368 



Work for August. 



Vol. II. 



vest secured ; your cross-ploughing finished ; 

 your early-planted potatoes will now claim 

 your attention. Your wiiite and yellow po- 

 tatoes are first ripe ; take them before the 

 vine is entirely dead, and haul them out of 

 the rows with a three-tined hook-fork, (see 

 page .374 :) in this state they will generally 

 adhere to the vines, and by one stroke of the 

 fork they will be readily cleared ; but if 

 you suffer your potatoes to stand until your 

 vines are dead, the coats of the yellow and 

 white potatoes will soon begin to run and 

 grow defective ; they will also sever from 

 the vines, and the expense of digging with 

 the hoe, nearly, or quite doubled. To save 

 expense and labor, is ready money in all bu- 

 siness; but in farming, it is ready money 

 with interest, because it saves time, which 

 is more valuable to the farmer, who is en- 

 gaged about his farm, than money. I can 

 say from my own knowledge, that one man, 

 with such a fork as above, can throw out of 

 the row, after two hoeings, and when the 

 vines are partly green, more than 100 bushels 

 of potatoes in a day ; but how many the same 

 man could dig with the hoe in the same time, 

 I have no knowledge. 



Your potatoes should be gathered and 

 housed, as soon as dry, to preserve them from 

 injury from cattle and the weather. Your 

 early potatoes gene-rally command a good 

 market, and a fair price ; but one of your 

 best markets is your hog-stye. The value of 

 this root, when boiled and mixed with bran, 

 corn, or oat-meal, and given to hogs to bring 

 them forward to fatten, may be fairly estimat 

 ed at 35 or 50 cents the bushel. 



Gather your potato vines, coarse hay, and 

 stout stubble, and fill your hog-pens. Cart 

 in turf, and other rich earths, and cover tiie 

 vegetables in your hog-pens; the great heat, 

 and warm rains in dog-days, will bring your 

 manure forward fast. Spare neither time 

 nor expense; it will prove a rich mine. 



FLAX AND HEMP. 



Your flax next claims your attention ; this, 

 if you design it for the nicest domestic manu- 

 facture, you will pull when the blossoms be- 

 gin to turn and fall off, after the Irish method, 

 and rot it in water, after the manner pre- 

 scribed below for rotting hemp. If you let 

 it stand for seed, observe when the stalk be- 

 gins to turn, and the under leaves fall ofi', 

 then pull your flax, and, in both methods, 

 bind up as you pull, in small bundles, and set 

 up your bundles in small bunches to dry ; or 

 spread it upon the ground for several days, if 

 the weather is good, and then bind and stack 

 against the rains, in long stacks, with tlie 

 buts or roots out, and cover your stacks care- 

 fully with loose flax that will shed off the 

 rains, or your flax will be injured : the better 



way is to house your flax as soon as dried as 

 carefully as you have done your harvest. You 

 may rot it in the water, or dew rot it, by 

 spreading it upon your grass grounds in Sep- 

 tember, after the seed is carefully beat off by 

 the flail, in the usual way of threshing, or 

 beat off by hand, by whipping each sheaf 

 across a barrel, or some other permanent 

 body, such as a flax or hemp brake, &c. The 

 seed, when cleaned, is valuable, either for 

 the home, or foreign market, and commands 

 a fair price, and good pay. No time can be 

 fixed for rotting your flax, either in the wa- 

 ter, or on the grass ; both depend upon the 

 warmth of the weather, and the latter upon 

 the moisture of the season.* The success of 

 your crop depends very much upon a suitable 

 rot ; to obtain this, you must frequently dry a 

 handful, and try it in your brake, and when 

 the rot is perfect, lose no time in turning 

 again your flax, to dry and take up; and 

 when dried, lose no time in housing it; the 

 least delay may expose it to a rain, at this 

 season of the year ; this, if the weather is 

 warm, or if cold and long, will injure, if not 

 ruin your crop , the same is equally true with 

 your hemp. 



HEMP. 



Next to your flax, your hemp claims your 

 attention ; this requires a process somewhat 

 difterent. When you observe the under 

 leaves upon your male hemp begin to turn 

 yellow and fall off, after the period of blos- 

 soming is over, divide oft" your hemp-fields 

 into rows, 4, 5, or 6 feet wide, by pulling up 

 the hemp clean, in alleys of two feet wide, 

 in the intermediate spaces ; bind up the hemp 

 as you pull, and carry it out and set it up to 

 dry 10, 15, or 20 bundles in each bunch, and 

 house it as soon as it will answer, without 

 heating. You may then go on to pull out 

 the male hemp from the female, (which bears 

 the seed,) by passing in the alleys and reach- 

 ing into the rows and pulling up each male 

 stalk separately; bind, and carry out, and 

 stack as before, until you have separated the 

 male from the female hemp ; house when dry 

 as before. After 10 or 15 days, when the 

 burs in your seed-hemp begin to open, and 

 the black seeds appear, lose no time in pull- 

 ing, binding, and stacking your hemp, as be- 

 fore ; the hemp-birds will become numerous 

 and busy in quest of seed ; your hemp will 

 shell, and your loss will be great. In bind- 

 ing your hemp, select two spires of the short- 

 est of the best coated hemp for bands ; for if 

 you use the short undergrowth, which has 

 but a thin coat, your bands will fail you in 

 rotting, and your hemp will suffer waste by 



* VVhfn yon rot flax in the water, a pond or pit an- 

 i^wers tipst ; this confined water renders the flax solt, 

 but will not answer for hemp. 



