Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 October 1889 — FARM AND HOUSEHOLD. [ARTICLE]

FARM AND HOUSEHOLD.

c Harrowing Wheat. A good many farmers have not the nerve to harrow their wheat in the spring any more than th ey have to run , a harrow broadcast over tbe corn-field I after the crop is up. Next spring is a good time for those who are timid on ! this point to gain some wisdom by (personal experience. If you have never tried harrowing your wheat, try some of it next spring and institute a comparison by comparing results of one kind of treatment with the other. W ith hardly an exception in the whole line of agricultural products, universal experience has proven that cultivation is essential to the best possible results. General analogy would be sufficient of itself to suggest the beneficial results ■’ of tillage applied to wheat, but the matter has not been left to analogical inference. Many experiments have been made by thoroughly cultivating the crop, when so planted, as to make it possible and with wonderful results as to increase of product; but in to that, the practice of giving wheat a thorough harrowing in the spring has come to be quite general in many localities. The best harrowing for the purpose will probably be a “smoothing” one, but any harrow not having too large teeth will answer. Of course a few plants will be jerked out by the roots, but tho sm.illness of the number of such will be remarkable. The loss by this will not begin to offset the gain made by loosening the soil, so as to give the roots a chance io penetrate the greatest possible distance. Then, too, the benefit from preserving moisture in the soil, by this loosening of the surface, may be great in case of drouth about the time the grain begins to fill. The packing process by the continual fall of rains for seven months makes the wheat field a pretty solid surface by the time the plant begins fairly to grow in the spring. In addition to the good it does the wheat, this harrowing also very greatly aids in getting a good catch of clover or grass seed. Where the fields are seeded down harrowing for this purpose alone more than pays for the trouble. It is always best, if possible to time the harrowing just before a rain, and the ground should be just-right when it is done.

Improving the Farm, The best "and shortest way to improve a farm is to reduce the stock, plow your fallows in winter so that the soil will be warm and dry and the subsoil decomposed early in the spring. Harrow well and then sow ten or twelve quarts of grass seed to th« acre when you put in your oats. If all take, your chance is good for obtaining from five to ten acres of oats and a field seeded down to grass. Then prepare as many acres for rye sowing, provided your Imd is not good enough for wheat and the two crops will give you all the straw you need and the corn-field, with usual good luck, will produce enough to fat stock. At the end of the season you will have the produce from fifteen or twenty acres of land, represented in oats, corn and potatoes and as many acres sown with rye and wheat. Keep just stock enough to eat up the produce in grain and hay, and after gathering your next year’s crops of hay and grain, covering say fifty acres of your farm of 100 acres, you may think of-adding as many head of cattle as your farm will sustain without purchasing very heavily of foreign supplies. By the end of the fourth year you are ready to put in a crop of wheat and save plowing up your bottom meadow, you have re-seeded the whole farm and are now ready to enlarge your dairy— aDd at the expiration of ten years your land ought to be m a condition to double your crops ead-the- nnmber-of~yotrr cattle; —Thisis rotation.—Practieai-Farmer. Farm Notes, No succulent food is more greedily eaten by pigs at any ago than beets. They may be fed any time from the first thinnings during the growing soason to the fully grown roots in winter., They are especially valuable as a part of the winter food for breeding sows, and some beets should always be saved for that purpose. / A scythe will pull the buckwheat together in bundles that will need no binding except a slight twist of straw around the head, sotting each bundle by itself on its butt When dried by cold weather, the flail on a smooth floor will tako out tho grain better, cheaper and nearly as quickly as it can be done by thrashing machines. This is the old-fashioned way, and it is as good as any. We do not understand why cheese is hbt more generally used as food by all classes. In England it largely takes the place of meat, which it supercedes, not only because of its cheapness, but its superiority. The poor quality of much cheoee offered in market is pribably the reason for the popular prejudice against it We eat more meet in this country than any people in Europe, and cheese ought largely to take its place. Sometimes when a very heavy grain crop has been grown the field is more easily prepared for wheat seeding by burning over the stubble. A few furrows should be plowed next the fences, to prevent the fire spreading where not wanted. Oat stubble, however large, does not burn as easily as that of wheat. Its 6talk is not so firm. In burniii? wheat stubble many Hassian flies will usually be destroyed, thus making it safer to sow wheat after wheat , Sometimes after threshing cows turned into the barnyard at night, with access to a fresh straw stack, will pick at the chaff and eat enough to diminish their milk flow. It is this often, rather than the diminished pasture, that lessens the milk ylel? at this season. We have known farmers to put a fence around the stack, so as to keep their cows from injuring themselves at it, as a simple minded person is said once to have put a fence around a very poor lot to keep his stock from grazing on it. — American Cultivator.