122- KEEPING ONE COW. 



ABOUT SALTING. 



I never fed the cow any salt for health during the summer, but 

 she kept healthy, and the butter came. In the fall, I began feed- 

 ing her the house slops, night and morning, and when she did not 

 eat them freely I put a little salt in. When I thought she was not 

 jeating her fodder up clean enough, I would sprinkle on a little 

 brine with an old broom. I never fed salt for her good, but some- 

 times for mine. In the fall, when I wanted her to eat up weeds 

 before they went to seed, I used occasionally to sprinkle with 

 brine such spots as I wanted eaten off closely. I never could 

 make my old lawn-mower cut off weeds any closer than grass, but 

 this new lawn-mower would eat these weed patches to the collars 

 of the roots. 



My cow became used to this kind of life, makes me no trouble, 

 has furnished the milk and butter for out family of four the whole 

 year, and some butter to send to my friends, and a litcle to selL I 

 have fodder enough from my quarter acre to keep her until grass is 

 abundant, and have one dollar and twenty cents of the price of my 

 calf still on hand. 



I might go on and tell you how I used to buy hay at a high 

 price for wintering my cow, and quantities of bran, brewers' grains 

 and corn-meal ; how the hay always made her costive and hide- 

 bound, and how she never ate it with half the relish which she 

 does the corn fodder ; how I found it an unladylike act to raise my 

 foot and force the garden stake into the ground, and so contrived 

 a smaller iron that I could more gracefully plant, and that no un- 

 ruly cow ever could pull up ; how with this new stake I can safely 

 leave her on the lawn all night with the fullest confidence of find- 

 ing her in the morning just where I left her, how when at first 

 the cow got loose and wandered to the garden, I discovered that 

 the taste of the butter was disagreeably affected by her eating 

 certain herbs, and how it was very pleasantly flavored by others ; 

 how I am cultivating these herbs to make the sweetest and most 

 golden butter ; how but dear me ! for a one-cow story it is already 

 too long, 



