12 



out. If the time of cutting is deferred until the seed begins to ripen 

 many of the blades will be dry and the stalk will be yellow and hard for 

 a considerable portion of its length. It will be woody, indigestible as 

 food, and a great part of its value will be lost. When timothy is over- 

 ripe it has very little more value than oat-straw for feeding. When cut in 

 its prime it has no superior as a hay. 



Timothy hay cures quickly. It should remain in the sun only long 

 enough to assure it against mould. After it is well wilted it must be 

 raked into wind-rows and afterwards made into small cocks four feet in 

 diameter at the base' and about five feet high, well pointed and rounded 

 off at the top. Within a day or two, the hay will be cured sufficiently to 

 put into permanent ricks or stacks, or to be stored in an open shed, 

 from which it may be baled and sent to market If a rain should unfor- 

 tunately fall while the hay lies in wind-rows or in cocks, wetting it to a 

 considerable depth, it must be immediately opened to the sunlight until 

 it is dried out. It is best for the quality of the hay that not a single drop 

 of rain fall upon it and that it be cured, as far as possible, with the least 

 amount of sunshine. This method will make sweet, fragrant and nutri- 

 tious hay of prime quality with excellent color. 



When the saving of seed is the main object, timothy should not be 

 cut until the heads are fully ripe. A good thick stand of timothy upon 

 rich land should yield from eight to twelve bushels of seed to the acre, 

 weighing 45 pounds to the bushel, which is the legal weight in Tennes- 

 see. Of timothy seeds there are about 75,000 in an ounce. 



Heavy rains or strong winds are to be feared after the heads are fully 

 ripe, for they beat out the seeds and largely diminish the yield. In cut- 

 ting timothy for seed the self-binder should be used, and the grass tied 

 up in bundles like wheat or oats, and put up in shocks where it must 

 remain for two weeks or more, until it is dried thoroughly and is ready 

 for the thresher. The fewer times the bundles are handled, after being 

 fully dried, the less will be the loss of seed. 



The yield of timothy hay on fertile valley lands sometimes reaches 

 three or four tons an acre. It oftens attains a height of five feet with 

 heads from eight inches to a foot in length. A bottom field lying on Red 

 river in Montgomery county was sown by the writer in 1858 with a mix- 

 ture of timothy and herd's-grass. It was sown the latter part of Septem- 

 ber. The following summer thirty tons of excellent hay was sold from 

 ten acres and two or more tons were retained for home consumption. 

 The soil of this meadow was a calcareous loam with a deep red, well- 

 drained, unctions, clayey subsoil. The meadow lasted for twelve years 

 and yielded heavy crops of hay every year, until it was finally plowed up 

 to give place to a tobacco crop. 



Timothy is thought to be a great exhauster of the soil. This is 

 doubtless true, but its capacity in this respect is not greater than that of 

 Indian corn, wheat or tobacco. It has been well said that a crop that does 

 not exhaust the soil is not worth gathering; that it is impossible to get 

 from the soil something for nothing. The duty of every farmer is to 

 restore to the soil, by commercial fertilizers or by home-made manures, 

 some of the valuable nutritive elements that are taken from it by the 

 crops. 



