5 6 
SCRAPS FROM MY NOTE BOOK. 
SCRAPS FROM MY NOTE BOOK.—No. 1. 
While travelling over the United States for 
several years past, I have jotted down in a memo¬ 
randum, whatever appeared to me worthy of note, 
and which might some day be interesting to those 
who take pleasure in increasing their agricultural 
information. And here I give you a scrap about 
An Orange County Milk Farm. —While on a visit 
at Newburgh last summer, I made the acquaintance 
of Mr. J. R. Colwell, who lives on a farm of 280 
acres, 2£ miles from the river, and upon which he 
keeps 50 cows, 4 oxen, 5 horses, and varying num¬ 
bers of young stock. About 60 acres are in grain 
cultivation ; the other in pasture, mowing, and 
woodland, which latter, however, is pastured. The 
average crops on this, as well as adjoining farms, 
may be fairly stated as follows :—Corn, 40 bushels 
to the acre ; rye, 20; oats, 40 ; and hay, one-and- 
a-half tons. Of course the great reliance for profit 
is upon the milk sent to the city market. This is 
sold at an average through the year of two cents 
per quart, delivered on board of steam-boats at 
Newburgh. Mr. Colwell expects his cows to 
average 5 or 6 quarts of milk per day through the 
year, which will be in a year, at 5i quarts per day, 
2,007£ quarts, at 2 cents, $40.15, which is a little 
below what is generally calculated for the average 
produce of cows in Orange county. 
Last year Mr. Colwell only kept sixteen cows, 
from which he sold milk to the amount of $890, 
making an average of $55.62| to each cow ; a very 
pretty little item for some of us out west, who brag 
of our great prairie pastures, to set down opposite 
our account of profit, where cow-keeping costs 
nothing, and the profit is in exact proportion. 
But I must tell how Mr. Colwell’s cows are kept. 
In summer, upon good pasture, watered by such 
springs and rills as are always found trickling 
through a mountainous country such as this is. At 
six o’clock regularly through the summer, they are 
brought from the pasture to the yards, and milked, 
and then turned out in a different pasture during the 
night. This change of pasture every night, Mr. 
Colwell looks upon as an item of great importance. 
When the pasture begins to fail, say 1st of October, 
he commences feeding half a bushel per head per 
day of brewer’s grains, which are hauled each day 
from Newburgh, and fed to the cows in heaps laid 
upon the clean sod. The winter feeding com¬ 
mences on an average the middle of November, 
and ends about the 10th of May. The cows are all 
stabled through the winter, and at present turned 
out to water; but Mr. Colwell intends to fix his 
stable so as to water them as they stand in the 
stalls. For winter feed, everything of straw, hay, 
or stubble kind, is cut up, and corn and cobs, and 
occasionally oats ground, and two quarts of this 
meal, with three pecks of brewer’s grains to each 
cow, is mixed up with the chopped straw, &c., 
twelve hours before feeding, and given in quanti¬ 
ties to satisfy each appetite—not forgetting a daily 
allowance of salt. This feed, and a warm stable, 
gives him almost as much milk in winter as in 
summer When I was there in October last, the 
price of grains was four cents per bushel, and I 
think I understood Mr. Colwell, that was his con¬ 
tract price through the year. If you will add the 
present prices of hay and grain, it will be interest¬ 
ing to some of us “outside barbarians.'* and enable 
us to “ calculate” the cost of milk. [We shall be 
obliged to Mr. C. if he will do this. Ed.] Mr. 
Colwell could give you many other items worth 
your notice, I dare say, and I engage you a most 
hear.y vrelcome, if you will give him a call. 
There is another thing connected with this farms 
that gives it a claim upon the notice of every true 
American, who loves the mementoes of our Revolu¬ 
tionary history. It is the very ground occupied by 
Washington’s army, while he occupied that memo¬ 
rable old stone house in Newburgh, which is still 
known as Washington’s Headquarters. It was 
upon this farm where our toil-worn, poorly fed, and 
worse clothed soldiers used to lie down in far 
worse winter-quarters than do the present occu¬ 
pant’s cows, and at times, too, when they would 
have been right glad of some of the good, sweet meal 
now fed to them, to say nothing of the rich milk 
poured out upon this field of Mars, where the veri¬ 
fication and benefit of beating swords into plow 
shares is so well illustrated. Relics of those an¬ 
cient days, are still plowed up from time to time, as 
the plowman becomes satisfied of the truth of turn¬ 
ing up gold if he will but plow deep. Far more 
likely to plow it, than to dig it up, out of “ Kidd’s 
ship,” which some of that numerous class of people 
who seek to live by any other mode than plowing, 
either deep or shallow, are still shallow enough to 
try to do' at a place on the river below West Point, 
called Colwell’s landing, after one of the ancestors 
of the gentleman I have mentioned, and who accom¬ 
panied me down the river and pointed out this and 
many other interesting spots. Here it is said, 
$20,000 have been spent in money digging, which, 
if it had been spent in digging the soil, would pro¬ 
bably not have been sunk like the present expendi¬ 
ture, deeper than that sought after. 
Quantity of Grass Seed sown to the Acre. —In 
my own neighborhood, and many other places in 
which I am acquainted, four quarts to the acre of 
timothy seed is thought to be a good seeding; and 
I am laughed at for talking about putting on half a 
bushel. If such men ever read, I should like to 
have them learn how they seed land in Orange 
county. Noticing while on a visit to Mr. Charles 
Downing last fall, that he was seeding down a 
piece of ground—dry gravelly loam upon a side 
hill, I had the curiosity to see how much seed he 
put on to the acre, and found it was half a bushel 
of clean timothy, one-fourth of a bushel of orchard 
grass, and one-eighth of a bushel of clover. Now, 
if four quarts is enough, what a waste of seed is- 
here ? And equally wasteful was he in the labor 
bestowed upon the land. Not contented with 
plowing and throwing on the seed in a windy day, 
he actually sowed it carefully even, and then har¬ 
rowed the ground until smooth. And what is more, 
picked up the roots, stones, aoid trash, besides the 
waste of putting on manure. 
“ Well, no v T onder such folks can make $55 
from a cow in one season—we can’t do it out 
west, that ar’ a fact, stranger; but then we can live 
without it.” 
That is the answer—“ we can live'’’’ —yes, we can 
and do live, the Lord knows how; but you neve* 
will till you come and see. “ One half the 
world don’t know how the other half live.”—N«> 
