Talks on Manures Part 13

One of the charms and the advantages of agriculture is that a farmer must think for himself. He should study principles, and apply them in practice, as best suits his circ.u.mstances.

My own method of managing manure gives me many of the advantages claimed for the Deacon's method, and John Johnston's, also.

"I do not understand what you mean," said the Deacon; "my method differs essentially from that of John Johnston."

"True," I replied, "you use your winter-made manure in the spring; while Mr. Johnston piles his, and gets it thoroughly fermented; but to do this, he has to keep it until the autumn, and it does not benefit his corn-crop before the next summer. He loses the use of his manure for a year."

I think my method secures both these advantages. I get my winter-made manure fermented and in good condition, and yet have it ready for spring crops.

In the first place, I should remark that my usual plan is to cut up all the fodder for horses, cows, and sheep. For horses, I sometimes use long straw for bedding, but, as a rule, I prefer to run everything through a feed-cutter. We do not steam the food, and we let the cows and sheep have a liberal supply of cut corn-stalks and straw, and what they do not eat is thrown out of the mangers and racks, and used for bedding.

I should state, too, that I keep a good many pigs, seldom having less than 50 breeding sows. My pigs are mostly sold at from two to four months old, but we probably average 150 head the year round. A good deal of my manure, therefore, comes from the pig-pens, and from two bas.e.m.e.nt cellars, where my store hogs sleep in winter.

In addition to the pigs, we have on the farm from 150 to 200 Cotswold and grade sheep; 10 cows, and 8 horses. These are our manure makers.

The raw material from which the manure is manufactured consists of wheat, barley, rye, and oat-straw, corn-stalks, corn-fodder, clover and timothy-hay, clover seed-hay, bean-straw, pea-straw, potato-tops, mangel-wurzel, turnips, rape, and mustard. These are all raised on the farm; and, in addition to the home-grown oats, peas, and corn, we buy and feed out considerable quant.i.ties of bran, shorts, fine-middlings, malt-combs, corn-meal, and a little oil-cake. I sell wheat, rye, barley, and clover-seed, apples, and potatoes, and sometimes cabbages and turnips. Probably, on the average, for each $100 I receive from the sale of these crops, I purchase $25 worth of bran, malt-combs, corn-meal, and other feed for animals. My farm is now rapidly increasing in fertility and productiveness. The crops, on the average, are certainly at least double what they were when I bought the farm thirteen years ago; and much of this increase has taken place during the last five or six years, and I expect to see still greater improvement year by year.

"Never mind all that," said the Deacon; "we all know that manure will enrich land, and I will concede that your farm has greatly improved, and can not help but improve if you continue to make and use as much manure."

"I expect to make more and more manure every year," said I. "The larger the crops, the more manure we can make; and the more manure we make, the larger the crops."

The real point of difference between my plan of managing manure, and the plan adopted by the Deacon, is essentially this: I aim to keep all my manure in a compact pile, where it will slowly ferment all winter. The Deacon throws his horse-manure into a heap, just outside the stable door, and the cow-manure into another heap, and the pig-manure into another heap. These heaps are more or less scattered, and are exposed to the rain, and snow, and frost. The horse-manure is quite likely to ferment too rapidly, and if in a large heap, and the weather is warm, it not unlikely "fire-fangs" in the center of the heap. On the other hand, the cow-manure lies cold and dead, and during the winter freezes into solid lumps.

I wheel or cart all my manure into one central heap. The main object is to keep it as compact as possible. There are two advantages in this: 1st, the manure is less exposed to the rain, and (2d), when freezing weather sets in, only a few inches of the external portion of the heap is frozen. I have practised this plan for several years, and can keep my heap of manure slowly fermenting during the whole winter.

But in order to ensure this result, it is necessary to begin making the heap before winter sets in. The plan is this:

Having selected the spot in the yard most convenient for making the heap, collect all the manure that can be found in the sheepyards, sheds, cow and horse stables, pig-pens, and hen-house, together with leaves, weeds, and refuse from the garden, and wheel or cart it to the intended heap. If you set a farm-man to do the work, tell him you want to make a hot-bed about five feet high, six feet wide, and six feet long. I do not think I have ever seen a farm where enough material could not be found, say in November, to make such a heap. And this is all that is needed. If the manure is rich, if it is obtained from animals eating clover-hay, bran, grain, or other food rich in nitrogen, it will soon ferment. But if the manure is poor, consisting largely of straw, it will be very desirable to make it richer by mixing with it bone-dust, blood, hen-droppings, woollen rags, chamber-lye, and animal matter of any kind that you can find.

The richer you can make the manure, the more readily will it ferment.

A good plan is to take the horse or sheep manure, a few weeks previous, and use it for bedding the pigs. It will absorb the liquid of the pigs, and make rich manure, which will soon ferment when placed in a heap.

If the manure in the heap is too dry, it is a good plan, when you are killing hogs, to throw on to the manure all the warm water, hair, blood, intestines, etc. You may think I am making too much of such a simple matter, but I have had letters from farmers who have tried this plan of managing manure, and they say that they can not keep it from freezing.

One reason for this is, that they do not start the heap early enough, and do not take pains to get the manure into an active fermentation before winter sets in. Much depends on this. In starting a fire, you take pains to get a little fine, dry wood, that will burn readily, and when the fire is fairly going, put on larger sticks, and presently you have such a fire that you can burn wood, coal, stubble, sods, or anything you wish. And so it is with a manure-heap. Get the fire, or fermentation, or, more strictly speaking, putrefaction fairly started, and there will be little trouble, if the heap is large enough, and fresh material is added from time to time, of continuing the fermentation all winter.

Another point to be observed, and especially in cold weather, is to keep the sides of the heap straight, and the _top level_. You must expose the manure in the heap as little as possible to frost and cold winds. The rule should be to spread every wheel-barrowful of manure as soon as it is put on the heap. If left unspread on top of the heap, it will freeze; and if afterwards covered with other manure, it will require considerable heat to melt it, and thus reduce the temperature of the whole heap.

It is far less work to manage a heap of manure in this way than may be supposed from my description of the plan. The truth is, I find, in point of fact, that it is _not_ an easy thing to manage manure in this way; and I fear not one farmer in ten will succeed the first winter he undertakes it, unless he gives it his personal attention. It is well worth trying, however, because if your heap should freeze up, it will be, at any rate, in no worse condition than if managed in the ordinary way; and if you do succeed, even in part, you will have manure in good condition for immediate use in the spring.

As I have said before, I keep a good many pigs. Now pigs, if fed on slops, void a large quant.i.ty of liquid manure, and it is not always easy to furnish straw enough to absorb it. When straw and stalks are cut into chaff, they will absorb much more liquid than when used whole. For this reason we usually cut all our straw and stalks. We also use the litter from the horse-stable for bedding the store hogs, and also sometimes, when comparatively dry, we use the refuse sheep bedding for the same purpose. Where the sheep barn is contiguous to the pig-pens, and when the sheep bedding can be thrown at once into the pig-pens or cellar, it is well to use bedding freely for the sheep and lambs, and remove it frequently, throwing it into the pig-pens. I do not want my sheep to be compelled to eat up the straw and corn-stalks too close. I want them to pick out what they like, and then throw away what they leave in the troughs for bedding. Sometimes we take out a five-bushel basketful of these direct from the troughs, for bedding young pigs, or sows and pigs in the pens, but as a rule, we use them first for bedding the sheep, and then afterwards use the sheep bedding in the fattening or store pig-pens.

"And sometimes," remarked the Deacon, "you use a little long straw for your young pigs to sleep on, so that they can bury themselves in the straw and keep warm."

"True," I replied, "and it is not a bad plan, but we are not now talking about the management of pigs, but how we treat our manure, and how we manage to have it ferment all winter."

A good deal of our pig-manure is, to borrow a phrase from the pomologists, "double-worked." It is horse or sheep-manure, used for bedding pigs and cows. It is saturated with urine, and is much richer in nitrogenous material than ordinary manure, and consequently will ferment or putrefy much more rapidly. Usually pig-manure is considered "cold,"

or sluggish, but this doubleworked pig-manure will ferment even more rapidly than sheep or horse-manure alone.

Unmixed cow-manure is heavy and cold, and when kept in a heap by itself out of doors, is almost certain to freeze up solid during the winter.

We usually wheel out our cow-dung every day, and spread on the manure heap.

This is one of the things that needs attention. There will be a constant tendency to put all the cow-dung together, instead of mixing it with the lighter and more active manure from the horses, sheep, and pigs. Spread it out and cover it with some of the more strawy manure, which is not so liable to freeze.

Should it so happen--as will most likely be the case--that on looking at your heap some morning when the thermometer is below zero, you find that several wheel-barrowfuls of manure that were put on the heap the day before, were not spread, and are now crusted over with ice, it will be well to break up the barrowfuls, even if necessary to use a crowbar, and place the frozen lumps of manure on the outside of the heap, rather than to let them lie in the center of the pile. Your aim should be always to keep the center of the heap warm and in a state of fermentation. You do not want the fire to go out, and it will not go out if the heap is properly managed, even should all the sides and top be crusted over with a layer of frozen manure.

During very severe weather, and when the top is frozen, it is a good plan, when you are about to wheel some fresh manure on to the heap, to remove a portion of the frozen crust on top of the heap, near the center, and make a hole for the fresh manure, which should be spread and covered up.

When the heap is high enough, say five feet, we commence another heap alongside. In doing this, our plan is to clean out some of the sheep-sheds or pig-pens, where the manure has acc.u.mulated for some time.

This gives us much more than the daily supply. Place this manure on the outside of the new heap, and then take a quant.i.ty of hot, fermenting, manure from the middle of the old heap, and throw it into the center of the new heap, and then cover it up with the fresh manure. I would put in eight or ten bushels, or as much as will warm up the center of the new heap, and start fermentation. The colder the weather, the more of this hot manure should you take from the old heap--the more the better. Fresh manure should be added to the old heap to fill up the hole made by the removal of the hot manure.

"You draw out a great many loads of manure during the winter," said the Deacon, "and pile it in the field, and I have always thought it a good plan, as you do the work when there is little else to do, and when the ground is frozen."

Yes, this is an improvement on my old plan. I formerly used to turn over the heap of manure in the barn-yard in March, or as soon as fermentation had ceased.

The object of turning the heap is (1st,) to mix the manure and make it of uniform quality; (2d,) to break the lumps and make the manure fine; and (3d,) to lighten up the manure and make it loose, thus letting in the air and inducing a second fermentation. It is a good plan, and well repays for the labor. In doing the work, build up the end and sides of the new heap straight, and keep the top flat. Have an eye on the man doing the work, and see that he breaks up the manure and mixes it thoroughly, and that he _goes to the bottom of the heap_.

My new plan that the Deacon alludes to, is, instead of turning the heap in the yard, to draw the manure from the heap in the yard, and pile it up in another heap in the field where it is to be used. This has all the effects of turning, and at the same time saves a good deal of team-work in the spring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A, B, Manure Heaps; C, D, E, Ridges, 2 ft. apart._]

The location of the manure-heap in the field deserves some consideration. If the manure is to be used for root-crops or potatoes, and if the land is to be ridged, and the manure put in the ridges, then it will be desirable to put the heap on the headland, or, better still, to make two heaps, one on the headland top of the field, and the other on the headland at the bottom of the field, as shown in the annexed engraving.

We draw the manure with a cart, the horse walking between two of the ridges (D), and the wheels of the cart going in C and E. The manure is pulled out at the back end of the cart into small heaps, about five paces apart.

"That is what I object to with you agricultural writers," said the Doctor; "you say 'about five paces,' and sometimes 'about five paces'

would mean 4 yards, and sometimes 6 yards; and if you put 10 tons of manure per acre in the one case, you would put 15 tons in the other--which makes quite a difference in the dose."

The Doctor is right. Let us figure a little. If your cart holds 20 bushels, and if the manure weighs 75 lbs. to the bushel, and you wish to put on 10 tons of manure per acre, or 1,500 bushels, or 13? cart-loads, then, as there are 43,560 square feet in an acre, you want a bushel of manure to 29 square feet, or say a s.p.a.ce 2 yards long, by nearly 5 feet wide.

Now, as our ridges are 2 feet apart, and as our usual plan is to manure 5 ridges at a time, or 12 feet wide, a load of 20 bushels of manure will go over a s.p.a.ce 46 feet long, nearly, or say 15 yards; and so, a load would make 3 heaps, 15 feet apart, and there would be 6? bushels in each heap.

If the manure is to be spread on the surface of the land, there is no necessity for placing the heap on the headland. You can make the heap or heaps. --"Where most convenient," broke in the Deacon. --"No, not by any means," I replied; "for if that was the rule, the men would certainly put the heap just where it happened to be the least trouble for them to draw and throw off the loads."

The aim should be to put the heap just where it will require the least labor to draw the manure on to the land in the spring.

On what we call "rolling," or hilly land, I would put the heap on the highest land, so that in the spring the horses would be going down hill with the full carts or wagons. Of course, it would be very unwise to adopt this plan if the manure was not drawn from the yards until spring, when the land was soft; but I am now speaking of drawing out the manure in the winter, when there is sleighing, or when the ground is frozen. No farmer will object to a little extra labor for the teams in the winter, if it will save work and time in the spring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Field, 4020 Rods, showing Position of two Heaps of Manure, a, a._]

If the land is level, then the heap or heaps should be placed where the least distance will have to be traveled in drawing the manure from the heap to the land. If there is only one heap, the best point would be in the center of the field. If two heaps, and the field is longer than it is broad, say 20 rods wide, and 40 rods long, then the heaps should be made as shown on the previous page.

If the field is square, say 40 40 rods, and we can have four heaps of manure, then, other things being equal, the best points for the heaps are shown in the annexed figure: