Rensselaer Union, Volume 11, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1879 — Cut the Grass. [ARTICLE]

Cut the Grass.

Do not wait for the grass or the clover to get ripe before you cut it for hay. Any of tho meadow grasses are in their prime for hay, so far as nourishment is concerned, just after they are out of bloom. The sap that goes to form the seed is then in its best state of elaboration. Every day tho farmer waits afterwards militates against the value of the hay for feeding stock, for tho nutriment in the stock'goes towards the ripening of the seed, and in grass this is the least valuable. The same rule will apply to clover or any pther forage crop, in-< eluding Indian corn for tedder. Cut any forage orop just after the time it has fairly formed its seed heads. For selling to city consumers it does not so much matter. Many of them like ripe hay. If they will have it, let them. It is their privilege to buy what they like —if they can pay for it. Those who keep themselves posted on the subject of agriculture don’t want ripe hay. Some men who keep baiting Btables in cities, like buy dead ripe; horses do not eat so much of it. In mowing, do not set the sickle bar too close to the ground, especially if it be timothy. An inch stubble is quite close enough. Timothy forms a bulb at the surface of 'the ground. Close cutting often kills this, and the farmer who docs not read is somewhat puzzled to know why his timothy is suddenly killea. It is oftener from close cutting than from freezing out, or any other cause. Iu curing hay, do not let it get too dry before taking. Rake as soon as the hay will gather well in the rake. Do not let nearly dried hay take rain if it can possibly be avoided. It is cheaper in the end to spread hay from the cock than to let it get wet in the swathe, and especially better to open the cooks Father than lot it get wet in the windrow. Clover- hay should be simply allowed to get half dry on the ground, and then be cured in high, narrow cocks. Even if, in curing, it frowns some, it is better than to let it become bleached by exposure to the sun. Bleaching causes the leaves to drop.. If slightly heated in thacock, the leaves are toughened. Do not salt wet hay with a view of bettering' its condition. It will not help a bit—will injure it father; that is stock that are starved ter the want of •s •

salt will eat rotten hay for the sake of the salt. Better use the spoiled hay for littering up the yards and give the animals their salt as it comes from the doalor. If hay is rather groen from the sap it contains thoroughly dried salt will take up much of the superabundant moisture, and the quality of the hay Will remain intact. In any ease we should not give more than eight quaffs of salt to the ton. Thus salted it may be used once a day as a feed, and preferably in the morning. Since it will excite thirst at about the time the stock are turned out to drink. It is not generally known that hay may bo put in a barn much greener than in a stack, and come out all right. The reason of this is that it is kept more perfectly from contact with the air. It will sometimes heat severoly. The moisturo will stand over the top of the mow, and for the reason that during the proqess of fermentation, the moisture rises to the surface faster than it can be absorbed by the air in the barn. Whenever this is the case, if the mow gets so hrit that a sharpened stake driven deep in the mow, and allowed to remain ovornightcomes out in tho morning so hot as to be too warm for the hand, there will dangor of serious mow burning. If only a gentle heat is experienced, the hay will not be injured, and although it may be browned somewhat, many good farmers consider it better for this fermentation. The safe rule, however, is to so dry the hay that it will retain its normal green color as hay in tho mow or stack, so far as possible.—Prairie Farmer. One time I was in Mister Brily’s shop and he had cut ors a pigs hed and set it on the top of a bail, and ole Gaffer Peters he cum in and seen it, and he sed, ole Gaffer did:- “Mister Brily, yure pig is a gittin out." Mister Brily he luked, and then he sed: “Thats so, Gaffer, you jest take that stick and rap him onto the nose fore he can draw it in." So Gaffer he took up the stick and snook up reel sli, and fetched the pigs hed a reglar nose wipe, hard as ever he cude with the stick, and noked the pigs hed off the barl, and you never seen sech a stonisli old man. But Mister Brily he pretended like he wasent a lookin, ana ole Gaffer he sed: “ Mister Brily, you must xouse me, but wen I struck at that pig it dodged and cut its hed off agin the edje of tho fcarl.” —Little Johnny , t'» San Francisco Argonaut. —An acute thinker says: “We know some teachers who have had twenty years’ ‘ experience,’ and yet it would be hard to find poorer ones. We know some whose experience of two years has placed them high in the profession. Who ever heard of measuring the ability of a lawyer by the tiumber of years he had practiced at the bar, or the capacity of a military commander by the number of years he had held command, or the skill of a doctor by the length of years he has administered calomel to his salivating patients?”— Dr. Foote's Health Monthly for July. Capt. Eads, of jetty fame, says: “ It is idle to spend $150,000,000 in digging a canal through the isthmus when by .spending one-third as much along the line of Ine present Panama Railroad it will be perfectly easy to take ships and their cargoes bodily over the isthmus.” His plan would be sipiply to dig a ship canal with locks alongside the railroad. Ho believes it to be practicable, and, as oompared with the plan lately recommended at the Isthmus Canal Conference, on the other side, very economical.