224 Bureau of Farmees' Institutes. 



1 



Plowing". 



I have said the islanders were the most scientific farmers, yet 

 if I could show you one of their plows, you would laugh. 

 It is anything but a scientific implement, for instead of tha long, 

 graceful, easy lines of a modern light draft American plow, it is 

 very large and heavy, with the mould board about as blunt as it 

 is possible to make it. It takes six horses to draw one of these 

 plows, but if it is not scientifically built it does most scientific 

 work. While an American plow turns a furrow that is so easy 

 and gradual that the ground is barely cracked in the turning, the 

 islander's plow, pulverizes the ground thoroughly. The plowing 

 season is the great event of the year, the farmers changing 

 work, as no one man has horses enough to do the job properly. 

 First they plow a furrow about four inches deep and fourteen 

 inches wide with four horses; then a heavier plow follows in the 

 same furrow with, six, seven and sometimes eight horses attached. 

 This plow goes eight to 'ten inches deeper and the same width as 

 the lighter plow. The ground is so thoroughly pulverized that 

 nothing more is done to it except that boys and men walk along 

 the furrow and knock to pieces any lumps that work to the sur- 

 face. The whole seed bed from top to bottom, of the furrow 

 {twelve to fourteen inches) is more like an ash heap than a plowed 

 field; no harrowing is needed, not a foot touches it until the day 

 for planting; in fact it would be almost impossible for a horse 



to travel across it. 



Planting' Potatoes. 



" The spuds," as they call the seed potatoes, are carefully lifted 

 from the ground where they are left to ripen. Later they are 

 sorted and set, with the eye-end up, in trays. These trays are 

 corded away in some outbuilding adjoining the stables, and by 

 spring there is one strong sprout an inch and a half or two inches 

 long growing out of this eye end. These trays are carted to the 

 field and the potatoes planted by hand, one at a time. First a 

 line is stretched across the field and men with shovels throw out 

 a trench, using the line as a guide. Women follow and dust a lit- 

 tle commercial fertilizer along the trench; other women and boys 

 come on with a tray of potatoes and set each one upright in the 

 row. The trench is about four inches deep, so that the sprout 

 on the potato is very near the top of the ground when covered. 



