1834 
THE RURAL WEW-YORKER. 
673 
RURAL PRIZE ESSAY.— Class IX. 
RYE.—ITS FUNCTIONS IN AGRICULTURE. 
STEWART DEAN. 
In the United States rye is the least popular 
of the grains, and its merits are not as well 
understood as they should be. It is not gener¬ 
ally fed understandingly as a grain ration for 
farm stock, especially horses, and its use is 
now almost obsolete in many portions of the 
country. This is owing, first, to the belief 
that it is too costly; and, second, to the idea 
that it is a good substitute for oats for horses 
and young stock. I am inclined to believe 
that the first notion is correct, from the fact 
t hat, rye as a nutrient comes into direct com¬ 
petition with corn, which it. resembles in com¬ 
position. Farmers have been in the habit of 
feeding rye to horses with the notion that it 
would take the place of oats, when, in reality, 
it is complementary to oata, being rich in 
carbohydrates—in fact, as just said, it very 
closely refembleacorn in composition. In our 
climate, with our immense and cheap corn 
crops to take its place, rye can never become a 
cheap food for horses; aud the liability of 
dairy cows to abort when fed the grain or 
straw of rye that has ripened the spores of 
ergot, its fungoid parasite, is well known 
among careful dairymen. 
These are cogent reasons against rye as a 
popular grain food. To my mind it has, how¬ 
ever. two missions in our agriculture, which 
are as unique as they are useful. The first is 
as a soiling crop for dairy cows. Rejoicing in 
a cold climate, rye pushes its first shoots to 
ward the returning suu long before any other 
grass or grain plant, not excepting “Quack.” 
Iu this respect, it stands first in every sense, 
and opens the season’s feeding witli a good, 
full swath by the time pastures are in fair 
condition. In this latitude the 10th of May is, 
in an early season, about “turning-out" time, 
and rye on good land will then be 15 inches 
high. Of the merits of soiling I shall 
say but a word, that being a problem 
for each dairyman to work out for him¬ 
self. The value of land and the character 
of the individual’s business, apart from the 
dairy jwr se, will indicate very clearly 
whether he can carry his herd through Bum¬ 
mer on soiling crops at a profit. It is tuoroly 
a mutt*.'!* of a few acres with a good deal of 
labor, or u grout rnuny ucrea and little or no 
labor. Rye starts the soiler in first-class 
shape in the Spring, and will take him through 
May. The most favorable soil for this crop is a 
light gi*a vel or sandy loam. The middle of Sep¬ 
tember is the right time to sow. About three 
bushels of seed per acre will make the best qual¬ 
ity of Spring feed. Rye is apt to be coarse if 
the seeding is thin, and cows will eat too 
little to secure the highest yield, unless it is 
very delicate in texture. Rye should not be 
grown with either hog or cow tnuuure as a 
fertilizer. Hog manure makes a very rank 
growth of stalks and louf, aud cows won’t eat 
enough of such foliuge to insure an abundant 
milk yield. There is doubtless an odor or 
flavor of the hog iu the substance of the plant. 
The same may lie said of cow manure. Cattle 
will dodge the gross where either their 
manure or urine has fallen in a pasture, for at 
least two years. It is the same thing in re¬ 
gard to forage crops. But there is a marked 
exception as regards horse manure. Cows eat 
greedily fodder crops raised with this, and 
ordinary superphosphate appears to leave no 
repelling taste. A light dressing of horse 
manure, say 10 two-horse loads, and 400 
pounds of complete fertilizer per acre, are 
abundant for fair lands. 
Two points in soiling should be noticed. 
The first is, not to give the cows all they want 
at once; but bring them gradually, through 
four or five days, up to a full feed. Rye fed 
largely, following suddenly on hay, will im¬ 
part a disagreeable odor to the milk, which 
will be intensified in the butter—a kind of a 
“tumipo-eabbage” odor. There is no necessity 
for this, ami if the crop is fed sparingly at 
first, there will be none at all. Of this I do 
not know the philosophy; but ’tis a fact. The 
other point is, that some cows do not seem to 
relish the rye freshly cut, but if it is wilted, 
they acquire a taste for it, aud pitch in with a 
gusto, after two or three days. 
Rye, cut wheu nearly in blossom, makes a 
very good light, coarse horse hay. This is 
the proper thing to do if you have some of 
your fodder crop left, as Orchard Grass, and 
clover will be ready to cut then; and your rye 
stubble should be turned under, and a crop of 
fodder corn drilled in for late feed. An aver¬ 
age 800-pound cow will eat, one day with an¬ 
other, not far from 90 pounds, if she is getting 
a fair amount of grain, say six quarts of a 
mixture consisting of two-thirds corn and one- 
third oat meal. It is safe to say that an acre 
of good rye will fee*! 10 cows from 17 to 20 
days. 
Somebc dy has said that snow is the poor 
man’s manure. That might be applied with 
equal truth to rye. Clover is the great ren¬ 
ovator of good land; rye will perform the 
same generous office on soil so poor that 
clover will not “ catch” at all. My bobby on 
fertilization is the necessity of the presence in 
the soil of a large amount of vegetable humus 
as a primary condition to favorable plaut. 
growth. This belief presses itself upon me 
with the uuabating persistency of an instinct. 
The more I have tried to reason it out of my 
head, the more the proofs in its favor have mul¬ 
tiplied. When 1 read of some eminent man 
announcing that in order to raise so many 
bushels of corn, he would take so many 
pounds of nitrogen, so many of phosphoric 
add. aud so many of potash, and saying noth¬ 
ing about this humus, for some reason or 
other it makes me nervous. 
Now, I have come to believe that u consid¬ 
erable amount of this vegetable deposit in the 
soil is absolutely necessary to iuako a good 
crop, and that the chief element lacking in 
worn-out soils is, not the everlasting nitro¬ 
gen, potash, etc., but this very same cheap, 
hardly-ever-montioned factor. Chemistry 
can show us no practical difference between 
the best and the poorest agricultural soils, 
save the vegetable mold. In worn-out soils 
we must put it back, and make the yellow, 
sickly-colored earth once more of a darker 
hue. How shall we do this without barn-yard 
mauure or muck! I say with rye. On those 
enfeebled soils you can't do anything with 
clover; it won’t grow at all, and the seed is 
too expensive to experiment with; corn is 
very nearly as bad in this respect; but rye 
will fill the bill exactly. 
Its rank, far-spreading, greedy roots will 
hunt every available particle of nutritive sub¬ 
stance, and it will make a considerable amount 
of growth as a first crop on land that has been 
abandoned as being too much impoverished to 
grow any farm crop. This growth should be 
turned under when heading out, aud the luml 
may be left In that condition till Fall, though 
it would be boiler farming to drag it twice or 
three times. In September turn the land over 
and sow agaiu. This crop will be 20 per cent, 
better than the preceding one, and should be 
treated iu the same way, Sow the third time, 
and in the Spring seed to clover, letting the 
grain ripeu, If you get, a “eatrh.” If you do, 
never again let that laud get below the capa¬ 
bility of growing a crop of clover. If the 
olovor should not do well, turn it under us 
before, and put In the fourth crop of rye 
You need not worry, you will get the clover 
this time. 
This treatment is sure, and costa nothing but 
a very small amount of time aud labor and 
the value of two bushels of seed per acre. 
Where does the rye get all this fertility from? 
Here comes in this humus theory agaiu. I 
believe that the decaying vegetable matter 
liberates most of it from the soil, where, left 
without the wooing influences of the organic 
matter, the inorganic treasures would lie lock¬ 
ed up In stony-hearted inertness, in these 
older States, there are thousands of acres now 
exhausted from starvation, that might iu five 
year’s time be laughing with luxuriant plants. 
Rye and a little vim can change all this, aud 
nobody will be a cent in debt for doing it. 
Chant. Co., N. Y. 
%OCUtUS, flf. 
WESTERN CANADIAN FAIR. 
[EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.] 
London is situated in the center of one of 
the finest farming districts of Ontario, and one 
would naturally expect a large representa¬ 
tion of farmers and farmers’ products at the 
Western Canadian Fair, held there from Sep 
tember22 to 27. In this he would not be dis¬ 
appointed; for, though the weather was very 
unpropitious during the first part of the week, 
yet a very good show was gotten together. 
We noticed that much of the best stock was 
the same that had been shown at Toronto the 
previous week, aud the bulk of the horses 
were of the same heavy class mentioned The 
cattle were largely Short horns; the sheep 
were nearly all coarse and medium wools; the 
hogs were largely Yorkshires and Suffolks 
We noticed a Suffolk Punch horse and mare, 
three years old, recently imported from Eng¬ 
land, which attracted much attention. Their 
weights were 1,650 and 1,810 pounds respec¬ 
tively. They were short-legged, blocky, active 
animals, and seemed well adapted to farm work. 
There was a good show of agricultural ma¬ 
chinery; including several tile machines, 
which we were very glad to see, as their pres¬ 
ence showed that increased attention is being 
paid to the getting rid of surplus water from 
the soil- one of the essentials to a better sys¬ 
tem of fanning. Among the novelties in the 
way of agricultural implements we noticed 
n combined sulky rake, thistle-killer and har¬ 
row. It was so constructed that the rake 
teeth are readily detached, aud In their 
place is substituted a series of catting 
teeth made sharp aud broad, so that 
a thistle could hardly escape being cut 
off by them in passing. These could be re¬ 
moved, aud a harrow substituted in their 
place, and it was so arranged that the driver, 
while riding, could readily raise any part of it, 
for the escape of stones, sods or other obstruc¬ 
tions. 
We also uoticed a new combined wheat 
drill, fertilizer sower and wheat cultivator. 
It had three wheels and a flexible tongue, and 
was guided by the driver so as to run per¬ 
fectly straight—a very necessary provision 
where cultivation is to be done in the Spring. 
For cultivating, the tubes and hoes are re¬ 
moved, and in their place is .substituted a sort 
of sad iron-shaped float, which, wheu culti¬ 
vating the wheat iu Spring, runs aloug the 
surface between the wheat, rows, and lifts up 
the wheat leaves. Attached to the standard 
of this float, aud following it, Is a cultivator 
tooth, which can bo so placed as to throw 
little or much soil towards the wheat plants 
on either side, covering tin* roots much or 
little. It seemed tons a novel and desirable 
improvement, on the wheat drills. 
The exhibit of bees and honey and apiary 
appliances was large and attractive, and wo 
were glad to notice that many of the exhibi¬ 
tors-were ladies, and they secured a fair share 
of the prizes. Apiculture is especially a wo¬ 
man’s employment, and wo hail increased at 
toution by them to it as a very favorable sign, 
and hope it may rapidly increase. 
There was a large show of fruit, and it was 
of liue qua! Ity though not so large as last week 
at Toronto. In the arrangement of fruit, all 
exhibits of each variety were placed together; 
this made it easy to see at, a glance the whole 
of any one sort, and enabled a casual visitor 
to compare the various plates with each other. 
Another feature was novel bo ns, and one 
which we desire to especially commend: it 
consisted of a display of market fruits ready 
packed in barrels for shipment. The commit¬ 
tee examined the fruit very closely, and we 
were glad to see that it was honestly packed. 
Such examples should have a very beneficial 
effect upon the mode of sorting and packing 
apples. 
A Canadian fair without a large exhibit, of 
feeding roots, would be a great,curiosity, and 
the collection made was certainly a great curi¬ 
osity and study to an inhabitant of the States- 
We never saw a larger collection or finer sam¬ 
ples of the various sorts of feeding roots than 
that exhibited in the Produce Hull at London. 
There were tons and tons of them, aud all so 
remarkably fine we were glad we were not 
one of the judges, as it would have puzzled us 
to say where the prizes belonged. The potato 
show was also fine, hoth iu numbers of sam¬ 
ples shown, and iu the average excellence of 
the individual sorts. 
Wheu we say that our friends, the Vicks, 
made an exhibit of flowers, we need say no 
more to assure any one who knows them, that 
the flower sho w was worth looking at; at, least 
one third of the entire exhibit was made by 
them, and, like all their work, it was first- 
class. No firm on this continent has done 
more to create and cultivate a correct taste 
for flowers, uud for their constant efforts in 
this direction they should receive especial no¬ 
tice. 
The dairy exhibit, both iu butter and 
cheese, was much the largest and finest of any 
which we have seen this year, and when wo 
inquired the reusou of such a fine display, we 
were assured that that portion of Canada 
lying north and east of Loudon is a fine dairy 
district, aud that much attention is devoted to 
the manufacture of butter and cheese. 
We have been impressed with the great in¬ 
terest shown by Canadian ladies in all kinds 
of farm stock and farm products. While it is 
a rare thing to see a lady, at any fair held in 
the States, taking even a casual glance at the 
stock, in Canada Hue-appearing and richly- 
dressed ladies, with their husbands, and often 
in groups by themselves, make a tour of the 
stables, stalls und pens, and minutely examine 
and compare the merits of the different; breeds 
and different animals of each breed, and it is 
not an infrequent occurrence to Uud the lady 
a better judge of stock than her husband. The 
ladies are also, as a rule, well posted upon the 
business aud conditions of the farms and of 
farming operations; especially were they well 
informed in fruit-growing. 
This fair was entirely exempt from the sale 
of all kinds of liquors, including ale, wine and 
beer, and would have been very decent and 
orderly, were it not that ball throwers, lifters 
and strikers wore allowed to create bedlam in 
the most populous parts of the grounds, and 
petty showmen were continually bawling their 
attractions. We noticed also a half dozen or 
more full-fledged gamblers who were allow¬ 
ed to fleece the young ami green of both sexes 
and crack their indecent jokes, especially 
when surrounded by women und girls. Can¬ 
adian laws are strictly opposed to these .prac¬ 
tices, and the welfare and morals of tho young 
and future farmers are in the scales, and it 
does seem as though such unusually level¬ 
headed people would have sufficient decency 
ami regard for good morals not to be willing 
to sell themselves to the Devil for the paltry 
sum they can realize for these privileges. As 
we talked with the directors and saw what 
decent people they appeared to be, we could 
not but wonder at their moral depravity or 
gross Ignorance and stupidity, in allowing 
such debasing practices on their fair grounds, 
Shall there never more be an unobjectionable 
fair? 
THE WESTERN MICHIGAN FAIR. 
(RURAL SPECIAL REPORT.) 
The Sixth Annual Fair of the Western Mich¬ 
igan Agricultural Society was held at Grand 
Rapids, Mich., Sept. 23 89. The success of the 
undertaking was seriously interfered with by 
ba*l weather. Thursday, however, was pleas¬ 
ant, and a largo crowd visited the grounds. 
The exhibits In all the departments wore in 
excess of previous years, aud had the weather 
been pleasant, on Tuesday ami Wednesday, tho 
attendance would undoubtedly have been 
larger than in any year in the history of the 
society. 
Homological Hall was well arranged, and 
was full of very choice fruit, embracing 1,889 
entries. J. G. Knmsdell, Grand Traverse, 
showed 80 varieties of apples, 15 of plums, 10 
of pears, 4 of poaches, 6 of grapes, 3 of crab- 
apples, and 8 of quinces. He also exhibited 
a bushel of Cutbbert raspberries picked on 
the day of the opening of the fair. Tho North 
ern Fruit Growers’ Association had a fine col¬ 
lection of 40 varieties of apples, 10 of plums, 
and 4 of grapes. The Western Michigan 
Fruit Growers’ Association, organized in July 
last, had about 300 plates of apples, grapes, 
peaches, plums, etc. Altogether, this hall 
was filled with as fine and large a collection as 
any the writer ever saw. This speaks well for 
the interest this locality has In this important 
field, aud the crowds of visitors in tho halls, 
afforded ample proof that, the labors of those 
who got up this department wore fully appre¬ 
ciated. What is true of Pnmological ITall is 
equally true of Agricultural Hall. This too 
was well filled, the entries numbering 550. 
The agricultural implement display was tho 
largest ever made on these grounds. Tho Sy¬ 
racuse Chilled Plow Co. exhibited a full line 
of their sulky, land-side ami swivel plows, 
and steel frame cultivators. John Deere & 
Co., Moline, III., showed the Gilpin Sulky, a 
full line of walking plows, corn cultivators, 
and potato diggers. The Oliver (’hilled Plow 
Co., South Bond, Ind., Imd a large and fine 
exhibit of the Casaday sulky plows, und a 
number of walking plows. Plows wore also 
exhibited by the North Fairfield Plow Co., 
North Fairfield, Ohio; the Bryant Plow Co., 
Rryant.Ohio; tlinBissell Plow Co.,South Bend, 
Ind.; the Economist Plow Co, of the same 
place; and the Grand RapidsM’f’g Co., Grand 
Rapids, Mich. J. W. Bookwaltor & Co., 
Springfield, Ohio, showed rakes and hay ted¬ 
ders. Deere & Mansur Co., Molt tie, Ill., bail 
corn planters on exhibition. The Empire 
Drill Co., Shortsville, N. Y., showed grain 
drills and horse pokes; the Crown M’f’g Co., 
Phelps, N. Y., grain and fertilizer drills; 
the Janesville Machine Co., Janesville, Wis., 
grain drills, broadcast seeders and mowers; 
and the Albion M’f’g Co., Albion, Mich., 
spring-tooth harrows, seeders and hay rakes. 
Self-binders were shown in operation by 
Hoover & Gamble, Miainisburg, O.; Walter 
A. Wood, M. & It. M. Co., Hoowaok Falls, 
N. Y.; Goo. Esterly, Whitewater, Wis.; Os¬ 
borne & Co., Auburn, N. Y.; Altman, Miller 
& Co., Akrou, O.; J. F. Seibcrliug & Co., 
Akron, O., aud McCormick ffc Co., Chicago, 
ill. Emerson, Talcott <fc Co., Rockford, ill., 
exhibited mowers, rakes, corn planters and 
cultivators. The Eureka Mower Co., Utica, 
N. Y., showed their direct draft mowers. 
Gere, Truman, Platt & Co., Oswego, N. Y., 
showed the Whipple Harrow. The Belcher & 
Taylor Ag’l Tool Co., Chicopee Falls, Mass., 
showed the S. R. Nye Bay State Rake aud tho 
Bullard Hay Tedder. 
There was tho usual number of traction and 
portable engines, grain and clover thrashers, 
road machines, windmills, etc., all in opera¬ 
tion, which attracted much attention aud 
made plenty of noise. 
There can scarcely be any doubt as to the 
future prospects of this association. Al¬ 
though young in years, it has already proved 
