188 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



wonder the alfalfa suffers when you allow the nurse crop to 

 ripen the grain. You try it next year. Select some ex- 

 cellent piece of ground, and try an acre. Don't try too 

 much till you know the creature, — learn her ways. I saw 

 at Professor Voorhees's where he had a three-year-old field 

 of alfalfa from which he got 26,000 pounds of forage by 

 waiting through the summer. He said he cut it four times. 

 When you cut your alfalfa, you can then let it grow, and in 

 the fall have a growth of at least a foot or more. Don't 

 pasture it in any instance, unless it be with sheep or some 

 light animals, for heavy animals tread down and kill it. I 

 have noticed when I have drawn my heavy wagon over the 

 field, it seemed to injure it, seemed to crush it. It is a 

 forage plant. When it comes spring, and you come to har- 

 vest it, as the crop will be ready the last of May, when it is in 

 the showery portion of the year, you will be obliged to use 

 care in curing the hay. Get some sheeting forty inches 

 wide and tear off a piece forty inches long, which will make 

 a piece forty inches square. Make these into hay caps by 

 some arrangement which will enable j t ou to weight the 

 corners. Go into the field, cut the alfalfa and give it half 

 a day to sun. Then cock it up into about 50 or 75 pound 

 cocks, and draw these caps onto them. I had a field of 

 alfalfa, with about 500 cocks, go through three heavy rain- 

 storms, and you couldn't have told it afterwards by the ap- 

 pearance. Now, then, you have to go with your fork and 

 move those about every two or three days, or the heat will 

 kill the alfalfa, and when it comes a bright, sunshiny day, 

 throw oft' the cap and pick it all over and shake it up a little, 

 if you think it needs a little more curing, but be sure and 

 cock it up again, and let it stand from eight to ten days, 

 cure in the cock, go through the first sweating. Then take 

 it into the barn when it is quite moist, when it is tough, in 

 order that you may save the leaf, because the leaves consti- 

 tute the richest portion of it. Cut it when the first little 

 blue blossoms begin to show, don't wait until it is all blos- 

 somed ; for then you will see a natural coming up of the 

 second growth, and you cut that in the same way. It is 

 persistent, and bound to make seed. It is anxious to repro- 



