance. The 
classical manure pile beneath the eaves 
has pretty well vanished from the milk¬ 
shipping districts. I have small regard 
for the average city milk inspector, and 
a large proportion of the IdOi odd rules 
that the New York Board of Health 
has established have very little bearing 
on the question of good milk—yet one 
great service the so-called sanitary in¬ 
spection has accomplished — it has 
brought about a general clean-up of 
barnyards such as no amount of mere 
exhortation by press or platform would 
ever have accomplished. We have been 
pretty thoroughly reformed by strong- 
arm methods, for which let us be prop¬ 
erly thankful. It may fairly be said 
that the daily drawing of manure, or 
at least its removal, to 100 feet from 
the stable, has become the rule rather 
than the exception. 
I think I have now come to the ques¬ 
tions that I had in mind to ask—Where 
shall we use this manure and how and 
when shall we apply it? 
Of course, in the great majority of 
cases in the East, when we think about 
manure, we are thinking about the 
POLO IN THE BARN YARD 
M ilo D. Campbell, president of the National Milk Producers 
Federation, tells a good story about one of his neighbors up in 
Micjiigan. It seems that this neighbor lived near another farmer 
who was noted for his closeness, and being rather ii-ritated by this 
characteristic in a business transaction he rather emphatically re¬ 
ferred to the fai’iner as “the most manuriest cuss” he had ever seen! 
Mr. Van Wagenen has written on this page a “most manuriest” 
article and has made the very good sug’gestion that some short 
letters, giving your experience with this essential practice in good 
farming would be. worth while. All right, let’s have some. 
Incidentally, because there is so little opportunity for recreation 
on the fai’in, we call especial attention to Mr. Van Wagenen’s sug¬ 
gestion for playing “barnyard polo!” 
dairy farm, and by common usage we 
dairy farmers of this i-egion have pretty 
nearly standai’dized on a three-crop (not 
a three-year) rotation, this being corn, 
followed by oats, or better, oats, peas 
and barley in mixture with the grass 
seed and then the meadow mown until 
in the judgment of the owner it needs 
breaking up and putting into corn 
again. This is a very simple, yet 
widely used, and, I feel sure, sound 
rotation for most dairy farms. 
The Choice of Where to Place It 
Well, that leaves us only two choices 
as to where to put the manure. It must 
be used either on the new seeding or 
on the old meadows that are to be or 
have been plowed for corn. 
Green nitrogenous manure had bet¬ 
ter be kept away from oats, unless it be 
on pretty poor land, because oats, make 
trouble enough with lodging, even with 
the fertility left over by the corn crop. 
As to whether we shall use manure to 
grow new seeding or to grow bigger 
corn, I don’t believe it is a vitally im¬ 
portant matter. Our old practice, and 
one very common throughout the State, 
was to put the manure on the ground 
where corn was to be planted. More 
recently I find we are swinging over, at 
least in part, to the practice of spread¬ 
ing it on our new seeding or best year¬ 
ling meadows. I think I can give some 
good reasons for using this method. 
For one thing, theoretically, at least, 
there is less likelihood of loss of plant 
food when manure is spread on a living 
sod rather than on raw, fall-plowed 
land. But no one knows just how much 
there may be to this idea. 
Another reason is that if manure is 
full of weed seeds, especially yellow or 
wild mustard, which is one of our most 
troublesome weeds in both oats and 
corn, it will be better to spread on a 
meadow and let these seeds germinate 
and perish harmlessly, instead of giving 
them a fine seed bed along with the 
corn. Yet another reason for using it 
on new seeding is that the clover plant 
is so fundamental to agriculture, both 
as a nitrogen gatherer and soil im- 
pi’over, and as a source of protein in 
the ration, that we may well devote our 
greatest energy to getting the maxi¬ 
mum results from this plant. 
Sometimes, however, there is a rather 
seriou.s difficulty in spreading manure 
on the meadows. On Hillside Farm we 
grow a good many oats and generally 
a few acres of wheat, and so have more 
straw than we usually know what to do 
with. If coarse, strong manure is 
thickly spread on meadows without rot¬ 
ting, a good deal of it may rake up 
again with the .first crop of hay. 
Are We Justified in Piling Manure? 
Now I am coming to the point re¬ 
garding which I wish to ask advice: 
Are we ever justified in piling manure 
in large piles on the field to be spread 
later on? 
For a gi'eat while I have been accus¬ 
tomed to say—making it a sort of a 
categorical statement—that the proper 
way to handle manure was out of a 
water-tight gutter behind the !cows, 
into a water-tight wagon box and then 
spread upon the land, regardless of 
weather conditions, every day in the 
year except Sunday. I say “except 
Sunday” because as a churchman I be¬ 
lieve in cutting down chores on that 
day to the irreducible minimum and be¬ 
cause outside of that the dairyman 
must make an ef¬ 
fort to practice as 
far as possible his 
greatly broken day 
of rest. For years 
in practice as well 
as preaching I lived 
up to this exhorta¬ 
tion. 
Right here is 
where I am becom¬ 
ing a little irregu- 
lar and shaky. 
There , are two or 
three reasons why I 
am asking questions 
about this. For one 
thing, I cannot quite 
rid myself of an un- 
e a s y feeling that 
where manure is 
spread on deep snow, or perhaps worse, 
on a bed of ice covering the fields, and 
then there comes a thaw and rain and 
a rush of water everywhere, I am 
afraid I say that some of my pi’ecious 
plant food goes merrily to the sea. I 
am sure that a coffee-colored stream, 
goes from the field. Of course, the 
wise men tell us in rather learned 
terms that this is mainly coloring mat¬ 
ter an tannin. But, like the Scots¬ 
man, “I ha’ me (loots.” 
The unfortunate truth about manure 
is that it is almost impossible to handle 
it without some loss. We lose if spread 
under some conditions, at least. We 
surely lose if piled in the open. Even 
if sheltered from the weather, we lose 
nitrogen. 
Just a word to give a couple of rea¬ 
sons for sometimes piling in the field. 
We ought to spread manure more 
widely, smaller application and more 
frequently. A manure spreader will 
do a better job and make a load go 
further than would be possible by the 
most careful hand-spreading. More¬ 
over, I am not sure that the practice of 
piling really requires much more labor. 
It is a debatable question if we cannot 
pitch off a load of manure and pitch it 
on the spreader again about as quickly 
as we can do a really careful job of 
hand-spreading. Moreover, if it is on 
new seeding, the manure spread by 
power will not be nearly so trouble¬ 
some by raking up in the hay next 
year. 
At present we are spreading most of 
our daily product of manure. Later, 
as the snow becomes deep, we shall put 
it in large piles on the knolls away 
from pools of water and where the 
snow will not bank around it. 
Next spring, as soon as the ground 
becomes firm enough and before work 
on the land begins, this manure will be 
rapidly handled with a spreader. 
T know that this is not really ortho¬ 
dox. I am not even cock sure of my 
own position, and am willing to take 
advice. I am merely stating the matter 
as I happen to see it now. 
