442 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
July 1 
of milk as cheap in .January as in .June. What do you 
think of that ? ” 
“ You see that I made 360 pounds of butter in June: 
375 pounds of butter in December, and 365 pounds of 
butter in January. The cost of keeping' is $2 per 
month in summer, ard S3 55 in winter. So for butter 
summer is the cheaper.” 
“I have a frie.id who claims that for profit cows 
should be fresh in spring. What ^o you think about 
that ? ” 
“ A cow will probably give more milk if fresh in 
fall, provided she is kept in the best manner.” 
“ But! ” said I, “if she is fresh in spring, she gives 
the bulk of her milk when food is cheapest; as she 
dries up towards winter less grain is required In the 
coldest months, when dry, no grain is needed, and the 
cost of keeping is reduced to just a maintenance 
ration.” 
“How about the price of butter in winter?” he in¬ 
quired. “You have to feed enough to maintain the 
ccw. why not add grain and get butter enough to pay 
for both?” 
My answer was : “ Good butter packed in firkins 
sells in the fall for only a few cents less than winter 
butter. So many have gone into winter dairying that 
there is not difference enough in price to pay for in¬ 
creased cost of winter feed. But that is not the worst 
trouble. When fed on good hay and grain, the cost is 
from 18 to 30 cents per day, if the cow is fed, as she 
must be to keep up the flow of milk, so that she will 
be profitable during early summer. Now, how many 
cows are the re that will make enough butter to pay 
for this ration ? I think with scrub cows, barns and 
owners, there is more profit in letting the cows go dry 
from December till March.” 
“ Well! Perhaps you are right; but there is no 
month in the year when my dairy does not more than 
pay for the food consumed. Let’s leave this to the 
Rubai, readers.” 
“ Agreed.” 
Something About the Silo. 
“ What ration will make the finest butter?” I asked, 
as we went out to inspect the silo. 
“ Sweet clover hay, oats and corn.” 
“ Does ensilage affect the butter ? ” 
“ Yes, favorably, but nothing equals or gives the 
nutty aroma obtained from corn meal.” 
The silo is 10x16x30 feet, with a dirt floor, double- 
boarded, ’• ith paper between. It has been built two 
years. The corn was Pride of the North, planted on 
.June 15, and cut in the glazing stage, October 1. A 
portion was frosted Saturday night, and was cut Mon¬ 
day morning, and put in the silo Tuesday. The ensi¬ 
lage is absolutely “ sweet,” not a pound spoiled on 
bottom or sides, and less than a wagon-boxful on top. 
I could not find anything different from 50 other silos 
I have visited that had more or less rotten ensilage 
that filled the barn with what to me is a “ stench,” 
but which others call “ aroma.” In reply to my ques¬ 
tion, “ How did you get such good results?” he said : 
‘ I do not know, unless it is the fact that the corn was 
cut very short, about an eighth to a quarter of an inch 
long, and the silo was kept fullest at the sides.’ 
Mr. Baker had never had a bit of poor ensilage, and 
is a little bit “ lucky ” in this respect. I wonder if 
finely cut ensilage will pack closer, or whether the 
fact of the silo being new, therefore tighter, has any¬ 
thing to do With it ? C. E CHAPMAN. 
NEW IDEA IN HAY RACKS. 
Fig 158 shows a sketch of a hay rigging implement 
1 invented last season. My neighbors all think it 
good. I say I invented it, as it is the first one of the 
kind I have ever seen. The sketch, I think, will give 
a very good idea of it. The one just finished is built 
of 2 J-£x5-inch hemlock bed sills 16 feet long for the two 
center ones 16 inches apart; two of the same size 10 
feet long six inches from the same fill the bolster be¬ 
hind; two infiontof the same size three feet long 
fill the front bolster; one arm behind is 23^x5 inches 
8 feet long, running clear through on top across the 
bed sills; one in front, I%x6 inches, 8 feet long, of 
hard wood, is mortised to receive the standards, which 
are 2x6 inches, 16 inches long to the shoulder, bolted 
between the two bed sills, the same bolts receiving 
the ladder. 
The front has a lx3-inch piece of hard wood at each 
end of the short bed sills bolted on the bottom of the 
same and long ones also, and a l%x5-inch piece at the 
fore end of the longer'short bed sills and under the 
short center arm also ; one of the same size is under 
the short arm forward of the hind wheel one-half- 
inch bolts which tie it strongly. The brackets which 
hold the boards over the hind wheels are 11 and 12 
inches high and 18 inches long, and made of good old 
wagon tire 1 % inch wide. The forward end standards 
I let stand back so the boards lie flat on the arm. This 
rigging is designed for a Western built wagon. The 
bolsters are three feet two inches, and there is a high 
wheel for a low wheel; the standards and the brackets 
could be shortened or varied ; if deeper bed sills were 
used, the brackets would be shorter. 
Bradford County, Pa. .r. k. Montgomery. 
HAYING N0\V AND THEN. 
A grizzled, bony-armed, stoop shouldered man stood 
with his sleeves rolled up to the shoulder looking over 
the fence into a 90-acre field of Timothy that was 
gently waving in the breeze. The grass was heavy— 
good for at least two tons per acre over the whole 
field. 
“ You’ll get lots of hay there,” I remarked. 
“ Good crop,” said he, smiling. “ Splendid crop. 
And right under my thumb, too. Fifteen—yes, ten 
years ago a field of grass like that would have appalled 
me. I used to grow about 40 acres then and if the 
crop was heavy I would begin to fret and worry about 
the harvesting long before it was ripe. Now I have 
it right under my hand. I’m not worrying a minute!” 
“ So you are fixed for handling it now, are you? ” 
“ Handling it! We don’t handle it any more. 
Machinery does the handling. We merely manage the 
A Well-Arranged Hay Rack. Fig 158. 
machinery. Why, bless your soul! haying is simply 
fun compared with what it used to be.” 
“ I’m well aware of that. I’ve tugged and heaved 
and pitched under the blazing sun until my head spun 
and every bone and muscle in my body ached like so 
many boils.” 
“ Exactly. And hay was worth no more than it is 
now. I have worn myself out with hard toil in the 
wheat and hay fields. I used to be as strong as a 
horse and as tireless as a machine, but I’m only a 
wreck now. I’ve made money out of hay and wheat, 
but I've broken myself down at it. If we’d the ma¬ 
chinery we now have when I was young, I would not 
be bent and stiffened as I am.” 
“Excessively hard manual labor and whisky to¬ 
gether have knocked out many a good, strong farmer 
long before his time. He would toil and moil until 
his body was literally worn out, and then drink whis¬ 
ky to enable him to do just a little more.” 
“That is a fact; but that’s all past now. Now 
there’s that 90-acre field of grass—there will be about 
200 tons of hay to put up, and I’m actually looking 
forward to the job with a feeling of eagerness and 
pleasure.” 
“ How do you manage it ? ” 
“ If the ground is fairly dry and the weather hot, I 
go into the grass with a lively team and wide-cut 
mower at sunrise, and slash down as much as I think 
we can get up all right that afternoon. In the mean¬ 
time my two men are cultivating corn. If the ground 
is damp or the grass extra heavy, we start a tedder in 
about nine o’clock. At noon we hitch two teams to 
wagons with hayracks on, attach the loader to one 
of them, and a boy drives while the man loads the hay 
as it comes up. When he gets a load on he takes it 
to the barn, while the loader is attached to the other 
wagon and a load run on. When the man gets to the 
barn he thrusts a horse hay fork into his load, a boy 
leads a horse off a short distance and the hay is 
hoisted up and into the mow. In a few minutes the 
load is in and the man on his way back for another. 
Before sunset the last load is in and everybody feels 
first-rate.” 
“No exhausted, stiffened, swearing men with blis¬ 
tered hands and boiling blood. No whisky, no night 
work, nobody 1 overhet ’ ; supper on time, chores 
done by daylight and everything lovely ! ” 
“That's it exactly ! Simple fun compared with the 
old hand-fork, back-cracking, man and woman-killing 
drudgery and worry of the ‘good old times.’ I often 
wish I’d been born 50 years later ; still I’m glad that 
I’ve lived to see and handle these machines. Invent¬ 
ive genius has done great things for farmers, and will 
do many more in the next 50 years.” 
Christian County, Ill. fred. guundy. 
THE HALL0CK FARM AGAIN. 
NOTES FROM EASTERN LONG ISLAND. 
They Couldn’t Believe the Story. 
After my article in regard to the Hallock farm ap¬ 
peared in The R. N.-Y. last summer, several people 
wrote to inquire if it was an account of actual farming 
or simply a high-grade lie, a cross between a fact and 
fancy. I can hardly blame any one who has never 
visited the farm for doubting some of the statements 
concerning it, but I can assure Rural readers that 
the information is reliable, as I have lived only a mile 
from the place for 30 years. Mr. Collingwood has 
visited the place and seen the onions growing and 
the carrots among them, and the onion and carrot 
seeds which were truly worth looking at; so The 
Rural reading public can rest assured that the Hal¬ 
lock farm is a reality. [That is so. H W. C.] 
* 'There has been but one mortgage on the farm within 
my remembrance, and that was paid off when Mr. 
Hallock bought the place, 22 years ago, and, as he has 
paid cash ever since, it looks as though the farm’s 
finances were founded upon a rock. Of course, Mr. 
Hallock has often hired money to enable him to pay 
cash for his manure and running expenses, as he pre¬ 
ferred this to the enormous time-prices charged by 
fertilizer dealers. Put this down as one of the secrets 
of success : “ Pay cash.” Another error occurred in 
the article of July 30, 1892, in which I stated that the 
farm had frequently changed owners, when I should 
have said managers. Before Mr. Hallock bought it, 
the land had been rented out on shares, a pernicious 
system, which, cn the supposition that the Jabor of 
the tenant should balance the rental value of the 
land, encouraged a tendency to greed in the landlord 
and laziness on the part of the tenant. Many of those 
old contracts stipulated that the “ party of the second 
part ” should leave as much manure in the cow yard 
as he found there, and should keep the “ acrost ” 
fences in repair. While the terms of contract may 
have been religiously fulfilled, a hungry earth found 
a very inadequate supply of manure Thank fortune 
the “ acrost” fences, the shares and the cow yard are 
relics of a past age. 
The Hallock farm was poor when he bought it. For 
the first year two men cut a shock of corn, 49 hills, 
and carried it away in two armfuls. The case is very 
different now. One reason why the farming public 
does not know of the Hallock farm is because it has 
not been written up for the agricultural press. The 
R. N.-Y., which manages to discover all the prize 
farms, was the first to publish an accurate account of 
this interesting place. Mr. Hallock, like many of our 
best practical farmers, does not care to sound his 
own trumpet, and, as his produce is sold in the open 
market for eating purposes, he has nothing to adver¬ 
tise, and has no fancy stock or seeds to sell at fancy 
prices to less fortunate fellow farmers. If any one is 
benefited by a study of Mr. Hallock’s methods, he 
can credit it to the enterprise of The R. N.-Y. 
Another Big Crop Last Year. 
The comments which some people have made about 
the crop statements are laughable and show how little 
they understand the management of this place. One 
man reads the crop statement and says it is impossible 
to raise so much on a farm of 68 acres, including hills, 
woodland, pasture and meadow. Bless you! he has 
no hills or woodland or pasture, and very little meadow 
and that is not embraced in the 68 acres, as it grows 
only a wild salt grass which is used for bedding the 
horses. The 68 acres do not include the land occupied 
by the house or barns, roads or wharf, or anything 
but the actual land on which the crops grow and as 
most of it grows two crops in a season, a good deal is 
explained that otherwise seems queer. Here is what 
was raised on the 68 acres last year : 
10,000 quart* strawberries. 
5,425 barrels early cabbage. 
3,1 f 0 bushels early potatoes. 
3,000 
4,650 
12,000 
8,000 
20 
onions from sets, 
late potatoes, 
carrots. 
onions from seed, 
white beans. 
176 barrels Hubbard squash. 
3 tons hay. 
100 bushels onion sets. 
150 “ B ussel’s sprouts. 
40 pounds carrot seed. 
150 “ onion seed. 
1,£00 bushels corn in ear. 
275,000 cabbage plants to carry over 
winter. 
This shows the average yield of potatoes to be about 
300 bushels per acre, onion sets 500 bushels and onions 
from seed 800 bushels. The 12,000 bushels of carrots 
were all raised as a second crop, most of them among 
the onions. 
The mott surprising thing to me is, not that the 
onions yielded 800 bushels per acre, but how he got 
along with so little hay for his dozen horses and two 
cows. I believe he bought some hay last year and 
we must remember that 18 acres of corn as grown on 
his exceedingly ^rich land furnish an immense amount 
