PUBLISHED BY J. B. RUSSELL, NO. 62, NORTH MARKET STREET, (at the Agricultukai. War khouse.) — T. G. FESSENUEN, EDITOR. 



VOL.. XI. 



BOSTO^f, WEDNESDAY EVENING, AUGUST 8, 1832. 



NO. 4. 



C o 111 isi u iQ i c a t i o n . 



ON CONVERTING CLOVER INTO 

 n A Y . 



Mr Fesse.nden — In No, 1. of the volume of tlie 

 New England Fiirnicr, I observe a contrariety of 

 opinions as to the best method of making clover 

 hay, calcidated rather to perplex, than to instruct 

 and guide, the young or inexperienced in this 

 branch of husbandry. Having practised both 

 spreading and making tliis hay in cocks, for some 

 twelve or fourteen years, on a scale of some mag- 

 nitude, I offer you a comparison of their relative 

 advantages, as suggested by my experience, with 

 some illustrative remarks. A new and better 

 practioe is often rejected, in agriculture, from the 

 doubts which caution suggests, or abandoned upon 

 slight and imperfect trial. The prudent maxim, 

 " let well enough alone,'" may be carried too far, 

 especially, where, as in this case, the effort " to do 

 better,'" incurs neither hazard nor expense. 



The object of the farmer is to make the hcsl, 

 and most hay of his clover, with the hast labor. 

 The curing process is the mere evaporation of so 

 much of the moisture of the grass as will prevent 

 the heating or spoiling of the hay when housed or 

 stacked. Rain, and even dew, are prejudicial af- 

 ter the grass has in part been cured. In the 

 spreading process, it requires, according to your 

 correspondent, W. B. " three days of sunny weath- 

 er ;" during which, it is presumed, the crop is to 

 be fjrst spread, or tedded, thrice cocked, o';;! 

 twice opened from the cock, — making six qpera- 

 tions'after the grass is mown, before the curbig 

 process is perfected, to say nothing of turning or 

 raking. In the cocking process, one half of thfse 

 operations, and consequently one half of the la- 

 bor, are saved. For the grass cocks are made from 

 the swath, and are once opened and again gath«r- 

 ed for the cart. As to quantity, I always 

 found, that the sun required to dry the succulent 

 stocks of spread clover, crumbled and wasted tiie 

 thin leaves and blossoms, which, if not a princijal, 

 are a material portion of the crop. I have seen 

 one to two half buslicls of those crumbled leares 

 and blossoms where a hay cock has stood, besides 

 what has been wasted in gathering with the rake. 

 I consider the loss from 15 to 25 per cent of the 

 eatable or nutritive matter. In curing in the sock, 

 the loss is not half a per cent. And 1 mean n erely 

 to judge from my own practice, when I say, that as 

 to quality, the hay made in the latter mode is uni- 

 formly and vastly better than that made by spread- 

 ing. 



As my practice differs somewhat from either 

 of the methods you have detailed, I will state it 

 briefly. 



I commence mowing clover after breakfast of a 

 fair day, when the dew is principally dissipated 

 and continue cutting till night. At 2 or 3 P. M. 

 one hand or more commence putting what was 

 mown in the forenoon into grass cocks with forks. 

 Each man takes say three swaths for a row of 

 cocks. The cock is laid in the interval, where the 

 ground has become dry, with as small a base as 

 convenient, loosely, and to the height of three or 

 four feet, and brought well to a point. Being laid 



in strata, and not rolled, the centre is kept liighest, 

 and the rain, should any fall, is carried off at the 

 drooping exterior. The second day, that which 

 was cut in the afternoon of the first, and the morn- 

 ing of the second, is put in like manner into 

 grass cocks. The tliird day, if fair, or the first 

 lair day that ensues, the grass cocks of the first 

 day are opened, say at 8 or 0, and, if required, 

 turned between 11 and 3, and housed the same 

 day. Sometimes, where the clover has stood long, 

 tlie process is finished the second day ; and some- 

 times the grass cocks have stood five days, in bad 

 weather, witiiout fermenting, or suffering materi- 

 ally from the rain. If rain falls upon the swaths, 

 they are spread and shaken, to expel the rain, but 

 the grass cocked for the curing process. The 

 common rake is often wholly dispensed with. 

 What the fork does not collect, is gathered with 

 tlie revolving horse rake when the hay is nearly 

 housed, and taken off with the last load. 



I cannot perceive, though I have never tried it, 

 that making the hay in swaths has but little, if any 

 advantage, over the spreading process. It suffers 

 nearly as much from waste, is equally or more ex- 

 posed to injury from rain or dew, and is not beu- 

 cftted by what is termed the sweating process, 

 or equalization of moisture. The nature of this 

 )rocess I will illustrate by a comparison'familiar 

 to a printer, and which will be understood by an 

 editor or a fartner. In preparing unsized paper 

 for the press, each quire is passed once or twice 

 through a trough of water, by which one or two 

 sheets of the twentyfour become comjiletely sat- 

 urated, while the residue receives comjiaratively 

 none of the moisture directly. But when this pa- 

 per has lain in a pile for a few hours, with a pres- 

 sure upon it, the moisture becomes equally dis- 

 tributed throughout the mass, and it is difiicult to 

 identify the sheets which were originally wet. So 

 with the clover. When it has become wilted, the 

 stocks are the principal repository of moisture. 

 When put in grass cocks, they are continually 

 l)artiug with this excess to the leaves and drier 

 parts, until a perfect equalization has taken place. 

 A constant evaporation goes on from the exterior 

 of the cock ; and when it is opened preparatory 

 to being housed, the moisture being equally dis- 

 tributed, the curing process is completed perfectly 

 in two or three hours. This sweating, or equal- 

 izing process will take place in the mow if it does 

 not in cock. The hay made in this way retains 

 its leaves and blossoms, and a fine bright color. 



My rules for making clover hay are : cut when 

 dry — cock before it gets wet — open only when 

 there is a prospect of a few hours' sun — and re- 

 cock for the cart before the leaves crumble. 



.Albany, July, 1832. B. 



In my last comitiunication, I omitted to dele " agency 

 of the" in the first line of the second liead, and you have 

 inserted " aliments" for " elements," in the 16tli line 

 of the same paragraph. I may have mistaken your cau- 

 tion. 1 thought it referred to the compost. 



frost for fodder, and letting the ear continue for 

 awhile to draw nutriment from the stalk, is uni- 

 versally practised in Chester county. The ed- 

 itor says — " late in Se[)tember or early in October, 

 corn is cut near the earth. Set up in shocks 

 round a hill, that is left itncut, to help support the 

 rest— the tops tied with rye straw. In this situa- 

 tion it remains until seeding is over. It is then 

 husked — the busker having a pin of hard wood, 

 2J inches long, about the size of a goose quill, 



harp at one end, which is fastened under the two 



uiddle fingers of the right hand with a string. 

 This aids him to tear o])eii the husk and consider- 

 alily facilitates the work. Not reraendiering to 

 have seen such an implement in use elsewhere, I 



uppose it not common ; but, though very simple, 

 it is useful. After the corn is taken in, the stalks 

 are tied in bundles, with straw — drawn near the 

 barnyard and put in ricks, thus: The rick is 

 made long, the butts pointing out eacli way, the 

 tops overlapping more than a third, and raised so 

 that wet will fall off each side froin the centre. It 

 should he of moderate height, from 7 to 10 feet. 

 Beginning at one end the fanner takes off, from 

 top to bottom, enough for his cattle. All the rest 

 remains undisturbed, and secure from rain as 

 when first put up. In this way the whole is fed 

 out, from one end of the rick to the other. What 

 the cattle do not eat is trodden into the manure 

 heap, absorbs juices that would otherwise evapo- 

 rate or run off, and then the corn stalks, when 

 well rotted, .^l•e returned to the field, increasing 

 its fertility. How much better is this mode than 

 topping corn and leaving the stalks .to stand all 

 winter, drying and withering in the field, affording 

 neither food for animals nor manure for land." — 



Genesee Farmer. 



CUTTING CORN STALKS. 



The editor of the Village Record, published at 

 Westchester, Pa. says the practice of Judge Bucl, 

 to cut his corn up by the roots and set it in little 

 stacks to ripen, thus saving the leaves from the 



3IILK. 



" An easy method of removing the taste of garlic, 

 or of turnips, from milk, and thus preventing it 

 in butter. 



"As the dairy is found of much importance to 

 the agricultural interests of this country, the fol- 

 lowing is offered to the piddic through the medi- 

 uiTi of your miscellany. The object of the pres- 

 ent essay, is to avoid an inconvenience to which 

 our dairy is subjected, and to convert it into an 

 advantage. The following plan is recomiTiended, 

 as a method of removing the garlic taste from 

 milk, and producing sweet good butter, in place of 

 that which is generally considered so disagreeable. 

 " When the milk is new from the cow, put one 

 quart of boiling water into every gallon of milk ; 

 stir it through and put the whole into broad shal- 

 low dishes, so that it will not be above two inches 

 deep. Let these dishes be placed on an open 

 shelf, that the vapor may pass freely and entire- 

 ly away. When the milk has stood in this man- 

 ner twelve hours, it may be put into the churn all 

 together, or only the cream, as may be most 

 agreeable to the taste or practice of the operator. 

 Milk from cows that have pastured on garlic, when 

 inanajed in this way, will be quite sweet. The 

 plan here proposed is founded on analogous ex- 

 perieice. 



"The feeding of cows on turnips communicates 



