1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 197 



Mr. Walker. No, sir. I »raise my hay for market, and 

 you have to give the buyer such hay as he wants. Capt. 

 John B. Moore once said he raised a certain variety of 

 strawberry, the meanest strawberry there was, but the kind 

 of strawberry the Boston people wanted. Now, I try to raise 

 the kind of hay my customers want, and they want as much 

 herds-grass hay as they can get, and do not mind about a 

 mixture of witch-grass. [A question was asked which was 

 inaudible to the stenographer, but Mr. Walker replied to it 

 as follows :] Perhaps I can answer that question best by 

 telling exactly what I do do. I lay down my land to grass 

 whenever I can, from the spring until the time the ground 

 freezes up. If I could do it exactly when I want to do it, I 

 would do it somewhere from the first day of August to say 

 about the middle of September. Now, my mode of operation 

 is this, and here is where I am standing to-day. I have 

 worked up to it from another level. I go on and invert the 

 sod of my land, sometimes during haying when we have 

 lowery weather, and if we do not do it at that time, then 

 just as soon as we can get at it. I plough about eight and a 

 half inches deep. Of late years I have used the Cassidy 

 sulky plough. That turns the sod over and laps one furrow 

 upon another. That leaves the ground pretty rough. I use 

 a harrow to get down a good surface. Sometimes it needs 

 to be harrowed more and sometimes less. I then take a 

 manure-spreader and put five cords of manure on top of that 

 sod as evenly as I can spread it. The end aimed at is to 

 disseminate the manure over the surface of the ground in the 

 finest possible way. When that is done, I have found no 

 better way than to plough that manure into the seed-bed. 

 You take up the turf and you will find the main part of the 

 roots are down about four inches deep. I try to put the 

 manure down all the way from the top to the bottom of that 

 four or five inches. If you take a plough and cut a narrow 

 furrow, and watch it, you will find that as that furrow turns 

 over, this manure spread evenly on the surface will tumble 

 down with it, and some will be at the top and some will be 

 nearly buried. When the field has been well ploughed in 

 that way, we take a harrow and make it as even as we can. 

 I find that with a smoothing harrow I can do as well as with 



