CARROTS VERSUS RUTA-BAGAS. 125 



to have a certain portion, as a change, but I would not recom- 

 mend it as one of the great leading crops. 



With regard to carrots, I have long since abandoned the 

 growing of them at all. I have tried them over and over and 

 over again, for the purpose of making milk, and I never got 

 a quart of milk from all the carrots I ever fed in my life. I 

 got more disgusted with them than I did with half-grown 

 fodder-corn, a good deal. And with regard to making fat, 

 they will not produce fat to the extent that Swedish turnips 

 will, at all. As to feeding them to horses, I consider a horse 

 weakened, enervated, softened by carrot feed, the meanest 

 brute that stands on this earth. I don't want him in my 

 stable at all. I cannot drive him from my house to my farm 

 (which is only two miles distant) and back, without his being 

 in a wash of sweat, and I cannot dry him in twenty-four hours 

 after he gets into the stable. A more bloated and disagree- 

 able-looking beast than a horse fed on carrots, I never have 

 seen. So I have abandoned carrots. It is a hard crop to 

 raise. The boys have got to crawl on the ground in hot 

 weather to weed them, you must hunt them with a spy-glass 

 for a month after they come up, and when you get them into 

 the barn, the chances are ten to one that the crop is not half 

 so great as you expected. 



These are, in brief, the results of my experience. The 

 ruta-baga stands foremost among the root-crops. If sown 

 about the middle' of June, upon warm lands, a little light in 

 their character, with a proper supply of well-decomposed 

 manure upon the surface, and supplied with the best super- 

 phosphate you can get in the drill where you put your seed, 

 my word for it, you will have a good crop, and one you will 

 never repent having raised. Carrots I would abandon for 

 ever. The mangold-wurzel I would treat as I have said ; 

 raise a small crop and use it simply as a change, and neglect 

 the leaves entirely. I could no more afford to keep my men 

 hauling mangold-wurzel leaves into the barn to feed forty 

 cows, after milking in the morning, than I could afford to set 

 them at work picking up gravel-stones in the road, in order 

 to enable me to drive over a smooth road. The leaves are 

 good enough, if the cows will pick them up, but you cannot 

 afford to cart them to the barn. 



