With a bin of road-dust, and one of leaves, a winter’s supply of litter
is secured, and it is surprising what a pile of manure we have in the
spring. Another valuable source of manure is the pigsty, with plenty
of leaves for a warm bed, and sufficient road-dust to absorb all the
liquids, it is astonishing how clean our pigs are, and the sty is free
from all bad odors; the big potatoes and mammoth beets, show the richness
of the pig-pen fertilizer. I think our fifty hens pay for all their food
with the droppings the poultry-house furnishes. The roosts are over a
slanting platform, which is kept covered with road-dust both summer and
winter; the droppings fall on this floor, and roll down into a large box
twelve feet long, three feet wide, and three feet deep. The dust the
chickens work down with the droppings is sufficient to absorb all the
ammonia and preserve all the fertilizing qualities of this most valuable
guano. A large box of road-dust is always kept in the water-closet, a
liberal use of which furnishes a quantity of most valuable fertilizer,
besides freeing the closets from all noxious smells. The wash water and
slops from the kitchen are utilized by being thrown on a pile of sods and
other rubbish, which are forked over, and as soon as decayed, carted to
the manure pile. From so many sources we are enabled to give our small
farm a most liberal supply of manure each spring and fall, so that even
with the double cropping most of it gets, it continues to improve, and
yields more bountifully each succeeding season.