The Portland daily press., 1880-03-30
AGRICULTURAL.
Muck.


E. Lewis Sturtevant contributes to Land
and Home the following article on muck:
Few men are gifted with that comprehen-
siveness that they can see the whole life of
the farm from season to season spread out
as on chart, and the whole effect of each
course of procedure. Hence fallacies are
common, and receive so much cOuntenance
from people more familiar with theory than
practice that they become established upon
pedestals difficult to overturn. Such is the
idea of cooking food for stock; another is the
belief that cutting food for cattle influences
digestibiity; a still greater lies in the ques-
ton of deep or shallow blowing because
based on the reasoning that deep or shallow
blowing covers the object, and not the effect
which it is desired to produce; another ex-
pensive fallacy is that muck and dirt are ma
nure, and that cord of this stuff, mixed
with cord of manure, will produce two
cords of manure. But even more dangerous
fallacies are those connected with the use of
artificial fertilizers.
have been talking to-day with a man
who made manure, and had certainly in
creased the bulk in the barn cellar to be
hauled out on the fields. / asked him wheth-
er he would not prefer the same material in
half the bulk. He replied that he would.
''Why, then, do you haul in your muck and
double bulk?' He wanted manure. $50
do we, all of us. But did you ever see a more
vigorous growth of weeds on your muckheap
than elsewhere?' No, he hadn't. ''Did
you ever put your muck on field by itself,
and watch its effect?' He had not. ''Did
you ever suspect that the virtue ascribed to
the mixed muck and manure was produced
from the manure present and not the
muck?' WE'LL he had never thought of it.
T ga
muck is either good or harmless, or else in
furious. If good, it ought to show some re-
suits used by itself; if inert, its use by it.
self would demonstrate that; if bad, you
would soon find it out. In either case, what
do you gain by hauling it into your barn
cellar, when it adds no more to the manure
than it would to the field, and has to be
hauled out againT'
There is no greater mistake than this,
that we can make manure by hauling in bulk
which is not manure, and undergoes no
chemical change which makes it's insoluble
constituent soluble. Understand me, l do
not object to muck, or sawdust, or litter, as
an absorbent. But decidedly object to the
use of stuff which gives no evidences of val
lie. l protest, in the interests of profitable
farming, of an educated agriculture, against
farmers working SO blindly as not to recog-
niZe whether or not costly operation is a
gain. Muck has physical action in the
soil, but if this action is needed, haul the
muck directly to the field when required and
save one shoveling and one hauling. Muck
may be useful in a dry compost. If dry COM
post is desired, and muck is not too costly to
obtain, then use muck. Muck may have
fertilizing value; then use it, but use it in
way that the labor will not amount to more
than the fertiliZing value. A shrewd and
successful old farmer at a farmers club,
where amateur farmers were present, and
the subject was how to make farm profita-
BILE, arose, and closing his eyes tight enough
to bring out the concealed wrinkles of his
face, and pressing his stomach with both
hands, he drawled out the neatest, shortest
and most effective speech of the session:
'You can't make farm pay when there's
too many legs under Il kitchen table," l
think of this whenever l see amateur farm
ers hauling huge piles of muck with paid la
Dor; and wonder how long it will be before
the accumulated expense of running the
farm will open their eyes to the fallacy of
assuming that YOU can make manure by
simply increasing the bulk of the dungheap.
"Muck is good!' shouts somebody who
has used it. Granted that muck mag be
good; but then it is for you to find out
whether IL be good or not. Many an inferi-
cows in a herd, the owner knowing that his
total milk yield was bringing in money, but
not realizing the loss incurred in keeping
the poorer beasts whose products simply
added to the milk and reduced the profits.
So generally good farmer may make his
farm pay. and still use muck unproftably:
but he should ask himself whether his pro-
fits would not increase if he cut off some of
the leakage in his farm practice