158 ANNUAL REPORT. 



use everything that grows excepting the blades; I don't use them 

 only to fertilize my land. I make use of the seed. In the first 

 place I go in before I cut my cane and select my seed for the 

 next year's planting. I tie it up in small bunches and keep it 

 away from the rain, let it completely cure and take it off with a 

 currycomb. Very many of our small farmers don't have a 

 currycomb, and if they do perhaps they don't use it. When the 

 seed heads are well cured I strike them across the top of an open 

 barrel and thus thresh out and secure the ripest and best grains 

 for seed. The other seed I cure in the field. Once in a while 

 there is a season that it will mould, but generally it will cure. 

 My process of gathering the crop is about as Prof. Porter has 

 described; after cutting the seed I leave it in a pile until I get 

 through caring for the cane; by that time it is cured. This year 

 I have hauled some three or four acres of it and piled it up by 

 the hog pen, just as I have cut it in the field, and the snow has 

 covered it up, and we are feeding it every day to the hogs. It 

 is a simple way of caring for it, but I find that it pays to feed it. 

 A simple way to care for the seed is when you go into the field 

 take your knife and with one blow you sever the seed, and it can 

 be piled up in a bin after it is thoroughly cared; and I will 

 guarantee that I can take a thousand bushels and have it keep 

 as well as corn. I feed it to my hens in that form; probably it 

 requires a little labor for the hens, but they have nothing else to 

 do. I throw it in a heap by the hog pen and it keeps there. 

 That is the way I put it under cover. If it is cured it keeps all 

 right, but that which I have by the pen is not under cover. I 

 think I can keep it as well as corn. 



Gen. Le Due. Suppose you put it in a corn crib, will it keep"? 



Mr. Whij)ple. Where I have mine there are some windows 

 out and it was piled up in a heap there and here is some of the 

 seed that I took out of the pile to bring here. 



Prof. Henry. You put it in when it is dry? 



Mr. Whipple. I get it dry and then it will keej). And then 

 my bagasse from the mill, instead of burning that, I have plenty 

 of waste wood in the woods there and that is cheaper for me to 

 burn than the bagasse. 1 am also in the garden business and I 

 would rather put it into the raspberry bushes to mulch the vines 

 than to burn it. I am trying to make an estimate of the amount 

 of berries from, the same amount of ground with its use and with- 

 out. I find there is a great difference. I find that there is a 

 great difference in the yield of fruit and a better result secured 



