114 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



I should, perhaps, say just a word as to the time of cutting the 

 oats and peas. This should be done when not more than one- 

 third of the field is turned yellow, and they should be cut with 

 a mowing machine, and treated and cured as hay. 



It should be borne in mind that handled in this way, the 

 feeding value of the straw is about equal, ton for ton, to ordi- 

 nary late cut hay. It is also a fact that the grain cut in this 

 period of growth will be plumper, and weigh more pounds to 

 the bushel, than if it were left to get fully ripe. 



When the crop is removed in this way, ordinarily the last of 

 July, seed with clover, about six quarts, and two quarts of tim- 

 othy to the acre. This seeding will go into the winter as large 

 as if it were sown with the crop early in the spring. 



This also enables one to run a weeder over the oats and peas 

 four or five times, until the crop is a foot high, thus conserving 

 the moisture, and killing the weeds. 



There is no form in which you can raise food value as cheaply 

 as you can raise it in ensilage. It is not my province to discuss 

 the question of ensilage further than to say this : You know in 

 the summer you do not like to feed your cows timothy hay 

 because they do not do well, and yet a chemist will analyze 

 grass and timothy hay and find they are the same thing, only 

 more water in one than the other and the proportions are differ- 

 ent. You and I know the value of them as food. The man 

 who, during the six months that his cows are housed, depends 

 on the hay, does not get succulence enough, does not get that 

 element which is in the grass, unless he has some kind of a 

 succulent food, and there is no succulent food that you can 

 raise as cheaply as you can ensilage from matured corn, sowed 

 thin, cultivated cheaply, and stored as you know how to store it. 

 A good silo will pay for itself the first year, in the excess of food 

 value that you will have by taking care of your corn in that 

 way as against the ordinary method of curing it. Th^'s question 

 of succulence you cannot lose sight of. 



Another thing, in the cheapening of milk production we 

 must follow this short rotation, and keep it right up. Suppose 

 some time your clover does not catch, there are other crops you 

 can put in. as millet, and I am not so sure but alfalfa is going 

 to help us out on this proposition. I believe you can raise alfalfa 

 anywhere that red clover can be raised. There is the same 



