HOME-MADE DRAG. 191 



little irregularities. It will kill the first growth of weeds that 

 comes up, before the seed of potatoes, corn, pease and other 

 crops have appeared, and it answers the purpose of one hoeing. 

 You can hoe an acre the first time in an hour, or as fast as two 

 horses can walk. It will cover two rows at a time, and do 

 the work perfectly. This drag can be made by any farmer, 

 with an axe and a saw and one dollar and twenty-five cents' 

 worth of material, in an hour or an hour and a half, so that 

 every farmer can have one without going to his neighbor to 

 borrow. It takes a great deal longer time to go to a neighbor 

 and borrow a drag, and carry it back (which, I am sorry to 

 * say, is not always done), than to make one. So I advise you 

 all to make one for yourselves, and not depend upon your 

 neighbors. I believe there is no labor-saving implement of 

 greater importance to the market gardener than that simple 

 draff, which will cost not over two dollars, labor and all. I 

 have used one for many years, and am finding new uses for it 

 every year. I don't know how I could get along without it. 



After the ground is prepared by the drag for the seed- 

 sower, sow your seed. I use, for sowing all kinds of garden 

 seeds, Willis's seed-sower. We farmers have found it neces- 

 sary not to depend wholly upon the agricultural-implement 

 makers for tools. They have made vast improvements, and 

 the agricultural stores have almost everything you can think 

 of, but they have not got some things that we farmers in 

 Essex County think we must have, and in order to get them, 

 we make them ourselves. I took Willis's seed-sower as a 

 basis, with which you»are all probably familiar, and made one 

 myself, for the purpose of using some of these new and 

 improved fertilizers. It is very important that the young 

 seed, when it first starts, should start with vigor and power. 

 Therefore, it wants a fertilizer that will act upon it immediately, 

 and give it a push forward that it will not forget through the 

 whole season. If you have your seed in a seed-bed, where it 

 cannot get at the manure for two or three weeks, the weeds 

 will get a start, and it takes a long while for the tiny vegetable 

 to get over that check which it has received. Therefore I 

 would urge the importance of applying a fertilizer that shall 

 be adapted to the immediate use of the crop, and be assimi- 

 lated immediately where the seed is dropped. In order to do 



