KEEPING ONE COW. 21 



first, the early sown rye will cover the ground with a dense 

 growth, at least four feet high, furnishing a large quantity of most 

 nutritious green food. On those portions of the plot where the 

 latest corn is to be planted, two or three cuttings are made ; this 

 gives most excellent food for the cow, and the quantity grown 

 on this fourth of an acre will surprise any one who has never tried 

 it. There is quite a plot of early peas, and as soon as the last 

 picking occurs, while the vines are green, they are pulled and fed 

 to " Spot," who relishes them very much. Turnips, or corn, are 

 at once sown on the ground where the peas were. 



When our early cabbages are taken up, all the leaves, and much 

 of the stalks, are turn 3d into milk by taking them to the cow's 

 manger, and the ground at once planted, or sown, to something 

 that will make mora food. The beet, carrot, and turnip tops, and 

 late cabbage leaves, make quite a quantity of feed late in the fall, 

 if care is taken in saving and preserving them. Possibly there may 

 be some better forage crop than " evergreen," or sugar corn ; I 

 think another fall I will try the Minnesota Amber Sugar Cane, in 

 a small way. I tried Pearl Millet, in one row, this season ; it 

 tillered, or spread wonderfully, but did not do so well as the corn, 

 as the stalks were small, and the millet makes such a feeble growth, 

 at first, it requires the whole season to produce as much fodder as 

 I get from corn sowed the fourth of July. 



CALVIN G. 



I generally manage to have the cow come in about the first of 

 September ; by that means the six weeks time she is allowed to 

 go dry, occurs during the warmest portion of the summer, viz., in 

 July and August, when, with the facilities the person who keeps 

 but one cow possesses, it is difficult to make good butter. This 

 is also the season when butter most generally sells the lowest. 



The calf is taught to drink after it is a week or ten days old, 

 and fed on a porridge made from skim-milk and wheat middlings, 

 or shorts ; by the time it is six weeks or two months old it will be 

 well fattened, and can be sold to the butcher for veal, at a good 

 price, for at that season of the year veal is scarce and in demand. 

 The cow bsing in full flow of milk all winter, when butter is most 

 always higjh, will pay a good profit for her feed and care. A 

 couple of weeks prior to the time the calf should be born, I 

 make a box stall on the barn floor, and permit the cow to run 

 loose in it until the calf is taken away to learn to drink. During 

 this time she should have a good bed of leaves, and the stall be 

 cleaned each night and morning. So far at such times I have ex- 



