134 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[April, 
Walks and Talks on the Farm—No. 88. 
The Deacon has been visiting a farmer in an 
adjoining town, and brought me a sample of his 
clover hay. It i3 as bright, sweet, and almost 
as green as when cut, “I thought I would let 
you see,” said the Deacon, “ what kind of hay 
a good old-fashioned farmer makes. He says 
he would not have one of those spreading ma¬ 
chines if you would give him one. The less 
you stir clover hay the better.”—“It is splendid 
hay,” I said; “but I am not sure that I have 
not got some that is just as good, though not 
quite so bright.”—“Ail his hay is just like this,” 
said the Deacon; “ I picked this out of the barn 
just as it came. It is a good sample of the 
whole.”—Now, it so happened that the Deacon 
had not bis spectacles with him, and there was 
a good-sized thistle in the sample of hay. 
“Well, Deacon,” said I, “ if this «sa fair sample 
of the whole, your friend has as many thistles 
on his farm as I have, though I presume I can 
beat him in docks.”—By thorough cultivation, 
I have made encouraging progress in reducing 
the number of all weeds on my farm except 
docks. It would seem that the more we work 
the land the more the docks grow. It causes 
the seeds to germinate. There ought to be 
some way of killing the young dock plants in a 
wholesale way, but I have not yet discovered 
it. The Deacon says he will cure his clover 
hay in future as his friend does, and thought I 
would do the readers of the Agriculturist a 
good turn by publishing the method. It is sim¬ 
ply this: Cut the clover with a machine in the 
morning. Let it lie until toward evening, with¬ 
out stirring it, and then put it in moderate-sized 
cocks, and let it remain in these cocks until it is 
well cured and fit to draw into the barn. Last 
year he let the cocks remain out five or six days. 
Now this is a capital way of curing clover hay, 
'provided you could be sure of the weather. I 
was with Lawes and Gilbert when they made 
their well-known experiments with different 
manures on red clover, and I took duplicate 
samples of 25 lbs. of the clover, as soon as it 
■was cut from each plot, for analysis. Of course 
we had to save every particle of it, and -we 
wrapped each sample in large sheets of brown 
paper, and conveyed it to a well-ventilated 
room warmed by a stove. Better hay was 
never made, and nothing would please me bet¬ 
ter than to have a hundred tons of such hay to 
feed out every winter. And if the Deacon will 
cure it for me in this way, I will let him have 
the job: Cut the clover when the dew is off, 
and draw it in immediately without bruising it, 
and then cure in thin layers in a warm ventil¬ 
ated room in the shade; this is the perfection 
of hay-making. But this cannot be done ‘in 
practice. Now, what is the next best method? 
To bruise the clover as little as possible, and 
dry it by means of the wind rather than by the 
sun; and never let it be exposed to dew or 
rain, especially after it is partly cured. But, this 
is comparatively a slow method; and every 
day’s delay, and in fact every hour’s delay, in¬ 
creases the risk of having the hay damaged by 
rain. Taking this into consideration, and after 
giving considerable thought and study to the 
subject, I have concluded that, all things con¬ 
sidered, the best plan is to cure the hay as rap¬ 
idly as possible. If you chew a blossom of 
clover, you will find it quite sweet. It contains 
considerable sugar. And this sugar is soluble 
in water. And yet the heaviest rain falling con¬ 
tinuously on a field of growing clover in full 
blossom will not wash out a particle of the 
sugar. The sugar is soluble, but the water can¬ 
not get at it. But cut down the clover and let 
it wilt and become partly dr}’, and the water 
will then wash out the sugar. 
Experienced hay-makers know very well that 
a heavy rain or dew, falling on clover only just 
cut down, will not injure it. But rain or dew, 
falling on a field of partially-cured clover, does 
considerable damage. And the more the clover 
has been bruised in shaking it about, the great¬ 
er will be the damage done by the rain. Bear¬ 
ing these facts in mind, when there is consider¬ 
able clover to cut, I would start the machine 
about five o’clock in the afternoon, and cut as 
long as I could see; and unless there was a very 
heavy dew, I would start the machine soon 
after daylight in the morning, and keep on cut¬ 
ting until nine or ten o’clock. By this time the 
hay cut the night before will need moving. 
How best to do this is, with me, an open ques¬ 
tion. Some good farmers do it with a tedding 
machine. My own plan has been to take a 
self-acting steel-rake, that can be easily raised 
and lowered rapidly, and pull the clover into 
small windrows, five or six feet apart. In an 
hour or so afterward, turn these windrows by 
hand, and if any of the clover is green and 
matted together, shake it out. Treat the morn¬ 
ing-cut clover in the same way. And if you have 
time, turn the night-cut clover again before din¬ 
ner; but if not, turn it immediately after dinner. 
If it has been spread out much in turning, the 
horse steel-rake can be used again to consider¬ 
able advantage. I have a twelve-year-old boy 
that does this work with the rake to perfection. 
The rake is lifted by the wheel, and it is thrown 
in and out of gear by a lever. He moves this 
lever back and forth, and keeps the rake going 
up and down about every second. The object 
is not to rake the grass together, but to turn it. 
The oftener the green hay can be stirred the 
more rapidly it cures, and this is the main ob¬ 
ject of the first day’s operations. About three 
o’clock, pull the hay together into windrows 
with a wooden revolving-rake, and put it into 
moderate-sized cocks. At the same time, let the 
boy with the steel-rake run it between the rows 
of cocks, and make every thing clean and snug. 
The next morning, if necessary, turn over the 
cocks, and spread out any part of the hay that 
is still green. And it may be necessary to turn 
the hay again in an hour or so. By one o’clock 
the hay should be fit to draw in. The objec¬ 
tions to this method are (1), that it takes more 
labor, and (2) that opening the cocks, if done 
carelessly, may shake off the leaves of the 
clover, which, except the blossoms, are the best 
part of the hay. The advantage is simply a 
gain of time, and less risk from bad weather. 
A heavy growth of clover, badly knocked 
down, and twisted together by rain and wind, 
is a bad crop to handle. Better cut a heavy 
crop early, rather than run the risk of having it 
fall down. What you lose in the first crop by 
early cutting, you will gain in the second, or in 
the seed. Or, if you are short of pasture, an 
early-cut field of clover soon gives a capital bite 
for recently-weaned lambs. But early-cut clover 
shrinks a good deal, and it requires extra care 
in curing. The hay is very deceptive. It ap¬ 
pears cured when it is not. The sap is quite 
weak, and the ingredients of the clover are only 
partially organized, and consequently more in¬ 
clined to run into injurious fermentation. Ear¬ 
ly-cut clover, therefore, must be thoroughly 
cured. It then makes capital hay for milch cows. 
One of our large potato-dealers remarked to¬ 
day : “ Early Rose will be cheap next fall, and 
Peachblows scarce and high. Everybody is 
going to plant Early Rose.” I wish I could be 
sure that Peachblow’s would bring a good 
price. There is no crop that pays better, in this 
section, than Peachblow potatoes, provided 
you have a good yield, and get a fair price. I 
sold mine this year, in February, for $1 per 
bushel of GO lbs. If I could be sure of 50 cents 
a bushel at digging-time, potatoes would pay 
much better than any other farm-crop. But we 
should make our land rich enough to average 
200 bushels per acre. The labor of digging is 
the main objection to the crop, and the only 
practicable w T ay of lessening this labor is by get¬ 
ting a large yield per acre. It costs very little 
more to dig an acre that will yield 200 bushels, 
than one thatonly yields 100 bushels; and if the 
poor crop is weedy, as it is likely to be, it will 
cost more to dig the hundred bushels than the 
two hundred. I think you can raise more pota¬ 
toes per acre, provided the land is rich enough, 
by planting in rows than by planting in hill's, 
but it costs more to hoe them, and a good deal 
more to dig them. And so, except on high- 
priced land, it is, perhaps, better to plant in 
hills, say three feet apart each way. Last year 
I planted my Peachblows 31 feet apart each 
way, and tw’O sets in each hill, and the tops 
completely covered the ground. I am con¬ 
vinced that we talk too much about “ large vs.. 
small potatoes for seed,” “ planting in hills or 
drills,” and depth of covering, and far loo little 
about enriching and preparing the ground, and 
keeping the crop free from weeds. If the land 
is dry, rich, and clean, and the potatoes are 
planted in good season, and the soil kept well 
stirred by the use of the cultivator until there 
is actual danger of cutting off the roots and 
tubers, and any weeds that have escaped the 
hoe are afterward pulled out by hand, the 
chances are favorable for a good crop, no mat¬ 
ter w T hat system of planting is adopted. And, 
on the other hand, if the land is wet and poor, 
and the -weeds are suffered to choke the crop, it, 
is no use sending to Dr. Ilexamer for seed, or 
of asking him what is the best method of culti¬ 
vation. With all his skill, he cannot tell you 
how to raise a good crop in such circumstances. 
Get the land right, and if you have then time to 
talk about new varieties, and the best method 
of planting, well and good ; but do not try to 
get a good crop by any species of agricultural 
legerdemain. You cannot cheat nature; and all 
who attempt to do so arc ultimately found out 
and punished. It is the greatest evil connected 
with our farming. 
Mr. Cook, of Perry Co., Pa., says he has two 
hundred acres of land that has been dressed 
with lime at the rate of 100 to 150 bushels per 
acre. This puts it into paying condition, but 
not much more. And he wants to bring it into 
a high state of cultivation, and he cannot possi¬ 
bly make barn-yard manure enough for this 
purpose, and he asks if it will pay to use pure 
bone-dust at $50 per ton. With ordinary farm- 
crops I do not think it will. It would pay bet¬ 
ter on turnips and mangel wurzel than on any 
other crop, and if we could get it for about $25 
per ton, it would be a profitable manure for 
turnips, and, probably, for old grass-land in the 
dairy districts. I think Mr. Cook can make 
manure much cheaper than he can buy it. Land 
that has received such a liberal dressing of lime 
ought to produce capital crops of clover. And 
the clover may be fed out on the farm in con¬ 
junction with bran and oil-cake, and thus the 
