82 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Feb. 11 
SOILING AND ENSILAGE. 
Are loo much for “ Western competition.” New life for 
Yankee dairy farming. Let Connecticut grow her 
own protein. 
EDWABD C. BIRGE. 
Part 1. 
Eastern Dairying Behind Eastern Gardening. 
Eastern dairy farming has been less progressive 
than vegetable farming in the same section. At the 
present time it is suffering more from slipshod, unbusi¬ 
ness-like methods at home than from Western competi¬ 
tion or foreign importation. To farm no better than 
our grandfathers did is not to farm as well. Their 
methods were adapted to their conditions. They 
improved their farms, made money and raised their 
families to commanding intelligence by processes 
which are now out-grown. Their daily bread was 
fresh to them, but is stale to us. Knowledge just 
opening to their vision is in the back numbers now. 
Still success may and must come to us in doing the old 
things. Our business ever is to raise food from the 
soil. But our task is to find new methods; methods 
in touch with modern conditions. At the request of 
The R. N.-Y., I shall detail some work we have been 
doing, which will indicate lines along which the dairy¬ 
man may advance in the direction indicated. 
At the outset, let me disclaim any new or wonderful 
discovery: nor have we yet perfected a system of green 
feeding; but we are working in a tentative way towards 
such a system, reaping, as we go along, advantages 
enough to pay the traveling expenses. This article 
will doubtless reach many who are doing better work 
in this direction than we are. If from them the rest 
of us acquire more information, this will have done 
some good. The original ideas put forward here mostly 
originated with Mr. A. \V. Cheever of Massachusetts, or 
Prof. C. S. Phelps of the Connecticut Storrs School or 
Henry Stewart. 
Ours is a retail milk dairy farm run for the purpose 
of securing a living for the owners, and dependent upon 
current profits for increased capital. It is in process 
of evolution from the old regime of Timothy hay and 
cornstalk fodder in winter and pasture in summer, to 
a proposed future of continuous succulent fodder both 
for summer and winter. Dairy farming has not every¬ 
thing in common with the “ feeding-the-land-from-a- 
bag ” style of agriculture, but the vegetable farmer is 
able to take care of himself. Our corner stone is 
stable manure. Our magician’s wand is a dung-fork 
waved over the fields. 
A 17-Cow Power Dairy. 
Our herd consists of 17 cows, two heifers coming in 
next spring, three calves and a full-blooded Holstein 
bull three years old, weighing about 1,000 pounds. 
This bull in a tread power runs our fodder cutter to 
cut dry fodder and, last September, cut seven acres of 
corn for the silo. Three horses do the work of our 80- 
acre farm, peddle milk once a day in winter and twice 
a day in three summer months, besides light driving 
by one. We have lying in a compact body 80 acres of 
land, divided into about 25 acres of woodland, 25 of 
pasture, and 25 of arable land. At least half of the 
farm carries the whole. 
□ Our cows are a well-weeded herd of grades of all 
breeds, picked up when and where the exigencies of 
the milk trade demanded, intermingled with heifers of 
our own breeding. Their average weight runs about 
800 pounds. From the cows in milk we are getting 
at present an average of eight quarts per day. 
Our customers are critical, and we have to supply 
milk of high quality, necessitating our keeping rich 
rather than large milkers. Most of these cows come 
in before July for our heavier summer trade ; yet the 
yield should be one or two quarts more. We have not 
weeded closely enough. Perhaps we do not feed high 
enough. It might be said here that all of our opera¬ 
tions are a cross between our own inefficiencies and 
the advanced agricultural practices of the day. The 
progeny is too often a scrub. 
Housing and Feeding the Cows. 
The herd, excepting the horses and calves, are housed 
in a barn cellar 42 x 30 feet. This is warm, well-lighted 
and fairly well ventilated; but the space is too 
crowded and we are now building an adjoining stable 
40 x 14. The cows are fastened with swinging stanch¬ 
ions on a plank floor with a gutter behind them. The 
top and side walls are whitewashed yearly. The bull 
is tied with two ropes upon a slat floor adjacent to the 
cows. He is a quiet fellow generally and takes much 
satisfaction in chewing his cud in the society of the 
ladies of his harem. He goes out in the field with 
them most of the time. Although we drive him about 
with the cows he is always led with a staff. 
We cut wheat hay two inches long and mix a pile 
upon the floor half and half with ensilage. At 5 a. 
m. the cows are fed one bushel of this mixture and four 
quarts of corn meal and wheat bran mixed half and 
half by weight. While eating they are milked. After 
breakfast they go out into the field back of the barn 
unless the weather is severe. They are out 1% hour, 
while the stables are cleaned, the bedding arranged 
and their hay ration—about 10 pounds—put in the 
mangers. As soon as this work is done they come in to 
their hay, and nothing more is done for them till 4 p. 
m. They are then turned out, the bedding is arranged, 
and their supper of cut feed put in the mangers. Then 
they come in to it and are milked. A running brook 
flows back of the barn and all have abundant oppor¬ 
tunity to drink unmolested while out. In severe 
weather they are watered with pails from a water 
barrel in the stable. This barrel is filled from a pipe 
of running water forced into our dairy by a hydraulic 
ram from the above-mentioned running stream. The 
temperature of the water in the barrel is about 40 or 
45 degrees. I will anticipate several arguments of the 
warm-water brethren : probably it would be a good 
plan to warm the water. We may do it later but shall 
not quite yet, so the agent needn’t call. In season¬ 
able weather we like to turn the stock all out of the 
stable and so have a clear field to clean up, to fix the 
bedding and to clear out the mangers and to feed. It 
is little trouble to turn them out and none at all to let 
them in. They all take their own places “ with neat¬ 
ness and dispatch,” if the feed is in the manger. 
From Onions to Milk. 
Beginning to wholesale milk in 1884 with five cows 
upon an onion and potato farm, we were obliged to 
buy out the peddler the next year to save our whole¬ 
sale trade. We bought another cow, some milk of the 
neighbors and began that ceaseless round of toil which 
is the lot of the milkman. We have gradually gone 
out of the onion and vegetable business and concen¬ 
trated upon the development of milk production. We 
fed cornstalks and Timothy hay in winter and past¬ 
ured in summer, and gave more or less grain all the 
time. The first of every April found us out of fodder 
with pasturage five weeks off. The middle of every 
July found our pasture dried up and a great shrinkage 
in the milk. We suffered from a periodical famine. 
The Silo to the Rescue. 
We longed for ensilage a long time before we found 
that long ensilage would answer. The expense of 
building a silo, combined with that of cutting ma¬ 
chinery, was greater than we wished to incur at that 
time. At last we ran across a farmer in a neighbor¬ 
ing town, who put the cornstalks full length into a 
silo cheaply constructed in one bay of his barn. We 
found this ensilage to be in good condition in January, 
the cows were eating it well, and no bad flavor was 
A Revolving One-Horse Harrow. Fig. 29. 
imparted to the milk. In the summer of 1889 we built 
a lean-to on our barn, 15 by 15 feet and 20 deep. We 
hewed out six-inch girts extending from the barn 
posts to the corner silo posts, putting them closest at 
the bottom where there would be the most strain. 
We covered up and down outside and in with one 
thickness of matched pine barn covering with one 
thickness of building paper under the outside boards. 
The floor is earth ; the roof tin. The cost, besides 
our own labor, was about $100. A long door filled 
with short cross-boards opens into the barn for filling 
and emptying. On the barn side the single thickness 
of the original matched pine barn covering serves as 
the wall of the silo. The double outside prevents 
freezing. 
In the spring of 1889 we planted eight acres of White 
China corn, a variety of medium but vigorous growth. 
It gave an estimated yield of 70 to 80 bushels of 
shelled grain per acre. The cows ate about one acre 
of it green during the summer and fall. On Septem¬ 
ber 1, as the ears, began to glaze, we picked them off 
throwing them together from two rows each way, 
making a windrow of four rows of corn. The latter 
was planted in hills 3% by 3% feet apart and had re¬ 
ceived level culture both ways with a one-horse cul¬ 
tivator. The rows were of equal length—about 80 
hills or 16 rods to a row. Four rows of picked stalks 
cut and thrown upon the wagon as it was driven 
along made a load. Three men with one two-horse 
team would put five loads, or half an acre, into the 
silo in five hours besides picking off the ears. 
(To be Continued.) 
A VERY LOW-DOWN WAGON. 
In The Rural I have seen descriptions of nearly 
every kind of vehicle, that can be used on the farm; but 
there is one kind quite common here, in Maine, which 
I have never seen mentioned in the paper. With many 
of the wagons the great advantage seemed to be 
that they were low down. My kind (Fig. 28), is 
emphatically so. Its most noticeable part is the iron 
hind axle which is bent at right angles, so that its 
lower side is only 12 inches from the ground or even 
less. Such wagons are built suitable for carrying any 
weight, from those fit for light marketing and milk 
carrying, to those for four-horse teams. One for one 
horse, to carry a ton or more, should have the bent X 
of about 1%-inch iron, according to quality. These 
jiggers, as we call them, have the advantage over 
other low-down wagons described in the papers, of 
having wheels as high as those of any other kind ; 
and they will therefore run as easily. The fore axle 
is a plain straight one, and the body is hung by a long 
hook inserted in a heavy eye in the front cross-piece 
of the body, and passing up through the axle tree, 
and fastened by a pin going through the hook. In 
making the box the side boards will come far enough 
forward to clear the axle when the wheel on that side 
is hard against the cramp iron. The draft may be 
directly from the forward axle as in other wagons ; 
but it is better to draw from the cross-piece of the 
body with a lifting pull. f. w. hills. 
A REVOLVING ONE-HORSE HARROW. 
Fig. 29 shows a revolving one-horse harrow made 
by myself. To make one, from the remains of an old 
buggy one should select a wheel with about one foot 
of the axle attached to the spindle, and the shaft ends 
or tips—four pieces of oak timber 2x4 inches and 
three feet long—half lap them at the crossings, leaving 
a five-inch space between, each way ; nail them well 
together and put in one three-quarter inch tooth at 
each intersection and one near each end of the cross¬ 
pieces ; cut off the spokes and nail them down so that 
the hub is in the center. Take the old spindle and 
drill a small hole through it and the wheel tap ; and 
put the axle end through the beam 2x4 inches, about 
four feet long ; put on a clevis and attach the old 
shaft tips for handles, by means of pieces of two-inch 
board, as the sketch shows. Join the two parts and 
place a nail through the tap to keep it on the spindle, 
and the harrow is complete. As I use it, I cause it to 
revolve as I desire by simply pressing a little more or 
less on one handle than on the other ; while to prevent 
its revolution, I press alike on both handles. It is 
easily managed and pulverizes the soil well. r. c. n. 
LEAVINGS. 
Referring to the answer to F. C., Fredericton, 0 , 
in a late Rural, in regard to his persimmon tree, I 
expect the trouble is due to the fact that there is no 
pollen-making tree in his neighborhood, and his little 
persimmons are simply abortive and seedless. The 
persimmon rarely makes perfect flowers, though not 
always completely dioecious. F. C. had better get a 
graft from a tree known to be barren (staminate) and 
insert it in a limb of his tree to furnish pollen to de¬ 
velop the fruit. w. f. massey. 
The Old Farmer’s Thermometer. —Several years 
ago, my seed onions not having kept as well as usual, 
I was compelled to look up a lot just about planting 
time. Several friends told me that if those of the 
quality I wanted could be found anywhere, it would 
be at the farm of an old man, who was rather famous 
for his success in keeping onions a little later than 
anybody else in that region. I gave him a call and 
found he had just what I was looking for, a very 
choice lot of onions, all in excellent condition, show¬ 
ing hardly a sign of root or sprout, though it was quite 
late in the season. After paying the old gentleman 
over double the price such onions had brought the 
previous fall, I asked him how it was that he had suc¬ 
ceeded in keeping them so nicely. They had been kept 
in the lower story of his barn. He pointed to a door. 
“You see that door ?” said he ; “ well, that is always 
kept open- until I see frost on the clapboards on that 
spot,” pointing to a spot inside, “ and then I close it; 
and if it grows still colder, I close another inner door, 
and as soon as that frost mark leaves, I open both 
again.” In short, the old farmer was guided by a 
