The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1877-03-27
THE FARM AND HOUSEHOLD.
Farm Topics for Spring.

The lengthenng days again remind US that
sprlng is approaching when the farmer must
begin his usual routine of agricultural opera
lions, and when few hints may not be amIss.
be saved. Take then hen manure from the
hen house and compost it very early in the
spring, with an equal bulk of swamp mud or
loan, With sprinkling of plaster, and give it
sufficient time to heat slightly, and pitch it over
as often as needful to keep it from burning,
giving it sufficient time to become mell0wed
before it is used in spring. Take all the ashes
that you may have saved since last sdring,
mix quarter or one-half of the bulk of bone
meal in a moasses hogshead with them, wet
down not excessively, cover the top with two or
three inches of loan or dry swamp mud, to
keep the grasses from escaping, let it remain
till wanted in the spring. then mix it We II with
the composted hen manure, and you will
have strong, reliable fertilizer to strew in the
burrows of your fodder corn, or drop in your
cabbage hills, or corn hills. or to sow and har-
row in when you SOW your wheat, or TO use in
almost any other place where manure is needed
for quick staff
AS stock raising has not yet deprecated as
most all there farm interests have, it should be
the care of the farmer to raise what fodder he
can for that purpose. Turn over in the spring
all the dry, poor land that you have in your
fields that will not pryduce ton of grass to an
acre, and plant to fodder corn. in burrows,
three feet apart. The cultivator run between
the rows lew tunes Is all the cultivation
necessary. Cut up when sufficiently matured,
bind in bundles and shock in the field to re.
main till duly cured for the barn.
AS the potato takes little else from the soil
but potash, L consider it not so exhausting to
the soil as crop of oats or wheat. Of late
years have followed the corn crop, where the
land has been well MANFRED, broadcast, with
early rose potatoes, realizidg twice the profit
therefrom, when potatoes are only fifty
cents per bushel, than can be gained from oats
or wheat, with far less depreciation of soil.
Sow down to grass seed at early digging time,
or the following spring with grass seed and
oats, to be cut green for fodder, as oats cut in
that state are said to take less from the soil.
Don't give over housing cattle every night,
after pasturing time arrives, where it can be
done. Spread under them loan, swamp mud,
or forest leaves. and let it go down into the
barn cellar to the hogs, and you will be sur
prised to see, next fall, what an amount OF
good manure you will have, instead of a small
moiety of leached, sun.dried yard manure that
you have usually had.
A moderately wet hog yard or barn cellar Is
best for making manure with hogs, and where
you can get forest leaves enough, although they
may be nothing but pine leaves, raked up with
the scurf of the ground. to soak up the liquid Of
the hogs or cattle, never haul in heavy loan
having no vegetable matter and being of no
benefit to the soil besides its absorbing capaci-
ty to the liquid manure: besides, it is too heavy
to haul out again to apply to the soil.-NeW
England Farmer.