Elementary Agriculture William LewisNida UC-NRLF II iiiii II ill III III III ill ill mi II I ^B 3D3 DflE ArLANAGANODMPANY MMIMMi Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2008 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/elementaryagricuOOnidarich Fig. 1. Every stock farm needs its shade and water easily accessible. Elementary Agriculture By William Lewis Nida, Ph. B. Superintendent of Schools, River Forest, 111. 1921 A. Flanagan Company CHICAGO c: COPYRIGHT 1913, 1915, 1917. BY A. FLANAGAN COMPANY AGRIC. DEPT, ^"-^ ^-^ PREFACE If country boys and girls are to be kept on the farm, it is incumbent on parents and school authorities to enlist their interest in scientific farming and stock raising at the earliest possible age. A text on Agriculture for grade or rural schools should, therefore, begin with a discussion of farm animals, because it is vastly easier to stir up enthu- siasm among children over the raising of fine stock than it is over soil elements or even fine crops. Many texts have reversed this order, because certain farmers' organizations have so recommended. However, if education is our object, the child mind should receive first consideration in presenting any subject. - The author was born and reared on an Ohio farm and taught in rural schools for several winters. He was later a supervisor of township schools. His knowledge of actual farm life and rural schools on the one hand, and of the child on the other, is offered in explanation of this attempt to place before the children of the common schools a simple and stimulating introduction to scientific farming. Grateful acknowledgments are due to the U. S. Depart- ment of Agriculture for a number of fine photographs and for much valuable material from which the author has drawn freely. The author and publishers also desire to express thanks to the Agricultural Extension Department of the International Harvester Company for a number of fine plates and half tones chiefly of animals and farm scenes, selected by the author, and for valuable sugges- tions. To others who have kindly aided us with photo- graplis, credit has been given in the body of the book. William L. Nida. 578505 CONTENTS Part I. Farm Animals PAGES CHAPTER I. THE HORSE 1-15 Taming the Wild Horse — Horses Introduced in America — Draft Horses — Coach Horses — Roadsters — Use and Care of Horses — Breaking the Colt CHAPTER II. CATTLE 16-28 Taming of Cattle— The Ox at Work— Beef Cattle— Dairy Cows — Building Up a Fine Herd CHAPTER III. MILK AND BUTTER 29-33 Milk as Food — Care of Milk — Butter-fat — Churning — Cheese-making — Bj-products CHAPTER IV. SHEEP 34-38 Origin of Sheep — Their Care — Merinos — Mutton Types CHAPTER V. SWINE 39-48 Improving the Hog — Bacon and Lard Types — Berkshires, Chester- Whites, Duroc-Jerseys, Poland-Chinas — Feeding and Care — Diseases CHAPTER VL POULTRY 49-57 Origin of Chickens — Value to the Farmer — Kinds and Uses of Fowls — Their Care and Feeding — The Young Brood — Poultry Pests CHAPTER VII. TURKEYS, DUCKS, AND GEESE 58-60 Raising Turkeys — Ducks on the Farm — Geese CHAPTER VIII. INSECTS 61-67 Insect Enemies — Insect Friends — Parts of an Insect — Biting Insects — Sucking Insects — Insect Growth — Larva Stage — Pupa Stage — Life of Insects CHAPTER IX. THE BEE 68-76 The First Sugar Makers — Taming the Bee — Making Honey — The Bee Family— Care of the Bees for Profit — Other Services of Bees CHAPTER X. BIRDS 77-83 Birds of Killing^vo^th — Service to Farmers — Grosbeaks — Protecting Crops — Paying Their Way CONTENTS Part II. Soii/S and Farm Crops PAGES (CHAPTER XL SOILS 84-95 What Soil Is— Kinds of Soil — Humus — Plant-foods — Liquid Food for Plants— Importance of Water in Soil— Drainage —Tiling— Bacteria in Soil — Rotation of Crops— Different Systems of Rotation CHAPTER XIL PLANTS AND HOW THEY GROW 96-102 Parts of the Plant— The Work of Roots— The Stem- Leaves — Flowers — Pollination — Variety in Plant Life — Dissemination of Seeds CHAPTER XIIL TILLAGE AND FARM MACHINERY. 10^-112 Tilling in Ancient Times — Teachings of Jethro Tull — What Tillage Does — The Dust Mulch — Dry Farming — Irrigation — Better Machinery — Iron Tools CHAPTER XIV. CORN 113-125 Origin of Corn — Importance to the Pioneer — Indian Farm- ing— The Corn Belt — Choosing Seed Corn — What Consti- tutes a Prize Ear — Curing the Seed — Testing Seed Corn — Preparation for the Crop — Getting a Good Stand — Cultiva- tion— Harvesting — The Silo — Other Uses of Corn CHAPTER XV. WHEAT 126-137 Origin of Wheat — Introduction of Wheat Into America — Kinds of Wheat — The Crop — Wheat in Rotation — Enemies of Wheat — Harvesting Tools — Animal Power — The Reaper — Self Binder — Combined Harvesters — Uses of Wheat CHAPTER XVI. OATS, BARLEY, AND RYE 138-145 Climate and Soil for Oats — Seeding and Harvesting— Bar- ley— Rotation — Enemies — Use — Rye Enemies — Use CHAPTER XVII. THE HAY CROP 146-153 Timothy — Clovers — Harvesting Red Clover— Alsike Clover — Alfalfa — Cowpeas CHAPTER XVIII. SUGARS AND OTHER CROPS 154-160 Cutting of Sugar Cane for Seed— Planting Sugar Cane- Harvesting — Sugar Beet — Cultivation and Harvesting — Rice — Tobacco CHAPTER XIX. THE FIELD OR IRISH POTATO 161-167 Origin of the Potato— A Tuber— Kinds of Seeds— How to Choose Seed — Soil and Cultivation — Diseases and Enemies — The Sweet Potato CONTENTS PAGES CHAPTER XX. WEEDS 168-171 Annuals, Biennials, Perennials — Fighting the Weeds — Weeds for Drugs CHAPTER XXL ORCHARDS 172-181 Convenience to Market — Hill Country for Orchards — Best Slopes — Influence of Water — Soil — Preparation for Plowing — Setting Trees — Tilling the Orchard — Pruning — Spraying — Harvesting CHAPTER XXII. THE FARM GARDEN 182-200 The Boy's Experiment Farm — Garden Tools — Mulching — Hot Beds — Cold Frames^^Transplanting — Peas and Beans — Beets, Turnips, Carrots, Parsnips, Radishes — Chard, Aspara- gus—Sweet Corn — Cabbage, Lettuce — Cucumbers, Melons, Squashes — Onions, Tomatoes, Egg-plant — Grapes — Rasp- berries and Blackberries — Strawberries CHAPTER XXIII. COUNTRY ROADS 201-212 Bearing Upon Farmers' Profits — Good Roads and Schools — Interest of City People — Working Out the Road Tax — Pay- ing Road Taxes in Cash — The Macadam Road— Effect of Surface on Loads— Surfacing Clay and Sandy Roads — Loam Roads— Brick Roads CHAPTER XXIV. PRESERVING FOODS. 213-215 Germs Which Help and Hinder — The Yeast Plant — Making Bread — Mold — Canning Fruit — Smoking Meats — Cold Stor- age— Preserving Fruits — Bacteria in Butter and Cider CHAPTER XXV. FARM SANITATION , 216-224 Water Supply — Sewage and Disease — Mosquitos and Malaria —The House Fly and Typhoid— Fighting Flies— Milk a Germ Carrier — Ventilating the Bam — Heating and Ventilat- ing the Home — Fresh Air in the School Room CHAPTER XXVI. THE FARMER'S COLLEGE 225-228 The Department of Agriculture — Helps from Pamphlets — State Experiment Stations — College of Agriculture CHAPTER XXVII. BOYS' AND GIRLS' CLUBS 229-238 Club Movement — Boys' Com Clubs — Father and Son Clubs —Potato Clubjr— Tomato Canning Clubs— The Club and School Appendix Exercises — Problems — Experiments 241-285 Index 287-294 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE PART I. FARM ANIMALS CHAPTER I THE HOESE Taming the Wild Horse. Who tamed and rode tlie first wild horse and how he did it, we shall never know; but it was an important event for mankind. It happened long ages ago, before men began to write their doings in books. We know that horses lived in the time of the cave men, for we find remains of horses and rude pictures of them scratched on stone in caves and sand drifts. The cave men hunted these wild horses for meat and for their skins. Variety in Size. The horse was then much smaller than he is now. He was about the size of a wild pony. The wild horses that came to live in mild climates where food was plentiful began to grow larger, with heavier limbs and stronger muscles; but those that passed into cold, bleak lands where food was scarce, grew small like the ponies of the Shetland Islands. The Horse's Foot. The bones and fossils of the ancient horse show that he was once less than twenty-four inches in height. He had a spreading 2 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE f^ot witli Hvi^ toes. At that time lie lived in low, marsj-iy lands, and -tqes were needed to help him get >^boui'.''As4he'eaVtli became harder he lost one toe after another and so was able to travel faster to escape from his enemies. The horse's hoof is the Dail of the one remaining toe. Riding Horseback. The Greeks first drove the horse hitched to rude chariots, bnt later, it is said, they learned to ride him without saddle or bridle. They invented the first bridle bit, which is called the .snaffle. Neither Greeks nor Eomans shod their horses. At first only kings, nobles, and warriors could afford horses. They were used chiefly in war and for riding and driving in war chariots. But everybody who was able rode horseback; even kings looked upon this as the most dignified way to travel. The First Work Animal. All this time the farmer had only the plow ox or the stubborn ass to help him raise his crops. "When at last the farmer began to use the horse, he did his work much faster, for the horse has not only better speed and greater strength than the ox, but he can hold out longer. The Horse and the Indian. Horses were not found in America when the white men first came. The Indians were greatly frightened when they saw the horses which the Spaniards brought over. They thought these animals were terrible monsters. But the Indians soon learned to use the horse, and, after a time, great herds of horses appeared wild on the western plains. THE HORSE 3 The Big Draft Horse. Tlie»^^«3|^%me when men began to breed horses for different uses. When they wished work horses that could draw very heavy loads at a slow pace, they selected the heavy, stout- limbed animals that had strong muscles; and by using these as parents they reared more like them. Gradually the colts of these horses grew stronger and larger, and so the draft horse was developed. Fit;. 2. A coacli hoi6t. Coach and Roadsters. Other men wanted horses that could i)ull heavy coaches with good speed. ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Fig. 3. Percheron stallion. They wanted high knee action and fine style. So they kept this kind to breed from and developed the coach horse (Fig. 2). Still other men wanted speedy horses for light loads, and they reared saddle and race horses. Kinds of Draft Horses. The draft horse is blocky, heavy, and powerful. He may weigh from fifteen hundred to two thousand pounds and is in much THE HORSE 5 demand for pulling great loads on city streets. He has a round body and ratlier short legs. His hind legs are the stronger,^ yet he uses his front legs so much in pulling that the front quarters are heavy and powerful. His breast is broad and his front legs far apart. From France we get the Percheron (Figs. 3 and 4) draft horse, with a gray, chestnut, or black color; from Belgium comes the bay Bel- gian; the Shire of bay brown or chestnut color comes from England and the smaller but more active Clydesdale (Fig. 5) from Scotland. How to Hitch a Horse. When a team cannot pull a heavy load, it is often because the feet slip. The heavier the horse is, the better he can hold with his toes. A horse can really pull more on hard or slip- pery roads if he has a man on his back. This gives him more weisrht and a better foothold. One wav to Fig. 4. PrUc six-horse Percheron team. ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Fig. 5. A Clydesdale. help a horse pull heavy loads is to put the whiffle- tree low down. It is better to have the doubletree under the tongue for heavy pulling. A farmer once tested this by hitching a horse to a post with a spring balance which would show how many pounds he pulled. When the whiffletree was tied six inches from the ground he pulled six hundred pounds more than when it was three feet from the ground. Driving Fast. When a horse has a light load and is driven for speed, the whiffletree should be high. This makes the weight on the horse lighter so there is less strain on his legs and feet. Sometimes you THE HORSE see in the city a two-wheeled carriage with the driver sitting high behind. This is called a hansom cab. The driver's weight makes the thills pull up on the horse and so carries part of the horse's weight. This saves his feet greatly in driving upon hard pavements. Race Horses. The American trotter (Fig. 6) and the American saddle horse are the best of their kind in the world. Trotters have powerful hind legs and i»ood lungs. They have small heads and large nos- trils so they can breathe abundance of air (Fig. 7). - - • '- jiiv . ■■»• » .^,i*,n *. >i - '• *' »*■: Fio. 6. American trotting horse (Morgan type). 8 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTUEE Other Uses of the Horse. Among the Tartar tribes of northern and central Asia, mare 's milk and horse- flesh are still used for the food of man. Old horses are always fattened for the meat markets of France and other countries of Europe. Most Horses in America. To-day in Great Britain there is one horse to every twenty people ; in France, one to every ten people; and in the United States, one to every five people. So we have more horses in America than there are in any other country, and we make them do more of our work. Horse Power Cheap. Human labor costs more than any other kind of labor, so the farmer has learned to use his horses for many purposes. Years ago, when harnesses were poor and tools crude, many things were done by human hands that are now done by horse power. To-day one good horse can do as much work as ten men, while his board and keep costs about half as much as that of one man. Doing Forty Men's Work. A farmer boy who drives a four-horse team hitched to a gang-plow is doing as much work as forty men working with hand tools. Four-horse plows and four-horse har- rows are very common on the large farms in the West. Some of the great harvesting machines em- ploy as many as twenty or thirty horses and mules on a single machine. Feeding the Horse. A horse's stomach is small, so he cannot use as much bulky food as a cow. He THE HOKSE 9 ought to have at least three good meals every day. When a horse is making long trips on the road he should not have too much hay, but a richer food, like corn or oats. The work horse should have his largest meal at night, when he has plenty of time to eat and digest it. If a horse is not warm, it is better to water before feeding him. The water passes on through the stomach and leaves room for the food. If an animal is very warm, it should Fig. 7. Thoroughbred trotting mares and colts. not be given either food or water until it has cooled off. Clover hay is not so good for a horse as tim- othy, because it is more dusty; and dusty hay is liable to give horses the heaves. If dusty hay must be used, it should be sprinkled before feeding. A Good Variety. It is cruel to feed the horse on nothing but oats and hay all the year round, when 10 . ELEMENTARY AGRICULTUEE he would so much like some barley, beans, peas, corn, or turnips for a change. In the United States Army a horse is allowMten^ quarts of oats a day. It is better to feed corn on the cob, as this makes the animal eat more slowly and it also improves his teeth. When carrots are given, they should be sliced to prevent the horse from choking. It is important to keep a little salt in his trough. Cleaning the Horse. When a horse comes to the barn w^ith muddy legs, they should be rubbed down or washed, especially in cold weather, to prevent rheumatism. Time spent in cleaning and rubbing the horse in the evening after the day^s work is done, is much better for the animal than the same time spent in the morning, because the horse will rest so much better. His Care. When a horse is warm upon stopping work in cold weather, he should be blanketed to keep him from catching cold. On very cold morn- ings the bits should be warmed by dipping them in water before bridling the horse. Even cold water will keep a frosty bit from freezing to the tongue and tearing the skin. Have you ever tried touching your tongue to frosty iron? Healthy Shoulders. Many farm horses suffer from sore shoulders. This need not be so. The collar should fit and be kept clean. If there is danger of sore shoulders, they should be washed in salt water at noon and in the evening. Salt water is healing, and it makes the shoulders tough. When THE HORSE n the team is working hard, the harness ought to bo removed at the noon hour. The horse should be well cleaned every day with a good brush. The curry- comb is harsh and painful, especially when used by rougli hands. A Pleasant Home. The horse's home or stable should be kept clean. It needs to be light, but the windows must not be where the' horse will look into them, for this will injure his eyes, as it does yours when you sit facing a window. The horse barn should also have good air. If the barn is made verj^ warm, a window should always be open where the draft will not strike the animals. Shoeing the Horse. Many horseshoers do not un- derstand their trade, and so they injure the feet of the horse. Sometimes they put on shoes that are too big, and this stretches the hoof too much. A very small shoe pinches and makes corns. Some pare the sole too much, and others even use the knife on tlie frog, which is a great injury to the foot. As the hoof is growing all the time, just as a man's finger- nails grow, the shoes need to be changed often, so they will not pinch the foot. One Lesson at a Time. In breaking colts it is better not to try to teach them too much at one time. One of tlie first lessons is to ''halter-break" the young colt. This should be done while he is still a suckling. A strong, well-fitting halter is placed on him, and he is tied short to a post near to his mother. A colt should always be tied firmly, for if 12 ELEMENT'AEY AGRICULTURE 1. Clove hitch. 2. Picket rope with a half-granny and a half-hitch. 3. Bowline: a noose that never slips; is easily untied. 4. A slip knot, running noose, or halter knot. 5. Becket hitch for joining a cord and a rope. 6. Reef knot or square knot ; never slips ; easily untied. 7. False reef or granny ; diflacult to untie ; a bad knot. Fig. 8. Knots that every THE HOBSE 9 10 Anchor bend. Fixed loop in middle of a cord. Weavers' knot or sheet bend, for joining small cords. Two half-hitches. 12 13 12. Blackwall hitch. 13 Carrick bend for joinlnjr large ropes. 14. Timber hitch ; cannot slip or Jamb ; easily untied. farmer should know. 14 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTUBE he once breaks loose he has learned a very bad trick (Fig. 8). His First Bridle. After the colt is halter-broken so he can be tied or led, it is a good plan to tie his halter to his mother's hame or collar. In this way he gets used to trotting beside another horse. The next lesson is to put on a bridle with a smooth bit. An open bridle is better than a ^' blind'' one, for the horse ought to see everything about him so he will the more quickly get used to the new experience. Driving the Colt. A saddle may now be put on, or a single harness with crupper and back strap. It is a good plan to drive the horse at first without a cart. The driver passes the lines through the tug or the loop made for the shafts, and in this way keeps the animal from whirling suddenly and get- ting tangled up in the lines. It is well to have a helper lead the colt at first, until he understands what is expected of him. Driving Double. The colt may now be hitched to a cart with long shafts and a kick strap, or he may be hitched up with another horse. When this is done it is a good plan to keep a pair of single lines on the colt's bridle and have these in the hands of a helper. In hitching up double, it is well to use a heavy wagon with a brake and to put the colt on the ''off" side. He can now be taught to stop, to back, and to start at the proper signal. Not Too Many Signals. A horse should be trained early to stand still while he is being harnessed and THE HORSE 15 liitclied up. Very few words or signals should be used, for a horse has far less brains than a dog. "Whoa'' should always mean to stop. "Steady" is the word when we wish the team to go more slowly. "Back'' should be used only when we wish the team to move backwards. Kindness Pays. ^ * The merciful man is merciful to his beast," and the well-treated horse repays his master's patience and good care. Horses, like all farm animals, should be kindly and gently handled. Jerking and whipping do harm to the horse, and this means a money loss to the farmer. (QUESTIONS (1) How do we know that the horse lived in the cave man's time? (2) What were horses first used for? (3) What difference did the horse make in the life of the In- dian? (4) Why did men want a draft horse? (5) What is taking his place in the cities? (6) Do you think that machinery will ever entirely take the place of the horse? (7) Why or why not? (8) Are coach horses increasing in the city streets or decreasing? (9) Why? (10) Why should the horse be hitched low to a heavy load? (11) What types of horses have been developed in America? (12) Why does a horse need different kinds of food? (13) How do you break a colt? (14) In what ways is machinery relieving the horse on the farm? (15) Make questions of your own on each chap- ter. (16) Have the class answer them. For exercises, problems and experiments on each chap- ter, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER II CATTLE More Useful Than Horses. Horses are a great help to man, but we could get along without them better than without cattle. Cattle supply us with meat, leather, and milk; and they may also be yoked up for work. Where Cattle Came From. Cattle have come down to us from a queer animal of the cave man's time, called tlie urns. In those far-off days there was also a kind of wild cattle. Some say the herds of wild cattle mixed with herds of the urns, and this mixture formed the cattle that we have. But nobody 'is very sure about this. We know that the cave man hunted and killed wild cattle for meat. Taming the Wild Cattle. A long time after the cave man a higher race of men lived in villages built out over the edge of lakes in Switzerland. These people, called the Swiss lake-dwellers, seem to have tamed the cow. How do you think they did it? They probably kept cows at first for milk only. Instead of hunting all the time for food, the people began to give some time to their cattle and so became herders. Churning the First Butter. Then a wonderful dis- covery was made by some one, and that was how to make butter from milk. Probably some lake-dweller 16 CATTLE 17 was carrying upon a journey a skin or leather bag of milk, and the motion churned the butter. Milk will not keep long without souring, but butter keeps much longer. The cow, with her milk, butter, hide. Fig. 9. A heef breed ( Shorthorns). and meat, must have done a greaj; deal to help these ancient people to better ways of living. Hitching Cattle to Loads. We do not know when cattle were first yoked up and hitched to loads. Perhaps a cow was tied by a leather thong, when suddenly she made oif through the woods, dragging a man or tlie log to which she was tied. Then some 18 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE one hit upon the idea of tying a cow to anything he wished to have moved. The First Plow. After the yoke was invented, some clever person made a rude plow of sharp sticks tied with thongs, and agriculture took a long step forward, because this enabled the farmer to use animal power to till the soil, instead of doing it all by hand. • Two Kinds of Cattle. Cattle were early brought to America from Europe. Men began to want two kinds of cattle, one for milk and butter and the other for beef. They found that a good milch cow is .not very good for beef, for her food all goes to milk; while a fat cow will not give much milk, as her food makes flesh or muscle. By carefully select- ing the good milkers for mothers, farmers have developed a fine dairy animal, such as the Jersey, the Guernsey, or the Holstein. Beef Cattle. Other cattle raisers have bred from the large, heavy animals and have herds of fine beef cattle, such as the Shorthorns (Figs. 9 and 17), Here- fords, or Galloways (Fig. 10). The beef cow is square, with all bones well covered w4th flesh. Her back is straight and her legs full and thick. The neck is full and stocky, the legs short and set far apart to support the large, heavy body. The more meat these animals can make from a given amount of food, the more profitable they are. Their Care and Feed. Beef cattle need different food and care from the dairy animals. The beef CATTLE 19 type do not require such warm barns as the milkers do, because fat animals never need such warm hous- ing as do lean ones. They seem to do better in dry, open sheds that are well bedded. They need such foods as will make them fat most quickly and at the least expense, and cattle feeders know this well. Fig. 10. A Galloway cow. Getting Ready for Market. Sometimes calves are fed fattening foods as soon as they can digest them. They are kej^t on such food until they are ready for the market at from ten to sixteen months of age. Other cattlemen give their young herd the freedom of the range or pasture for a few months, or, per- haps, for a year or two, and then put them on rich, 20 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE ^h'iu. 11. An empty dinner pail. fattening foods for a few months before tliey are Bold to the butcher or the packer. Feeding MeaJ. When teaching a young calf to eat meal, the farmer puts him in a box stall with another, older calf, . and the young one will learn from his companion. Another way is to take a little meal in the hand and put the hand in the mouth of the young calf. (Fig. 11.) A Mixed Food. A good meal ration for calves is a bushel of ground corn, a bushel of ground oats, a peck and a half of wheat bran, and the same of oil meal, all well mixed. As soon as ,calves will take hay or fodder, it should be given to them. They will begin to nibble and taste it when two or three weeks old. The best hay is clover, alfalfa, or cow peas. As soon as they begin to chew the cud, finely cut hay is mixed with the meal. In this way one cau prepare the calf for weaning. (Fig. 12.) CATTLE 2r Saving Cream. Wlien calves are fed on skimmed milk they miss the butter-fat that has been taken away as cream. In its place the farmer feeds the calf some corn meal or linseed meal. One or two cents' worth of meal will serve the calf as well as twenty-five cents' worth of cream. Choosing a Good Dairy Cow. The dairy cow is shaped like a wedge. The neck, thighs, and shoul- ders are thin and lean. She should be thin, not because she is poorly fed, but because she is turning a large part of the feed she eats into milk. She should be quiet and gentle. She should be strong and have room for a large quantity of food. Her hips are prominent and wide apart, and the rump is high. The hind legs are trim and set well apart. i'iCi. i— ntttic arc oar mothers? 22 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Most important of all, she has a large, well-shaped udder. The floor of the udder is straight and extends well forward and well backward, too. The ^^^^^^^^"^,^^ W^ i ^ >'] jf^mm % Wj^gf V. im Immmm * 1 f] Fig. 13. The dairy type (Jerseys). udder is soft and fine. The teats are evenly placed and of medium size. The buyer should milk out a few streams to see that the openings are not so small as to make her a hard milker. The milk veins which extend forward from the udder should be large, with many branches, because they supply the blood from which the udder secretes the milk. The Jersey Type. The Jersey cow (Fig. 13) is famous the world over for her rich milk. These cows were the first dairy animals to become popular in our country. They change a large part of their food into milk instead of into flesh or fat. Jersey milk is the richest of all. The Jersey heifer matures CATTLE 23 oarly and may become a mother at between two and three years. So the dairyman does not have to feed her long until she more than pays her way. This breed came, in the first place, from Jersey Island, in the English Channel. The island is only eleven miles long by five and a half wide, but it is very rich and productive; and the farms there are very small, sometimes not more than two or three acres. The principal industry is dairying, and the stock has been kept pure by forbidding foreign animals to be brought in. The milk is nearly all made into butter. The Guernseys. The Guernsey cows, like the Jer- seys, come from one of the islands by that name in the English Channel. They are somewhat larger Fig. 14. A record cow (Holstcin). 24 • ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTURE than the Jerseys. They have coarser bones and carry more flesh. Guernseys are noted for their yellow milk, which is only second to that of the Jersey in richness. But they often give a greater amount than the Jersey. The Holstein. This dairy animal was bred 2,000 years ago along the Ehine, in Europe. The Dutch first brought these cows to America, shortly after the settlement of New Amsterdam. The Holstein (Figs. 14 and 107) is noted for the great amount of milk given. ^ The milk is not so rich in butter-fat as that of the Jersey or Guernsey, but the large amount makes her a most desirable cow to keep near large cities like New York, where the milk is sold by measure. Other noted dairy types are the Ayrshire, the Brown Swiss (Fig. 15), and the Dutch Belted. The Babcock Milk Test. For a long time dairy- men did not know how to choose the cows which gave the richest milk. Not many years ago Dr. S. M. Babcock, of Wisconsin, invented a machine to test milk for the amount of butter-fat. Now every farmer may know which cows are valuable and which ones are not. Eefer to page 247 for full descriiJtion of the Babcock Milk Test. What a Good Cow Produces. A good cow should produce from twelve to fifteen pounds of butter a week. One of the highest records ever made was by a Holstein cow that made thirty-three pounds of butter in one week (Fig. 14). CATTLE 25 Caring for the Dairy Cow. Twice eacli day the dairy cow is driven to the barn to be milked, and the more milk she gives to each pound of food, the more valuable she is (Fig. 16). In order to give an abundance of milk, she must have the best of care and food, and kind treatment; and she must be milked at regular hours. She should have water and plenty of good fopd at every meal time. Their Food. In summer, when the cows are in Fig. 15. Brown Swiss twin calves, hull and heifer. 26 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE pasture, they need very little other food .unless the pasture becomes short and dry. Then corn, alfalfa, peas, oats, rye, or some other crops may he cut green and fed to them. Water and shade should be within reach of cows at all times in hot weather (Fig. 1). In winter they like hay, root crops, and silage. A Balanced Feed. It is best to feed some dry hay or fodder, some silage or green food, and some grain. The careful dairyman always feeds just the right amount of each to supply what the cows need without any waste. He calls this a '^balanced ration. ' ' Testing Cows. Some pure-bred cows are poor milkers. The only way to make sure that a cow is worth her board is to test her milk for butter-fat and weigh the milk. Every dairyman should keep a record of each cow for one year. A spring balance with a paper beside it will enable the farmer to weigh the milk and put down the amount quickly. An Easier Way. Or, instead of weighing the milk every day, the farmer may weigh the milk of each Fig. 16. A roiv of money makers. CATTLE 27 cow for three days each month. The sum of these weights multiplied by ten will give the year's pro- duction. Take samples for the Babcock test in the second, fourth, and seventh months after the cow freshens. If you add these and divide by three you get the average daily production of butter-fat. Cow-testing Associations. Dairymen who find it i'lG. 17. A Slun-ihoni hull. difficult to test their own cows are in some instances banding together in cow-testing associations. To this association each farmer contributes a small fee and with this money an expert is employed who spends his time going about among the dairies and testing the cows of each herd. This plan has been used in Holland for many years, and is the reason for tlio great advance in the dairy business in that 28 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE country. Farmers who desire to form such an asso-^ elation should write to the Department of Agricul- ture, who will send a man to assist in forming the organization. Uses Made of Beef Cattle. It is said that every grown person in the United States eats, on an aver- age, one hundred and fifty pounds of meat in a year. The greater part of this is furnished by the great herds pastured on the Western plains. Leather for many purposes is made from the hides, and butter- ine is a product of the fat or tallow of beef. Buttons are made from the bones ; combs, from the bones and hoofs; and glue, from the sinews, bones, and hide trimmings. How to Get Good, Stock. The cheapest way for a farmer to build up a fine herd of either dairy or beef .cattle is to save only the calves whose father or sire is a pure-bred animal. (Fig. 17.) There is a true saying among stock farmers that ^'The sire is half the herd.^^ The way to improve a scrub herd is to obtain a pure-bred sire. The first calves are half pure. When these calves become cows and mothers, their calves are three-fourths pure stock, and so on. Scrub cattle have no place in the fields of a good farmer. QUESTIONS (1) If men had to choose between having either horses or cattle alone, which should they choose and why? (2) How do you think butter making was discovered? (3) How do you think the first plow was invented? (4) Name the chief dairy types? CHAPTER 111 MILK AND BUTTER Milk as Food. Milk is a good food for every one. The Laplander milks his reindeer, and the Arab his camel. The people of India milk their buffaloes, and the mountain people their sheep. A quart of cow^s milk contains about the same amount of food as three-quarters of a pound of beef. Thus we see that milk is cheaper than meat or eggs. As the cities grow there is a greater demand for milk, but the buyers insist that it be clean. Keeping Milk Pure and Clean. Milk absorbs or takes up odors'. If a cow is fed cabbage, onions, or turnips a few hours before she is milked, you will notice the flavor of those vegetables in the milk. Milk that stands uncovered in dirty barns has the odor of the stables. Therefore, the barn must be clean and light, with plenty of windows to admit the air, and the cows should be fed proper food. They should always have pure water, because milk carries many germs, especially those of typhoid fever. Feeding should be done after milking, so the air will not be full of dust to settle in the milk. Milking the Cows. The udders of the cows must be washed, and the milker's clothing and hands should be clean before a drop is drawn. All pails and vats for holding milk should be thoroughly 29 30 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE washed with warm suds and then rinsed with scald- ing water. As soon as milk is drawn, it is well to cool it to stop the growth of the germs that cause it to sour. Butter-fat. If we look at a drop of milk through a microscope we shall see many tiny, roundish bod- ies with a pearly look floating in the fluid. Fifteen thousand to twenty-five thousand of these little bod- ies placed side by side will measure an inch, and there are millions of them in a drop of milk. These particles are the fat of the milk, from which butter is made. They are lighter than milk, and when milk stands for a time they float upward. With some of the milk on top of the pan they form the cream. Ready to Churn. After the cream is removed by a skimmer or the new hand-separator, it should stand until it ripens, or sours. It is most easily churned at a temperature of from fifty-six to sixty degrees Fahrenheit. The room should be, as nearly as pos- sible, the same temperature as the cream. Churning. When this cream is put into a churn and dashed about, the little particles of fat hit to- gether and stick to one another until they unite to form small pieces of butter about the size of a grain of wheat. Then we can see the butter-fat in the buttermilk. Preparing Butter for Market. When the butter is gathered from the churn, it may be washed to remove part of the buttermilk. Then the whole butter mass MILK AND BUTTER 31 is pressed together and rolled with a wooden paddle to remove the rest. Three-fourths of an ounce of fine table salt should be added to each pound of 1) u 1 1 e r and even- ly worked into the butter ^^^' ^^' '^^^ ^^^ ^^y ^f separating cream. mass with the paddle. The worker firmly rolls and presses the butter, but does not rub it, because that destroys the grain. When the butter is free from but- termilk, it can be made into a tempting lump and stamp- ed and rolled in oiled paper. Butter is judged for its flavor, color, grain, and the amount of salt, but in a great measure it is judged by its general appearance. The Churn. Farmers, to- day, prefer the barrel churn, without a dasher. In opera- tion this churn throws the I'k;. 1'.'. 'flir new way — cream separator. cream back and forth against its sides. Churns 32 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE should never be filled more than half full. Butter- making is greatly aided in late years by the use of the separator and butterworker (Figs. 18 and 19). Cheese-making. Cheese may be made from skimmed milk, or the whole milk. Most of the cheese we buy at the store is made from the whole milk. Years ago our grandmothers made cheese as commonly as they did butter, but cheese-making is such a long process that to-day it is done in cream- eries or factories. Cheese is the solid part of the milk in such form as will keep for long periods. A little difference in the process of the making, pro- duces a different sort of cheese. One book tells us of one hundred and fifty-six different kinds. They are. usually found in three classes — hard or soft cheese, cream cheese, and sage cheese. Cottage Cheese. Cottage cheese is a home prod- uct made by heating sour milk, which has thickened, to the point where the curd separates from the whey. The whey is drained off through a cheesecloth, and the dry curds are seasoned with cream and salt. A great deal of this is sold on the market for table use. By-products. The by-products of the dairy are skimmed milk, buttermilk, and whey. These are chiefly used in feeding young animals on the farm, because it costs less to ship fat stock than it does feed or milk. The curd of the milk is dried in large factories and ground fine and used in the sizing of paper. Milk sugar is made largely from whey. This MILK AND BUTTER 33 is much used for babies and invalids. Other foods and drinks which are becoming popular are made from the dairy. Up to 1850 the dairy work was all done and marketed from the farm. Now the milk is largely taken to creameries and factories, and butter, cheese, and condensed milk are manufactured there. QUESTIONS (1) How do you judge a dairy cow? (2) Which cow would you keep for butter making and which for sell- ing milk? (3) What kind is most common in your neighborhood? (4) Would it pay better to keep a dif- ferent kind? (5) Why is the Babcock test a great in- vention? (6) What is a balanced feed? (7) How would you test a cow to decide if she were worth keep- ing? (8) How would you proceed to develop a fine herd of cattle? (9) Which dairy type do you like best? (10) Why? (11) What other animals are sometimes kept for their milk? (12) Which is the cheaper food, milk or beef? (13) How does milk sometimes spread disease? (14) What is butter-fat? (15) How is butter made? (16) What makes the difference in cheese? (17) Name some other uses for milk. (18) Make questions of your own for use in class. For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER IV SHEEP Wild Sheep of Asia. On the plains of Asia there may be seen to-day small flocks of wild sheep. They are larger than our common sheep, with such im- mense horns that it would require a foot line to reach around one at its root and a four-foot line to measure their length. The wool of the wild sheep is brown, with a buff-colored streak along the back. These wild sheep are strong, quick, and suspicious, so they are very hard to catch. They are hunted for their flesh and their skins, which are made into clothing. They have a coat of fine soft wool to keep them warm, and over this is a long coarse hair, which serves as a raincoat. Another Kind of Wild Sheep. In the mountains of Greece is another type of wild sheep, smaller and less active than those of Asia. It is believed that our domestic sheep have come from one or the other, or perhaps both, of these wild types. Taming the Sheep. Some writers think the sheep was tamed before the horse or cow, because they were small and could not defend themselves so well. Sheepskins made fine clothing for the cave man. The first animal we find mentioned in the Bible is the sheep, but the Bible mentions other domestic animals. 34 SHEEP 35 Where Sheep Live. The sheep can live on rough hillsides and mountain cliffs where other domestic animals would starve. They thrive best in cool cli- mates, because of their heavy coats of wool. They require less grain and will eat more kinds of food than the horse or cow. So they are more easily cared for (Fig. 20). The Use of Sheep. A flock of sheep increases very rapidly, for ewes, or mother sheep, often bear twin Fk:. 1^0, A (,ood animal cats no mjrc hut pajs heticr. lambs every year. The lamb"S become full-grown in a few months, and their flesh makes excellent food, while the fleeces make woolen clothes for the people of many lands. When prices of wool are fair, a good ewe will pay her board and keep through the year with her fleece. The flesh of the sheep is worth about half as much as the wool. If she raises two lambs they are clear gain to the farmer. Sheep have no equal as weed-destroyers, for they eat nearly every weed that grows on the farm. In small numbers they build up and enrich the land, for sheep manure is worth more as a fertilizer than 36 ELEMENTAEY AGKICULTURE Tig. 21. A Merino ram. that of any other farm animal except poultry. A few sheep will pay their way and make money for their owner on any farm that is not wet and marshy. They will not thrive on low, moist land. Aside from their fleece and mutton, the bones are used for fertilizer. The skins make leathei* for boots and shoes. The tallow is made into candles, and the skins of the intestines are made into strings for musical instruments. Two Kinds of Sheep. We raise two types of sheep, because those that produce the best wool do not make the best mutton. If a farmer is raising sheep for mutton mainly, he keeps a herd of Shrop- shires or Southdowns or some other mutton type. If he is chiefly interested in growing fine wool, he keeps American Merinos or some breed like them. Merinos for Wool. The oldest races of the domes- ticated sheep are probably the Merinos (Fig. 21). They were Very likely kept in Palestine in Bible times, and it may be that King David when a lad kept watch over a flock of Merinos. They came to America from Spain and have been greatly im- proved by American farmers. They are the best SHEEP 37 wool-producers, yielding heavy fleeces of very fine wool that is used to make the finest and most expensive vroolen goods. Thrive in Large Flocks. Though the Merinos are not so hardy as the wild sheep, they are hardier than any other of the domestic breeds. They will thrive in larger flocks than any other kinds, so they are used in the range country of the West. They have a long life and grow good fleeces to a ripe old age, w^liile the fleece of the mutton type begins to lose in weight at an early age. Sheep on ranches of our Western states are kept a thousand or two thousand in a flock and sent off in the summer with a herder and a shepherd dog. If the herder has a horse, he sometimes cares for five thousand in a flock. One rancher often owns from twenty-five thousand to fifty thousand sheep. The cattle men object to large flocks of sheep, for they eat the grass so close that other ani- mals cannot be grazed there. Cattle also dis- like the odor left by sheep. The Shepherd Dog. The shepherd dog, or collie, tends the flock and rounds them up when they stray. Ho watches them at night and keeps off the mountain lions. These dogs are very intelligent. They obey 38 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE the voices and spoken commands of their masters, and even understand signals of the arms. Care and Fleeces of Sheep. The Merinos stand more neglect than other sheep. They can get through the winter on good straw, a little grain, and some hill pasture. However, their mutton is only fair, and they do not raise as many lambs as other breeds. Their bodies are covered with large folds or wrinkles of skin that make shearing diffi- cult, but these very wrinkles only make so much more surface for good wool to grow on. Sheep for Mutton. Shropshires and Southdowns are the best liked of the mutton types in America. The Shropshires (Fig. 22) have nearly black faces and legs, and no horns. They rear more lambs than other kinds, but their wool is not so fine as that of the Merinos. Mutton sheep are profitable even on high-priced land, if it is near a good market. Fancy lamb mutton is a delicac}^ that people like and are willing to pay for. Southdown ewes usually rear two lambs each year, and they are good mothers. QUESTIONS (1) Where did the forefathers of our sheep come from? (2) Have you any reasons for believing that the sheep was tamed before ths cow or horse? (3) Could you think of a reason why sheep will not thrive on a wet or swampy farm? (4) Which of the mutton types do you like best? (5) Why? (6) Are Merinos raised in your county? (7) Why, or why not? For problems and experiments refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER V SWINE Improving the Hog. Hogs, like most other do- mestic animals, were brought to America from Europe. Most of the breeds of fat hogs have developed here. By carefully choosing and keeping the best hogs the farmers have made the fine breeds of to-day quite different from the- fierce wild boar. The wild hog did not take on fat, but our domestic breeds will fatten in a remarkably short time. The hog yields meat at a lower cost than any other animal when he is well cared for and prop- erly fed. Intelligent farmers do not raise scrub hogs, which are sometimes called ^^ razor backs.'' It takes two years to get a scrub to weigh as much as a well-bred pig will weigh when nine months old. If a farmer has only scrub stock he can improve his herd in a very few years by the use of a well-bred sire. Among the standard breeds of hogs popu- lar on the great hog farms of the Central West are the York- shire, Tamworth, '*'<•• '^'^- ' '''" ^^'"^ p^h- Cheshire, Berkshire, Chester-White, Duroc-Jersey, and Poland-China. (Figs. 23, 24, 25, and 26.) 39 40 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE The Bacon Type. There are two different kinds, or types of hogs. The people of Canada, and espe- cially of England, like hacon with considerable lean meat in it. This can only come from swine which have well developed muscles. And so hog raisers have brought forth a lengthy, muscular animal called the bacon type, such as the Yorkshires and Tamworths. It costs more to raise the bacon type. The Lard Type. In our great corn belt it has been found that a fine type of fat hogs can be raised chiefly on corn, which is cheap food. So farmers have developed a fat hog type or lard variety. This type has small bones, a short, round body, and short legs. Berkshires. There are several breeds of fat hogs that are popular, one of which is the Berkshire. The Berkshire hog is a fine lard-type animal usu- ally black with white marks on the face, feet, and tail. Berkshires are found in every state but are Fig. 24. Berkshires on clover. SWINE 41 Fig, 25. Chester-White sows and pigs. very numerous in the com belt. They grow rapidly and fatten easily. Berkshire mothers have large families and take good care of them. (Fig. 24.) Chester- Whites. Another popular breed of the fat hog type is the Chester- White. They are of medium size and white, no black hairs being allowed in the pure breeds, and the hair is often curly. They were developed in Chester County, Pennsylvania, by mixing several other breeds of hogs. Chester- Whites are good grazers and the sows have large litters of pigs. (Fig. 25.) Duroc-Jerseys. Duroc-Jerseys are another Amer- ican breed of the fat hog type. They are about the size of the Chester- White. Duroc-Jerseys are cherry red in color, but sometimes yellowish reds and chest- nut shades are seen. We do not know just how they 42 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE originated, but different breeds of red liogs were common many years ago in New York and New Jersey, and these were brought together and blended. Red hogs are common in the corn states. They are good grazers and put on flesh easily and cheaply. They are liked because they have large litters and because they reach good size and weight. They thrive well when following a herd of fatten- ing cattle. Poland- China. Another fat hog is the Poland- China. (Fig. 26.) They are usually black with Fkt. 26. A prize Poland Cliina. white markings on the face. The breed was first known in Ohio where in the early days the pre- vailing color was white. Poland-Chinas are great favorites in the corn states, because they seem to do better on corn alone than any other breed. For the purpose of turning corn into pork Poland- SWINE 43 Chinas are unequalled. They make good gains on pasture with light grain ration, and mature early. Their litters are not so large as those of the Duroc-Jerseys which is a mark against the breed. Feeding. The first thing to think of in feeding hogs is a balanced ration. The most important part of this ration is the protein and as most feeds on the farm are short in protein this must be supplied. The easiest way to provide the protein for hogs is to grow large forage crops like alfalfa or clover. Milk and bran are rich in protein. To balance the protein, corn is the cheapest and best food. It fur- nishes heat and fat. Corn and alfalfa or corn and clover is, perhaps, the easiest balanced ration to provide, especially in the corn belt. Corn, alone is not rich enough in protein for the best results, but it is often used for a few weeks immediately before a herd is shipped to market, to make w^eight. The hog must also have plenty of pure water. Pigs need more water than older hogs in propor- tion to their size. Charcoal, lime, ashes, and salt should always be in reach to provide the mineral food which the animal needs. Pigs need room to exercise for the sake of their digestion. For this reason it is better to let them forage for part of tlieir food. (Fig. 27.) Hogs on Pasture. By far the greatest number of hogs are fattened for market in the summer and early fall. The care and labor is less then and the gain in flesh greater. Pigs need more feed in cold 44 ELEMENTARY AGRIGULTURE Fig. 27. Good feeders. weather just as people do. Pigs do well on pasture. We have learned that pigs fed on corn alone on blue grass pasture gain weight as rapidly as if they were fed a carefully balanced ration in a dry lot. But clover or alfalfa is better than blue grass or timothy pasture. (Fig. 24.) Corn fed on clover pasture is better than the more costly feed of corn and shorts in parts of two to one in a dry lot. Coarse, bulky foods do not suit hogs well.' Wheat bran, corn-and-cob meal and oat feed are too bulky to give the best results. It has been proven that com soaked from one feeding time to the . next is more easily digested. Rooting. Hogs relish herbs, roots, grubs, and mineral elements and they like to root for them in the soil. Eooting is good exercise for hogs, but it destroys grass and forage crops and the habit once acquired is difficult to eradicate. Hogs will do less rooting if fed wood ashes, charcoal, grit, and salt; but even then they are likely to root up the soil in cool, shady places. Often it is neces- ' SWINE 45 sary to put rings in their noses but they should not be put in too deep. Yards. A hog farm should be fenced hog tight to keep the herd from those of the neighbors and to protect crops. Young hogs need yards large enough to furnish pasture and forage. Ten or fif- teen pigs are enough for a four-acre lot of clover or alfalfa. The forage not eaten if mowed two or three times a year brings forth a fresh new crop of tender growth and keeps the herd well fed. Fencing. "Wire fencing is much used. The posts of cedar or of hedge are generally treated with creosote to prevent water soaking and decay. They will last from eight to ten years. A better post may be made of concrete for a cost of twenty-five cents apiece. The comers of the fences should be well braced and a barbed wire placed beneath the woven wire to keep the herd from rooting and crawling under. Gates should be of plank or steel frames with woven wire and safe fastenings. Sheds and Shelter. Some farmers depend on large open sheds to shelter their herds. Such sheds should have tight roofs, sides and ends. The south side is left open for air and sunshine. This is especially suitable for warm climates though not for the Northern states. The sheds should have partitions to prevent the hogs from piling up- too much on cold nights when they get overheated and catch cold afterward. They are apt to have a lung disease which is mistaken for cholera. 46 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Fig. 28. The Colony type of hog house uith chain and single tree for hauling. Hog Houses. Houses differ according to climate. In the warmer states the breeders use small mov- able hog houses large enough for a mother and her family. (Fig. 28.) These houses are scattered about over the farm. This is known as the colony system. The great advantage of this system is that the hogs are separated in small families and if disease breaks out only a few are exposed. These may be taken to a distant part of the farm and in case of cholera the house may be burned with little loss. The more convenient plan is the large central hog house which saves much time in feeding and care. Such a house has a place for sleeping, a SWINE 47 separate place for small pigs and another for fat- tening hogs. Such hog houses are made in many forms. Some are round, others square or rectan- gular. (Fig. 29.) In any case all buildings should be warm and dry with plenty of light and air. (Farmer's Bulletin 438 — Hog Houses.) Diseases. The two most common diseases of hogs are tuberculosis and hog cholera. Hogs get the germs of tuberculosis through their food. Pigs fed on the refuse from dairies and cheese factories get the germs from infected cows. Hog cholera is sometimes called swine fever because a fever always accompanies the disease. Frequently the hogs. die very suddenly after a few hours, other forais allow the animal to live several Courtesy of U. S. Dept. of Agriculture KiG. 2'J. A tcell-built and well-arranged central hog house, showing arrangement of outside pens. 48 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE days. Hogs that have cholera are stupid and life- less and refuse to move. They lie huddled together or retire to a corner of the pen. Some will eat while others will not. No cure for hog cholera has been found except anti-cholera serum. (Farmer's Bulletin 379 tells how to prevent hog cholera.) There are other diseases such as mange, paraly- sis, and black tooth. The most satisfactory way to give medicine to hogs is in their food, but it is always a good plan to know how to prevent disease in the first place. Lice. If the herd is troubled with lice the hogs may be dipped in a coal tar disinfectant to be had at the drug store. Directions for using it are also given. In summer crude oil may be poured on the water in the wallow. This will cling to the hogs and kill the lice without injury to the hog. Gunny sacks soaked in crude oil may be wrapped around a rubbing post in the hog lot. QUESTIONS (1) In what ways do our hogs differ from the wild boar? (2) How has this change come about? (3) What protection do hogs need ? (4) Why? (5) Which breeds do you find in your county? (6) How do the East and West differ in hog raising ? (7 ) Where in your county are most of the hogs raised? (8) Name the chief breeds of bacon and lard hogs and tell why they are popular. (9) Discuss hog houses. (10) Tell what you can about diseases of hogs. CHAPTER VI POULTRY The Original Home of Poultry. Our chickens have probably come from the wild jungle fowl of India. Early man used to snare and kill these large wild birds for food and rob their nests, because he liked the eggs to eat. When men settled down and gave up their wandering life, they tamed and fed the jungle fowl. In time their wings grew smaller, because they used them so much less, and their bodies grew heavier. So to-day we have the con- tented hens that stay quietly in their pens and cackle to let us know when they have an ^gg ready. Value of Fowls to the Farmer. Since the farmer has learned in the last few years to take better care of his poultry, it is now thought that they pay better for what they eat than any other stock on the farm. There is a great demand for *' broilers" from ten to twelve weeks old, and they bring fancy prices. The number of eggs used in the United States daily is beyond our imagination. It is estimated at about forty-four millions. Besides supplying eggs and meat for the farmer's use, the chickens, if they are allowed to roam, catch many grasshoppers and in- sects. During the summer months they get most of their food on the range. They like grass, seeds, bugs, lime, and grit. 49 50 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Four Classes. Chickens have been divided into four classes. The large, fat, meat-producing kind does not lay well. They are the Cochins and Brahmas (Fig. 30). The Leghorns and Minorcas are especially valuable for producing eggs. They are a small, wiry sort with large combs. They lay large, white eggs and seldom want to hatch them, so they can be kept laying for long periods. Their flesh is not so excellent for the table as other breeds, but they are very popular among poultry keepers near large cities where fancy prices are paid for eggs. The fancy or game chickens are beautifully feathered birds and are kept for show. To this class belongs the bantam that is too small for real use. But certain breeds combine the best qualities of the layers and the fat chickens. They are the gen- FiG. 30. Light Brahmas. POULTRY 51 eral purpose fowls that have nice tender meat. They both lay well and make good mothers. To this class belong the differ- ent kinds of Plymouth Rocks (Figs. 31 and 32), Wyandottes and Rhode Island Reds. These breeds are all developed in Americ:^. Habits. Chickens swallow their food whole. It is softened in the crop and ground up in the stomach, or gizzard, the walls of which are hard and muscular. Fowls tip their heads back to swallow when they take a beak full of water, because they have* no muscle in their throats. Chickens wallow or take a dust bath to drive away insects or clean their skins; and in wet weather they oil their feathers so they will shed water well and so keep their skin dry. The Nests. A hen will Jiide her eggs, if possible, so a cozy place should be arranged in a quiet, dark place for her nest. She begins to lay in the spring, one egg each day. If left to herself, she would commence to sit as soon as she had twelve or fif- teen egga. By removing the eggs she is kept laying a much longer time. The breeds that do not sit Fig. 31. Barred Bock. POULTEY 53 have been known to lay as many as two hundred lliirty eggs in a year. Poultry in Pens. Chickens that have free range are more profitable and do better than those kept in pens. But fowls can be kept under many .conditions. To do well they must have reasonably warm, dry quarters with plenty of light and fresh air. In parts of the West, where it is dry, a frame of poles is set up in November and covered with straw. The chickens run inside this warm shelter and do well. If a hen is protected from draughts, frost, lice, and bad air she is likely to think spring has come in February and will begin early laying, or perhaps she will lay all winter. Some breeds lay well in the winter time when they have good care. Care of Henhouse. Farmers should clean up their old henhouses with a shovel, broom, and boiling water. They should paint the roosts with kerosene to kill lice, and whitewash the walls. The cracks can be stuffed with straw and covered with tarred paper. Very soon the farmer will see his hens doing better. Leaves or straw make a fine floor covering, and they force the fowls to scratch for the grain. The house should be kept clean and fresh leaves or straw ])ut in each week. (Fig. 33.) Laying Hens. Laying hens require different food from those intended for table use. Variety of food is important. One reason the hen lays in summer is because she chooses her own food and has a bal- anced ration. She eats all day long, a little at a 54 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE time, and does not mope. A moping hen does not lay well, as exercise is necessary. Chickens in a pen need animal food, such as meat scraps and skimmed milk, to take the place of the insects that they get when they are allowed to roam. Cracked oj^ster shell furnishes lime for making the eggshell, and grit must be provided for grinding their food. Fresh water in clean dishes should always be within reach. During the winter season, corn may be given once a day because it is a warming food. Ground bone, table scraps, cooked potatoes, turnips, and vegetable tops are given instead of green food. Eggs, like milk, often show by their color, flavor, and odor what food the hens eat. Hatching Little Chicks. Hen's eggs are hatched by keeping them at the same warm temperature for twenty-one days. Many farmers prefer the hen to incubators for hatching. Perfect-shaped eggs with good firm shells should be selected for hatching. The fresher they are the better. When two broods of chicks are hatched at the same time, one hen may be able to mother both. Haw to Care for the Brood. Little chickens must be kept dry and must be carefully fed three times a day. Corn meal and bread crumbs and the yolk of hard-boiled eggs are a good beginning. If chicks are in a pen, cut grass from the lawn makes good green food. Soon a little chicken will eat wheat and cracked ,corn. Chicken lice are a great trouble to the tiny chicks and the mother hen, and the nest POULTRY 55 li. I .sdhiturif poult r;/ Jtou.sr. should be dusted with powder a week before tlie chickens are liatched. Some of tlie powder may be mixed with lard and rubbed well on each chicken's head. Brooder Chicks. Incubator chickens have no niotlicj' 1() Icac'li ilioni to (»al srnt niul irroon stuff 56 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTUKE When chicks are first brought to the brooder, bread crumbs are sprinkled upon the floor among the grit, and in this way they learn to take food and grit at the same time. To make them eat promptly, the Fig. 34. Incubator babies. food may be taken away after five minutes. (Fig. 34.) Fattening Broilers. When the chickens are weaned from the hen, the cockerels are put in a yard by themselves and fed on porridge made of four parts of corn meal, two parts of middlings, and one part beef scrap. The mixture is wet with skimmed milk until it will run from a wooden spoon. They are fed this at morning and at evening. They are allowed plenty of shade and kept as quiet as POULTRY 57 possible. This makes them more meaty and soft than those that exercise. Chickens about a hundred days old gain the most rapidly. They often gain from one and three-fourths to two and one-fourth pounds in a month. "When cockerels weigh two pounds or over they should be sold for broilers. Poultry Pests. Hawks capture many chicks. A good marksman can kill a few and hang them on poles around the yard as an object lesson. The best remedy is to keep the chicks in yards covered with wire until they are large enough to run for shelter. It is well to have low-growing shrubs where chickens can hide. If pigs run in the same field with chickens they must be^watched, for if a pig once gets a taste of chicken, he will chase them continually. Eats trouble chicks at night. Cement floors and stone foundations in chicken houses will keep out rats. Poison may be used if it can be kept away from the chickens. QUESTIONS (1) Which do you thmk will pay better on the farm, the Leghorns or the Barred Rocks? (2) Give reasons. (3) How do fowls keep themselves clean? (4) Why do we scatter grain in straw for the chickens to search out? (5) Why should farmers use incubators? (6) What is the use of grit in chicken feed? (7) Why is oyster shell eaten by hens? (8) What is the cause of soft-shelled eggs? (9) Why should chickens be penned up and kept quiet when fattening for market? For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER VII TURKEYS, DUCKS, AND GEESE Turkeys. A flock of turkeys has helped many a farmer's daughter to a new winter outfit or bought her things to go away to school. Besides being a profitable bird at Thanksgiving time, they destroy millions of bugs which would injure the crops. The bronze turkey (Fig. 35) is the most common in the United States. Some turkeys are hatched by hens and some by incubators. The first food should be the curd of milk made like cottage cheese. To the cheese should be added chopped boiled eggs and a bread made of corn meal, skimmed milk, and salt. After turkeys are six weeks old, they get their own living catching grasshoppers and bugs. They need clean pens and clean food. Dampness is sure to kill young tur- keys, so they should be kept in their pens in the morning until the dew is off the grass. Fattening Turkeys. The turkey is usually allowed to roam until he is ready for market, Fig. 35. Bronze. turTcey. 58 TURKEYS, DUCKS, AND GEESE 59 but about the first of October he should have an eve- ning meal of good yellow corn. It is well to begin with a little at a time, but by the first of November he must go to bed with a full crop every night. This makes the flesh yellow, juicy, and tender. Ducks. Pekins are the most popular ducks (Fig. 36). Duck's eggs can be hatched under hens or in incubators. The first food of the duck- lings should be a moist mash instead of dry feed. Ducks need plenty of water to drink, for they take a mouthful of food and wash it down with water. They must have drinking pans deep enough so they can stick their heads in over their eyes, because that is their way of keeping their nostrils and eyes clean. The birds are dry-picked to save the feathers for pillows. Duck's eggs are popular, especially at Easter. Geese. The goose is the Christmas bird (Fig. 37). When geese are allowed to roam they gather most of their food, which is usually grasses and insects. In the winter months they must be fed one meal a day. Geese graze as freely as cattle and have been accused of destroying the roots of grass. They must Fig. 3G. Pekin ducks. 60 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTURE have plenty of water for the same reason that ducks need it. The eggs are best hatched under a hen. A sitting goose is very cross and has been known to break a man's arm with a blow of her wings. Young goslings are easily chilled and must be looked after during cold rains. To make a rapid Fig. 37. The Christmas bird. growth, geese must be fed wheat bran, corn meal, and scraps. They should have plenty of shade, water, and grass. They may be made ready for market in three months. Their feathers are valu- able for pillows and many other things. CHAPTER VIII INSECTS Insect Enemies. Almost every plant has an in- sect enemy that feeds upon it; and the farmer who wishes to protect his crops, orchards, and gardens must know how to fight these plant enemies. In- sects form about nine-tenths of all the animal life upon the earth. Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of farmers' produce is lost each year because of insects. (Figs. 38, 39, 40, 41, and 77.) Insect Friends. Certain insects, however, are use- ful to mankind. Some gather honey and carry pollen from flower to flower, while others spin silk, and still others clean away dead animals. These friends of man are: bees (Fig. 45), wasps, dragon flies, tiger beetles, silkworms, and many others. Parts of Insects. Insects when full-grown have the body divided into three parts: the head, the middle part, or thorax, and the abdomen or back part. On the head are the eyes, the feelers, called antenncp, and the mouth. The chest or thorax bears the wings, of which there are usually two pairs, and six legs. Biting Insects. There are among insects two kinds of mouths. Such insects as grasshoppers and beetles bite the food. Others, such as mosquitoes, bedbugs, bees, and butterflies, suck their food. 61 62 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTURE Insects with biting months have two pairs of jaws with which they chew their food ; and they often eat bark, leaves, fruit, and flowers. All these biting insects may be killed by spraying poison on the plants on which they feed. Sucking Insects. Insects with sucking mouths usually live upon the sap of plants or the blood of i£F^ .m m . ^^ '•% Courtesy U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fig. 38. Knotty apples from trees that were not sprayed. animals. Some few of them, such as bees and but- terflies, feed largely upon the nectar or sweets of flowers. Since they get their food from the inside of the objects on which they feed, we can not poison them, but must find some other method of fighting them. Contact Insecticides. Substances have' been dis- covered which will kill insects when covering or touching their bodies. These are called contact INSECTS 63 insecticides. Insects do not breathe through their noses or mouths, but they have little holes, or pores placed along both sides of their bodies, and through these the air passes in and out. When anything clogs these breathing pores, they die. It has been found that certain oils and powders will destroy in- sects by smothering them. Oils may be mixed with Courtesy U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fig. 39. Apples from trees that were sprayed. No farmer can afford to neglect Ms fruit crop. other materials so as to prevent damage to the plants on which the insects live. Kerosene emulsion is such an insect destroyer. Poisons may be put on the plants before insects appear as a protection, but contact insecticides must be applied to the insects themselves. Moulting of Insects. Insects have no bones or inside skeleton, but the skin becomes very hard and 64 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTUBE horn-like and is usually .considered the skeleton of the insect. As it becomes hard it will not stretch; and when the insect has grown so large as to en- tirely fill this hard coat, a new or soft coat forms underneath; and the old one is shed or cast off. The casting off of an old coat, or shell, is called moulting. The skin is moulted several times during the life of the insect, and each time it becomes larger. The chief changes in the in- sect's life usually come in the last two moults. Courtesy U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fig. 40. Curculio depositing its egg upon a young peach. Stages of Development. Wasps, bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, and mosquitoes have very re- markable changes in the last moults. Such insects are said to have four stages of life: (1) the egg stage, (2) the larva or grub stage, (3) the pupa stage, (4) the adult stage. (Figs. 42 and 43.) Courtesy XJ. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fig. 41. The young grub de- stroying the fruit. INSECTS 65 Larva Stage. Eggs hatch into the larva stage, which is the time of growth and when most of the eating is done. The larva of a butterfly is a eater- pillar, that of a fly is a maggot, and the larva of a mosquito is a wiggler. Some insects eat all the time during this growing stage, never going to sleep. Courtesy U. S. Dept. of Agriculture ^ Fig. 42. May beetle, called also June beetle or June bug; a, beetle; b, pupa; c, egg; d, newly-hatched larva; e, mature larva; f , anal segment of same from below. They stop only long enough to cast their coats. The kinds that live on flesh have, in some instances, been known to eat two hundred times their own weight in a single day. Pupa Stage. The larva then goes into a resting or sleeping state, enclosing itself in a case of some kind. This is called the pupa stage. Silkworms spin for their pupa stage a silken covering called a cocoon. While in this state the insects go through many wonderful changes. Wings and legs are grown and after a short time the full grown or adult Courtesy U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fig. 43. Mexican Cotton Boll Weevil. 1, Weevil, tack view, weevil, side view; 3, fully-grown larva; 4, egg; 5, pupa ready to transform ; 6, adult weevil with wing covers raised and wings extended, ready to tale flight. INSECTS 67 insect comes forth a fly, a mosquito, or a beetle. Freezing the Insect. The blood of insects is trans- parent like water and is pushed along through the body by the beating of a large vein or artery which lies along the back, instead of by the beating of a heart. Insects are cold-blooded and can freeze with- out being killed. During the winter insects hiber- nate; that is, a great many varieties live through the winter hidden away among old grass or under stones, logs, bark, and* in the ground. Even the eggs of insects may be frozen solid and remain uninjured. . Insect Life Short. Insects generally die soon after laying their eggs, though some kinds live longer, raising several broods. A great many die before their eggs hatch. Insects are found in all countries at all times of the year. They are found in our homes, gardens, and fields; in the air, water, and the earth: both within and upon the bodies of animals. We shall learn more of the different kinds of insects as we study the chapters on crops. QUESTIONS (1) How do insects compare in numbers with animals? (2) Name some insects that are man's friends. (3) Name the parts of the insect's body. (4) How many legs have they? (5) What is the difference between biting and sucking insects? (6) Why does a farmer need to know how an insect takes its food? (7) Why do insects moult? (8) Explain larva, pupa, and cocoon. (9) What is peculiar about the blood of insects? (10) What is meant by hibernating? CHAPTER IX THE BEE The First Sugar Makers. All the old Bible coun- tries had their beekeepers. Before the growing of sugar cane and the making of sugar was begun, bees furnished the only means of sweetening food. Our savage forefathers probably robbed the hollow trees where bees stored their honey and in time learned how to capture swarms. In England, not many hundred years ago, swarms of bees were so prized that they were willed from one family to another. Finding the Bee-Tree. To find a *' bee-tree," the hunters took to the edge of the woods boxes of diluted honey; then they followed in the direction the bees took as they flew home. It was believed when the bee had his honey basket filled, he took the straightest way possible to the bee tree. That is how we came to have the expression, *^Take a bee line.'' The Honey Train. An American invented the hive which makes it possible for one man to take charge of many bees. There are many men who make beekeeping their business (Fig. 44). It has been estimated that if all the honey manufactured in the United States in one year were put in cars, it would make a train .thirty-five miles long. 68 THE BEE 69 Where the Honey Comes From. Bees, with their long tongues, take the sweet juice, or nectar, from H '•i'"'''i Courtesy of "Bee Culture," Medina, Ohio Fig. 44. A profitable apiary. flowers, clover, buckwheat, alfalfa, black gum, chest- nut, and catnip. This nectar we may taste by pull- ing a clover blossom to pieces, but only the bee knows how to make it into honey. Pollen and Wax. It was once thought that the bees used the little yellow balls, which we some- times see clinging to their hind legs, for making wax; but now we know the little yellow balls are made of pollen which the bee gathers from flowers for the purpose of feeding its young, and that the wax is secreted from their own bodies in much the 70 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE same way as a cow secretes milk. The wax forms in little scales on the under side of their bodies, and when they want to use it they pick it off with their feet. After mixing it in their mouths, they use it in building the beautiful combs with the six-sided pockets in which they store honey. Members of the Bee Family. We do not care to Courtesy of U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fkj. 45. The honey hee ; a, worJcer; 1), queen ; c, drone. [Twice the natural size.'\ go very near bees when they are at work, so not many of u^ know the difference between the queen, the workers, and the drones (Fig. 45). The queen is the largest and the most important bee in the hive. If we examine the cell, or living room of the queen bee, we shall find it nearly four times as large as those of the other bees. It is about the size and shape of a peanut and is usually placed on the edge of the comb. THE BEE 71 The Work of the Queen. The queeu is the mother bee, and she lays all the eggs. It is said that a queen bee has laid more than three thousand eggs in a single day. There are some seasons when she does not lay so many, and there are other seasons when she does not lay at all; but it does not take long for her family to become too large for the hive. Why Bees Swarm. When the family becomes too big, they form a new family, or, in other words, they ''swarm.'' (Fig. 46.) A cloud of bees comes out of the hive and lights on a near-by bush. From Fifi. 46. Courtesy of "Beo Cullnro." Medina. Ohio stand of hees near the swarming time. 72 ELEMENTAKY AGEICULTUKE here they send out scouts to find new housekeeping quarters; they also wi§h to make sure their queen is with them. If they find she is not with them, they return to the old hive and wait for her before they start again. If the beekeeper is watching, he makes ready a clean, fresh hive and either shakes them in or places it where they will go in. The New Queen. The queen which takes her place in the old hive comes from an egg laid in the queen's cell. She has been fed with *^ royal jelly.'' This is much richer food than that which is fed to the baby bees which grow into the workers or drones, and it makes a much larger bee. (Fig. 45-b.) Getting a New Queen. In case an accident hap- pens to their old queen, the bees have a curious way of getting a new one very soon. The drones choose three .cells which contain newly-hatched bees, they knock out the partition cells, kill two of the bee- babes, and feed the third on ^^ royal jelly." Dividing the Work. There are from thirty thou- sand to forty thousand workers in a good strong colony, and each bee has its own work to do. The young bees build the comb, feed the newly-hatched bees, and do general housework; those a little older secrete wax and help their elder brothers to shape pockets for storing the honey which these older bees bring in. A queen may live four or five years, biit the workers that are hatched in the spring, work so hard that they often wear themselves out in forty or fifty days. THE BEE 73 The Drones. The drones are the male bees. They are larger than the workers and have no sting. Somebody has called them the *^ tramps'* of the bee family, because they do no work. When the workers tire of feeding the drones, they kill them and throw them out of the hive. (Fig. 45-c.) The Kind to Keep. Bees have been known to make from twenty-five to thirty pounds of honey in a year in one hive. The Italian bees are considered the finest, because their longer tongues can reach nectar in the flowers that the black bee ,can not reach. They are also more gentle and easy to handle. Helping the Bee. To secure honey in the best shape for the market, the beekeeper places in the top of the hives frames which hold just one pound of honey. (Fig. 47.) These have a sheet of wax on which is impressed a network of six-sided cells. From this foundation, new cells are built by the bees. A machine has been invented that saves the time and energy of the bee in wax making. The Honey Extractor. Once a beekeeper's little son was playing with a piece of unsealed honey- comb in a basket. The lad had tied a piece of string to the handle. As he whirled the basket around and around in the air, his father noticed the honey dripping from the basket. When he found the cells of the honeycomb were nearly emptied without in- juring the comb he thought, **How much labor it would save the bees if they could fill their combs again instead of having to make new ones!" So Courtesy of "Bee Culture," Medina, Ohio Flu. 47. It's all in Tcnowing how. THE BEE 75 lie invented the honey extractor which empties man}^ combs at once and gives ns the clear strained honey. It removes the honey from the comb without injury to the comb and without destroying its place in the frame; and these old combs are put back in the hive to be filled again. In this way bees are kept busy ,2:athering honey instead of building comb. Keeping Them Warm in Winter. Bees must bo protected from the cold in winter, or they may die. The ^'box hive'' incloses the real hive, leaving a space to be filled with chaff and other packing ma- terial. A small opening is left so the bees can get out in cold weather. They must have exercise in the open air to keep well. Do Not Starve Bees. In removing honey from the hive, care should be taken that there is enough left to feed the bees through the winter season. Sometimes a keeper prefers to feed the bees on a sirup made of sugar, so he can sell all the honey. Another Service. Besides the income the bees bring the farmer in honey and wax, they do him another great service. They scatter pollen from one plant to another. Many plants cannot bear fruit or seed unless their pollen is mixed. The wind does some of this, but the bee is the best mixer. He dives into the heart of a flower for nectar and gets his body covered with pollen and takes it with him to the next plant. It is said clover would not grow on the island of New Zealand till bumblebees were taken there to scatter the pollen. 76 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE Busy as a Bee. Now we know what busy, strange, helpful little creatures the bees are, and we do not wonder at the old saying, '^As busy as a bee." Every farm has enough plants to provide several swarms with pollen and nectar, so that each one may have its own honey. What one needs to know about beekeeping he may learn largely from books, because it is said that more books have been written about the bee than about any other domestic animal. QUESTIONS (1) Why were bees more highly prized in the olden times than to-day? (2) What plants are good for honey bees? (3) Where do the bees get the wax? (4) What is *' royal jelly"? (5) How do bee farmers aid their bees in honey making? (6) What other service does the bee perform besides making money? (7) Why would not clover grow in New Zealand at first? For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER X BIRDS iV certain beautiful poem tells tins upon a time the farmers of Killing- A Story, story. Once worth were troubled and angry, because the birds ate so much of their fruit and grain. So they held a town meeting and ordered every bird killed. Only one man, the village teacher, pleaded for the birds. He said it would be lone- ly without their cheerful songs. He reminded the farmers of the many in- sects which the birds de- voured. He told them that the few cherries and the small measure of grain the birds ate were only just wages for the hard work they did in protect- ing the farmers' crops from worms and bugs. But the farmers did not heed his warning. The parent birds were shot and the little ones starved in their nests. For one long summer 77 Fig. 48. The Red-Hemkd Wood- 'pecker, an enemy of tree insects and a friend of the farmer. 78 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTUEE there were no birds in Killingwortli. Hundreds of caterpillars and cankerworms and small insects destroyed the crops and the leaves on the trees. The land looked like a desert. At last the fool- ish farmers saw their mistake. They hastened to send away for many cages of singing birds which were again al- lowed to fly about at will. The story ends here, but we are glad to know that the birds we all love so much are of great use to us. Service to the Farm- ers. It will be impossi- ble to mention here all the helpful birds. Rob- ins hop about the fields and lawns and gardens, destroying grasshoppers and earthworms. The bluebirds, warblers, and chickadees work among the tree-tops, catching the insects which eat the tender leaves. The nuthatches, creepers, and woodpeckers (Fig. 48) patrol the bark of the trees, finding plant lice and borers. Other Friends of the Farmer. The swallows, fly- catchers, and kingbirds sail about the air, snapping Fig. 49. The Boholinh, an enemy of grasshoppers, caterpillars, army worms and the like. BIKDS 79 up flies and mosquitoes. When darkness comes, the owls and nighthawks go on duty and capture in- sects of many kinds. They swoop down and catch moles, meadow mice, and rats that do harm to farmers' crops. Grosbeaks Are Friends. Grosbeaks are of such l)articular service to the farmer that in many states they are protected by law. The rose-breasted gros- beak, or ** potato-bug '' bird makes a tenth of his diet of potato beetles (Fig. 77). He also eats the cucumber beetle. He is accused of eating peas, but he is so useful in the garden that it is worth one's trouble to put netting over the peas. He may also be kept away by a scarecrow. He is very fond of orchards, for can- kerworms, caterpil- lars, and the moths and scale insects that attack trees are his special delight at meal time. The cardinal, or red-bird, belongs to the gros- beak family. The> have been accused of pulling sprouting Fig. 50. The Meadow Lark. 80 ELEMENTAEY AGRI€ULTUEE grain, though the examination of the stomachs of five hundred cardinals did not prove this to be true. Tarring the Seed. To prevent the western gros- beaks from pulling the seed grain, the farmers soak the seed corn or other grain in a barrel of water and stir it thoroughly with a stick dipped in gas-tar. When the grain be- comes black, it is spread on sacks and dried in the sun. With this coating of tar, it is safe from the birds. Seed planted with a checkrow planter is not disturbed be- cause the earth is packed. Protecting Grain Fields. Some farmers protect their fields of ripe grain by plant- ing a few rows of mil- let on the edge of the field. Birds prefer millet to other grain, but it should be sowed so as to ripen at the same time as other grain. The Grosbeak and the Orchard. Mulberry and june-berry trees will protect an orchard in the same way. The black-headed grosbeak, if not prevented, eats a good deal of fruit; but it has been estimated Fig. 51. T^e common Quail or Bobwhite, BIEDS 81 that for every quart of fruit he eats, he consumes, by measure, a quart and a half of black olive scales, a quart of flower beetles, and a large quantity of codling moth babies and cankerworms. If this is true, he certainly saves much more fruit than he destroys. Policemen of the Air. Some one has called the birds the little policemen of the air, because they protect us from the robber bugs and caterpillars. Insects make up nine-tenths of the animal life of the world, and it has been estimated that a bird will destroy thirty insects daily, so he is a very valuable little policeman. Eating Weed Seeds. Another great foe of the farmer is weeds. In one state alone the tree spar- rows are reported to have eaten eight hundred seventy-five tons of weed seed in one season. This included smartweed, rag- weed, bindweed, crabgrass, and many others. The bobolink and meadow lark destroy many in- sect enemies of the crops and untold quantities of weed seed. (Fi^-s. 49 and 50.) Big Appetites. Birds need a great deal of food, because they ,. rni i. n ii ^''^'- ^-- Making friends are so active. They eat all the of the Mrds. 82 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE time they are not sleeping or caring for their young. One flicker was found who had in his stomach five thousand ants; a nighthawk ate at one time sixty grasshoppers, and a bobwhite (Fig. 51) ate seven- teen hundred seeds of weeds for one meal. Making Friends of Birds. Birds may be coaxed to stay near the house and garden by protecting them from cats and bird-dogs and by making nest- ing easy for them. One kind-hearted farmer built a home for a wren. It was a box six inches square and about eight inches high. He put a little perch on the front and an entrance hole only one inch across, so the sparrows could not get in. He did not paint it, but left it wood color, for birds do not like bright-colored dwellings. The same little wren came on the fifth day of May every year for seven years and kept house in it. Martins and bluebirds also settled down in his bird houses. (Fig. 52.) The farmer ^s wife coaxed the orioles to build their strange little pouch nests on the limbs of their elm trees, by putting out yarn and cotton twine on the bushes in the nesting season. Covered arbors were made and vines allowed to grow to make sheltered places for rearing their young. Sharing with the Birds. A big mulberry tree in the garden furnished food for many songsters as well as plenty of pies for the farmer's family. On top of posts in the yard, out of the reach of cats, were shallow dishes which provided water for the birds: and the farmer left an opening under the eaves of BIEPS 83 his barn so the swallows could get in and keep house among the rafters, because they keep the barn free from gnats and flies. This bird-lover was not so cordial to crows, blue jays, sparrows, and chicken hawks, for they destroy the eggs and the young of the song birds. QUESTIONS (1) What birds get their food among the tree tops? (2) Do you know these birds? Get a bird book to aid you in learning them. (3) What kinds work on the bark of trees? (4) Name some that get their food on the wing. (5) How may orchards be protected from birds? (6) Why do not birds like bright-colored bird- houses? For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. PART II. SOILS AND FARM CROPS CHAPTER XI SOILS What the Soils Do. The layer of dirt or crust that covers the earth is .called the soil. It is so thin in places that the rocks appear through it. In other places it is deep. Plants and insects, birds, beasts, and men, are all fed on what grows in this layer of soil. It is marvelous that soil will produce so many different kinds of plants. A Light Soil. -As we go about we notice that the soil of some fields looks quite different from that of others. Here we find a loose soil in which we can easily see a large amount of common sand. There we find soil that contains so much clay that bricks can be made of it. The more sand a soil contains the easier it is to cultivate it. It works better under the plow and harrow. For this reason a sandy soil is said to be a light soil. Heavy Soil. Clay soils stick together and are hard to work, both when they are very wet and very dry. If we make clay into mud pies, they will crack when they are dry. Clay soils behave this way in the fields. We have all seen the big cracks in clay soil in the dry midsummer. This kind of soil is said 84 SOILS 85 to be cold, because it holds so much water instead of allowing it to pass through easily. Because clay soils are sticky and hard to work, we call them heavy. Crops for Clay Soils. Clay soils are excellent for pastures, and they wear well. Apples, pears, and grapes do well on them. They also produce good crops of hay, wheat, oats, beets, cabbages, and tur- nips. But clay soils are too cold and wet for corn and too hard to allow potatoes to grow freely. Loam. A soil that is composed of clay, sand and decomposed organic matter is called loam. If there is more clay than sand, it is called a clay loam; if there is more sand, it is a sandy loam. The presence of decomposed organic matter gives it fertility. This is the best farm soil, for loam makes a good home for plant roots. It is easy to cultivate, and because it allows moisture to pass through it readily, no time is lost after rains in waiting for it to dry out. What the Soil Contains. We know that all soil is made up of fine particles of rock or sand, of decayed plants, of water, and of insect life. It also contains air and another plant life, which, perhaps, we do not know about, because we cannot see it. They are so small it would take many thousands of them to measure an inch. This low, tiny plant life we call bacteria. They are very useful in changing the soil so as to make it ready for plant food. Bacteria must have air to live, and that is one reason we must have air in the soil. 86 ELEMENTARY AGEICULTURE Plant Food. In order that plants may grow, they need certain foods that we call plant foods. Plants get this food from the soil and the air. In order not to rob the soil, we must know what our crops are taking out of it and how to put these plant foods back. Plants Need Many Foods. The plant needs a variety of foods, just as a hungry boy does. Ordi nary plants need about thirteen different kinds. Some of these elements, or different kinds of foods, are obtained from the air, and others from the soil. To grow good crops, the soil must not only have enough of all the foods that the plants need, but they must* be in such form that the roots can take them up and use them to build up the stalk, leaves, and fruit. Only Liquid Food. The foods taken from the soil are called mineral foods, because they are actually bits of minerals dissolved in water just as you dis- solve sugar or salt. Plants drink their food through tiny, hollow root hairs that take up this water solu- tion. They cannot take up solid particles of soil. So all this mineral plant food must be dissolved in water before it can pass into the plant and become a part of it. Water the Chief Plant Food. When soil is perfectly dry, plants cannot grow in it, for water generally forms about three-fourths of a plant ^s weight. Since the plant can take plant food from the soil only in liquid form, we see that water itself SOILS 87 is not only an important plant food, but it carries to the stalk and leaves nearly all the other foods they need. After traveling through the rootlets up the stem to the leaves, the water that is not needed passes oft' from the leaves into the air. Therefore we see that plants take in much more water than they can use, for the sake of the food that the water brings with it. We are told that timothy hay needs three hundred tons of water to obtain the other foods necessary to make one ton of hay; oats require five hundred tons of water for a ton of plant. Other Food. A bundle of t\^heat as it comes from the self-binder weighs about ten pounds, and nearly nine and one-half pounds of this is composed of water and the carbonic acid of the air. A large part of the farmer's labor is done to supply the elements that make up the other half pound of this bundle of wheat. It contains ten simple foods and no two in equal amounts. The wheat cannot spare any one of these ten plant foods. So when the soil loses one element of wheat food, it is no longer good wheat land. Humus. Different parts of the same fields may have different colors. The red color of some clays is due to the iron in them, but the brown or black color of soils is usually due to T:he humus that they con- tain. Humus is the decay of plants. The leaf mould which we find under the dead leaves in the woods is a good sample of humus. This is a very impor- tant element in soil. Humus not only makes the 88 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE soil dark and rich, but it makes the ground loose and mellow so air can get in. It also enables the soil to hold far more moisture than would be pos- sible without it. Plants, we know, need both air and moisture about their roots, so humus is a valu- able aid to the farmer. Soil and Surface Water. How does the soil obtain and keep moisture and give it over to the plants? If we go into the fields after a heavy rain, we notice muddy streams running from the plowed land, carrying off good, fine soil. Part of the water that falls as rain and snow, runs off instead of sinking into the earth. This we call surface water, and it often does much damage to our fields; but much of the water that falls upon the ground sinks into the soil through cracks and holes and between the tiny grains of soil. When the land is dry the farmer likes a slow, steady rain, because it all soaks into the ground to feed plants, instead of running off as surface water and carrying good soil with it. Why Clay Soils Are Wet. As the water passes through the soil, each tiny grain of sand and each little particle of earth is covered with a coat of moisture. All through the soil are small holes or open spaces between the^ grains, and into these the water goes. In such fine soil as clay, Avhich packs closely, the spaces are small, and the water cannot pass through rapidly; so it is kept back in holes, open spaces, or puddles. In loose, coarse-grained earth, such as sand, the spaces are large; and the SOILS 89 water passes through rapidly. This explains why clay soil is sticky and wet while sand is a dry soil and almost never forms puddles. Holding Water for Plants. It is easy to under- stand how water will move downward through the soil wherever there are openings or pores. We also know that water-coated particles will pass on some of their moisture to dry ones that touch them, just as lamp oil passes up the wick. Thus, you see, mois- ture is always moving toward dry areas. This means a great deal to plants, for when their rootlets drink up the water that is around them and the soil about them is becoming dry, more moisture moves toward the dry place and supplies the thirsty plants. In this way plants may obtain nearly all the water in a good soil. Importance of Drainage. Some regions have con- siderable rainfall. Water soon forms a coat about each tiny grain of soil and fills the pore spaces. If more rain keeps falling, and the water cannot pass down easily through the soil, we have swampy land. This happens especially where the under drainage, as we say, is not good. In such swampy lands, the open spaces, or pores of the soil, are always full of water, and no air can penetrate the soil. Good Soil Contains Air. All plants need air about their roots as well as about their stems and leaves. The roots can not do their work without air, and they will not go deeper than the air can follow. Without air, seeds will not sprout, but will rot. 90 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Then, as we have said, there are the hosts of soil bacteria whose work it is to change certain plant foods for the plant's use; and these bacteria can not live without air. How to Drain Swampy Land. Level fields of clay soil are often unfit for crops, because they do not drain well. They are always water-soaked and swampy. Thus the farmer must drain such fields or allow them to lie idle. The best method is to tile-drain them. This is done by digging trenches from thirty to one hundred feet apart, according to the soil. In the bottom of these trenches tiles are laid. These tiles are merely hollow tubes about a foot long, made of clay and burnt hard like brick. They are laid end to end about four feet below the surface of the ground. Care must be taken to see that the tile line slopes gradually to some lower level at the creek or river. How Draining Helps. The tile drains carry away the excess of water. This allows air to enter the soil, and plant roots will follow as deep as the air and so get more plant food. Bacteria can also find better homes because of the air in the soil. A Map of the Tile Lines. The tile should not be too small, as small ones get filled up easily. Noth- ing smaller than three inches in diameter should be used, and in many places only four-inch tile are laid. Tiling a field costs a great deal of money and it should be done right. A map of the field may be kept showing just where every tile line is, so that SOILS 91 if a section again becomes swampy, it will be easier to find any tile that has filled up and failed to do its work. The Farmer's Bacteria Friends. We have learned of the tiny bacteria plants that live in the soil and help to prepare food for the plants we cultivate. Some kinds of bacteria live in other places, and others are harmful ; but these soil bacteria are very necessary and helpful, and the farmer works hard to make the soil right for them to grow. There are millions of bacteria in a cubic inch of fertile soil. They do not need sunlight as do most plants, but they do require air, moisture, warmth, and food. How They Help. Bacteria pounce upon all vege- table matter, such as leaves, wood, grass, and dead animal matter, that falls upon the ground and begins to decay, or rot. The bacteria break up all these substances into simple foods that are ready for tlie plant to drink. It would be of no use to manure soil if it were not for bacteria. Bacteria and Clover. Some kinds of bacteria set up housekeeping upon the tiny rootlets of certain l)lants such as clover, alfalfa, soy beans, and cow- peas. They take a certain element, that we call nitrogen, from the air and store it up in little bunches or swellings on the roots of these plants, ready for them to feed upon. Plants must have this nitrogen as food, and soil that contains abun- dance of it is rich soil. Every farmer boy knows that the fields are richest where clover, alfalfa, or 92 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTUEE cowpeas have been growing. (Fig. 53.) The reason is that the millions of bacteria have been at work upon their roots, storing up nitrogen for them and for other plants to feed upon. This explains why farmers use these crops to build up worn-out soils. Growing Several Crops. The farmer always raises some crops that pay better than others. Corn may pay better than oats, and yet it is wise to grow some oats, because the two crops can be worked at differ- ent times. A farmer may raise all the corn he has time to take care of and still raise a field of oats besides. Barley, oats, and spring wheat require attention at the same time. So the farmer usually chooses only one of these crops. Rye and winter wheat must be worked at the same time, and so the farmer grows but one of these in a season. Not Too Many Crops. It is better to raise a num- ber of crops than to put the whole farm into one, because the farmer wishes to provide work for him- self and his laborers all the time. It is not well, however, to have too many crops, because they may call for too much machinery. A farmer can not afford to buy the necessary tools for potatoes or wheat or orchards unless he has a fair-sized field in such crops. But small vegetables and fruit for home use should all be raised on every farm in gardens and small orchards. Rotation of Crops. Rotation means that the crops grown on each field are changed every year or two. Nearly every successful farmer does this. Still SOILS 93 there are fields that have never grown any crop but cotton; others, nothing but wheat. This is bad for the land, and the thoughtful farmer does not prac- tice it. Good Reasons for Rotation. By rotating and having several different crops, the laborers and teams are kept busy. The farmer has some crops Courtesy of AgricuUural Experiment Station, Wisconsin Fio. 53. Clover sod with potash and phosphorus fertilizer yielded S6 bushels of com per acre, shown at the left, as compared with 13.5 bushels where potash and phosphorus were used without clover, shown in the center, and 28.5 bushels where peat, potash, and phos- phorus were used, shown on the right. This shows the importance of adding nitrogen and organic matter to sandy soils. to sell and some to feed. He also escapes a total crop failure, and he keeps his soil in better condi- tion. By growing the same crops on the same fields year after year, certain weeds get the upper hand. By changing crops, these weeds are checked, be- cause the crops are worked at different times and in different ways. Then, too, there are some plant 94 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTURE diseases and insects that will get a big start unless other crops are introduced on the field. When in- sects find their favorite crop gone and one growing that they do not like, they are without food and starve to death. But perhaps the most important reason for rotation is to keep up the supply of humus in the soil by growing clover, alfalfa, or cow- peas and plowing them under to restore the vege table mould or humus. Rotating in the North. There are different sys- tems or methods of rotating crops. Many good farmers in the Northern states divide their farms into five fields, and on each field they raise corn, followed by oats, then by wheat, then clover, and lastly by timothy. Then they plow the timothy stubble and again start with corn. Try to make five diagrams or maps to show what each field con- tains each of the five years. In Potato States. In some potato-raising sections, they have a three-year rotation: a crop of potatoes is followed by one of wheat or oats, and that by a clover crop. Such a farm is divided into three fields. In the Corn Belt a good rotation is corn for two years, next oats, and then clover and timothy. Rotation for Cotton. For cotton plantations a good system is: Cotton the first year, followed the second year by corn with cowpeas planted between the rows or sown broadcast just before the last cul- tivation of the corn; the third year oats are grown, and they are followed by cowpeas the same season. SOILS 95 Phosphorus a Plant Food. We have learned that a plant needs many plant foods, but the most of them are usually found in the soil and in the air and water in great plenty. If the farmer needs to l)ut nitrogen in his soil, he may do it best by sowing a crop of red clover, alfalfa, or cowpeas. But all l)lant foods ,can not be put back into the soil by a crop. If a farmer raises and sells corn or wheat, he is taking out of his soil and shipping away one important plant food called phosphorus. Most of tjie phosphorus that corn and other grains require before they can grow well, they store up in their seed or grain. And when this grain is sent away to market, it takes with it three-fourths of the phos- phorus used by the crop. Putting Phosphorus Back. This must be put back into the soil somehow; and it may be done by pur chasing bone meal from stockyards companies who buy and slaughter our stock, or by purchasing manure for our fields or by buying rock phosphate from the places in Tennessee or Florida where this mineral is mined and ground for fertilizer. Keeping Up the Land. Phosphorus is the plant food most likely to be wanting in our rolling l)rairies, in the hilly timber lands, and in soils worn out by long cultivation. If clover will not grow well, one may feel pretty sure his fields need phos- y)horus, and, perhaps, lime. For most farms, all that is needed to keep them up is plenty of rock phos- phate, with a crop of clover, alfalfa, or cowpeas, in rotation and all the manure made on the farm. CHAPTER XII PLANTS AND HOW THEY GROW Learning about Plants. Since men and animals live largely on plants, and farmers are kept busy growing crops to feed the world, we want to know more about how plants grow and produce seed. We may easily see what the animals about us eat and drink, but it is not so easy to learn just how plants eat and grow and bear fruit. Dividing Their Work. Plants need food, water, and air, just as animals do. They also need warmth and light. The plant has different parts — a stem, roots, leaves, and flowers. It divides its work up among these parts. The roots of the plants have their work, and it is different from that of the stem and leaves. Roots and Their Work. Let us first look at the roots. Pull up a radish from the garden, and you notice that the upper part of the root is large and round and is stored full of food. Below is a tap root which grows smaller and smaller to the end several inches down. All along this tap root are tiny rootlets with root hairs branching off from them. These root hairs cover only the tips of the smallest rootlets, but they extend out in all direc- tions. They are very close together, for often there are as many as thirty thousand on one square inch, 96 PLANTS AND HOW THEY GROW 97 They are not young roots, because they never grow larger. They are only tiny little hollow tubes which contain sap. They have no pores, or holes for water to enter, but it easily soaks through their thin walls. Thus these root hairs drink in the soil water which contains many of the plant foods; and the sap car- ries this watery food up along the larger roots and stem to the leaves. Here the sunshine helps to make the plant food ready to build up the stem, leaves, and the fruit of the plant. The larger roots do not take plant food from the soil. Their work is to hold the plant firmly in its place in spite of storms and heavy rains. When a plant is taken up to be trans- planted, most of the small rootlets with their many long hairs are broken off. Perhaps you can now understand why a plant is so likely to wilt when it is transplanted. The Stem. The stem, or trunk, bears the leaves and holds them up in the air and sunshine. It car- ries the watery plant foods from the roots up through the outer wood layer to the leaves. The materials, or starch and sugar from the leaves, pass down through the bark to the part where they are needed to enlarge the plant. The Leaves. But more interesting than roots or stem are the leaves. They serve as so many stom- achs where the •plant food is digested and made ready for use. The chief work of the leaves is to make the plant foods over into starch and sugar. They take a large part of this starch and sugar, 98 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTURE called carbon, from the air, but the othef parts come to the leaves through the root hairs. The leaves also give off to the air all the water that is not needed by the plants. If the leaves give off more moisture than the roots supply, as they often do on very hot days, the plant wilts in order to prevent further evaporation. The Flower. The starch and sugar made by the leaves is either stored up for food or used at once to build plant tissue. When enough has been stored, the plant begins to flower. The flower is sometimes beautiful like the apple blossom, but often, as in the wheat or oats, it is not showy. The Seed. The flower of plants has a very im- portant work to do, because it contains the parts which create the fruit. The fruit contains the seeds from which new plants may be grown. If the flower fails to do its work, there will be no fruit, no seeds, and no new plant, unless a new plant can be started from a slip or cutting of the old plant. The Father and Mother. The flowers of different plants differ very much, but they usually have two parts. One is the ^^pistiP^ or mother part, which contains the ovary or seed food. This seed food will not grow into seed unless it receives some pollen or yellow dust that grows on another part called the ' ' stamen. ' ' The seed itself is ^ tiny baby plant all tucked under a good cover with food enough for it to live on until it can send out rootlets into the ground. PLANTS AND HOW THEY GKOW 99 The Corn Flowers. Every plant must have its flowers with their stamens and pistil, but the sta- mens and pistil are not always together in the same flower. Examine a cornstalk as it grows. The tassel is the stamen, or father flower, with its yellow dust, or pollen; and the ear is the pistil, or mother flower. If the pollen does not fall from the tassel on the silks of the ear to fertilize the ear, there will not be a grain of corn on the cob. Carrying the Pollen. The corn is only one of many plants that have their male and female flowers separate. Such plants depend partly upon the wind to carry the pollen from the father flower to the pistil where the new seed is to grow. Some plants depend upon insects to carry the pollen for them. So these plants have developed bright colored flowers that the insects can easily see. They also secrete a sweet food, or nectar, to reward the in- sects for their trouble. They hold out bright red and yellow and blue petals and say to the insects. *'Here you can get good honey.'' Night Workers. Some plants depend upon in- sects that fly only at night to carry their pollen. These plants do not have bright flowers, because colors cannot be seen well in the darkness. They have white flowers; and to aid the insects in finding tliem they have a strong, sweet odor or fragrance that guides their friends. The insects come from far and near for the sweets. They brush against the stamens and get covered with yellow pollen dust. 100 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE Away they go to other flowers, leaving some of this pollen on every plant they touch. When they go in deep for the honey, they leave pollen on the pistil just where it is needed. Pollen from Other Plants. Plants bear the strong- est and best fruit and seeds when the pollen has been brought to them from another plant. In a cornfield the ears on one stalk may receive pollen from its own tassel and from a dozen others stand- ing near. Sometimes when a farmer wants corn for seed, he goes about a certain part of his corn lot before the silks come out and cuts off the tassels of all the poor stalks. ^In this way he allows the ears to receive pollen from only the strongest plants. Kinds of Plants. There are thousands of differ- ent kinds of plants in the world. Perhaps there was a time when the world was young when there were very few plants. But as they spread over the earth they found different kinds of homes. Some seeds were gradually carried into cold regions, and others into hot places; some found wet spots, and others came into deserts. Some found homes on high, rough mountain tops where the storms raged about them, while others fell into low, shady nooks where they were protected. How They Came to be Different. As the plants were slowly carried into such different kinds of homes, they kept fighting for life and food. Often many plants were struggling for air and sunshine on the same little spot; and only those that proved PLANTS AND HOW THEY ,GEOW IQl good fighters lived. Slowly but- si^ireLy inany. o.f these plants changed to meec their tiew ^rrolnld- ings and became unlike their early parents and even unlike their close kin. Each one set to work to pro- tect itself and get its own food, and thus it slowly developed new i3arts, new ways of growing, and new ways of fighting for food. Only the best and strongest plants lived to spread their seed. In this way the world came to be covered, with untold multitudes of different kinds of plants. One Interesting Habit. It is interesting to study about the habits of different plants and how they grow and spread their kind. One of the important things about them that the farmer needs to kn6w is how they scatter their seed, because many weeds grow and fight for life where the farmer does not want them. Scattering Their Seed. Some plants, like the cocoanut, grow their seed in a hard shell which is waterproof, and in this they float on streams and rivers to new homes. The seeds of the maple and ash trees have wings, and on these they sail away across the fields wherever the wind will carry them. The dandelion seed has a queer little balloon on which the wind carries it to some far-away home. Then we know the burdocks and stick tights that catch in our clothes or fasten themselves on passing animals and hold tight for a long ride, to fall at last and set up housekeeping in a new region. Any boy or girl who will examine the seeds of plants 102 oELEME:IJITARY AGEICULTUKE ^nd do a little thinkmg will discover many inter- estihg iand woiiderful secrets about their different habits. How Man Helps. Man has chosen certain plants that furnish food for him and his flocks, and these he tries to help to good homes where they will grow and bring forth their harvest of grain or fruit. He spreads and sows these plants in several different ways. He sows the seed of the common grains or cereals, and covers them with earth. Sweet potatoes are grown from slips or plants; Irish potatoes, from the ^^eyes^' of the potato; grapevines from cuttings or twigs clipped from the vine. Sugar cane is grown by planting a short piece of the stalk. Many plants do not come true from seed, and man has learned to grow them by grafting or budding. A bud or graft twig is taken from one plant and so carefully put upon another that it will grow as part of the plant. And the strange thing about it is that it will produce its own kind of fruit and not the kind of the plant on which it is grafted. There is no end to the wonderful things man is learning to do with plants. QUESTIONS (1) What are some of the parts of a plant? (2) How do root hairs differ from true roots? (3) How do root hairs take in the plant food? (4) Can you now tell why a transplanted plant often wilts or dies? (5) How does the food pass from the roots to the leaves? (6) Why does it need to go to the leaves at all? (7) Why do plants have seeds? CHAPTER XIII TILLAGE AND FARM MACHINERY Sowing and Reaping in Olden Times. For thou- sands of years after men learned to plant seed they tilled the soil with a forked stick. Their only object seemed to be to get the seed covered in the ground. In Egypt for long ages seed was scattered broad- cast by hand and herds of cattle were driven over the ground to tramp it in. These ancient people reaped their grain with a crooked knife and beat the kernels from the husks and chaff with a stick, or Fig. 54. The best and cheapest fertilizer. flail. Sometimes they drove their cattle over it on the ))arn floor to thresh it. Tlien it was ground into 103 104 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE meal in stone basins with stone pestles. The crooked stick also served to dig the root crops. Wearing Out the Soil. Men of those times did not know how to cultivate crops. They knew that weeds injured the crops, but they did not know that it was because the weeds took the plant food, water, and air that their grain needed. When the land failed to bring a good harvest, the farmer concluded that the field needed a rest; so he rested it, or, as we say, let it lie fallow for one year. He did not know what we do to-day — that his land only needed a rotation of .crops, that is, a different crop planted each year, or that barnyard manure would make it fertile again (Fig. 54). Jethro TuU. About two hundred years ago there lived in England a landlord named Jethro Tull. He watched his crops closely and soon saw that the fields he worked or tilled the most brought the largest crops. He taught other farmers that tillage was the most important part of farming. He be- lieved that fields would never wear out if they were always cultivated thoroughly. He thought that plants took their food in solid little grains or parti- cles, and the only thing needed was to break up the soil very fine and the plants would eat it as a calf eats bran. We know that Tull was mistaken in thinking that plants take their food in solid form, but he did a great service to his farmer friends and to all the farmers siuise that time by showing them how important tillage is (Figs. 55a and 55b). TILLAGE AND FARM MACHINERY 105 Courtesy TJ. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fig. 55a. A field in poor tilth. Crops in such cloddy soil have a small chance. '.uurtesy U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Flo. 55b. A field in good tilth. The best time to cultivate a crop is before planting it. Feeding Plants. We know that plants can use only the plant food that is prepared for them. If it is not in the right form, it makes no difference 106 ELEMENTAKY AGRICULTURE how much food is in the soil, the plants will die in the midst of plenty. It is the farmer's task to see that the plant food in his soil is ready for his crops to use, and he tills the soil so that moisture can enter and be kept near the roots. Tillage loosens the soil so air can enter. Tillage also keeps down the weeds that steal the plant food and keep out the sunlight and warmth that the crops need. We can see that a great deal depends upon the farmer's stirring his soil at the right time. Keeping Moisture in the Soil. The well-tilled soil is broken into very fine grains or particles (Fig. 55). These fine particles will hold much more water than coarse ones, because each tiny grain has its own coat of moisture. This, you remember, is the reason clay soil will hold more moisture than sandy soil. Clay does not drink it in so rapidly, but- it holds on to it better. Moisture passes easily from wet grains of earth to dry ones that touch them, so we see that the looser the soil is the fewer are the particles which touch one another. If they do not touch one another, water cannot pass so easily from wet particles to dry ones and in this way climb to the surface and pass off into the air. The surface soil especially must be loose to keep the moisture from evaporat- ing, or getting back into the air. The Dust Mulch. The loose layer of surface, which we call dust mulch, acts just like a blanket. Turn over a log or a board in the barn lot in tlie TILLAGE AND FARM MACHINERY 107 spring and you will find the soil under it more damp than the ground not covered. The board has kept the moisture from passing off into the air. When we remember how much moisture crops need; we will see how important the dust mulch is. Every time it rains hard it packs this mulch down, and the farmer should cultivate his crop again, to loosen the top soil. Dry Farming. Perhaps you have read or heard of dry farming. In many places in our great West there is not enough rainfall in a year to raise a crop. But if all that falls in two years could be kept, it would raise one crop. The farmers have learned that if they keep a dry mulch on the ground and save all the rainfall of one year, they have a pretty good chance to raise a crop the second year. It means that they must cultivate or till the ground for two seasons to get one crop, but that is better than raising nothing at all on these wide, dry areas. Where rainfall is less than twenty inches per year, dry farming or irrigation must be practiced. Irrigation. Two-fifths of the land of the United States is too dry to produce regular crops without irrigation. By irrigation is meant the storing of water in lakes and reservoirs by means of huge dams. This is done in the rainy season, when there is plenty to be had. This water is then turned on the fields by means of ditches when crops are grow- ing, where it takes the place of rainfall (Fig. 56). Some reservoirs are supplied from rivers that flow 108 ELEMENTABY AGBlCtJLTtJBE the year round, while others must be filled in the rainy season. The United States Government is Fig. 56. A private irrigation plant. spending millions of dollars in the dry sections to save for crops some of the water that is going to waste. Making Machinery Better. A slight improvement on the crooked stick was a rude plow made from several sticks bound with thongs of skin. This was used after the ox had been taught to bear the yoke. Farming with such tools was hard and toilsome labor with little reward. A brush dragged over the plowed ground was probably the first harrow. Copper Tools. It was a great step forward when some one learned to smelt copper. Though copper TILLAGE AND FARM MACHINERY 109 is soft and will not take on a sharp edge, yet it made far better tools than did sticks. The next step was made when it was found that by mixing tin ore with .copper a much harder tool could be made, with a better edge. This mixture is called bronze. Bronze tools were used for untold ages until some clever man found out how to make a fire hot enough to smelt iron ore. When iron tools and weapons were made, we have the beginning of all the wonderful machinery in use to-day. The First Iron Tools. Iron tools were few and costly at first, because the warriors needed all the iron they could get for their weapons. But men learned at last to make hillside furnaces for smelt- ing iron ore, and then the farmer got a few iron r~ .-,, ^i£u>, • 1 ^^^^^H^^^^^^^Hfl|^r^Fj^^ ... I '' l^HH .. - m Fig. 57. Put the soil in yood tilth with a dish huiiuw utfviu voicing. 110 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTUEE tools. The day came when some clever farmer put an iron share on his plow to cut the soil. From that day to this men have gradually improved iron farm tools, and the splendid horse-power machines of al] Fig. 58. A tractor engine drawing four ploics. descriptions which do farm work to-day are the result of the wonderful inventions of many bright minds. Farm Machinery of To-Day. The poorest farmer of to-day has a plow to turn the sod and stir the soil deeply; he has a cultivator to tear and break the soil, and a harrow to make it fine like ashes for the dust mulch (Fig. 57). Certain soils that TILLAGE AND FARM MACHINERY m are sandy and too loose need rollers to pack them slightly. Every sort of harvester has been devised for gathering the crop. But farmers have not been content with horse power alone. They have har- nessed the wind to their windmills, they have hitched their plows and harvesters to great steam engines (Fig. 58), and they are using the power of gasoline engines to do many kinds of work about the farm (Fig. 59). Even electricity may be had where there is a waterfall to make it cheaply. Care of Machinery. It is important that the farmer take good care of his machinery and tools. More plows have been rusted out by the weather than have been worn out by use. There are three good rules for every farm. Keep all tools under a good roof when they are not in use. See that all machinery, wagons, and the like are kept well Fig. 59. A gas engine is a great labor saver on the farm. 112 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE painted, so tliey will last longer and save the farmer from buying new ones early. Use plenty of oil to save wear on all machinery. Oil and paint cost money; but if thirty-five cents' worth of paint will make a thirty-five-dollar machine last several years longer, it pays to use the paint. QUESTIONS (1) Who was Jethro Tull and what do we owe to him? (2) What do we mean by saying that plant food must be in the right form? (3) How may a farmer save the moisture in his soil for the crop? (4) What is meant by a dust mulch? (5) What is dry farming? (6) In what different ways is water obtained for irrigation? (7) What are the objections to copper tools? (8) In what way is bronze better for tools? (9) Why was it so long before iron tools were made? (10) What invention do you think has meant most to the farmer? (11) Why? For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER Xir COEN America and Corn Discovered. When Columbus sailed toward the west over the unknown ocean, he hoped to reach the rich cities of Asia and the Spice Islands. Here he expected to obtain a rich cargo of spices, some of which were worth their weight in gold. But, instead of reaching China, Columbus landed upon a new world where white men had never been before. Instead of rich cities, he found only a vast wilderness inhabited by savages whom he named Indians. The Indians lived by hunting and fishing and by raising a few plants which were new and strange to Columbus and his sailors. These were squashes, tobacco, and maize, or corn. Colum- bus never knew what a wonderful golden treasure he had found in this Indian corn. It has come to be one of the most valuable crops in the world. When the com crops fail there is a scarcity of food for rich and poor and hard times for everybody for many months. Corn Saves the Pioneers. This Indian corn was a great blessing to the early immigrants from Europe, for the wheat and rye which they had brought with them would grow only in well-tilled fields and these pioneers were poor farmers with poor tools. There were no well-tilled fields, and men would not work. 113 114 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE They would have starved if the Indians had not fur- nished them with ,corn. The Indians taught the white men from Europe how to raise corn and how to make from it dishes fit for a king to eat. Indian Farming. The Indian methods of farming were very crude and simple, for they knew very little about tilling the soil. The Indian squaws killed a patch of forest trees by cutting a girdle around each one when the sap was running in the spring. After the trees died and the sunlight shone in, the squaws scratched the grains of seed corn into the ground, with a crooked, sharp stick for a hoe. Here, without the use of plow or harrow, the corn sprang up in the rich earth, and a harvest of yellow ears provided food for winter. Where Corn Grows. Since that time corn has been one of the chief crops of the American farmer in most sections, and to-day it is the most important of all. Corn can be raised in nearly every part of North America. In the North, where the summers are short, the farmers have developed a kind that grows only three or four feet high and that will ripen in seventy days. In the Southern countries of Mexico and South America there are kinds of corn that grow more than twenty feet high and require six months in which to ripen. The Corn Belt. Corn is now raised in many coun- tries, but about three-fourths of the world's supply is grown in the United States, and nearly one-half of the world's supply in the seven states known as COKN 115 the Corn Belt. They are Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana, and Ohio. The Corn Belt supplies many other states and countries with its surplus of corn. Besides a good soil in which to grow, corn needs hot weather with long days of bright sunshine and a great amount of rain. A Corn Train. If the corn crop of the United States in one yenr was placed in wagons, with fifty bushels in each load, and each wagon and team had been allowed twenty feet of space, the train of corn would have reached more than nine times around the earth at the equator. Com Land Valuable. Where corn thrives, it yields about twice as much food for each acre as is produced by any of the other grains. That is the reason why land in the Corn Belt is very high in price. Corn is grown in many places where only a half-crop is obtained, for a half-crop of corn yields as much food as a full crop of wheat or rye. Choosing Good Seed. It is believed that the farm- ers in any state in the Union could increase the yield of corn from five to twenty bushels an acre if they were trained in choosing their seed corn. In order to choose well the farmer must be a good judge of an ear of corn. To know a prize ear is not such a difficult lesson to learn. The Prize Ear. A perfect ear should be round, tapering, and full and strong in the middle. It must be firm to the touch, and the kernels should not be loose on the cob, as this shows that the ear 116 ELEMENTAKY AGEICULTUEE Fig. 60. is not thoroughly ripened. The distance around the ear one-third of the distance from the butt should be about three-fourths of the entire length. The rows of kernels must be straight, and there should not be fewer than sixteen nor more A prize ear. ^^^^ twenty - eight rows on the cob. In most sections the ear is from eight and one-half to ten inches long, and it should be filled out to the tip (Fig. 60). Good Kernels. The kernels to be planted should be wedge-shaped, with the edges touching those next to them their entire length from crown to cob. They should have deeply indented crowns without pointed or sharp corners. The color needs to be true to variety and free from mixture. Cobs. Ordinary types of white corn should have Fig. 61. A cob may he .too large or too small. white cobs, and yellow corn should have red cobs. However, certain varieties of types vary from this COBN 117 rule. The deeper or longer the kernel, the greater the proportion of corn to cob. An extremely large cob means late ma- turity and less corn in proportion to cob (Fig. 61). The ears should carry their size well out to the tips. The w i d e I the furrows between the rows of grain on the cob, the lower the proportion of corn to cob (Fig. 62). When to Select Seed. Some farmers are satisfied to choose the finest ears from the crib, but a better way is to select from the fields at husking time. By taking seed from stalks bearing two well- formed ears, the Fio. 62. Space between kernels next to f -i 1 y 0 §1 I i| hi 1 1 i t cob, objectionable. Ears Nos. 1 and 2 are same levpth and circumference. Ear No. 2 shelled out 33 per cent more corn by weight than No. 1. next crop will have more two-eared plants, and thus the crop will be larger. In order to choose seed for any crop, it is safer to see the plant on which it grew. 118 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE because like produces like. Careful selection of seed is the most profitable farm work. Curing the Seed. Every ear intended for planting must be gathered before the autumn freezes, since freezing corn that is not well dried injures the seed germ. Seed corn should be hung up where the air can circulate about it freely. A good place to hang seed corn is in the attic over the kitchen, with the windows open. The Corn Tree. The "corn tree'^ is a device for drying corn. It consists of an upright post driven full of small-headed nails. An ear of corn is easily stuck on each nail by jamming it into the pith at the butt end. A wall driven full of nails will serve the same purpose of holding the ears apart so they will dry quickly. Testing Seeds. Every ear intended for seed should be tested to see if the corn will sprout or germinate. Take six seeds from each ear and plant them for a test, keeping the ear marked by number. This will insure a good stand and prevent replant- ing, which causes a spotted field and a poor and uneven crop (Fig. 63). Improving Corn. A good way to improve the variety is to plant the seed from the hundred best ears on one side of the field and to choose the seed for the next year from this planting. In this way a farmer will improve his crop every year. Planting Evenly. To-day most farmers plant with machines, and the planter will not drop the corn CORN 119 evenly unless the kernels are of the same size. It is, therefore, wise to shell off and discard the kernels Fk;. 63. Testing tirelve ears of seed corn. on both the tip and butt of the ear which are of irregular size and shape. The corn grader is a machine which will do this work of sifting out the poorly-shaped kernels, or it may be done by hand if the crop is small. It is a good plan to test the corn planter to be sure it will drop three kernels in a hill. 120 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTUEE WW [^^.z^. Fig. 64. The old way of spreading manure leaves the field unevenly fertilized and the crop grows and ripens unevenly. Making the Soil Rich. The farmer prepares his fields well before sowing. He adds to the soil by spreading over it barn-yard manure, for manure contains the most plant food of anything he can put on his fields (Figs. 64 and 65). Instead of spreading manure on the corn lot, the farmer may choose fields to plant where he has the year before raised a crop of clover or cowpeas, because he knows that these two crops enrich the soil for corn (Fig. 53). Sometimes he buys a fertilizer made of certain foods which the plant needs, but this costs a great deal of money. How to Plow. To prepare the ground the good farmer plows rather deep to bring fresh soil up to the air and sunshine. The air and sunshine help to make the plant food ready for the little corn rootlets CORN 121 to take up. The ground should not be plowed when the soil is very wet, for it stays in hard lumps and is not easily broken up so the roots can reach into the earth. How to Keep the Ground Moist. The plow is fol- lowed by a disk or spring-tooth harrow (Fig. 66) until all clods are broken and the surface is mellow and fine like ashes. This ashy top soil acts like a blanket to keep the moisture in the ground from escaping. Planting the Crop. Field corn should be planted in rows about three and one-half feet apart. Years ago a few grains of seed were dropped into each hill by hand and covered with a hoe, but to-day the farmer uses a checkrow planter drawn by a team. Fig. (i;j. Manure should be spread evenly. This machine plants the corn so it can be cultivated both ways and be kept clean more easily. 122 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTUEE Keeping the Weeds Down. A few days after planting, the field should be harrowed to kill the grass and weeds that are ready to sprout, because they grow faster than the corn. "When the corn is a few inches high the harrow must be used again to break the crust and to supply air to the soil as well as to keep the weeds and grass down. Plowing the Corn. The field should be cultivated two or three times more, but after the corn roots have spread out between the rows, it is not safe to plow too clase to the row or too deep> for fear of breaking off millions of little rootlets that are feed- ing the plant. This applies also to the raising of sweet corn or pop corn and other cropp needing tillage. Fig. 66. Spring -toofh harrow. CORN 123 Gathering the Crop. When the lower leaves on the stalks begin to die, the corn is ready to cut. This may be done with a hand cutter or with a corn liarvester (Fig. 67). About sixty hills are cut and gathered into one shock. The tops are bound to- gether so the shock will stand while the com cures, which requires about six weeks. When the leaves are dry the husking takes place, and the ears are stored in well-ventilated cribs built high from the ground and protected from the rats and mice. Send to the Do]);irtmeTif of Agriculture for plans for the crib. 124 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE Saving It All. In some places the corn is husked, or picked, standing in the field and the cornstalks are burned. This is a great waste, for cornstalks make good food for horses, cattle, and sheep, and they like it very much. A machine which husks the corn and shreds the tops and leaves makes a feed called corn stover that is as good for live stock as timothy hay. Making fodder into stover saves it all. •41 1 1 '*" L _f .? ,:.. ^^^^^^^^^^^E_ Fig. 6«. Filling the silo. A Great Discovery. Every farmer knows that cattle like green feed much better than dry. But for a long time nobody knew how to keep feed green through the winter. Many years ago, in Europe, a stack of wet, green grass was covered with earth by accident. When winter came this stack was uncovered and the grass was still green and juicy. It was greatly relished by the cattle. COKN 125 Building Silos. After that, farmers began to dig pits in the ground to keep feed green. Such pits were called silos, and to-day they are made above ground of cement or wood and placed flear the cattle barns (Fig. 68). Cattle will eat more silage than fodder, and cows fed on it give more milk. When corn is grown for the silo it is planted about one stalk every seven inches, in rows three and one-half feet apart. Com a Treasure. Corn is the backbone of farm- ing in our country. Not only is it good for live stock of all kinds, but it feeds more people than any other grain except rice. Many useful things are made from corn besides the fodder, grain, and meal for feeding. The silks are used in the making of filters, and corn husks are made into mattresses. Pith is used for the packing of cofferdams of battle- ships. Oil, varnish, starch, alcohol, and many other articles are made from corn. There is one factory in the United States that makes forty-two different corn products. QUESTIONS (1) Which has meant more to the world the riches of the Indies or the golden corn? (2) Why? (3) Why was corn more necessary to the early pioneers than wheat or barley? (4) What makes land in the corn belt so valuable? (5) What is the best way to choose seed corn? (6) Why does plowing ground when it is wet injure it? (7) What harm is done by cultivating corn deep after it is waist high? For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER XV WHEAT White Bread. Nearly the entire wheat crop of the world is used for human food. Wheat bread is such a common food in our country now that we do not realize that it is still .considered a great treat by some classes of people in other parts of the world. The poor peasants in many lands eat bread made of rye, barley, or millet, because it is cheaper than *^ white bread.'' Millions of people in Asia eat rice, but wheat flour makes a light bread that is more healthful and tempting than that made by any other grain; and as fast as the poor classes of people can afford it, they demand wheat bread. The First Wheat Farmers. Who the first people were to raise wheat we do not know, because it hap- pened, like so many other interesting things, before men learned to write. Neither do we know where it first grew. The ancient lake-dwellers of Switzer- lard raised a kind of grain very much like our wheat. Some scholars believe that the early home of wheat was in the Euphrates Valley, in western Asia. Others think it first grew in Palestine. A kind of wheat has lately been found growing wild on the mountains of Palestine, and some people are sure that our wheat has come from this wild kind. Wheat was grown in China many hundred years 126 WHEAT 127 before Christ lived, and the Chinese said that it was given to them direct from heaven. Wheat in America. Wheat was the first grain brought to our country by the Jamestown colony in 1607. These pioneers cut down forest trees to build a fort, and in the cleared places they sowed I'Ki. t)".'. i l(c reap hook, an ancient looi jor rcdyiiuj (jrain. wheat. The first crops were very poor, but they wanted white bread, so they kept planting a little more each year. The crops were cut with the reap hook, or sickle, which is merely a knife with a curved, blade (Fig. 69). It was threshed by being trod u])on by horses and oxen. The World's Crop. Our country does not produce so large a part of the world *s wheat crop as it does of the corn. Europe raises twice as much wheat as does North America. European countries get twice 128 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE as much from an acre as we do, so they can raise it as cheaply as we do on our large farms in the West. Kinds of Wheat. There are several kinds of wheat. Some kinds are sown in the fall and remain on the field through the winter. Such kinds are called winter wheat. Others are sown in the spring and are called spring wheat. Climate. Wheat is better suited to short summers than is ,corn, so it can be grown much farther north. For several years farmers have been moving by hundreds to the wide prairies of western Canada for this purpose, and they are making it a great wheat country. Preparing the Soil. This crop will grow on a great variety of soils, but it seems to thrive best en a light clay. The land that is to be used for winter wheat needs to be plowed as early in the summer as possible. Such early plowing loosens the ground so it will hold more moisture. The soil should be made fine and loose. For spring wheat one may plow the fall before, or early in the spring. Sowing the Seed. Winter wheat is sown early in the fall, so that it may grow strong before the cold weather comes. Spring wheat should also be sown early, because wheat will sprout and begin its growth while the weather is still cool. Six to eight pecks of wheat are sown to the acre, and the seed is planted about two inches deep. The lighter and looser the soil, the deeper should be the planting. In olden times wheat was scattered by hand and WHEAT 129 harrowed in, but now it is nearly all sown by the drill (Fig. 70). . Cultivation. In most countries wheat receives no cultivation between the sowing and the harvesting. In many places it is harrowed or rolled after the seed has begun to sprout or after it has taken firm di ill. root. This is done to kill weeds and to keep moisture in the ground, as we do for corn. It is a mistake to think that this does more harm than good. In Japan wheat is planted in wide rows and hoed. Vegetables are raised between the rows. A hundred years ago wheat was hoed with a mattock. Wheat may be pastured in the winter when the ground is frozen, but not late in the spring. 130 ELEMENTAKY AGPICULTUKE Fig. 71. The cradle was a great improvement over the reap hook. Wheat in Rotation. Wheat should never be grown on the same fields year after year with no change of ,crop. It was grown in England far many years to test this. When it was grown on the same field every year for twelve years the average crop was a little more than twelve bushels to the acre. When it was grown every fourth year, with three other crops between, the yield for each acre was twenty- eight bushels, or more than twice as much. Enemies of Wheat. Wheat seems to have more enemies than any other crop that the farmer raises. He never knows when he sows his fields what he shall reap or whether he shall reap at all. Very hot or cold weather may ruin the crop. Drouths may come and the plants die of thirst; or it may rain too much and drown the wheat. Storms of hail or wind WHEAT 131 or floods may ruin it. Smut, or rust, or insects may- devour it. The farmer has more risks to run in growing wheat than in almost any other farm crop, yet mankind is willing to pay extra for wheat bread. Harvest Home. In most regions wheat must be harvested very promptly, or much of the crop may be damaged or lost. Before good machinery was invented it was a very toilsome task to gather the wheat crop. So much hard work had been put into it and such a long time had gone by since the grain was sowed that the farmer was always anxious at harvest time to reap his crop and pay his expenses. At the close of the season the people held great rejoicings, called in England ** harvest home.** They formed a procession, with music, to bring home the last sheaves of grain. The workers and ir'iu. 72. CuLiimj ichval with a cradle. 132 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE pretty maidens danced along, merrily singing: ''Harvest home, harvest home, We have plowed, we have sowed, We have reaped, we have mowed. We have brought home every load, Hip, hip, hip, harvest home." The Sickle. We have said that many years ago wheat was cut with a reap hook, or sickle, held in one hand (Fig. 69). A large part of the world's crop is still cut in that way among the peasants of Russia, China, and Japan. With a sickle a good worker can cut about an acre a day. The Scythe or Cradle. The Romans thought they could cut more if they had a longer blade and used both hands, so they invented the scythe. This allowed the grain to fall over when it was cut and some clever man placed wooden fingers above the scythe to catch the grain and help to lay it straight for binding. This was called the cradle. It is still in use in many places in our country for cutting small patches of oats and wheat (Figs. 71 and 72). Animal Power. But the cradle used only hand power, and men needed horse power to save both time and money. The first machine to use animal power was a wheat-header used in France about the time of Christ. It was a two-wheeled cart, pushed by-an ox yoked behind. On the front edge of the cart were sharp fingers, or teeth, like a big comb, to catch the heads of wheat and pull them off and rake them into the cart. This machine later disappeared. WHEAT 133 The Header. Hundreds of years later men began to make macliines with the power in front. This method with horse power meant a side-cut. The wheat-header is a machine that cuts otf the heads and throws them into a wagoia that is driven along- side. It saves binding and shocking. Wheat must be dry before it is cut in this way, for the grain is either stacked or threshed at once without time for curing. If it be damp, green, or weedy, it will not thresh well and is liable to spoil in the stack. The header is .chiefly used in dry countries. The header of to-day cuts a strip twelve to twenty feet wide. In the state of Washington three headers and one threshing machine usually work together on the mammoth farms. In this way from fifty to seventy- five acres of wheat are harvested in one day. The Reaper. Another machine has been worked out to harvest the wheat where the header is not successful. A machine was developed that would cut and bunch the grain. This was called the reaper (Fig. 73). McCormick's machine was first used in the harvest of 1831. It was a rather crude affair, drawn by one horse, but it was a good beginning. It meant cheap bread for mankind, but the farmers at first refused to use the reaper. They laughed at it; they said it would not work on hillsides. But they sat on the fence and watched it. Then they shook their heads and went back to their old cradles. M.cCormick talked and urged the people to try it, but it was ten years after the machine proved itself 134 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE before a farmer was found who would buy one. The next year two reapers were sold, then fifty, then a thousand. The grain was raked from the platform of the machine by a man walking behind. It had to be bound and shocked by hand. Not long afterwards larger and better machines w^ere made. It took Fig. 73. The first reaper. much hard work to change the reaper into the modern binder (Fig. 74). The Self-binder. The machine in general use in our country to-day is the self-binder, which cuts, binds, and dumps the bundles in piles to be shocked by hand (Fig. 75). On some of the large grain farms there are as many as fifty self-binders, and these often cut six hundred acres of wheat in one day. To make a device that would bind the wheat was a hard task. Finally one was made that would WHEAT 135 do the work, but it bound the bundles with wire. Pieces of wire found their way into the throats of .cattle, and farmers would not buy the binder. Some cheap binder twine must be found. Mr. William Deering spent much time and a great deal of money to get a twine that would knot easily and firmly. Fig. 74. The modern tindtr dmnn by a traction engine. He finally found that Manila hemp would act just right, and this made the binder complete. Our binder twine is usually made of a mixture of Manila and sisal fiber. Millions and millions of pounds of ])inder twine are used every harvest. Combined Harvesters. The most complete ma- chine of all is the combined harvester, which is used chiefly on the bonanza farms on our Pacific coast, where there is nothing to fear from rainy weather. This machine cuts, binds, gathers, cleans, and bags 136 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTUEE the grain without a single touch from human hands. On one side the wheat is cut, and on the other sacks of wheat are dropped in piles ready for the market. This machine is drawn by great teams of from twenty-four to forty horses and mules, and it har- FiG. 75. Shocks of golden grain. vests from thirty to forty acres of grain a day. It requires only four men to operate it. Steam Harvesters. There are large combined har- vesters run by steam. They harvest from seventy- five to one hundred twenty-five acres a day. They are used only on very large farms, from three thou- sand to twenty thousand acres each. In the days of the old Eomans it took four days and a half of WHEAT 137 work to raise and harvest each bushel of wheat. When the reaper was invented it took three hours of labor for each bushel, and to-day it takes only ten minutes. This is what machinery has done for the farmers. How Much We Eat. It is said that, on the aver- age, every person in the United States eats about five bushels of wheat in a year. Five bushels of wheat make a barrel of flour, and a barrel of flour turned over to the baker makes about two hundred fifty loaves of bread. Other Uses of Wheat. Most of the American wheat is made into bread, but there is also a great amount used for breakfast foods. Some wheat is fed to stock, especially to poultry. Wheat, bran, and middlings in great quantities are bought at the mills and fed to cattle. Macaroni is made from wheat, and so is starch, which is used for paste or sizing. The straw is used for feeding and bedding cattle and for making straw hats and bonnets. QUESTIONS (1) Why do not all people eat wheat bread? (2) How was wheat first harvested and threshed in America? (3) Why can Europe raise wheat as cheaply as we do? (4) Does corn grow as far north as wheat? (5) Give reason. (6) Why should fall wheat ground be plowed early in the summer? (7) Name some of the enemies of wheat. (8) Why is the modern wheat-header suited only to dry regions? For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER XVI OATS, BARLEY, AND RYE Climate and Soil for Oats. Oats thrive best in a cool, moist soil. The best corn regions are too hot for the largest yields. When oats are grown in the warm regions of the corn belt the seed should be sown very early in the spring so that the grain may develop in the cooler weather. The best oat states are too far north for a good corn yield. Oats will grow well on a poorer soil than com. When oats are raised on land that is very rich they grow too much to straw and too little to grain and are likely to lodge and blow flat in a storm. Oats or Corn. In the corn belt oats are not so profitable as com. The cost of growing the two crops is about the same but oats yield fewer bushels per acre and bring a lower price. When the price of oats is as low as thirty-five cents per bushel there is no profit in the crop. Still the wise farmer con- tinues to grow oats on good corn land because it is bad practice to raise corn on the same field year after year. In the rotation of crops oats fit in well. Preparing Seed. Seed oats should be plump and heavy and free from weed seeds and dirt. To re- move this extra matter the oats are put through a fanning mill. In many places the crop can bo increased one-fifth by carefully choosing the seed. 138 OATS, BARLEY, AND RYE 139 The seed should be treated in order to prevent smut. Some careless farmers lose nearly half their crop on account of smut. There. are two treatments to prevent smut. One is to soak the seed for ten minutes in a solution of one pint of formaldehyde and thirty-six gallons of water. Another is to soak the seed for ten minutes in hot water at a tem- perature of 133° Fahr. The last is called the hot water treatment. Testing Oats. It is well to test the seed oats to see if they will sprout well. If samples of the seed are put in a tester and placed in a room with a temperature of 70 "" to 80° the oats should sprout well in about three days. Out of a hundred seeds ninety-five should sprout. If a smaller number sprouts more seed should be sown per acre. By selecting seed carefully and cleaning and treating it every spring the crop will grow better every year. A Thirsty Crop. Oats need a great deal of mois- ture, more, we are told, than any other of our big crops. For every pound of dry matter in the crop the soil needs about five hundred pounds of water. Where does all this moisture go! Some of it evap- orates from the ground and passes off into the air, but most of it goes into the oat plant carrying food with it. The plant gives off the moisture it does not use through its leaves. This passing of mois- ture througli the leaves is called transpiration. Early Sowing. Fields intended for oats should have the soil stirred as early in the spring as teams 140 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE can be used on the land. We know that a mulch prevents moisture from passing off into the air. It is hard to believe, but we are told that in a certain test it was found that a field with a hard crust on the soil lost thirty tons of moisture per acre every day for seven days by evaporation. The Seed Bed. Some farmers sow oats on corn land with only a discing but a much better crop Fig, 76. A heavy crop of oats. will grow if the ground is plowed. If the soil is light or sandy it is best to roll it after seeding, but it should not be rolled when wet. After rolling, drag it lightly to" make a surface mulch. The proper depth to sow the seed depends upon the soil but in Illinois and Ohio the best crops are raised by covering the seed with one inch of soil. This is done by drilling the seed and following with OATS, BARLEY, AND RYE 141 a harrow to make sure that all the seed is covered and to leave a mulch on the surface. (Fig. 76.) Oats in Rotation. Some farmers sow too much seed. From many tests it is found that about ten 'pecks of good seed to the acre gives the best crop. Oats fit in nicely in almost any rotation system. In wheat sections of the West the crops follow one another in the order of com, oats, and wheat, each one year, followed by clover and timothy, two years. Farmers in the corn belt have a three year rotation of com, oats, and clover. Harvesting. The oat crop should be harvested when the grain has just passed from the *^milk stage '^ into the ** dough stage,'' or very soon after- ward. If there are many weeds the sheaves may be set in uncovered shocks so the sun and wind can dry them out. When oats are thoroughly dry and the weather is good they can be threshed from the field. This saves time and labor in the busy season of the year. But if oats are exposed to storms while in the shock their color changes slightly. This does not injure the feeding value but the farmer will not get so good a price for them in the market. The most convenient time to market the oat crop is at threshing time. This saves extra handling of the grain and the trouble of storing it. But if the price is low it is often better to house it. Oats, like all grains, will lose some weight in storage. To get the best price any grain must be sweet, free from weed seeds, and have a good color. 142 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Uses of Oats. Oats are used in the main as feed for horses for they are nearly a balanced ration in themselves." They are also fed in large quantities to sheep and cattle. The Scotch are very fond of oatmeal and it is being used more and more on our' tables. For making rolled oats and oatmeal the plump and heavy grain is preferred, but the hulls must be thin: Barley. Barley is grown in many parts of the world for its grain and for pasture. The grain is used as feed for live stock and in making malt for beer. Years ago barley was used in Europe and Asia for bread until wheat gradually took its place. Barley thrives best on well cultivated land because its roots are shorter than wheat or oats and it needs a w^ell-preserved soil. A rich clay loam is best suited to this crop for it will not grow well on land that is soggy. Rotation and Seed Bed. A good rotation for barley is com, barley, clover, and timothy. Barley does well on land that has grown potatoes, beets or garden truck the year before. For this crop it is best to plow the land in the fall, disc it in the spring, and put it in good tilth as early as possible. If the ground is then full of lumps and clods a roller, or planker, should be used to crush the lumps, followed by a fine-tooth harrow to finish the preparation. Barley is drilled or sown with a broad-cast seeder about six to ten pecks per acre. It is usually sown OATS, BARLEY, AND RYE 143 in the spring following the sowing of wheat but before the oats are put in. After the seed is in, it is well to run a fine-tooth harrow over the ground. Barley is an excellent nurse crop to start alfalfa or clover because it does not grow very tall or leafy and does not shut out the air and sunlight. Barley does not require so much water as oats and so it leaves more moisture for the grass. Enemies of Barley. Some enemies of barley are rust, mildew, and smut. There seems to be no remedy for rust or mildew but the smut is checked by formaldehyde, one pint in twenty gallons of water. This solution is placed in a barrel and sacks of barley seed are soaked in it for ten minutes, then emptied and spread on a threshing floor to dry before sowing. Uses of Barley. In our country barley is used mainly for feed for domestic animals and for malt- ing. A small amount is eaten by man in the form of pearl barley. In some places in the West it is grown as hay and grain for horses. It makes good feed for poultry and hogs and feeders are using it more and more for this purpose. When used for malt the malt-sprouts and brewers grain which are left are used to feed cows and to fatten cattle. Rye. Rye is not a very important crop in Amer- ica. It is used as food for both mankind and stock. Sometimes the hay is used but oftener it is. plowed under to enrich the soil. Rye straw makes good bedding for horses. It grows taller than wheat, 144 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE sometimes on very rich soil it reaches a height of seven feet. An Old Crop. Rye is a very old grain although it is younger than wheat or barley. It has al- ways been used in making bread by northern peoples but has been driven out of the warmer coun- tries by barley and wheat. In Eussia it is still the principal grain. Eye will grow on land that is too light and thin for wheat and barley and it has been crowded out of regions with rich soil. It needs well drained fields, how- ever, and in severe weather needs to be protected by a snow covering. Eye is also a fine nurse crop to seed for grass. Clover will start better when sown with rye than with wheat. Rye as Pasture. Grazing cows on rye in the fall will force a large increase in milk. If the stock is kept off when the ground is wet and the rye is not grazed too closely the crop will not be injured. Eye will furnish green food earlier in the spring than any other forage crop, much earlier than grass. Fig. 77. Rye and tim- othy attacked by ergot. OATS, BARLEY, AND RYE 145 Rye Enemies. Rye suffers from two kinds of rusts. A remedy for this is to burn the stubble or rotate crops. Rye is sometimes also attacked by smut, in which case it is treated the same as oats. Another disease is ergot, which is a fungus growth that attacks the rye grains causing them to become very large. (Fig. 77.) Ergot is a poison, causing much trouble when eaten in bread by man or when fed to stock. The remedy lies in not using seed that has ergot in it and in not sowing rye for two or three years on the infested fields. Uses of Rye. A good yield of rye is a ton of straw per acre which produces from sixteen to twenty bushels of grain. ' The straw is worth in the East nearly as much as the grain. Rye flour makes a light bread. Rye grain is used to make alcoholic liquors but this use will grow smaller as people do away with drinks that contain alcohol. questions; (1) In what kind of soil do oats thrive best ? (2) Com- pare oat soil and climate with that of corn. (3) How should oat seed be prepared for sowing? (4) How shall one save moisture for the oat crop? (5) Discuss the barley crop. (6) How is barley used? (7) What can you say of rye as an American crop? (8) For what is it used? (9) To what extent are oats, barley, and rye grown in your locality? (10) How do you account for this? CHAPTER XVII. THE HAY CROP Timothy. One of the chief hay crops of America is timothy. It is grown chiefly in the northern part of our country east of the Eockies. Timothy is pop- ular with farmers, because the seed is cheap and because it will produce a good hay crop the first year after it is planted (Fig. 78). It is easy to kill it by plowing. Timothy fits well into a system of rotation with other crops. It needs a good soil and plenty of rainfall. It is not only an excellent hay crop, but it is used in nearly all lands intended for pastures. After a few years other pasture grasses take its place. The Clovers. Another hay crop is red clover. This plant, like so many others, came to us from Europe. It has been grown for many hundred years. Farmers have known for a long time that clover seemed to make the land richer, but they did not understand why this was so. We now know that .clovers and their kin, such as alfalfa, cowpeas, and soy beans, enrich the soil through the work of the bacteria on their roots. We have learned that the bacteria take nitrogen from the air and store it in little swellings on the roots of th'ese plants. When the sod is plowed for other crops, the nitrogen helps to produce much better yields (Fig. 53). These 146 THE HAY CROP 147 clover-like plants are called legumes. They are valu- able because of the hay and pasture they yield and because they help us to build up the land on which ihey grow, with plant food. Most crops leave the land poorer, but les'iinios leave it richer, at least in nitrogen. Kind of Soil for Clover. Red clover requires a good soil. Many farms are too poor to grow it. The .J fm^ 4t . J> d j ft 4 ? ^ mi :■- .>-; ::^:'>- 1-u.w- . '. .11 ^ Ml- 'J ^^r 4. . V Fig. Tinioihij iidii. land should be well drained, because the roots will reacli down five or six feet if the land is not swampy. Sometimes a sprinkling of lime to sweeten the soil will help a clover crop to thrive. This is true of some sections of eastern Ohio, southern Indiana, and Illinois. Ready to Cut. Clover is usually sown in the spring on the winter wheat crop. It lives about two years. G'lover grows two crops a year. The second 148 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE crop is often cut for seed. In order to obtain the best hay, clover should be harvested just after it has Fig. 79. A hand dump rake. come to full bloom. Hay cut later is not so good. Careful Handling. In harvesting the clover crop, it should reach the barn or stack with the least handling and exposure.' If it is allowed to become too dry in handling, the leaves will crumble and fall off, and they are the best part of the hay. Curing Clover Hay. Clover hay should be well cured in the sun, or it will heat and spoil in the stack or mow. Some farmers cut it in the afternoon, and after the dew is off the next morning it is tedded, raked, and put in the cock before night (Figs. 79, 80, 81, and 82). Uses of Clover. Eed clover is used for hay and for pasture. It is often used as a green-manure crop to be plowed under if the ground is poor in humus. Even where it is cut for hay, the stubble knd roots THE HAY CROP 149 turned with the plow show gains in the crops that follow, because of the extra amount of nitrogen left behind. Clover makes an ideal hay for cattle, and where it is raised, it should make up a half or more of the roughage of milch cows. Sheep and young stock make excellent growth on clover hay or the clover pasture. Getting a Stand. Where the soil has been worn out by many crops being taken off and no plant food or humus put back, red clover will not often grow. In order to bring such land up, a heavy coat of barn- yard manure will help to give clover a start. Another way to get a set of red clover on poor land is to Fig. 80, A self -dump hay rake. spread straw over the wheat or rye ground that has been seeded to clover. This is done in early spring, before the clover seed has begun to sprout. 160 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Alsike Clover. Still another way to get one's poor fields seeded to red clover is to first sow Alsike clover. This will grow on soils that are too wet or too dry or too poor for red clover. Alsike is hardier and less likely to be attacked by disease. Alfalfa. Another clover-like plant that is coming to be even more important than clover is alfalfa Fig. 81. Hay loader. (Fig. 83). It was brought to America in the early days by the Spaniards, but only in recent years has it become a widely grown crop in the United States. Like clover, it is a legume whose roots are homes for bacteria. Thus it both brings the farmer fine hay and pasture, and it enriches his fields at the same time. Alfalfa has for years been a leading crop in the West. It is now being introduced widely in the great Corn Belt. It is a fine feed for milch THE HAY CROP ,151 COWS and for fattening hogs, lambs, and .cattle. The Soil and Crops. Alfalfa has a long tap-root which reaches down deeper than any other farm crop, often being twelve feet long (Pig. 84). Thus, you see, alfalfa needs a well-drained soil. It thrives wonderfully in dry regions. It continues to grow throughout the warm season. In Canada they cut Fig. 82. Horse power is cheaper than human labor. three crops of it in one season, while in Arizona eight cuttings are often harvested. How to Start Alfalfa. Alfalfa is not a successful crop on poor land. If the land is not rich enough, a heavy coat of manure may be necessary. In many ])laces east of the Mississippi River lime is needed to give alfalfa a start. About twenty-five pounds of seed are sown to the acre in the East, but much less is used in the West. It is best to sow alfalfa in the late summer or early fall. It is sometimes seeded 152 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE with grain in the spring. The field should be mellow and fine as a seed bed, for alfalfa is not a strong plant until it gets a good start. Weeds will injure it, so it is well to sow seed that is free from weed seeds. Alfalfa may be grown on the same field for a longer time without change than most crops, but it should be plowed in at intervals of from five to seven years and some other crop sown. Good for Horses. There is no one thing so good as alfalfa for the working horse. It builds up his worn-out muscles and keeps him strong and healthy. He needs much less grain when he can have alfalfa hay. It ought to be free from dust, but it does not Courtesy of Santa Fe R. R. Fig. 83. A field of alfalfa — six crops to the season. gather dust so easily as .clover. It is not safe to feed too much to horses. Alfalfa for Other Stock. Milch cows thrive on alfalfa, and nothing better is grown for calves, THE HAY CEOP 153 sheep, and hogs. Alfalfa and corn fed together make a finely balanced food for stock, because the food element that is lacking in corn is found in alfalfa; and what alfalfa lacks, corn will supply. Not only is alfalfa the best forage food for stock, but it will do more even than clover to build up the soil. Its roots go down very deep, and thus it gets food where no other farm crop can. The Cowpea. The cowpea is another legume and is a cousin to the clover and alfalfa. It has come to be an important hay crop in our Southern states, for it likes warm climates. It will grow on almost any kind of soil that is not too wet. Like clover, the cowpea will make good hay or green feed, and it enriches the soil. The cowpea is an annual plant and resembles the bean. Some varieties are bush-like while others are trailing. As it is difficult to cure without losing the leaves, it is sometimes grown with German millet to help save the leaves and to assist in speedy curing. Courtesy Santa Fe R. R. Fig. 84. Alfalfa plant showing long tap- root. CHAPTER XVIIL SUGARS AND OTHER CROPS Where We Get Our Sweets. Each person in the United States eats, on an average, more than sev- enty pounds of sugar in a year. Sugar is made from the. sugar cane, the sugar beet, and the sap of maple trees. Sugar Cane. Sugar cane may be grown in the Southern states wherever cotton is found. It very much resembles corn in appearance. Cultivated cane never produces seed, so the new crop must be grown from cuttings of the stalk. It takes a ninth part of the old crop to plant the field for a new one. The seed cane is usually stored on the land in the fall and covered with a layer of leaves and a thin layer of earth to protect it from the frost. In the spring it is uncovered or ^^ hooked up'' with long hoes and cut into pieces two feet long. Planting. The land is plowed and thrown into ridges eight feet apart, and the seed stalks are laid end to end in double rows in a trench on top of the ridges. An extra piece of cane is put near each joint so the sprouts will be regular. Cane should send up a sprout at every joint. Covering is done with a hoe or a machine. A machine covers ten acres in a day. The first crop is known as plant ,cane. The next year it will spring up from the same 154 SUGAES AND OTHER CROPS 155 roots, or it may be planted again. A good crop will come from the stubble even the third year. The land is then plowed and sowed to cowpeas. The fourth year a new crop of cane may be raised on the land where the cowpeas have been plowed under. Cane sometimes grows fifteen feet high. Harvesting. Harvesting begins in October. The sugar forms most rapidly then, but the crop must be cut before the frosts injure it. Colored workmen using a long knife go through the fields cutting the stalks very close to the ground, for the lower ends yield the most sugar. The leaves and tops are trimmed off, and the stalks are laid in piles. At the factory the stalks are cut and shredded into small pieces, and the juice is crushed out between heavy rollers. This juice is put into large tanks Avitli milk of lime to be made clear. Then it is made into syrup, and the molasses is separated from the sugar, which is then dried into large crystals and relined into our white sugar. Sugar Beet. It is impossible to tell by taste whether the refined sugar is made from cane or from sugar beets, but the raw beet sugar has a dis- agreeable odor and taste. Beet sugar was not dis- covered by accident. It was made after years of experimenting. More than two hundred years ago a German druggist first found sugar in beets, and sugar being at that time a dollar a pound. Napoleon offered a prize to any one who could make sugar from beets. The art was soon discovered, but it is 156 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE only within a short time that beet sugar has been made in the United States. The soil and climate of the greater part of our country will raise the sugar beet. The labor required to produce beets is much Courtesy of Santa Fe R. R. Fig. 85. A field of sugar leets. more than that required for an equal crop of corn, wheat, or potatoes; but the income is much greater. Preparation and Soil. The land for sugar beets must be a rich, deep soil. Plenty of moisture is needed while the plants are growing, and dry, warm weather when ripening. If sugar beets are to follow a grain crop, the land should be plowed lightly as soon as the grain is harvested. The ground is then dressed with a coat of manure, and later in the season it is plowed deep. The sub soiling plow that loosens the earth to a depth from fourteen to eighteen inches, enables beets to reach down into the SUGAES AND OTHER CROPS 157 soil where they will receive plenty of moisture at all seasons. Before planting, the ground is dragged or harrowed and rolled to pack it firmly. The beets are planted with machines. Horse-power machines plant four rows at a time. Since the sugar beet needs about four or five months' time to grow to the full size, it should be planted two or three weeks before corn. (Fig. 85). Harvesting. In October the farmer takes a few beets to the factory to be tested for the amount and quality of juice. As beets increase in weight rap- idly the last six weeks, it is well to delay harvesting as long as is safe to avoid danger from frost. The beets may be plowed loose eight or ten days before removing from the ground. They are then pulled by hand and the top cut off close to the root to remove the matter that prevents the separating of the sugar from the juice. The beets are then sent to the factory. Europe produces larger crops of sugar beets than any other part of the world. Rice. Kice furnishes the principal food of half the human race. It first came from the East Indies, but is now raised in many parts of the earth. It was probably brought to America when the Caro- linas were settled, and it is now the staple product of South Carolina. There are two kinds of rice, the upland rice and the lowland rice. Lowlgfnd rice was first grown in places that were overflowed by the tides, but irrigation is now used to raise this variety in most of the Southern states. Upland rice does 158 ELEM jNTAEY AGEICULTUKE not need to be flooded, but is cultivated much as oats or wheat. Growing Rice. The ground is prepared for rice and the seed is planted, harvested, and threshed very much the same as wheat. "Where the rice crop Courtesy of the Alabama Tobacco Fig. 86. A heavy crop cf tohacco and drying ham. is flooded with water, the ground is allowed to dry out at harvest time. The upland rice is thought by some planters to be better than the lowland variety, but the yield is not so great. Rice Products and Enemies. From the thresher, the rice is sent to the mill in barrels. A little more than half of it comes out clean rice, a small part is polish, and about a third is bran and waste. The SUGARS AND OTHER CROPS 159 rice polisli and bran are mixed and sold to feed pigs. The rice-stalk borer, the chinch bug, and the ''black weevil'' are all enemies of the rice crop. Tobacco. The United States produces more to- bacco than any other country in the world and sends p "^^r«iUH IP ^,V^RI^H Courtesy of the Alabama Tobacco Company Fig. 87. Drying and curing tobacco in a uell-ventilatcd harn. more than one-third of it to other lands. The vari- ety of tobacco raised depends upon the soil, climate, and the use it is to be put to. (Fig. 86.) Wet soils of .clay produce large, heavy plants that cure to a dark brown or red. Light, sandy soils raise a thin leaf curing to a bright red, mahogany, or yellow color. The quality of tobacco is affected by the soil, kind of manure used, and the climate, 160 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE more than almost any other plant. In the northern regions the seed is sown in a hotbed protected by cheesecloth. The young plants are tender and need watering with a weak manure water. They should be transplanted when five or six weeks old. They may be well cultivated until the plant begins to bud; then, if no seed is desired, the plants are topped so the strength may all go to the leaves. Fertilizer. Barnyard manure produces a rank growth of tobacco, but it is poor in quality. Potash is the most important plant food for tobacco. Nitro- gen is supplied in cotton-seed meal. Curing. When the leaves begin to turn yellow, the stalks are cut close to the ground. They should be wilted by cutting them when the sun shines the hottest. The plants are then hung up in the drying house without being crowded together. (Fig. 87.) After drying, the leaves are removed and tied up in bundles called hands. The tobacco leaf loses more than three-fourths of its weight in curing. Tobacco is made into cigars, cigarettes, cheroots, and snuff. QUESTIONS (1) Before the discovery of sugar cane, how did people get their sweets? (2) From how many plants do we get sugar now? (3) What do you know about maple sugar? (4) In what way is the raising of sugar beets more trouble than corn? (5) Compare the raising of wheat and rice from planting to harvest. (6) Why should not tobacco plants touch each other in the dry house ? For exercises, problems, experiments, see Appendix. CHAPTER XIX. THE FIELD OR IRISH POTATO The Potato's Early Home. The early home of the potato was in America. White men had never seen it until after the discovery of the continent by Columbus. The Indians of South America, from Chili to Colombia, were raising potatoes for food. How long they had been doing this we do not know. The Spanish explorers carried the potato to Europe^ where it was first grown in Spain and Italy. The Potato in Ireland. Some years later, we are told. Sir Walter Raleigh was cultivating it on his farm in Ireland. He called it **Battata.'' The potato came to be raised as the principal article of food in Ireland; and when, in 1846, there came a total failure of the potato crop, caused by the blight, a terrible famine and great suffering followed. It drove thousands of Ireland's best thinkers and workers to America. A Widely-grown Crop. Potatoes are a more im- portant crop in Europe than in America, and it is a staple product in many lands besides our own. Next to rice, it is probably the most widely-grown crop in the world. Not a Root, But a Tuber. The part of the potato that we eat is an underground stem which is called a tuber. It is not a root, like the sweet potato or 161 162 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE radish, for there are no rootlets growing upon the white potato. All the roots are found extending out from the stems. 1. Early Ohio. 2. Early Rose. Triumph. 6. Peerless. Courtesy of Agricultural Experiment Station, Wisconsin Fig. 88. Standard varieties of potatoes. Early varieties, 1, 2, and 3. Late varieties, 4, 5, and 6. The Kinds of Seed. The potato can be raised both from the seeds which grow in the seed ball at the THE FIELD OR IRISH POTATO 163 end of the stalk and from the tubers. The farmer always plants tubers, because they produce other tubers just like themselves. The potatoes grown from the seed do not always come true to the variety. The Potato Eye. Each eye of the potato will grow a new plant if a piece of potato is left on it large enough to feed the young plant until it can put out strong roots. When potatoes are allowed to sprout in the cellar they use up some of their plant food so they shrivel. These potatoes should not be used for planting. Cutting the Seed. Irish jiotatoes are usually cut into two or more pieces for planting. Some careful farmers cut two eyes to each piece; others claim it pays to use more seed and take a half potato for each hill. The seed is best cut a short time before it is put into the ground. One experiment station found an increase of fifty-four bushels per acre by placing the potatoes in a well-lighted room with a comfortable temperature for several weeks before planting. How to Choose Seed Potatoes. Our plants grow from the bud in the eye of the pjotato, and so we should know just what kind of a plant the seed l)otato grew on. We must see to it that we choose seed taken from vines that are good producers. Some vines have twice as many potatoes as others. Therefore, we select our seed potatoes, as we do corn, not from the bin, but from the potato field, as 164 ELEMENT AEY AGRICULTUEE they are dug. It matters not if the seed potato be large or small if it came from a hill bearing a large Courtesy of U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Fig. 89. Colorado potato beetle at work on the plant: a, beetle; b, egg masses; c, half-grown larvae; d, mature larvae. yield of fine potatoes. By careful selection, year after year, a farmer can greatly improve his variety THE FIELD OR IRISH POTATO 165 and produce larger crops on the same space of ground (Fig. 88). Climate and Soil. For the best crop one needs a deep, fertile soil with plenty of moisture, but not too wet. A cool .climate is most suitable. The seed-eyes are planted from two to five inches deep, and the most successful growers do not hill up the plants until late in the season. Moisture is held better if the ground is kept level. Cultivating the Crop. A few days after planting a harrow or weeder is run over the field to destroy all weeds as soon as they are started. This weeder is used once a week until the plants are six or eight inches high. Then the fields are cultivated between the rows about every ten days. Insect Enemies. One of the first enemies the plant meets after it appears through the surface is the flea beetle that gnaws small holes in the leaves. They may be checked by spraying with the Bor- deaux mixture or with Paris green. This remedy will also stop the ravages of the potato beetle, or Colorado bug (Fig. 89). Potatoes are commonly sprayed about five times, beginning when the plants are about six inches high and repeating the opera- tion every ten days. The Potato Scab. Another, enemy of the potato is the scab, which is a very tiny plant growing on the surface of the tuber. Scabby potatoes do not bring good prices. If seed potatoes are given a bath in a solution of formalin for about two hours 166 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE before they are planted, the formalin will kill the scab growth without injuring the potatoes. One- half pint of formalin to fifteen gallons of water makes a proper solution, which will do for several bushels of potatoes, as it can be used over and over The Blight. Another disease for the potato farmer to guard against is the blight. This is a tiny plant '^^ ¥J^A ...„;. ^^^^H^j| / 1 1 Wtjk 1 •SW !>• -'•'=■■ ■ --' ■■■^-i- (i. m : !^^V ""^fS^S ^0& ^^Mm ^E--- '7t^^ -irJ v'J^ ^^' jHH^^i M... u Courtesy of Agricultural Experiment Station, Wisconsin Fig. 90. A -field of potatoes yielding 35.0 bushels per acre. or fungus growth which attacks the plant above ground. The blight sometimes destroys a crop com- pletely. Spraying is the remedy for this enemy, also. Harvesting. Early varieties of the potato are dug as soon as they are big enough for market. Late potatoes are left in the ground until the vines are THE FIELD OR IRISH POTATO 167 dead. They should be gathered when the ground is dry and placed in a dark, cool place. Potatoes stored in the cellar should always be covered to keep the light from burning them. In some regions farmers raise from three hupdred to five hundred bushels per acre (Fig. 90). The Sweet Potato. This potato is not related to the white potato. It is not a tuber but an enlarged root. Instead of eyes it has many tiny rootlets on it. The sweet potato was found in the warm regions of America. It thrives in our Southern states, but is grown in truck patches in our Central states. A light, sandy loam yields the best selling sweet potato. QUESTIONS (1) How did white potatoes get the name "Irish*'? (2) What is the difference between a root and a tuber? (3) Why do potatoes that have sprouted in the cellar make poor seed? (4) Why not choose seed potatoes from the bin? (5) Many growers do not hill up the rows until late. Why? (6) Why cannot a farmer af- ford the necessary potato machinery unless he raises good-sized potato crops? (7) Make questions of your own for class use. For exercises, problems and experiments, refer to the Appendix. CHAPTER XX WEEDS Weeds Good Fighters. Weeds are plants that grow where they are not wanted. Their seeds, allowed to grow in the crops, take the lion's share of plant food, moisture, and light. Thus weeds rob and choke out the farmer's crop. Annuals. In order to fight weeds, the farmer must know how they grow and how they send forth their weed children. There are three classes of weeds. Many come up from seeds, blossom, ripen their seeds, and die in one year. Some of these annuals are wild mustard, ragweed and purslane. Biennial Weeds. These plants live two years. The first year they come up from the seed, grow, and store up food in their roots, but bear no seed. When winter comes all the plant above ground dies. The next year it sends up branches again, produces seed, and dies, root and all. Some of the trouble- some biennials are dandelion, barn grass, wild parsnip, bull thistle, and burdock. (Fig. 92.) Perennials. Plants of this class live from year to year. They grow sometimes from seeds but also from underground stems or from runners above ground. Among them are the Canada thistle (Fig. 91), quack grass, cow thistle, yellow dock, milk- weed, morning glory, and wild onion. 168 WEEDS 169 Fighting the Weeds. If a weed is an annual, then the problem is to prevent the seed from ripening or spreading. The seeds of some of these weeds will grow after several years, so if the farmer allows them to become abun- dant in his fields some of the seeds will grow each year and each year he must fight them. It is a good plan to harrow well just before planting a crop. This kills the sprouting weeds and gives corn or other crops a chance to get ahead. Weeds are easiest to kill when they are just starting to grow. Wlien weeds get a start in a pasture field a flock of sheep will soon kill them by eating off the leaves. Sheep w^ll eat most all kinds of weeds. When weeds get a start in an alfalfa field they may be checked by the use of the spring-tooth harrow or Fig. 91. Canada thistle. 170 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE Fig. 1)2. Burdock tlie disc. But when hay fields get too full of weeds the best way to fight them is to ro- tate the crop, and plant corn, potatoes. rape cab bages or beets. As these crops require care- ful cultivation one can kill the weeds and at ^the same time help along a pay- ing crop. Many weeds mature on corn or potato land or in stubble fields in the fall after the crop has been taken off. This may be prevented by following with a crop of winter oats, rye, or crimson clover. Biennials such as burdock, wild carrot, and bull thistle store up food in their roots the first year. These are much harder to kill, but may be destroyed by cutting the roots off below the crown. This is WEEDS 171 done by hand with a grub hoe. Biennials may be killed by planting a crop that has to be hoed. Perennials, like the Canada thistle and morning glory, may be killed by pulling them up by the roots or by keeping all leaves cut off, so they can- not breathe. They may also be destroyed by plow- ing in the fall so as to expose their roots, or by sow^ing a crop which will cover the ground very thickly and smother out the weeds. Weeds for Drugs. Many of the troublesome weeds on our farms might be sold for making crude drugs and medicines. Some drug companies in our country are beginning to plant burdock (Fig. 92), hoarhound, jimsonweed and foxglove to be used in making medicines and drugs. In Europe many farmers cure the weeds and sell them to dealers for this purpose. They dry thoroughly the leaves, roots, bark or seed. If this is not done they will mold. Many of the roots have to be washed and carefully dried. Boys on the farm might do this. The United States government has a pamphlet describing the different plants and the method of ])reparing them for market. Write also to the Agricultural Experiment Station of your state for bulletins on weeds. (1) What are weeds? (2) Why are they injurious to crops? (3) What are annuals, biennials, and perennial weeds? (4) Give some good methods of fighting weeds. (5) Tell about weeds for drugs. CHAPTER XXL OECHAEDS Helping One Another. Fruit trees of some kind will thrive in any section of our country, so every farm should have its own fruit. Some farmers make fruit-raising their chief business, while others have only a small orchard for family use. If the raising of fruit is the principal object of the farmer, he should locate where many other farmers are do- ing the same thing, so that they may form companies to help one another in many ways, especially in obtaining good prices for their .crops. Keep Near Market or Railroad. It is well not to go too far from the railroad to raise fruit. When peaches are to be handled, they should not be hauled more than three miles. Strawberries must also be marketed soon after they are picked and with as little cartage as possible. Apples are more firm and will endure more handling, but the expense of a long haul reduces the profits. Hill Lands for Orchards. It is usually better for orchards to be upon land higher than the rest of the farm. The cold air is heavier and settles into the valleys and lowlands, so the hill orchards are not so likely to be caught by late spring frosts. The Best Slope. The north and east slopes of hills are preferred for apple orchards, because they 172 OECHAEDS 173 are slower in warming up in the spring. This keeps the blossoms from coming out too soon and being injured by late frosts. Trees set on southern slopes receive more sunshine, and their fruit is more highly colored. But southern slopes are usually drier than northern slopes, and thus the fruit does not grow so large. The Influence of Water. Land sloping toward a river or a large body of water is good fruit land, because the water keeps the air from too sudden changes. The fruit should be on the slope that re- ceives the wind after it has crossed the water. Air near water is kept from getting suddenly colder and there is less likelihood of frosts. (Fig. 93.) Kinds of Soil for Fruits. For apple, pear, and plum trees a farmer should choose a deep, moist, clay loam. A sandy loam is better for peaches and cherries. Preparation of Fruit Land. The soil should be prepared as carefully for a fruit orchard as for corn. It is plowed deep for planting the trees, so the roots may reach out far and wide for food. The surface should be harrowed to a dust mulch. If the field is wet and swampy, it must be drained. Planting Trees. The trees may be planted either in the spring or fall. If the soil is in good shape, fall planting is better, because the trees get a start before winter. To make tillage easy the rows should be straight. Apple trees are commonly planted forty feet apart each way, but sometimes they are planted 174 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTUEE closer. . Pears are set about twenty-five feet apart and peaches and plums each twenty feet. There should always be room enough between the trees so spraying may be easily done and the crop harvested con- veniently. Setting Trees. When a tree is taken from the ground the more roots that are saved the better. But with the best of care many of them are broken or bruised, and others must be cut. All the broken roots should be cut back from" the injured end with a sharp knife, so the smoot.h w^ound will heal quickly. Since the tree has lost many of the rootlets that supply it with food, the branches must be cut back, too, else they will need more food and moisture than the roots can supply. People usually leave too much of the top on a tree that is transplanted. The trees should not be ex- posed to the sun and wind before planting, and the planter should not allow the roots to dry out. If the roots are covered with a coat of clay, it is well to dii3 them in water before setting them. Fig. 93. Irrigating an orchard. ORCHARDS 175 Packing About the Roots. The holes dug for the trees should be a little larger than the roots seem to need, so that they ,can be placed straight. Since the roots feed the tree, it is very important to pack the soil well about them^ so they can get plenty of liquid food from it. The upper roots should be raised until the soil is packed firmly under them. Roots should never be crowded together, but spread out naturally to grow as they will. In the bottom of the hole the soil must be packed very tight, but the top four inches should be loose for a dust mulch. A common mistake is to pack the soil tightly on top and leave it loose underneath. This brings the mois- ture to the surface and causes the young trees to die of thirst. Tilling the Orchard. xiiiiiig tiic vri uxxa, «. ^^^ ^^^ ^ ^^^^ between rows. The old idea that or- chards would take care of themselves after planting is a thing of the past. Now the successful fruit grow- ers till their orchards as regularly as they do their crops. Trees make nearly all their growth early in 176 ELEMENTAEY AGKICULTUEE the year, before the hot months of midsummer, so it is during the spring months that they need plenty of food and moisture. Then is the time to cultivate the orchards. More than nine-tenths of the fruit is water, and we know that tillage is very helpful in saving moisture. The drier the season, the more the harrow and cultivator are needed. After. July, when the growing period is over, a crop may be sown on the orchard to be plowed under later as green manure (Fig. 94). Injury to Trees. In tilling orchards, care must be taken not to injure the trees. The grass and weeds that grow close to the trunk of the tree do very little harm, and they had better be let alone, rather than run the risk of injuring the tender bark of the young tree. Pruning. If young trees are well pruned when they are set out, they will need very little more trimming until they begin to bear. Shoots that .cross each other and interfere with other branches should be removed. When branches are likely to become too crowded, the knife should be used. Many fruit growers change the shape of their trees to their fancy by pruning. They cut the tops back so the trees will spread out instead of growing tall, for it is difficult to spray a tall tree, and the fruit is harder to gather. Spraying Fruit Trees. All fruit trees have ene- mies which the farmer must fight. More than twenty-five years ago a man who was employed by OECHAEDS 177 the state of Illinois to study plants, discovered that Paris green would kill the potato beetle. He said that he believed the same poison would stop the cankerworm from injuring the apple crops. For a good many years farmers doubted and shook their heads; but here and there a man began to spray with Paris Green to protect the crops, and they found it worked well. Fewer apples were found wormy in orchards that had been sprayed. (Figs. 38 and 39.) This was only the beginning of an in- telligent fight to protect crops and trees from in- sects. Many discoveries have been made since, and now the best farmers everywhere are spraying with different mixtures to save their trees and fruits, their gardens and other crops. In the West, where the finest of fruit is raised, state laws have been passed, commanding every orchardist to spray his trees whether he finds them troubled with insects or not. This is to make sure he will not grow mil- lions of insects to attack the orchards and crop of some neighboring fruit grower who is careful in spraying. Bordeaux Mixture. Besides the insects which in- jure our trees, there are tiny robber plants, or fungi, like mildew and the brownrot, that attack peaches and other stone fruits, sometimes even apples and pears. In France, where many grapes are raised to make wine, the grape farmers near Bordeaux found that their vines were being injured by mildew. So they set very earnestly to work to find a check for 178 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE this enemy. After much experimenting, they dis- covered a poison spray now called the Bordeaux mixture. It is used all over the world to-day to kill the fungi that are injuring gardens and orchards. Spraying Machines. A farmer who has not more than five acres in his orchard can use a spraying machine worked by hand. There are many kinds of good spraying outfits. (Fig, 95.) It is chiefly im- portant to be sure that the liquid is well stirred by some means, so that the poisons will not settle to the bottom of the barrel instead of reaching the tree. The best fruit growers spray their trees regu- larly. (Fig. 96.) Peaches and prunes are usually not sprayed unless they are attacked by the scale. In many places apples are sprayed three times — once just before the blossoms open, again just before the blossoms fall, and a third time about ten or twelve days later. The mixture used is three or four pounds of copper sulphate, five pounds of lime, and a half pound of Paris green in fifty gallons of water. Thinning Fruit. Some fruit growers are now urging the thinning of the fruit crop. A part of the fruit on heavily-loaded trees is taken off before it is half grown, so that which is left may grow to a larger size. Though it costs a good deal to thin, the growers argue that it costs no more to pick the fruit when small than when it is full grown; and the fruit that is left to ripen is so much larger and brings so much better prices that it is well worth ORCHARDS 179 while. In Western regions the trees bear such heavy- loads that the branches break unless some of the fruit is removed. When the crop is light there is no need of thinning. Apples usually grow in clus- ters from three to a half dozen in a bunch. If one rj; — r h %. ^ to- i ^■H hI HHhV ^- vfi ft Ij^B Bi^i-- ^1 ^H^ IBB I^Hw J H In ^ I^^K^^K^^^^^r^ ^H ■ 1 WM iiii| 1 Fig. 95. A good spraying out fit for the orchard. is growing fancy fruit he should remove all but the best apple of each cluster. Pears grow like apples and may be thinned in the same way. In thinning stone fruits, the work may be done by pulling the fruit off; but with apples and pears it 180 ELEMENTAEY-AGEICULTURE is safest to clip them with sharp-pointed shears, be- cause pulling is apt to break the branch. A fruit tree that has been properly pruned and the crop thinned, will not need props to keep it from break- ing down; and it is more likely to bear a good crop every year. Harvesting Fruit. A farmer who grows fruit for market must pick it carefully to prevent bruising. In order to make the fruit attractive to the buyer, the grower grades his apples, that is, he sorts out those of the same * size and packs them together. Boxes are being used for packing, though many still prefer barrels for apples. Neat and .careful packing helps to secure good prices for the fruit crop. Peaches. Though many peaches are raised in California, the greater part of them come from the Eastern states. A mildly temperate climate favors this fruit. They must be packed quickly and closely and sent by fast freight when shipped. Packers get two cents a basket, and an expert packer can fill a hundred baskets in a day. Apples. Of all the many fruits grown in our country, the apple is the most important. More than forty million barrels are used every year, or about a half barrel for every man, woman, and child in the United States. There are fewer difficulties to meet in raising apples than any other fruit. The tree is hardy and is not easily injured. There are many varieties of apples that keep well through ORCHARDS 181 the winter. All kinds are firm and can be handled and marketed with less care and trouble than other fruits. Apples may be put to many uses. They are eaten raw or they may be cooked in a variety of ways. Some are dried or made into jelly, and in this form they may be kept for a long time. Seedless Apples. Since we have varieties of seed- less oranges, men have been trying to develop an d jt K^ ^^ M J i^ '.1 ■ ^?^_ Mm>i^U>:' t^^^B T '^M ^'^>^, 4«^*W^^ §m ^ m K BHI Fig. 96. The successful orchardist always sprays. apple without a core. When this kind takes the place of those we now use it will be a splendid thing for us all, because there are certain insects that live in the core of the apple and there is so much waste in removing it. Some day seedless apples will be a very common thing. CHAPTER XXII THE FARM GARDEN The Boy's Garden. The garden is a chance for the farmer boys and girls to have a little farm of their own. It is impossible for every child to have much space in the .school garden (Fig. 97), but at home he should have a little plot of ground to raise his crops. Here he can plant what he likes and learn many important lessons about how to till the soil and to care for plants. Any boy likes to try experiments for himself and to feel that there is one spot where he is the ^Vboss.'' Whatever is raised in the .child's garden should be his produce to sell or give away as he pleases. A Good Story. The story is told of a certain farmer's boy who was anxious to leave the farm. He was tired of the salt meat and potatoes that were served at his father's table three times a day. One summer he went to work for a neighbor. Here they had plenty of delicious sweet corn, tender young beets, sliced, ripe tomatoes, and meaty Lima beans, with a juicy melon from the spring house for dessert. The boy went home, started a garden, and decided to stay on the farm. (Fig. 98.) Gardens Everywhere. It is surprising how many garden crops can be grown in every part of the United States. In the cooler climates, garden truck 182 THE FARM GARDEN 183 grows rapidly because of plenty of moisture. In Dakota the best place for a garden is where some large snowdrift has melted late in the spring. In Texas vegetables grow the year around. Different Fig. 97. A school garden. varieties belong to different sections of the country, so seeds should be selected that have been tested and do well in the region where they are to be planted. Location and Soil. Since the garden belongs to the kitchen, it should be as near it as possible. Almost any soil can be graded, manured, and drained into a good garden, unless it is a very stiff clay that will not admit draining. The best garden 184 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE soil is a sandy loam that will dry out quickly after rains, so that it may be cultivated often. Fertilizing. Plowing in the spring must be done as soon as the ground will permit, but it is better to plow the garden in the fall so that freezing will crumble the ground into fine particles. Garden plants are grown close together in a small space, and we \\^ant them to grow quickly, so they need a great deal of plant food. A thick dressing of stable manure, from five to ten loads to an acre, should be put on before the second plowing. If this garden manure is hauled in the fall and made into a long, narrow heap mixed with sods and forest leaves, it will be well rotted and fine by spring; and it will easily mix through the soil, giving every inch of ground its portion. Leaves from the lawn should always be piled on the garden to decay. Well-rotted manure supplies all the nitrogen a garden requires, but to give vegetables a good flavor, potash is needed. Wood ashes will furnish this. After the manure is plowed under, the ashes are sifted on top, and then the surface is harrowed until all is fine as an ash heap. Dried hen manure, pounded fine and sifted, is often harrowed in with the ashes and is especially good for some garden crops. Preparation. The garden should be plowed from six to eight inches deep and harrowed four or five times. All stones must be removed. If these can be buried so as to be beneath the reach of the plow, THE FARM GARDEN 185 Fic. 98. A hoy's garden — Beautiful as well as iwofitahle. they will help to drain certain wet spots in the gar- den. A hand roller and hand rake are used for pul- verizing and crushing lumps of earth left by the harrow. For root crops in clay, a subsoil plow that drags a second share after the first and breaks and loosens the bottom of the furrow to a great depth is often used. Garden Tools. Small hand tools, such as trowels, spuds, and dibbles, are used in transplanting. The hoe and steel garden rake are useful in finishing the top of the ground. The common hoe is too wide for narrow rows and delicate plants, so there are 186 ELEMENTAEY AGEICULTURE many different sorts of blades made. Markers for keeping rows straight and a small hand roller, are great helps. .The wheel hoe is the best cultivator. Every farmer should have blades of different sizes and a set of disks which can be used on the culti- vator. Mulch. We know that a covering of fine, dry earth, or a dust mulch, prevents moisture from es- caping from the ground. ^'A finely raked garden bed is dry on top, but the footprints of the cat re- main moist for days, because the animal packed the soil wherever it stepped, and the water climbed up from one grain of earth to another until it reached the surface." Besides convenience in cultivating, it is wise to plant seeds in rows, instead of in beds which have been raised or hilled up, with high beds and low places between. When we leave the ground rough, or make large holes around our garden plants, we leave more soil exposed to the air, and this helps moisture to escape from the ground. In a very wet season, it is well to hill up crops like potatoes or corn, because we then wish to get rid of part of the moisture. Planting. We are usually told to make the earth firm and well packed over newly-planted seeds, be- cause thi-s brings moisture to the seeds lying near the surface and so hastens the sprouting. As soon as the seeds have sprouted, the ground should be loosened to stop evaporation. Large seeds can be planted deep and the earth well packed over them, THE FABM GARDEN 187 then the top is raked. To water a bed, wet it thor- oughly in the evening. When the morning sun begins to dry it out, loosen the top earth to stop the rise of moisture. Sprinkling the plants every few days is very harmful. Do not sow small, slow- sprouting seeds like celery and onions in land that bakes. A layer of chaff or a board may be laid on the row to h^ld moisture, but it must be gradually lifted as soon as the seeds get a start. Transplanting. In thickly-sown seed beds one must thin or move the plants to the garden as soon as they have their first true leaves. While seeds of lettuce, onions, radishes, peas, and many other things, can be sown in the ground in the early spring, we can' gain from four to six weeks by sow- ing the seeds of others indoors and transplanting them. Many farmers buy their egg plants, tomatoes, cauliflower, and peppers from hothouse gardens; while others grow their own in window boxes, hot- beds, and cold frames. The Window Box. A window box fifteen inches square and six inches deep, or old tin pans nearly filled with soil, are put in a south or east window. Suitable soil or dirt has been obtained in the fall and stored in the cellar or some convenient place. This is mixed with a little coal ashes or fine sand to make it light and loamy. The seed is scattered and covered lightly. The soil is then watered with a fine sprinjcler. Squashes and cucumbers may be planted on pieces of sod turned upside dow^. These 188 ELEMENTAKY AGRICULTURE sods can be set into the ground as soon as the soil can be worked. Hotbeds. Hotbeds are box-like frames sunk in the ground and covered with a sash filled in with glass or clotli. Some of the soil in the frame is taken out, and horse manure is put in its place. When packed solidly in the pit, the manure rots and produces heat. Over the manure is three or four inches of fine garden soil in which the seeds are planted. The manure keeps the soil above it warm. Hot air or hot water pipes are sometimes used under the hotbeds instead of manure. A well-drained spot, sheltered from the cold winds and sloping to the south, is best, because the sunshine is very helpful. It takes care and judgment to handle a hotbed prop- erly, because plants must be aired and watered at proper times. Cold Frames. The cold frame is like the hotbed, but has no manure in it and therefore no bottom heat. A combination hotbed and cold frame may be made of a large drygoods box partly filled with horse manure well trampled down and covered with clean straw. Small, shallow boxes are nearly filled with soil. After the seed has been planted in them, they are placed on the top of the manure and cov- ered with a pane of glass. Thus each box becomes a little hotbed. The glass is removed now and then for air. If the manure becomes too warm, the small boxes are raised on bricks. When the heat of the manure is gone, the hotbed becomes a cold frame. THE FARM GARDEN 189 Preparing for Transplanting. When the ground out of doors gets ready for transplanting, the plants in the window boxes may gradually become used to the colder air by having the window raised a little at a time. The hotbed sash is left open on bright, sunny days until the plants are ready for living in the open air. Transplanting. In transplanting, one must handle plants gently and plant them in freshly-turned soil which is very fine. A hole is made with a dibble or trowel. Put a cupful of water in each hole, and press the earth firmly about the roots. Roots of plants are often broken off in transplanting. Ex- cept with tomatoes and eggplants, part of the leaves may be cut off so the roots will not have too much top to feed until they get a firm hold. If the soil is freshly turned and the transplanting is well done, it is not necessary to water plants. If late in the season the gardener may transplant on a rainy or cloudy day. A handful of grass or hay packed around plants that have just been set out is better than covering with tin cans or flower pots, for they need light and air to breathe. Rotating or Changing Crops. Every vegetable has its own insect enemies and diseases. If the same vegetables are raised Vear after year on the same soil, these insects and diseases will grow worse. The vegetable also uses up some of the particular plant foods that it needs. Some plants are surface feeders, the roots not growing deep. Beets, carrots, 190 ELEMENTAEY AGRICULTURE ' and potatoes grow deeper and are able to feed where the others could not. If vine crops are followed with root crops, the latter will do well by feeding below where the others did. Kadishes, early lettuce, spinach, or peas may be harvested early, and cab- bage, beets, or late sweet corn planted in their places. Planting Between Rows. Planting between rows sometimes works well. In late June, when potato \ ines are well started, and the rows are well cleaned, late sweet corn is often planted between. However, if the season is too dry, this may injure both crops. Sowing turnips broadcast in late sweet corn or among tomatoes and squash, is worth trying. Weeds. Weeds take moisture and plant food out of the soil, and they spoil the shape of many vege- tables by crowding in upon them as they grow. They should not be allowed to reach the second leaf. In hand weeding it is well to collect the weeds in a basket. They sometimes take root again when left on the mellow garden soils. When weeds get a start, it is a good plan to cut off the tops with a sickle before seed forms on them. Mulching be- tween the rows with a layer of straw prevents weeds from growing. Mulching. In a dry season, after plants have been cultivated a few times and are well above ground, hay or straw about four inches deep may be put between the rows. This saves the labor of weeding and keeps the soil moist and cool. It is THE FARM GARDEN 191 especially good for potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, beans, or vine plants, though in a wet season straw holds too much moisture. Peas. Peas are the first product of real food value of the early garden. They are both delicious in flavor and very nourishing. By sowing the seed about a week apart, and using different varieties, one may harvest peas all summer. But the late varieties are in danger of mildew. Peas grow best in a cool climate, in a light, moderately rich soil. The first plantings should be in as soon as the ground can be worked. The soil must be kept mel- low and free from weeds to raise good peas. They need not be staked with brush when the garden is worked with a horse cultivator. Where the brush is used they may be sowed in double rows. There are a great variety of peas, and those that have been tested in your region should be planted. Peas are injured by mildew and the pea weevil. The weevil may be killed in the seed by placing them, before planting, in a closed vessel containing carbon- bisulphide. Beans. String beans should be sown as soon as the ground is free from frost, and every two weeks afterward to keep a supply for the summer. A sandy soil and a southern slope are best for beans, because they are tender and easily frosted. They should be planted less than two inches deep, for the growing top of the little plant is liable to be torn off as it comes through the ground. When 192 ELEMENTARY AGRlCUl^TURE beans are to be used green, they must be picked frequently, for if the pods are allowed to ripen, the plants will stop producing. The bean weevil is a serious enemy and should be treated like the pea weevil. Lima and butter beans are best grown in Southern climates. Poles or stakes for these should be set at least four feet apart each way for their vines to climb on. The worst disease of string beans is the brownish or reddish pitted spots upon the pods; they spoil the appearance of the crop and cut down the yield. Beets. The root crops all need a loose, deep soil. Subsoiling or double plowing is useful in hard earth. Beets are grown in rows three and a half feet apart. They may be sown very early, for the young plants will endure a light frost. They should be thinned when the plants are just big enough for greens. For winter beets, seed may be sown in July or August in the central states. After the first heavy frost, the gardener should take up the roots, cut oif the tops, and store the beets in a root cellar or pit. Leaf -blight is common with the beet in some places. This is prevented by spraying with the Bordeaux mixture. Turnips. Turnips should be planted on a rainy day and the seed covered lightly. About three- quarters of an ounce of seed to a row one hundred feet long. Young plants are thinned from five to seven inches in the row. If the plant grows too slowly, it is stringy and bitter. The fall and winter THE FARM GARDEN 193 crops of turnips are sown in July, after the early garden crops are harvested. The white and yellow varieties are'^ equally good, except that the white turnip keeps best through the winter. Except the maggot, the turnip has no insect enemies. Carrots. Carrots are good for soups, salads, stews, and other savory dishes. Carrot seed sprouts slowly, so it should not be sown deep. The earth must be kept loose. Radish seed sown in the same row will break the earth crust, and show where to expect the row of the carrots to appear. If seed is sown several times, a week or two apart, there will always be some carrots on hand. The plant has no serious insect enemies. Parsnips and Salsify. Parsnips may be treated exactly like the carrot. Parsnips and salsify may be left in the ground all winter without protection, and they make delicious fresh vegetables as soon as the ground thaws. Salsify, or vegetable oyster, should be sown very early in the spring and the plants should not be .crowded. Radishes. Radishes need a mellow, quick soil. They do not thrive in clay. Tojje tender they must grow rapidly and should be eaten while small. Grubs burrow into the roots and make them wormy, if the same piece of ground is used every year. Horse-radish. Horse-radish is grown from small roots that are trimmed from large ones when the crop is stored in the fall. These sets are planted two or three inches deep, top side up, and from 194 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTURE fifteen to eighteen inches apart in fairly wide rows. Swiss Chard. Swiss chard provides ''greens'' all through the season. Only one sowing need be made. The chard is cultivated the same as the beet and thinned to twelve inches. If, when the outer leaves are as large as your hand, they are stripped off, a new supply of tender ones will keep coming. Asparagus. Asparagus is a hardy plant. Its seed may be sown either early in the spring or late in the fall. When the roots are a year old, they should be transplanted in rows five feet apart, away from roots of trees or other plants. As much stable manure as can be plowed under, plowing ten to twelve inches deep, should be put on. Dig a trench nine or ten inches deep, and lay the roots about two feet apart in the bottom, covering them two inches deep with loose soil. The young roots that come up from the seed every summer should be weeded out. If the seed balls are ,cut off before they turn red, the plants can be kept from self -sowing. When the stalks begin coming up in the spring, the ground may be mulched with manure. This will save hoeing and also feed the roots. Sweet Corn. If good seed is planted, it will pro- duce a tender, sugary ear of sweet corn. Corn varie- ties mix so easily that only the most careful selection of kernels can improve a strain of corn. If the first lot is planted early in April, it will ripen the latter part of June in the latitude of New York. The corn should be planted thickly in drills with six or seven THE FARM GARDEN 105 kernels in a hill. If some should fail to sprout, there will be plenty left. If all seeds grow, it is easy to thin them. Be sure that there are not lumps or stones over the corn. The plant cannot fight its way out like beans and pumpkins. After the corn Fig. 99. A well-cultivated cahbage lot, is up, a handful of wood ashes on each hill will * ' make it jump. ' ' Break the crust after rains, keep the weeds and suckers down, and cultivate between tlie rows. For a continuous crop, plant every ten or twelve days until the latter part of July. Cabbage. Cabbages need a moist, deep, well- rl mined soil. They thrive better in a spot where 196 ELEMENTAKY AGRICULTUKE cabbage, turnips, or mustard have not been grown for three years. Select good seed, and sow in a hot bed or window box. When the plants are in the fourth leaf, thin them to secure stocky plants, and transplant only the best roots. When transplanting, remove the upper part of the leaves, set the plants firmly, and stir the surface soil. To stop the heads from bursting as they form, one may loosen the roots by slightly lifting and twisting the plant. Whitish butterflies lay their eggs on cabbages. These hatch green worms that eat the leaves. Kill the worms and spray with Paris green and water, or sprinkle with salt, lime, wood ashes, or pepper. The cabbage maggot works at the stem or root and causes decay. A piece of tarred paper put around the stem on the ground drives away the moth that lays the eggs. (Fig. 99.) Lettuce. Lettuce is the most widely-grown salad vegetable. It is now ready for the table every month in the year. Winter and early spring crops are grown in cold frames. Seed for an early sprin^l3rop may be sowed in a cold frame in March. Sowings in the garden ,can be made from April to October. The cabbage varieties, or head lettuce, are blanched by tying the tops together. Cucumbers, Melons, and Squashes. The seeds of cucumbers, melons, and squashes should be planted in shallow hills, three or four in a hill. They are all tender to frost. If each hill is covered with a box frame, it can be raised ou warm days and taken THE FARM GARDEN 197 away when frost is past. The cucumber beetle and the ** stink bug** are the chief enemies of these plants. Ashes, lime, and tobacco dust are used to drive them away. Muskmelons grow in warm, sandy land. Soil and location affect them greatly. Onions. Onions are grown from seed or sets in the open ground or in hotbeds. If sown outside, the seed should be put in as early as possible in shallow rows three feet apart and covered with a half-inch of fine, moist earth. They must be carefully weeded. Tomatoes. Tomatoes grew first in the South, so they need long seasons to ripen. Now, by selecting the right variety, the tomato can be grown in nearly every section of the United States. The plant may be started under glass or in window boxes about March first. They should be put in a cold frame where light and air are admitted on sunny days, until the ground in the garden is warm. Toma- to plants are set from two to four feet apart. They need moderate pruning and some simple means of holding the plant off the ground when the fruit is ripe. The varieties differ in color from pink and creamy and briglit yellows to bright red. Grapes. In order that grapes may ripen, they need a warm soil and a sunny exposure. A trellis is used for support. Ten feet between the vines is best for most kinds. The Concord grape is raised in New York and Ohio ; the small Delaware, in Dela- ware, Maryland, and New Jersey; but if we wish to see great clusters of white grapes, we must go to 198 ELEMENTARY AGRICULTUEE California. The largest grapevine of the world may there be seen. It covers half an acre. Eaisins are dried grapes. There is a raisin vine- yard in southern California which covers five thou- sand acres. Vines are pruned every year and the grapes gathered from the new shoots. Five-sixths of the grapes in California are made into wine or grape juice, or they are pressed as raisins. The dried currants that we use are really dried grapes. Grapevines are the prey of downy mildew, when it is hot and dry — also of black rot. Vines that have been weakened by bearing too heavy crops are often attacked. Prunings and fallen leaves and fruit should be destroyed, and the vines sprayed with the Bordeaux mixture. The first spraying should be done in the spring before the growth starts, and this should be followed every three weeks through the summer. To protect grapes for home use from black rot, frost, and birds, the clusters may be cov- ered with paper bags which are allowed to stay on until the fruit is ripe. The warmth induced by the bags makes the fruit ripen earlier and it is larger. Raspberries and Blackberries. The raspberries and blackberries do well in cool soil kept moist by mulching, after the ground has been thoroughly pre- pared. The shoots of both raspberries and black- berries that are sent up one season, bear fruit and die the next season. Pinch back the new shoots when they are two or three feet tall. This hastens the throwing out of side shoots upon which fruit THE FARM GARDEN 199 will be borne the following year. As soon as freez- ing weather is over in the spring, these side shoots should be cut back from nine to twelve inches. When the crop is gathered the old canes or shoots should be removed, and new ones cut away, leaving four Fui. loo. Nothiiuf fit) fiue (is Jtonie-grown si r