1878.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
4rl5 
us to do all that we can to breed, select, raise, and 
use the best milch cows possible, rather than be 
satisfied with cows that average only 6 or 8 quarts 
of milk a day. Breed has much to do with this; 
selection probably more than breed, and many a 
cow which gives 16 quarts of milk a day, or even 
20 , eats no more than one giving half or less than 
half that amount. Let us keep the best; but first 
let us know which are our best cows. 
Talks on Farm Crops.— No. 21. 
By the Author of “ Walks and Talks on the Farm," 
“ Harris on the Pigr," etc. 
“ It is a great mistake, Deacon,” said I, “ to feed 
the small potatoes now, when we have abundance 
of succulent food. They will keep until next June.” 
“ True,” replied he, “ but I tell you a few bush¬ 
els of small potatoes, boiled or steamed, and mash¬ 
ed up while hot with corn-meal, will push forward 
young fattening pigs very rapidly.” 
“ No doubt about that,” said I, “ but will they 
not be worth more next spring to cook in the 
same way for sows that are suckling pigs ? Now 
you have soft corn, and pumpkins, and sweet 
apples, and the leaves of cabbages, mangels, tur¬ 
nips, etc., which must be fed out soon or not at all.” 
With me, the fall is the busiest season of the 
year, and in determining how work should be done, 
this has to be taken into consideration. It is for 
this reason that I pit my potatoes in the field where 
they grow. Last year I had them dug by the job- 
paying 5 cents a bushel, and the men piled them in 
heaps containing about 30 bushels each. We aimed 
to place the heaps on high, dry ground, where the 
water could drain off. We make the heaps as high 
and compact as possible. Then cover them with 
straw about six inches thick, and throw on five or 
six inches of loose, mellow soil. 
“ It is a good deal of work,” said the Deacon, 
“ and it is better to put the potatoes in the cellar.” 
“It is not half the work one might suppose. 
With two teams and plows, and three men with 
shovels, I think I can cover 1,000 bushels in a day. 
We plow round and round the heap, throwing three 
or four furrows towards it. Then plow the same 
ground four or five times, setting the plow to run 
as narrow as possible. In this way the plow leaves 
very little work to be done by the shovels, and the 
repeated plowings makes the soil fine and mellow. 
The horses soon get used to it, and will go round 
and round of their own accord You should have 
a short evener, and whiffletrees; and the right hand 
half of the evener should be two or three inches 
shorter than the left hand half, because the nigh 
horse has much further to walk than the off horse, 
and ought not to have so heavy a load to pull. You 
cannot plow too much or too deep. Loose, mellow 
soil is a capital non-conductor of heat.” 
“Then,” put in Charley, “before winter sets in 
we repeat the operation. Last year we did it when 
the ground was frozen so hard that the men said 
we could not plow. But we found the loose soil 
around the heaps scarcely crusted over. We cov¬ 
ered them with straw again, and threw on another 
layer of earth, and did not lose a potato by frost, 
except in one heap nipped at night while digging.” 
“ We had a very mild winter,” said the Deacon. 
“True,” said I, “but no matter how severe the 
winter may be, a heap well covered with two layers 
of straw with a layer of loose earth between, and 
another on top, will be in no danger of freezing, 
and this is especially true if you are careful to plow 
up a quantity of loose dirt all round the heap. 
You cannot plow too much.” 
We pit our mangel-wurzels in the same way— 
only that we make much larger heaps. 
“When we have force enough,” said Charley, 
“ to keep three team6 going lively, it is real fun to 
harvest a good crop of mangels. We have over 
ten thousand bushels to get in this year, and the 
best we have ever had.” 
“You draw them in carts,” said the Doctor, 
“ and dump them into the pit ? ” 
“No,” said I, “ we have sometimes done so, but 
we usually draw them on stone-boats, tops and all, 
and top them at the pit. We have a man to help 
the driver to pull and load the mangels. We have 
three teams. One is loading up all the time, another 
is going back and forth, and the other is at the pit. 
But you must recollect that this kind of work will 
not run itself. You must be there to lend a help¬ 
ing hand when needed. There is always a weak 
spot, and you must be prompt in detecting it.” 
“ I do not know what you mean,” said the Doc¬ 
tor. “ It seems a very simple matter.” 
Charley laughed. He knows from experience 
that it is not half so simple as it seems. If left to 
themselves the men will soon get into a snarl. 
“Sometimes,” I replied, “the man and driver 
who are pulling and loading the mangels will get 
behind. That is the weak spot, and you must take 
hold and help for a few minutes, and put a little 
more snap into them. Then again, the men at the 
heap will not get through topping in time, and there 
will be two loads there instead of one. That is a 
weak spot; and you must be on hand to help the 
men tip over the stone-boat and let one of the 
teams go for another load of mangels. In this way 
you can make everything work smoothly, and your 
head will be worth two pair of hands—especially if 
you use your hands as well as your head 1”—“ What 
do you mean,” asked the Doctor, “by a pit?” 
“ Nothing more,” said Charley, “ than a deep 
wide dead-furrow. We make it by plowing three 
or four furrows on each side of the center of the 
proposed pit. We repeat this three or four times, 
forming a dead-furrow four or five feet wide and 
two feet deep. A little work with a shovel levels 
off the bottom, and the ‘ pit ’ is ready for the man¬ 
gels. We build up the mangels, about four feet 
above the level of the ground, like the roof of a 
house, and cover them with straw and earth, just 
as we do potatoes, but with less soil and more straw 
for the first covering, as the straw absorbs the 
moisture from the mangels. Last year we had so 
much warm weather, that the mangels commenced 
to grow before Christmas, and we had to open the 
pits. But we did not lose a dozen mangels out of 
10,000 bushels, either from freezing or heating.” 
“I think the danger of heating has been greatly 
overestimated,” said I. “ The real point, as Char¬ 
ley says, is to use a plenty of straw for the first 
covering, and only soil enough to keep it in place, 
say three inches thick. You want to use the plow 
freely for four or five feet on each side of the pit. 
Do not let the mangels freeze, but the nearer they 
come to it, the better. The leaves not wanted for 
feeding, are thrown on the sides of the heap. The 
pit can usually be left in this way until about 
Thanksgiving Day. Perhaps if you do the work a 
few days before, you will have an additional rea¬ 
son for thankfulness. We cover the mangels as 
we do potatoes, with two coats of straw and two 
layers of soil. If the work is delayed until the heap 
is reduced nearly to the freezing point, you need 
not, in ordinary winters, trouble yourself about 
ventilators, though we usually make a ventilator 
every eight or ten feet, by pulling some straw up 
through the layers of soil.” 
“ You have a famous lot of cabbages,” remarked 
the Deacon, “I suppose you will try to winter them. ” 
“Yes,” said I, “and the more cabbages I raise 
the better I like the crop. We have over 25,000 
head this year, and the cows and sheep must regard 
them with fond anticipation. If we have as good 
success in keeping them through the winter as we 
had last year, I shall put out more next season. 
There is very little trouble in harvesting them, and 
they are a valuable food in the early spring.” 
“ We plow out a deep dead-furrow,” said Charley, 
“ put two or three cabbages abreast, heads down, 
and then with a plow, set narrow, throw several 
furrows of soil on them, finishing with a shovel.” 
“Not forgetting,” said I, “to plow the ground 
on each side three or four times over, and as deep 
as possible. You cannot have too much fine, mel¬ 
low soil about them. But the later you do the final 
covering the better. Be very careful not to bury 
them where there is any danger of standing water. ” 
“ We had capital luck,” said Charley, “in keeping 
our cabbages for seed last winter. We saved about 
a hundred of the largest and best heads in the field, 
and put them into a dead-furrow, like the others, 
except that we put the roots down. We only lost 
two cabbages out of the lot. I should think every 
farmer would raise his own cabbage seed. It is very 
little work. When we were setting out our man¬ 
gels for seed, in the spring, we set out a row of the 
cabbages. The rows were 31 feet apart, and the 
cabbages 24 feet apart in the row.” 
“ Before winter sets in,” said the Deacon, “you 
must attend to your corn-fodder. I suppose you 
intend to let it remain in the field, and draw it as 
you want it in the winter.” 
“Yes,” said I, “we know that is a good plan, 
though I presume we shall some time discover a 
better. We cut the fodder with a self-raking reaper 
that threw the fodder into bundles ready for bind¬ 
ing. We have about 15 acres, all of it good, and 
some of it so thick and tall that we thought the 
reaper would not cut it. But it did the work far 
better than it can be done by hand. We let the 
bundles lie a few days to wilt, and then bind them 
up just as we do wheat, and then set them in 
stooks holding about a dozen bundles. We shall 
put nine of these stooks into one, and put a couple 
of bands around it. Mr. Hooker uses willows for 
bands. When these cannot be had, tarred rope is 
good, which afterwards, if saved, will be found 
very handy about the house and barns. In tying 
these large stooks, wc use, to bring them into shape, 
a quarter-inch rope, about 15 feet long, with a loop 
at the end, this is put around the stook and drawn 
up tight, and then the tarred rope is put on, and the 
other removed. If the work is properly done, the 
stooks will shed the rain and the fodder will keep 
perfectly. The only difficulty we have experienced, 
is from the butts of the stalks freezing to the soil. 
This is especially the case if the stooks are made 
when the ground is soft and muddy, which work 
should be done while the ground is dry and hard. 
The stook should be made as upright and compact 
as possible. It is a job that the farmer must see to 
himself. It requires a little common sense.” 
“ The farmers of New England and Eastern New 
York,” said the Doctor, “ will yet raise great quan¬ 
tities of corn-fodder not merely for milch cows, but 
to fatten sheep in winter.” 
“They cannot fatten them without grain,” said 
the Deacon, “ and the Western farmer will always 
have the advantage of getting cheaper corn than 
the farmers of the Eastern States.” 
“ That is true, but Eastern farmers can buy 
decorticated cotton-seed cake cheaper than those 
of the West can. And there is nothing better 
for sheep, and nothing that makes richer manure 
than that. Corn-fodder and cotton-seed cake will 
enable the Eastern farmer to fatten sheep in winter 
with great profit. We could ship thousands of 
sheep to England every week, if we only had those 
that were good enough and fat enough for the 
English market. Good mutton is worth more in 
England than beef, and live sheep will stand the 
voyage better than live cattle. Ten acres of corn- 
fodder and ten tons of decorticated cotton-seed cake 
would fatten 200 sheep, with say a ton of hay and 
two tons of bran for an occasional change of food. 
There is money and manure in the business.” 
“ Yes,” said the Deacon, “ and there is clean land 
and a better and higher system of farming. A 
good crop of corn-fodder will clean laud better 
than a summer-fallow.” 
“ I am not so sure about that,” said I, “but atany 
rate I know of no crop that leaves the land in suck 
admirable condition for barley, or potatoes, or 
mangels, or spring wheat. My corn-fodder this 
year is on old sod land that has not been plowed 
for many years, and we did not put a hoe into the 
field ; we cultivated once between the rows, but 
could not a second time, as the corn got too big for 
the horse to get through. The land now is in splen¬ 
did condition, with scarcely a weed to be seen in 
the entire field. The sods have withered nicely 
and the soil has a remarkably rich look. The corn- 
fodder shaded the ground completely, and this is 
favorable for decomposition and nitrification.” 
“ But much of the land in New England,” said 
the Deacon, “is too stony and hilly to plow.’* 
“ Very well,” said I, “ then pasture it with sheep, 
and give the sheep from half a pound to a pound 
