HARVESTING INDIAN CORN. 37 



or seventy pounds when it is well dried ; so there is not much 

 weiffht in the cob arjjument, after all. AVith one dressinor of 

 twenty-five loads of manure to the acre, I raise eighty bushels 

 of corn. Then I sow to barley, and seed down to grass ; the 

 next year after, corn. I have thirty to forty bushels of bar- 

 ley to the acre ; then, the two following years, about two 

 tons of hay to the acre ; after that, one and a half tons ; then 

 one and a quarter tons, — so I raise five or six crops with one 

 dressing of manure. 



I will now describe my method of harvesting corn. I never 

 cut off the top stalks ; it is labor lost. When the corn is 

 ripened so that the husk begins to loosen from the ears, I cut 

 it down to the ground, and lay it in bunches of six to eight 

 hills each; then lay rye-straw for single bands, and bind 

 it in bundles. Then, with a pole and cross-pin, I stook it, 

 putting eight to ten bundles to a stook, and bind the stook 

 with one band only. When the corn is well cured, I take the 

 band off the stook, and put the bundles on to a wagon with a 

 pitchfork, and unload the w?gon also with a pitchfork. When 

 I husk the corn, I unbind two bundles, and tie the two single 

 bands toijether. When husked, I bind what was two bundles 

 of corn into one bundle of husks. Then I can move the husks 

 conveniently with a pitchfork to any place I wish to put them. 

 I have found this the most economical and the most con- 

 venient way to harvest corn. The first year of my farming I 

 stooked my corn without binding, but found it ugly stuff to 

 handle, to put on or take off the wagon, or to move about in 

 the barn. 



I have found corn-stover valuable feed for cattle. If cut up 

 with a machine, it is worth as much as English hay, ton for 

 ton. The stover of my corn is large ; it grows ten or eleven 

 feet hio-h, and will weio^h two and a half tons or more to the 

 acre. It will more than pay the labor of raising the crop. 



I have kept cows from the first of November to the first of 

 April on cut corn-stover, wet, with one quart of shorts for a 

 flavorinij, and one feed morninof and ni^ht, and dry stover at 

 noon, and no other feed of any kind. Cows will keep in as 

 good condition, and give as much milk, as if fed on English hay. 

 I feed in tubs made of flour-barrels, cut in two. For a cow 

 of size to make six hundred pounds of beef, 1 feed one tub- 



