386 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Aug. 



deeper than is usual in the spring. Those left in 

 the ground accidentally at die:ging, have come up 

 •well, been healthy, and not known to rot. But I 

 planted too late, and the potatoes were found rot- 

 ted in the spring. If potatoes accidentally left in 

 the ground survive the winter, grow early and ap- 

 pear more vigorous than the spring planted, I ask 

 •why cannot we plant potatoes in the fall and have 

 them do as well ? Let the potato be reposited in 

 the ground with but short exposure to the air. 



6. The office of a seed potato is to furnish the 

 germs whence proceed the stalks or vines, and also 

 two sets of roots, sap roots and tuber-bearing roots. 

 Any farmer, by raising carefully all that has grown 

 from a planted tuber from its position ■will see this. 

 Only a part of the eyes have grown, sometimes 

 three, sometimes more, the others being inert. In 

 the most productive hills only the skin of the pa- 

 rent tuber remains, its substance being used up. It 

 has gone to feed the whole ])lant. A large pota- 

 to thus used up, must furnish more food than a 

 small one. A potato found under a bin in my cel- 

 lar in the fall, sent out stems with little potatoes 

 like peas upon them, and also fibre roots from the 

 same eye. The tuber was exhausted and dry, by 

 the process. J. Lee. 



Salisbury, Conn., June 9, 1856. 



For the Neio England Farmer. 



FANCY FARMING. 



BY HENRY F. FRENCH. 



Hay Caps — Mowing Machine* — Root Crops — Wheel Hoes — The 

 Double Plow — Boxes and Bugs. 



"Do you think all these fancy contrivances in 

 farming ivill payT' was the sensible question 

 bluntly propounded to me a day or two since, by 

 rather an old-fashioned farmer, who had occasion to 

 pass my land often, and is a keen observer of men 

 and things, with a careful eye to the main chance, 



He was looking at the time at my hay in cock 

 covered with hay caps, with a glance now and then 

 at a wheel-hoe, with which at the time I was weed- 

 ing a carrot bed. "If they don't pay me, they may 

 perhaps pay some of you more cautious people, 

 who take the benefit of my experiments, without 

 bearing the loss of their failure," was my reply, 

 The fact is, I was obliged to be a little more meek 

 than accords with my general disposition, because I 

 was conscious that my neighbor had noticed one or 

 two awful failures, not to say blunders, of mine in 

 the farming line, and it would not answer for me 

 to set up for infallibility before him. One can pre- 

 tend to know everything in his newspaper articles, 

 but one's neighbors usually discount a trifle from 

 his omniscience. 



We had a good agricultural talk, and if he did 

 not learn much, I did, and have been meditating a 

 good deal on "these fancy contrivances" since ; and 

 now, when the rain is pouring like a flood again, 

 on those same hay-caps, on another lot of hay, let 

 us pursue the subject with the readers of the Far- 

 mer. 



HAY CAPS. 



Hay caps do pay, and no mistake. Take four 

 yards of yard-wide cotton sheeting, — sew it togeth- 

 er so as to make two yards square, hem the rough 

 edges, turn up each corner two or three inches and 

 sew it strongly, tie in a short strong twine to form 

 a loop, and you have a hay cap ready for use. 



Four sharp wooden pins, of hard wood, half an 

 inch in diameter, eighteen inches long, to be thrust 

 upward through the loops into the hay at the bot- 

 tom of the cock, complete the preparation. 



This is our way of doing it in this neigborhood, 

 and we are all satisfied with it. The cost of the 

 cloth is eight cents per yard, and the making you 

 can calculate better than I, if you make them by 

 hand. Mine were made on a Wheeler & Wilson 

 sewing-machine, which sews a yard in a minute, 

 one of the "fancy contrivances" which, by the way, 

 is a great comfort to my family. "Well, how do 

 the hay caps work ?" is the question on all sides. 

 "Why don't they wet through, just as your cotton 

 shirt does on your back ?" The reason is, my 

 friend, because they shed rain just as your cotton 

 umbrella does. Or to be more precise, the princi- 

 ple of cohesive attraction at once unites two drops 

 of water that touch each other into one, and the 

 same principle conducts the water along the wet 

 cloth to its lower edge. If the hay were very fine 

 and very green so that the cloth would touch it at 

 all points, it would doubtless take off much of the 

 water, but coarse or partly dried hay is in contact 

 with the cloth, only at comparatively few points, 

 and so the cloth conducts the water away, like the 

 covering of a tent. Coarse clover will remain safe 

 through a week's rain with such protection, while I 

 have had fine hay which was cocked up green, in- 

 jured by heating, not by water, in three days. On 

 the whole, a farmer of moderate means, who cuts 

 much coarse hay, cannot afford to be without some 

 thirty or forty hay caps. He will save their value 

 in one such season as this, or that of last year. 



MO'WING MACHINES. 



In 1853, near Albany, I witnessed a trial exhibi- 

 tion of two mowing machines, Ketchum's and Em- 

 ery's, each of which did its work handsomely, and 

 at the rate of about an acre in an hour. Since 

 then I have seen several trials, but not one that was 

 satisfactory. Several tried in this county last year, 

 failed entirely. A good mower with the common 

 scythe, can cut an acre of grass in four hours, and 

 if a span of good horses, a skilful driver and a ma- 

 chine worth a hundred dollars or more, and liable 

 to expensive accidents, can do no more than four 

 times as much, there is no great saving of cost on 

 small farms. We usually mow our grass in the 

 morning, let it stand in cock through one night, 

 open it the next day, say at ten o'clock, and get it 

 in in the afternoon, and on this system, the men 

 can cut as much each morning by ten o'clock, as 



