NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



PUBLISHED BY THOMA;^ W. SUF.l'ARD, ROGERft' BUILDINGS, (JDN'GRl.-^S bTRKKl', (lOLRI'll DOOR IROM SJAIK bTRKK'J.) 



/OL. I. 



BOSTOiN, SATURDAY, APRIL 19, 182:3. 



No. 38. 



FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS UFXATING TO 



liRlCULTURE &, DOMESTIC ECONOMY. 



VOR THE NEW ENOI.ASB FARMKR. 



FRESliUVINO AN"D IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF 

 GRAIN. 



' When wheat has been injured during a bad 

 vest, it ought to be juit into small stacks, in 

 lich state it will dry much more quiclily, and 

 sooner rendered fit for grinding into flour, 

 stacked in a damp condition, it should rarely 

 threshed earlier than the summer after it 

 1 been harvested, when its condition will be 

 ;atly improved. 



Wheat, il" not in good condition, is much 

 proved by kiln-drying ; but it should not be 

 id, unless in cases of necessity, until some 

 e after it has undergone that operation. It 

 fht to be moderately kiln-dried, with a slow 

 «t, and frequently turned. But if the grain 

 musty, it ought to pass through a previous 

 ■cess, which is thus described by an eminent 

 ■mist. 



•The wheat must be put into any convenient 

 sel, capable of containing at least three 

 es the quantity, and the vessel must then be 

 :d with boiling water ; the grain should then 

 jccpsionally stirred, and the hollow and de- 

 ed grains, (which will float) may be ronov- 

 When the water has become cold, or, in 

 eral, when about half an hour has ehipsed, 

 to be drawn off. It will be proper then to 

 e the grain with cold water, in order to re- 

 e any portion of the water, wliich had tak- 

 ei ip the must ; after which, the corn being 

 <U ipletely drained, it is, without loss of time, 

 M 'e thinly spread on the tioor of a kiln, and 

 ' Highly dried, care being taken to stir, and 

 irn it frequently during this part of the 

 p :ess." 



By this simple operation, it is said that grain, 

 l^vever musty, may be completely purified 

 « 1 very tittle expense, and without requiring 

 s :ry expensive apparatus.* Mere ventilation, 

 h ,ever, has been recommended as a means of 

 p paring grain for use, sufficiently effectual. 



When grain has been infected with smut, it 

 C be thoroughly cleaned, however black it 

 n ,' have been, in the course of three washings, 

 il I wooden tub. The wheat should be after- 

 w ds kiln-dried. 



It has been generally supposed, that if 

 eat be much injured during a bad harvest, 

 flour made from it will not ferment, or bake 

 » loaf bread, and that it is only fit for distil- 

 in, or to be eaten by live stock. But such 

 us appear to be erroneous. With the aid ol 

 a, the flour may be much improved ; and, a 

 rate, may be made into cakest or biscuit 

 consumed with safety and advantage." 



.— Code of ^^ricuUure. 



No doubt but the mode here recommended lor p - 

 ng other kinds of musty grain would answer *r 

 ty or sour Indian Corn. 



It may likewise be made into what are called //oii" 

 .ca in Scotland, prepared with milk instead of ™- 

 sfvgpcciea of bread, whoUsome and palatable, ht 

 fit for laboring people, heing too easily digestd. 

 rl ash, or Magnesia will answer a similar purpoe 

 1 soda. For a mode of using the latter substanie, 

 SN. E. Tarmer, No. 1, p. 4. 



MANAIJEMENT OF Tlin GRAIN IN GRANARIES. 



Granaries in Europe are large buildings of 

 many stories, each of which consists of one en- 

 tire apartment, where the grain, by turning and 

 sifting is deprived of its superfluous moisture, 

 and rendered more fit for grinding into flour. 

 These operations are performed in the follow- 

 ing manner: the corn being deposited on one of 

 the floors, it is tossed by means of shovels from 

 one end of it to the other, in which operation 

 the dust and any other light substance falls to 

 llie floor, whilst the ,^rain, being heavier, 

 reaches the farther end of the floor. 



It is then sifted and spread on the floor about 

 half a foot thick, turning it twice a week, and 

 sifting it once, which management must be cm- 

 tinued for the first two months. The grain is 

 ilien laid a foot thick, and for the two next 

 months is turned once a week, and screened 

 less frequently. This management is to be con- 

 tinued for five or six months, when it may be 

 increased to two feet thick, and the former op- 

 erations repeated as occasion requires, which 

 will be more frequent in damp than in dry 

 weather. 



The above directions are calculated for the 

 climate of Great Britain, which being remark- 

 ably moist, requires greater precaution for pre- 

 serving grain, than would, perhaps, be necessa- 

 ry in the U. States. In a matter ot great con- 

 sequence, however, it is better to take too 

 much than too little pains, and give your grain 

 one or two, or half a dozen superfluous siftinga, 

 than to sutTer it to spoil for want of due atten- 

 tion. 



Dr. Walker, in his Economical History of 

 the Hebrides, gives us a dismal picture of the 

 circumstances of some of those islands, with re- 

 gard to timber. " The inhabitants" (he ob- 

 srves) " have to undertake a dangerous voy- 

 ige, from thirty to seventy miles, before they 

 ipn build a barn, make a plough, or even pro- 

 mre a flail, or the handle of a spade. This 

 vant of timber distresses the people in their 

 louses, in their husbandry, and in every art." 



The same writer, and in the same work, takes 

 lotice of a peculiar product of the bark of the 

 vhite birch {bclula alba) It is a gum of a ve- 

 fy agreeable smell, which in winter and spring 

 povers the buds, and abounds in the bark. It 

 Is glutinous, odoriferous and inflammable ; it is 

 extracted by the Germans and Russians in the 

 form of an oil, which is employed in tanning 

 leather, to which it communicates an agreeable 

 odour. The process of extraction, he says, is 

 simple and easy, a countryman could be taught 

 it in a day, but does not explain the process. 

 Dr. Walker adds '• the oil is a powerful vermi- 

 fuge. In Lithuania and Courland, it is used for 

 curing the itch and vermin in cattle ; if it 

 could be procured cheap and in abundance, il 

 might be found preferable to butter and tar for 

 smearing sheep." We wish some of our chem- 

 ists and medical men would give us a little of 

 this oil of birch, together with directions how to 

 obtain it in quantities — its medical and ecor om- 

 ical properties, &,c. The tree itself is very 

 common, we believe, in most of the woodlands 

 of the norlberp states. 



WOOD LOTS SHOULD HE H KCEn AGAINST CATTI E. 



In the General Report of Agriculture in Scot- 

 land it is stated that " One of ihe great causes 

 of the disappearance of the extensive forests, 

 which authentic history assures us to have ex- 

 isted in former periods in Scotland, unquestion- 

 ably is the introduction and multiplication of 

 cattle, and of sheep especially, in the bite of 

 catde there is a peculiar malignancy to the 

 growth of woods: the irreguh-.rity of the inci- 

 sion poisons the plant. The very rubbing of 

 cattle against a tree, by stripping otf the tine 

 scarf-'^kin of the bark, and leaving the abraded 

 hair of wool, is alone a poison to the tree." 



ON LAYING BOWN LAND TO PASTURE. 



When pasture is intended, the scythe is nev- 

 er admitted by many farmers, it being an es- 

 tablished maxim, that cutting the grass the first 

 year is highly pernicious to it afterwards. Nor 

 is this ditficult to be accounted for. The 

 scythe is pernicious because the herbage Ikis 

 been alloived to get too old before it is used. 

 The bite of cattle might be as injurious, if the 

 grass or herbage were only to be eaten at an 

 advanced period of its groivth, a:id if eaten 

 equally low with the cut of the scythe, w as 

 grass is generally cut down. Perhaps the state 

 in which the scythe leaves the roots, exposed 

 to injurv from the weather, after they have put 

 forth all their powers, is likewise injurious. 

 The bite of cattle, on the other hand, is like 

 the operation of clipping the top of a thorn- 

 hedge, wijich has always the eliect of thicken- 

 ing the lower branches.* 



PERMANENT PASTURES AND XOWING LOTS. 



It appears to us that our enterprising farmers 

 frequently incur a great expense without ade- 

 quate remuneration, in breaking up and cultiva- 

 ting old pastures. We do not maintain that it 

 may not sometimes be advisable, and the ex- 

 periment of Messrs. Rice &. Howe, ns mention- 

 ed No. 29, pages 228, 229 of our paper, seem 

 to be in favor of the practice. We have known, 

 however, pastures ploughed up at a great ex- 

 pense, which were so situated that manure 

 could not be applied, without costing too much 

 (or profitable tillage, and after one or two crops 

 of rye had been forced from the soil it was 

 laid down again to grass. But we have invari- 

 ably found the last state of such land was worse 

 than the first. If pasture or mowing land is 

 broken up at all, it ought to be tilled thorough- 

 ly, manuied ])lentifully, and be in good heart, as 

 farmers phrase it, before it is laid down again 

 to grass. Mowing ground which has been once 

 converted into tillage, will sooner be bound out, 

 or become too toughly swarded, than that which 

 has been continued in grass. It is, however, 

 sometimes expedient to break up lots for the 

 sake of levelling the hillocks or " crarf/c Ai7/s" 

 as they are called, suoduing bushes, clearing 

 away stones, k.c. even when such lots are in- 

 tended to be priDci])ally if not permanently de- 

 voted to grass. But, it is a fact, perhaps not 

 generally known or thought of, that land which 



*Gen. Report of .Agriculture in Scotland. 



