362 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
ceased. It grows from five to fifteen feet high, 
according to the strength of the soil, and the 
length of the season. It belongs to the rude 
stages of agriculture, and is grown to the great¬ 
est extent in Russia, where it is cultivated by the 
peasants, in small plots of ground. 
The plant requires a deep, rich, vegetable loam, 
such as is found in alluvial districts, and river 
bottoms. It flourishes best in virgin soils, where 
it frequently yields ten or twelve hundred pounds 
per acre. In the longer cultivated districts, it 
should follow the grass crop, especially clover, 
which has a tendency to restore the fertility of 
lands exhausted by hard cropping. If it can not 
have these conditions, manuring will be neces¬ 
sary to produce a remunerative crop. In turning 
under a green sward, the ground should be plow¬ 
ed and thoroughly harrowed, or cross plowed, to 
reduce it to as fine a tilth as possible. A fine soil 
is as much needed as in flax culture. Winter 
plowing is also recommended, no crop being more 
benefited by thorough preparation and careful 
husbandry than this. 
Much more attention is paid to the raising of 
seed in this country, than in Europe. A piece of 
land is devoted expressly to this purpose, so that 
seed perfectly ripe, and selected from well grown 
plants, may alone be used for the general crop de¬ 
signed for the fiber or lint. The seed plot is sown 
in drills three or four feet apart. As soon as the 
plants are well in blossom, so that the sex can be 
determined, the male plants are pulled and the 
female plants thinned out to six or eight inches 
apart in the drill. Care should be taken not to 
pull the staminate plants, until they have dis¬ 
charged all their farina, and fertilized the pistil- 
lates. 
The plants being thinned, the ground is kept 
under tillage, between the drills, with the plow or 
cultivator, and the drills are cleaned with the 
hoe. After the first light frosts, the plants are 
gathered, and carried to the barn for threshing. 
They shell so easily, that a damp day, or the early 
morning should be selected for carting them, oth¬ 
erwise much of the seed will be lost. The 
stalks of these plants are usually too large and 
coarse, to be used for lint. The seed should be 
carefully and thinly spread upon a well aired 
floor, and thoroughly dried, before it is put away 
for use ; and seed of the previous year’s growth 
alone, should be used for sowing. 
THE SOWING 
takes place any time in the month of May. The 
plant is rather feeble and tender when it first 
comes up, and if sown earlier, it is liable to be 
cut off by the frosts. If the seed time is deferred 
later, it is more likely to be hindered from ger¬ 
minating by dry weather. It is of great ad¬ 
vantage to select a wet time for sowing to secure 
a good even start to the plants. The seed is sown 
broad-cast like oats, and at the rate of about two 
husbols to the acre—the quantity however differ¬ 
ing somewhat with planters, according to the 
strength of the land, and the thoroughness of the 
preparation. It is put in with the harrow or 
the plow, and these are sometimes followed with 
the roller to break the lumps of earth, and to make 
a smooth even surface. If the season of sowing 
is favorable, and the plants come on well for the 
first month, and cover the ground, the crop is 
pretty sure, as it stands the drouth better than 
most cultivated crops. 
HARVESTING. 
The earliest sown hemp, is usually ready to 
harvest about the middle of August, and later 
fields will ripen in the order in which they have 
been planted. This crop however does not suf¬ 
fer so much as some others from a little delay. 
If cut a little before the leaves turn yellow the 
lint is not materially damaged, and if delayed a 
couple of weeks its market value is not affected. 
There is a diversity of practice as to-the mode 
of harvesting. The old method was to pull it up 
by the roots, and this process has this advantage 
to recommend it, that it saves some four or five 
inches in the length of the fiber, where it is thick¬ 
est and best. The process is the same as in flax 
gathering, the laborer grasping a handful and with 
a quick jerk pulling it out by the roots. The 
old method is still followed by the majority of 
planters, though cutting has its advocates, and 
they are yearly increasing. In this method, the 
laborer uses an old knife something like a sickle, 
cutting a handful at a time, and as near the ground 
as possible. 
In either case, the plants are laid on the ground 
with great care, and left for a few days to cure. 
They are then gathered and put in shocks, and 
tied in a cap at the top, with a wisp of hemp. 
From the shock, which is made up of small bun¬ 
dles they are sometimes taken near the barn, and 
stacked to remain a year. Where prices are not 
satisfactory, and the planter is able to hold his 
crop over, this is frequently done, and in the 
stack the plants undergo a heating process, which 
improves the quality of the lint; and adds to its 
value enough to repay loss of time in marketing. 
Several attempts have been made to remove 
the woody fiber from the lint, by machinery with¬ 
out the loss of time involed in rotting, but with¬ 
out success. The thing has been done, but the 
lint for some reason does not last as long and its 
market value is damaged. For some purposes, 
the water rotted hemp is much the best, and com¬ 
mands the highest price. That used for ships’ 
cordage goes through this process. Notwithstand¬ 
ing the advantage of water rotting, planters come 
very slowly into the practice, from the fact that 
it is more troublesome, requires more skillful 
handling, and oftentimes convenient streams are 
dry at the usual season of rotting—in the early 
Autumn. There is also a strong prejudice against 
working the hands in the water at this season, as 
it aggravates the tendencies of the climate to pro¬ 
duce chills and fever. 
In dew rotting, the hemp is spread out in thin 
layers upon the ground, usually in the month of 
October, and suffered to lie from six to ten weeks, 
according to the wetness and warmth of the sea¬ 
son. The object is to rot the woody fiber of the 
plant, so that it can be detached from the lint. It 
is sometimes spread upon the ground where it is 
grown, but this is not so good as a green sward, 
the dew collecting on the grass very much aiding 
the process of decomposition, When the plants 
are sufficiently rotted is determined by ex¬ 
periment. If the plants are rubbed in the hand, 
and the lint separates freely, the crop is ready for 
the brake. If taken up too soon, the process of 
breaking is made very difficult, and the lint is not 
pliable. If it remains spread too long, the lint is 
made tender, and its value is injured. If the 
weather remain cold, however, it is not damaged 
by remaining a week or two longer than is ab¬ 
solutely necessary. 
Some practice snow rotting, and this is nearly 
as good as water rotting, making a very soft fine 
lint, without affecting its toughness. It requires 
much longer time, and the weather is often un¬ 
comfortable, so that the increased expense of this 
process hardly compensates for the extra price. 
After rotting, the plants are again gathered, and 
put in shocks or stacks, or what is still better, 
stored under a shed to wait for breaking. 
■ CS- < » P - - ■■ ■ -- 
Why should a hen enjoy perpetual daylight 1 
Because her son never sets. 
Blinks from a Lantern..XIV. 
BY DIOGENES RED1VIVUS. 
A PRESUMPTUOUS FARMER. 
Another candidate for the hon¬ 
ors of my lantern has recently 
made his appearance. He thinks 
I am a very slow coach to be 
looking so long for a farmer. He 
thinks he is just the man I am 
seeking and presents a statement 
of his farm products, hoping that 
they will pass muster, and that 
he may be duly installed in the niche of fame, as 
the accepted of Diogenes. If there are any leaks 
left in his style of husbandry, he would like to 
know how to stop them. 
In his statement, he shows a farm of seventy 
acres worth $8000, or a little over a hundred 
dollars an acre. The gross products, as he 
estimates them, amount to $1,450.15. On 
the other hand he does not state the cost of pro¬ 
duction, and yet he wants to know if he is not 
doing a pretty smart business. The statement 
is not lucid enough, for a philosopher even, to 
determine whether he is making or losing 
money. For instance he puts down the hay crop 
at $300, and then the use of 7 cows at $210. 
If the cows eat up the hay, as is probable, 
there would seem to be little propriety in giving 
the farm credit for the product of hay. Then 
again, the product of corn and potatoes is put 
down at $300, and the beef and pork at $92. 
A part of the corn and potatoes were proba¬ 
bly used to make this meat. If so, it should be 
deducted from the credit account. This should 
be reduced at least $300 to make allowance 
foj- errors in calculations. We have then as the 
gross value of the products, $1150. The neces¬ 
sary labor to secure these crops, aside from 
the farmer’s own time, I will put down at 
$400. Now I will suppose the farmer to have 
a family of the average number, five individuals, 
and that it costs a hundred dollars each to feed, 
clothe, and warm them upon the farm, an esti¬ 
mate that would be rather small in a region 
where land is worth a hundred dollars an acre. 
We shall have then to balance the credit ac¬ 
count, interest on $8000 at 7 per cent $560, 
labor $400, support of family $500, making 
$1460, leaving our farmer $310 in debt at the 
close of the year. In other words he loses all his 
own time, which ought to be worth four hundred 
dollars, and pays $310 for the privilege of 
working his highly productive farm. This may 
be cheap enough, for the blessings of good air and 
country life, if a man is a gentleman of wealth, 
and can afford the luxury, but it is rather a poor 
specimen of farming. The cultivator wants to 
manage land so as to get legal interest for the 
money invested in it, to pay for the cost of culti¬ 
vation, including his own time, and to leave a 
handsome profit. If he can not do this, fanning 
is no better than other kinds of business. 
My correspondent needs to bring up bis farm 
to a production of crops worth two thousand dol¬ 
lars, with his present amount of labor, before he 
can show any skillful management worth talking 
about in the papers. He will probably have to 
stop some leaks before he can accomplish this. 
As he asks suggestions upon this topic, Dioge¬ 
nes would modestly insinuate that the most dan¬ 
gerous hole in the bottom of the farmer’s vessel, is 
the idea that he has reached the limits of perfection, 
and has nothing to learn in his business. I think 
about half the farmers have this notion, and they 
are already water-logged, and in danger of sink¬ 
ing with it. Go to almost any one of the twenty 
