94 BOxlRD OF AGRICULTURE. 



I will say, in answer to a question that was suggested some 

 time ago, that I mowed my land this year, over peat bottoms, 

 about the 20th of June, and I was very desirous of getting 

 another crop, but my pastures failed, and after a good crop of 

 rowen had grown, I considered the matter very carefully, in 

 order to determine whether it would be more profitable to cut 

 that grass or pasture it, and so retain a full flow of milk from 

 my cows. I concluded to do the latter, and turned my cattle 

 on to about ten acres that had been mowed as fast as we could 

 gather the crop after the 30th of June. I pastured nine cows 

 upon those ten acres up to the time that I was obliged to feed 

 them from the mow, about the 20th of November, and they did 

 not have a mouthful of grain from April until the time they 

 went into tlie barn. My practice is to induce a flow of milk, 

 after they leave the grass, with some sort of feed that will be as 

 cheap as anything I can possibly feed them with. You can then 

 begin to feed carrots and some shorts, for the grass is of very 

 little use to make milk after the frost has struck it. My inten- 

 tion is to recover those fields by pasturing them, the coming 

 year, all through the season ; that is, to put the cows on as soon 

 as the season gets well forward. I cannot plough those mea- 

 dows that were mowed, because the soil underneath is too cold, 

 with a peat bottom. I can pasture those lands two or three 

 years, and bring other grasses into the mowing lands that I have 

 been pasturing before. That gives the natural grasses an oppor- 

 tunity to come in, and if we do not pasture hard, they will 

 come in better than they will if mown every year right through. 

 Then, at the expiration of two years, I will manure those lands 

 again, and bring the grass into mowing, with three tons to the 

 acre, and so alternate, every two or three years. One acre of 

 such pasture land will carry a cow right straight through up to 

 the time she can gather the new grass grown on meadows that 

 are mowed in June. A neighbor of mine has pastured twelve 

 cows on eight acres adjoining mine and four acres in another 

 locality, equally valuable, but not fit to cultivate with ploughed 

 crops. He has pastured his cows up the middle of August, and 

 then he has put them on three or four acres of land that was 

 mowed about the 20th of June, until the pastures on those low 

 meadows recovered, and then he has pastured upon them, alter- 

 nating every two weeks or so. He pastures his cows in this 



