



THE FARMER AT o^KB-. . H3 



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iew moon and of Easter for each year ; in the new one it only serves 

 ;o find th3 epacts. 



The Cycle of the Sun is the number of years that elapse before 

 the Sundays throughout the year happen on the same days of the 

 month. If there were only 364 days in the year, that would occur 

 every year ; if 365, it would occur every seventh year ; but as a quar- 

 ter of a day makes an alteration of a day every fourth year, the cycle 

 must extend to twenty-eight years. The ^beginning of this cycle, 

 both Julian and Gregorian, is nine years before Christ. To find the 

 cycle of the sun for any given year, add nine to the date of the year, 

 and divide the sum by twenty-eight, the remainder will be the num- 

 ber of the years of the present cycle, and the quotient the number of 

 revolutions since Christ. If there be no remainder, it will be the 

 twenty-eighth or last year of the cycle. 



DAIRY. A. place where milk is deposited, and where it is manu- 

 factured into butter, cheese, and other articles of food. In some situa- 

 tions, the farmer brings his milk to market in its natural state, and 

 then he is said to keep a milk dairy ; in other situations, he manufac- 

 tures butter or cheese, and, in such cases, he is said to keep a butter 

 or a cheese dairy. It is quite evident, that it must depend on circum- 

 stances which of all these three sorts will afford the most profit. 

 "Within a few miles of a large town, where there is always a ready 

 sale for milk and butter, and where the carriage is short, the milk 

 and butter dairy will generally answer best ; but where the distance 

 from a market is considerable, the sale of milk in its natural state is 

 out of the question, and the dairy farmer will probably find it neces- 

 sary to engage in the manufacture of cheese. 



The dairy system is perhaps the most profitable, as well as the 

 most pleasing, of all the parts of husbandry. It was certainly the 

 earliest. Herbage may be converted into human food, either in the 

 form of flesh or of milk ; but it is calculated, that a much larger 

 quantity of human food will be produced from the same quantity of 

 herbage in the latter case than in the former. The herbage that 

 would be sufficient 7 to add one hundred and twelve pounds to the 

 weight of an ox, would, if employed in feeding cows, afford four hun- 

 dred and fifty gallons of milk. This, if made into cheese, which is 

 not the most advantageous way of consuming milk, would produce 

 four hundred and thirty pounds, besides the flesh that might be 

 obtained by feeding hogs with the whey. 



In some sections of our own country, the dairy operations are 

 extensive, well arranged, and productive of wealth. An instance of 

 this may be found in the northern portion of Ohio, frequently called 

 "The Reserve," which embraces eight counties. The inhabitants 

 here were mostly from New England. It would be difficult to 

 reduce any branch of business to a more perfect system than that 

 practised by the intelligent farmers of the Reserve in the dairying 



