THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
their corn crop. The way it used to be done when I 
was a boy, and I am sorry to say is still the way 
with the majority of farmers, is as follows: The crop 
is cut, bound and set up in large, round shocks in> the 
field and allowed to feed and breed mice for a month 
or six weeks; when the stalks are perfectly dry and 
as tough as rubber hose, it is husked, and many a 
day of cold fingers is endured. The corn is then 
put into a crib, and continues to fatten the mice, rats 
and squirrels. Occasionally, during the Winter, a 
grist is shelled, taken to the mill, ground, hauled 
home and fed to the Stock. A toll has been paid to 
the miller and a heavier one to the rodents. The 
stock refuse to eat the dry, tough, hard stalks, and 
Spring finds them forming a pavement in the barn¬ 
yard, about a foot deep, practically wasted. All this 
work, waste and expense would he saved if the whole 
crop was cut up and put into the silo when the corn 
was ripe and at its best, and would be all done and 
out of the way for good in two or three days of 
good weather. All of the stalks, cobs, grain and 
leaves would be eaten clean by the stock in the form 
of silage, but most of it is wasted, if treated in the 
old way. The stock like and fatten upon good silage, 
but iwill starve and refuse to give milk under the old- 
fashioned treatment. The silo has become just as im¬ 
portant to the success of the farmer to-day as the 
plow or mowing machine. 
Then comes the question of roots; mangel wur- 
zels for me. I find them just as necessary for my 
stock as the Alfalfa or silage. They grow to such 
enormous proportions (often to 18 or 20 pounds 
each) and the yield per acre is so satisfactory that 
they have become one of the necessary factors of 
stock farming. I usually harvest about 2.000 bushels 
FORTY-TWO DAYS FROM PLANTING. Fig. 158. 
every Fall, and every animal, young and old, gets a 
liberal feed of cut beets every day, and they take to 
them as eagerly as a child to candy. 1 do not be¬ 
lieve there is very much milk or butter fat in beets, 
or, in fact, in any of the root crops, but they are 
valuable because they help to assimilate the other 
foods; they keep the digestion in a perfectly healthy 
and normal condition, and the stock always looks 
sleek and healthy; 1 deem them exceedingly valuable. 
For the best results in raising beets, the crop should 
be planted not later than May 8, and not more than 
half an inch deep, and should be carefully thinned to 
about 12 inches before the plants commence to set. 
The way I raise mangels is about as follows: Not 
later than May 8 and earlier, if possible, have the 
ground thoroughly tilled and prepared for the crop. 
T use a two-horse planter, which plants two rows at 
a time, and set the rows three feet apart, and I plant 
the seeds about six or eight inches apart in the row. 
or as nearly so as I am able to gauge it. The 
planter must be set so that the seeds will not be cov¬ 
ered more than one-half inch in depth. I do not har¬ 
row the land planted to mangels, but when they are 
up out of the ground about four or five inches we go 
through the rows with a sharp hoe and cut out the 
plants so that they stand about 12 inches apart in 
the row. Immediately when this is done we start the 
cultivation of the plants exactly as we do with the 
potatoes with the two-horse cultivator, and carry on 
the cultivation in exactly the same way. Mangels, in 
my experience, are one of the easiest and cheapest 
crops to raise and, in fact, one of the most satis¬ 
factory. The mangels are stored in the Fall in a 
large root cellar, directly under the stable, which has 
a water-tight floor, and are cut up by means of a 
root-cutter propelled by a gasoline engine. The 
mangels keep perfectly until June, and are fed to the 
stock every day during the Winter and Spring with 
the very best results. 
Regarding potatoes, I raise about two acres every 
year. They generally bring a very satisfactory price, 
seldom less than 50 cents and often 75 cents a bushel, 
at which price they can be profitably raised; but if, 
perchance, they are a drug in the market during any 
season, then I feed them to the stock, and they are 
worth <10 cents per bushel for that purpose. 
You must have rotation of crops if farming is to 
he successfully carried on; therefore, I sow about 
four acres of oats and seed to Alfalfa each year; al¬ 
ways seeding after coni. This gives me the oats 
necessary for my horses, young calves, etc., and al¬ 
ways an old piece of Alfalfa to plow under, and I 
want to say here, that a man never fully realizes how 
strong and rich his land is until he sees those tre¬ 
mendous Alfalfa roots turned up to the sun. My 
notion is that a farmer cannot afford to purchase 
grain to feed stock nor to produce milk. He must 
raise all he feeds on his own farm, if the yearly 
balance is to come out on the right side of the sheet; 
and he can do it with good silage, good Alfalfa and 
plenty of roots. It is useless to say that this is but a 
general picture of my way of farming; hundreds of 
details must necessarily be omitted from such an 
article, and often modified or changed to suit the 
various conditions and environments surrounding 
every farmer. There is, however, always a right way 
and a (wrong way to till the soil; there is a right way 
and a wrong way to plant the seed and cultivate the 
crop; there is a way that brings success and there 
are many ways which lead to almost certain failure. 
The time has gone by when farming can be con¬ 
ducted as our grandfathers did it, simply because 
they made a living that way. To-day, the successful 
farmer must be quite as alert, quite as energetic and 
possess quite as much gray matter as the average pro¬ 
fessional man; and to me no field of labor has a more 
promising future, more honorable rewards or grander 
possibilities than open before the earnest, intelligent 
and progressive farmer. The day has also gone by 
when farmers can afford to raise scrub cattle, horses, 
sheep, swine, poultry, or any other thing produced 
upon the farm. The best is none too good, and in¬ 
feriors of any class are sure to pave the way to 
failure or. at least, to prevent the farmer from at¬ 
taining the highest success. john m’lennan. 
NEW FIGHT FOR OLD PRINCIPLE. 
The following report is sent by a Long Island farmer 
who attended the -meeting al Riverhead for organizing (he 
Produce Exchange. Every farmer who reads The It. N.-Y. 
will hope for the success of this movement. 
The thing has happened, and if you had been 
there it would have done your heart good to 
see those sturdy thinking American farmers, the 
best of their race perhaps, stand up and strike for 
freedom in the same spirit as did their forefathers in 
1776. These men are descendants of the first settlers 
who came to Long Island in 1640, and the pioneer 
spirit is strong in their hearts, while the same red 
blood runs in their veins. They are not the kind of 
men to give up, and do not take kindly to the idea 
that some one else has the right to put the price on 
what they have worked to produce. The great trou¬ 
ble with commercial conditions to-day is that the 
farmer gets too small a part of the price of the food, 
and the consumer’s living comes too high. In other 
words, the middleman or non-producer gets too large 
a share of the value of the product. What the Ex¬ 
change proposes to do is to market their potatoes 
with the least possible expense and to guarantee the 
goods for what they really are, and as Long Island 
potatoes are well known to be of the best quality, to 
maintain the top price in the markets. Dealers have 
often bought some Long Island potatoes and mixed 
them with up-State potatoes and sold them all for 
Long Island. You see that we are to the potato trade 
what Florida is to the orange grower or western 
New York is on apples, and that section from River- 
head east on both sides of the island produces the 
finest potatoes for eating in the world. What we 
propose to do is to sell Long Island potatoes direct 
to the trade in the New York market and elsewhere 
without the aid of the middleman, and with the stamp 
of the Exchange on each package, thus insuring the 
buyer that he is getting a certain grade of Long 
Island potatoes. Outsiders will be charged the trust 
price plus the five per cent commission that the Ex¬ 
change charges for handling the crop so that our 
markets cannot be swamped down with our own 
goods. Then think of the satisfaction of telling the 
buyer what the price is instead of his telling the 
farmer what he may have for the stuff. I know 
all the old stock talk about “You can't do it,” “Farmers 
ain’t good business men” and “You won’t get any 
more than you do now.” I know there will be a 
fight on, and the first year or two the profits will 
be taken up in trying to induce some of the local 
April 25, 
buyers to go to work and he producers. As to the 
profit of the enterprise, one of our local dealers 
stated that he would not handle a barrel of potatoes 
for less than 25 cents. Our potatoes never sell for 
more than $3 per barrel, and sometimes for less 
than $1.50, so that the Exchange commission would 
not be over 15 cents, and might be seven cents. Even 
as small a farmer as I am ought to clear $100 or up¬ 
wards a year and probably average at least $200 
apiece, so the gain to Suffolk County farmers ought 
to be a quarter of a million dollars per annum or 
more. It costs Suffolk County farmers more to pro¬ 
duce their potatoes than it does anywhere else, and we 
have got to get more. Hurrah for the Long Island 
Produce Exchange! C. L. y. 
NOTES FROM PROF. MASSEY. 
HIGH BRED SEEDS.—Passing a five and 10 cent 
store in this town a few days ago there was in the 
show window a great pile of seed papers with gor¬ 
geous lithographs of wonderful vegetables and flowers 
on the outside of the papers, but no name of any 
responsible dealer or grower, and a card on the pile 
stated that these seeds arc sold three papers for five 
cents. Doubtless many will buy them expecting to 
grow things like the lithographs, and, like the man 
with the beets, will get all sorts of stuff, when by 
paying five cents a packet from a responsible seeds¬ 
man, they could get what they buy. The difference 
between the cost of good seed and poor seed bears 
a very small proportion to the crop grown from them, 
and the wise gardener always pays more attention to 
the quality of the seed he buys than to the price. 
FORTY-NINE DAYS FROM PLANTING. Fig. 159. 
When 1 find a seedsman who has built up and main¬ 
tained a trade with large market gardeners I always 
have more confidence in his seed, for to maintain 
such a trade he must have the best, for this class of 
customers knows what they want far more than the 
usual run of private gardeners. 
THAT SOUTHERN HAY FARM.—It is not gen¬ 
erally known that the census reports show that for 
over 10 years the average hay crop of North Carolina 
per acre has been greater than that of Iowa. And 
yet Iowa grows a thousand of bales to one that North 
Carolina produces, and sells them for one-fourth the 
price that hay commands in North Carolina. The 
yield per acre is larger in North Carolina, not because 
her lands are richer than those of Iowa, for we know 
that they average far poorer, but because of the 
longer season and the abundant rainfall. And North 
Carolina can make from three to five tons per acre of 
the finest of hay from the cow pea. Mr. Tufts, at 
Pinehurst, on the pine barrens of North Carolina, 
made last year five tons of cow pea hay per acre, 
sowing an early crop and harvesting it and then sow¬ 
ing the same land and harvesting another. This hay 
could have been sold for $20 a ton or more. And yet, 
all over the South, men are scratching the ground 
and planting all their land in cotton for an average 
of 200 pounds of lint per acre, keeping no cattle, and 
only mules and no breeding animals, but paying for 
everything they and the mules eat out of their little 
cotton crop, when by growing the legumes and feed¬ 
ing stock they could make 1,000 pounds of cotton and 
make an abundance of stock feed and a profit on the 
feeding, or have to sell for more money than the 
cotton they now grow will sell for. And the papers 
are urging them to grow their “supplies,” as though 
every other crop but cotton was merely supplies to 
enable them to grow cotton Of course they are to 
a certain extent, but with proper farming the southern 
farmers would soon find that there are auxiliary 
crops that are worth selling, and that cotton is not 
the only thing they can make money out of. Flere 
and there there is an awakening to better farming 
in the South, but the general infatuation of a people 
for one crop, grown at an actual loss to many, is sad 
to contemplate. w. f. massey. 
