122 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
April 
with worthless plants. We should recollect that since 
the fall of man, the natural products of the mother 
earth are thorns and briars, while she is ever ready 
to repay with interest whatever we may bestow upon 
her bosom. 
The deficiency of grass seed sown in this region 
(southern Michigan) is lamentable. One man, and he 
considered as good as the average of farmers here, 
lately told me he had never sown a pound of clover 
upon his farm since he first commenced to improve it, 
14 years ago. The consequence of this management 
has been the loss of tons of valuable feed, the loss of 
the manure which that feed would have made, and the 
loss of the vegetable portion of the soil, which would 
in a measure have been kept up by the decomposition 
of the roots of the grass, when the land was prepared 
for wheat. 
Lands that have been managed in this way for 12 or 
14 years, will not now produce over one half of what 
they first did • and it would seem as if the most of the 
farmers in this section must soon see the bad effects of 
a too excessive cropping, without a rotation at least of 
grass well and thickly sown. 
In conclusion, I will quote the old proverb —' u As ye 
sow, so shall ye reap; if ye sow sparingly, ye shall 
reap also sparingly.” Brother farmers, when you sow 
your grass seed this spring, do’nt forget the text, if it 
closes the essay instead of commencing it. 
Hudson, Michigan. E. D. Pierson. 
Pitching Hay by Horse-Power. 
Having been a reader of the Cultivator for some 
years past, and having never seen any account of pitch¬ 
ing hay by horse-power, I thought the following descrip¬ 
tion of a fork which I have used for the last five years, 
might be of interest to your readers. The tool is a 
great saving of manual labor, especially where the hay 
has to be put up in high mows. It is simple in its con¬ 
struction, not liable to get out of order when properly 
managed, and can be made by our common mechanics 
at so trifling a cost as to put it within the reach of 
every farmer. 
The fork may be described as follows: (fig. 38,) A 
is the head, 28 inches long, and 2 | inches square, of 
white oak, or some other strong wood. B is the han¬ 
dle, 5 3 feet long, morticed into the head, with an iron 
clasp of band or hoop iron to fit tight over the head, 
and to extend six inches up the handle, secured by 
two good rivets through the handle, to increase its 
strength, c c c c, the prongs of the fork, made of 
good steel, and of the right temper, i an inch wide at 
the head, and drawn out tapering to the point. They 
are to be 20 inches long, 8 inches apart in the.head, with 
a burr to screw them up tight, and a rivet on each side of 
the middle prongs, to keep the head from splitting. E E 
staples, riveted over the end prongs, to which the rope, 
F F is to be attached—the rope to be drawn together 
3 feet from the head in the form of an A, and then the 
single rope to extend from that over a tackle-block, 
which is hung to a rafter at the peak of the roof of the 
barn, and 2 feet over the side of the mow, and thence 
to the bottom of the door-post, where another tackle- 
block is attached, under which the rope passes. G is 
a small rope, attached to the end of the handle, by 
which the fork is kept level as it ascends over the mow. 
As it approaches the place where the hay is to be left, 
the rope should be slackened in the hand, when the hay 
will tilt the fork so that it will discharge its load imme¬ 
diately. The fork, when loaded,,is raised by a horse, 
which is attached to a swingle-tree to whicji the rope 
is fastened, near the lower pully or^ tackle-block above- 
mentioned. When the hay is discharged from the fork, 
back up the horse and be ready for another fork-full. 
The fork is drawn back by the small rope. In this way 
forks-full can be picked up nearly as quick as they can 
be by hand. 
A farmer that has a large quantity of hay to pitch, 
will more than get pay for the trouble and expense of 
a fork of this kind in a single year. With the assis¬ 
tance of a boy to lead the horse to the fork, a man can 
with ease pitch off 6 tons of hay per hour, and pitch 
it from 15 to 20 feet high. On a trial of speed, I have 
pitched a ton 15 feet high in 4 minutes. The fork does 
not cost over $5 without the blocks and ropes, and I 
think they can be had altogether, ready for putting in 
operation, of Garret Brown, Newtown, Bucks County, 
Pa., for $7. A Practical Farmer. Bucks County , 
Pa., 1848. ___ 
Culture of Potatoes and Indian Corn. 
Eds. Cultivator —In your last number, I notice an 
article on the prevention of the potato rot, and I think 
that by pursuing nearly the same c&urse for the past 
four years, has been the means of saving my crop dur¬ 
ing tliat time. I generally plant good sized potat<*es, 
cut in two or four pieces according to size, and plant 
two pieces in a hill, about six inches apart. 
One of my neighbors, the past season, planted the 
same kind that I did, only they were small, about a 
fortnight before I did, and dug about thrbe weeks after. 
More than half of his are unfit to eat, while in mine 
not one in a hundred is affected. It is my opinion that 
the potato has become degenerated by using small and 
unripe seed. 
Also, an article entitled <{ fertility of the subsoil,” 
where a person raised ears of corn 22 inches long, on 
soil that was raised from a well, reminds me of some 
timothy I saw growing on soil that was thrown out in 
digging a cellar, some of the heads of which were 
nearly 14 inches long. 
Below I give you an account of my corn crop for the 
past season, grown on seven acres of land. It was a 
part of the field on which corn was raised in 1846, an 
account of which you published in the last volume— 
one acre of the field, the last year, being planted to 
potatoes:— 
Plowing, 61 days, 
Harrow, 2 “ . 
Rolling, k “ • 
Marking, 1 “ . 
Planting, 9£ “ .. 
Cultivating, 4| “ ., 
$6.75 
1st hoeing, 
15 
days,. 
. $9.38 
2.00 
2d do 
ioj 
u r . 
. 6.50 
50 
Cutting up, 
14f 
u 
. 9.00 
1 00 | 
| Husking, 
54£ 
u 
. 34.00 
6 00 1 
Drawing Stalks.2 
4C 
. 2.00 
2.75 
--— 
$80.88 
At an expense of nearly $111 per acre. We gath¬ 
ered from the field 20 loads of pumpkins, 1300 bushels 
of ears of corn, and 32 loads of corn fodder. 
La Fayette, 20 th Jan., 1848. E. V. W. Dox. 
Stall-Feeding Cattle. 
Editors Cultivator —While reading your remarks 
ta correspondents, in the December number of the Cul¬ 
tivator, it occurred to me that I might give you some¬ 
thing in the line of an experiment , from which one fact 
at least might be drawn, viz:—That it will not answer 
J for a farmer who wishes to make money, living where 
