It was natural for me to feel great interest in a case like this, so I called repeatedly to see the grounds and converse with the German owner. As it was seven years from his beginning when I first became acquainted with him, his little farm bore no resemblance to its condition when he took possession. There were signs of thrift all over it. His fences were new, and clear of hedge-rows; his house had been completely renovated; he had built a large barn and cattle-sheds, while his garden was immeasurably better than mine. Every thing was in a condition exceeding all that I had seen elsewhere. His two girls had grown up into handsome young women, and had been for years at school. All this time he had continued to enlarge his means of manufacturing and applying liquid manure, as upon its use he placed his main dependence. He had sunk a large brick cistern in the barnyard, into which all the liquor from six cows and two horses was conducted, as well as the wash from the pig-pen and the barnyard. A fine pump in the cistern enabled him to keep his manure heap constantly saturated, the heap being always under cover, and to fill a hogshead mounted on wheels, from which he discharged the contents over his ground. The tub and underground hogshead with which he commenced were of course obsolete. If it be possible to build a monument out of liquid manure, here was one on this farm of eight acres. Its owner developed another peculiarity--he had no desire to buy more land.
This man’s great success in a small way could not have been achieved without the most assiduous husbanding of manure, and this husbanding was accomplished by soiling his cow. As he increased his herd he continued the soiling system; but as it required more help, so he abandoned working for others and hired whatever help was necessary. The increase of his manure heap was so great that his little farm was soon brought into the highest possible condition. In favorable seasons he could grow huge crops of whatever he planted. But his progress was no greater than has repeatedly been made by others, who thoroughly prosecute the soiling system.
A frequent study of this remarkable instance of successful industry, led me to conclude that high farming must consist in the abundant use of manure in a liquid state. A fresh reading of forgotten pages shed abundance of new light upon the subject. The fluid excretia of every animal is worth more than the solid portion; but some are not contented with losing the fluid portions voided by the animals themselves, but they suffer the solid portions of their manure to undergo destructive fermentation in their barnyards, and thus to become soluble, and part, by washing, with the more valuable portions. Now it is well known that the inorganic matter in barnyard manure is always of a superior character, therefore valuable as well as soluble; and this is regularly parted with from the soil by those who permit the washings to be wasted by running off to other fields or to the roadside. I have seen whole townships where every barnyard on the roadside may be found discharging a broad stream of this life-blood of the farm into the public highway. The manure heap must be liquefied before the roots of plants can be benefited by the food it contains. No portion of a straw decomposed in the soil can feed a new plant until it is capable of being dissolved in water; and this solution cannot occur without chemical changes, whose conditions are supplied by the surroundings. Such changes can be made to occur in the barnyard by saturating the compost heap with barnyard liquor. All that nature’s laws would in ten years effect in manures in an ordinary state, when ploughed into the ground, are ready, and occur in a single season, when the manures are presented to the roots of plants in a liquid form.
