THE STABLE AND THE MANURE CELLAR
The stable for our cow is a shed nine by sixteen, built on the south side of our carriage and wagon house. One-half of the shed is partitioned off and enclosed for winter use or stormy weather; the other half of the shed is open on the south side, and our yard is about sixteen by thirty, including the shed. We think it would be better to have it larger, but we get along with it nicely. We find the best way to dispose of her manure is to have a small cellar underneath the stable, with cemented bottom and sides, so as to be water tight, the stable to have a tight floor with a gutter behind the cow to receive the droppings and urine, with a scuttle or trap door in the gutter to let it all go into the cellar. For bedding, we use forest leaves, and use them liberally. Where forest leaves cannot be obtained, any refuse hay or straw will answer, but the cow as well as the horse should have plenty of good dry bedding. To mix with the urine and droppings of the cow, we put into the cellar, sea-weed, muck, turf, slops from the house, and soap suds, or anything we think will make good compost. We gather up the droppings from the yard and throw them into the cellar. We keep our yard well laid with forest leaves. If those are not available, we use the next best thing we can get. In the fall, when we cart the manure out of the cellar, we gather up what has accumulated in the yard and put it into the cellar. In this way we save all of the manure, and in excellent condition. Now, to make it better and save the labor of pitching it over, we keep a pig where he can have access to the cellar, and if not disposed to work, we keep him on short feed and scatter corn in the cellar, so that in order to get it, he will have to root the whole mass over in good shape.
We cart our manure out in the fall, distributing it over our land as evenly as possible, and plow it under as deep as we can. We do not sow anything for next year’s use, as we think we get a better return from our land to sow early in the spring and continue it through the summer. It is a mistaken idea, or rather a grave blunder, to undertake to grow good crops of anything without the liberal use of manures. As soon as our land will do to work in the spring, we sow our oats, peas, and rye, giving a top dressing of guano, superphosphates, or bone meal, which we repeat with each successive sowing, also giving each hill of corn and rows of beets and turnips a small quantity. We alternate the top dressings, that is, if we use superphosphate the first sowing, we use ground bone or guano the second, and vice versa, as we find the continuous use of any one kind of manure or fertilizer is as injurious as continuous planting of corn or potatoes, without rotating with something else.