18C6.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
355 
■worse lliaii miue; " auti to the great amusement 
of ttfe audience, he handed Mr. B. the liat. 
For the first two j-ears I should have stood a 
chance of getting tlie hat in Jlouroe County. 
And yet a dirty barn yard is my abhorence. But 
I had no straw, and how can you have a clean 
yard, clean pig pens, and clean stables without 
Btraw ? A year ago last spring I had to buy 
straw and draw it five miles to litter my horses. 
But tlie next harvest brought the long-looked 
for abundance, and I used it freely, but still had 
a large slock left over this spring. " 5[r. S. and 
I have just been lalluiig about your having so 
much straw on hand," said cue of the best farm- 
ers in this section, as he rode past from the city. 
"I always like to work it up in some 'nay dur- 
ing the winter." He is a man whose opinion I 
value highly, and I took the reproof meekly. 
Of course I could have spread it about the yards 
and trod it into manure. But I now find that I 
blundered into a far better practice, and I shall 
always endeavor in future to have a good stock 
on hand for litter, during wet weather in sum- 
mer and early autumn. The cows stay in the 
yards at night, and by keeping them well litter- 
ed it is perfectly astonishing how much manure 
is made. I really believe they make more than 
during the winter, when they are in the yards 
and stables all the time. Then, how much 
pleasanter it is to milk in such a yard, and how 
much more comfortable the cows are ! When 
you have once got a good bed, it requires fresh 
litter but seldom. The pigs root it up and it 
soon dries, and by spreading this over the yard, 
it can be liept clean without much trouble. 
But I probably should not make so much ma- 
nure if I did not slop my cows. I was telling 
you sometime ago tliat I wanted to slop them, 
but could not do it, because we had no couve- 
nieucies for feeding them. Where cows are 
milked in tlie yard you cannot feed them with a 
pail, as they will frequently pull it over, and in 
any case the other cows would disturb them. 
My cow stable has uo space in front of the cows 
where you can carry the food to them, and we 
should have to carry the pail of slops between 
the cows. Both cows would try to get at the 
pail, and the harsh toues of the man, to say 
nothing of the occasional kicks in the mouth, 
would go far to counteract the benefit of feed- 
ing. But during the "heated term" my cows 
fell off from nearly 80 lbs. of butter a week to 
less than 60 lbs., and when cows once fall off in 
tlieir milk, it is not easy to bring them up again. 
But I thought I would see what could be done. 
We got a large trough, made of two-inch 
plank, that will hold forty or fifty pails of water. 
We set this under the pump in the yard, so that 
the cows can stand all around it. Into this 
trough, which is about two feet deep, we put a 
bushel of corn meal, and then pump in some 
water and stir up the meal. This should be 
done in the morning as soon as the cows are 
turned out to pasture, in order that the meal 
may have time to soak. Of course it is not 
necessary to fill up the trough till the cows are 
brought up in the evening, when thej' will like 
it all the better in hot weather if cold and fresh. 
When the cows get to the barn yard there is a 
race for the meal trough. And though they 
come fresh from water in the field, it is astonish- 
ishing how much meal-water they will drink. 
The weak spot in the arrangement is this : 
After the cows have drank the water, and they 
can get at the meal, the master cows will keep 
away the others, aud eat the whole. The rem- 
edy for this is simply to have the trough large 
enough to hold more water than they can drink 
during the night, aud to fill it full the last thing 
in the evening, aud pump in more, if necessary, 
the first thing in the morning. I keep a good 
many pigs, and feed them more or less corn 
meal all through the summer. The meal that 
is in the bottom of the cow-trough we take out 
before it gets sour, and throw it into the pig- 
cistern, so that we can, without loss, put a good 
deal more meal in the cow-trough than the cows 
actually eat, as it is all fed to the pigs, and is 
improved by the soaking. The only difference 
between this way of feeding meal, aud the 
ordinary mode of giving them slops in a pail, 
is, that in the latter case the cows cat the whole 
of the meal, while in the former they get only 
the soluble portion and that held in suspension 
— and they are allowed all they can drink. 
But, as I said before, the water must never be 
allowed to get so low that the cows can reach 
the meal. If you attend to it yourself, night 
and morning, this is an easy matter, but uo 
ordinary farm man that I have yet met with 
can get the idea through his head, short of a 
month or si.^: weeks. I attended to it myself 
for the first week, and all went right, but one 
Saturdaj' night, not feeling well, I did not go to 
the yard, aud the ue.xt morning I did not get 
there until they were just through milking. 
Sure enough the cows had got down to the 
meal, and two or three of the master cows were 
gorging themselves with it, while three men, the 
assembled ■wisdom of the form, stood looking 
on. But see to it yourself for a month or two, 
until it becomes a matter of daily routine, and 
then j'ou can trust it to any careful man. 
Instead of coru-meal I am now feeding peas. 
Like all peas raised in this section, they are full 
of bugs, or rather of the grubs that produce the 
bugs. But if fed out soon after harvest, aud be- 
fore the grubs become bugs, they do little or uo 
harm. But, at this season, the peas are not dry 
enough to grind up fine. The better plan is to 
put them to soak over night, and then boil them. 
They boil up quite soft in a couple or three 
hours, aud can be mashed easily, making as nice 
" peas pudding" as can be desired. We have a 
steamer, aud cook a barrel at a time. Last night 
I put a barrelful in the cow-trough, with say 
forty pails of water, and you would be astonish- 
ed, or at least I was, to find what splendid pea 
soup it made. It ■n'as too strong, to allow the 
cows to have all they wanted, while the same 
quantity of coru-meal (uncooked) would have 
given only a very weak solution. 
John Johnston writes me, that his Diehl 
wheat that he got last year from Indiana, gave 
him 105 bushels by weight from 3 bushels and 
27 lbs. seed, on a little less than three acres of 
land — say 35 bushels per acre. Not bad for this 
season. His Witter wheat went over 33 bushels 
per acre, on land from which he had a crop of 
barley last year of over 40 bushels per acre. 
The Diehl wheat is a handsome white variety, 
and bids fair to prove a valuable acquisition. 
Mr. J. threshes his wheat as he draws it from 
the field. Ilad I done so this year, it would have 
been greatly to my advantage, as the heavy rains 
damaged the top of the stack considerably. 
Had I postponed threshing a few days longer, 
the loss would have been very great. John- 
ston's plan is to thresh outside and put the 
straw in the barn. 
Some of my potatoes on the low land are 
commencing to rot. I shall dig them as soon 
as they are ripe aud feed all that are specked | 
with disease to the pigs. It used to be said in 
England that diseased potatoes, when cooked 
aud allowed to ferment, would fatten a hog 
quicker than sound ones. And it is not improb- 
able. I can see how the starch might be changed 
into sugar, and this by fermentation into alco- 
hol. And without discussing the question 
whether alcohol is a food or a poison, it is a 
well known fact that a little favors the accumu- 
lation of flit. " Hog feed should be allowed to get 
sour," is an old agricultural precept. I presume 
it is not the acid that is beneficial, but the other 
products of fermentation which accompany the 
formation of acid. The " whiskcj' " produced 
by allowing corn meal to ferment, may check 
the growth of pigs, but increase their tendency 
to lay on fat. But will the pork be as good? 
During the recent cold, wet weather in Au- 
gust, my young pigs did not thrive. I let them 
run in the barn-yard, and in the barley aud pea 
stubble, and they had all the slops from the dairy 
they could eat, with a little coru meal mixed 
with it. I could not think what was the matter 
with them. But since the weather has become 
warmer, they begin to improve, and I have no 
doubt if I had kept them shut up in a warm 
pen during those chilly nights, they would have 
done much better. Pigs are very sensitive to 
changes in the weather, and cold affects them 
seriously. Unless you have warm pens, and 
perhaps give warm food, it is not profitable to 
fot hogs, sofaras the accumulation of fat is con- 
cerned, much later than the first or second week 
in November. But of course it is desirable 
where hogs are fatted for market, to keep them 
until we have cold weather, as better prices are 
obtained from eastern packing establishments. 
Last spring I planted my potatoes with Ives' 
Potato Planter. It is set to plant the potatoes 
in drills 3' [3 feet apart, and to di'op a set in the 
drill about every eighteen inches. I think with 
nearly all varieties, except the Peach-blow, a 
foot or fifteen inches would be better. With 
Nevin's Potato Planter the eyes only of the 
potato are used. They are gouged out, and the 
potatoes can afterwards be used for stock. The 
" sets " are but little larger than coru. These 
sets are drilled along the rows just as you would 
drill grain. I have seen a crop raised in this 
way that was, to say the least, as good as if 
whole tubers or ordinary sets had been planted, 
and the ground was remarkably clean, although 
nothing but the horse hoe had been used. Still, 
on the whole, I prefer to plant larger sets. If the 
potatoes are assorted, I believe Ives' planter 
will drop them as well as it is ordinarily done 
by hand, and it will plant five or six acres a day. 
It marks out the land, makes its drills, cuts, 
drops aud covers the potatoes at one operation. 
.One of the Dutchmen who works for me occa- 
sionally was telling me to-day that he has just 
sold his cow. A farmer who wanted a cow, 
hearing this one was for sale, came to look at 
her and milked her. " She gave a pailful," said 
Jake, " and he handed over the money (§65) in 
a wink." I told him that I would have given 
that for the cow. " She was old," he said, "and 
the milk was very poor. He only got two jiounds 
of butter a ■week from her." Still I would have 
bought her. The cow ran in the road, and had 
nothing but what she could pick up. I would 
like to have tried her with a liberal diet of pea- 
soup. It is easier to increase the quality of 
milk than the quantity. A cow that gives a pail 
of milk twice a day, will make a pound of but- 
ter a day, if she lias sufficient good food.* 
