Butter and milk are not only luxuries, but in many families they are indispensable necessaries of life. In this article my principal purpose is to show how a cow can be kept with the greatest economy of land and labor. I consider these the essential points in the discussion. Where hay is dear and pasture scarce, a man who lives by the labor of his hands, cannot ordinarily afford to purchase the necessary food for a cow; and if he has only an acre or two of land at his disposal, he finds it more profitable to raise other products. Ordinarily it requires the yield of several acres of land to support a cow. But I propose to show that this can be done on less than one acre, by raising the proper crops, and treating the soil to the best advantage. A cow of ordinary size will consume about eleven thousand pounds of hay, or its equivalent, in a year. The equivalent of this amount of hay is—in potatoes, thirty thousand eight hundred pounds, or five hundred and thirteen bushels, and in Indian corn, seven thousand seven hundred pounds, or one hundred and thirty-seven bushels. These quantities cannot be raised on one acre, and if we examine the tables of equivalents of food, we find that most of the grasses, grains, and roots, are objectionable on account of unproductiveness, want of sufficient nutritive qualities, or of the labor that the cultivation of them requires.
VALUE OF ARTICHOKES.
There is, however, a root, or tuber, an acre of which affords enough nourishment to sustain two cows, with less labor than is employed in raising an acre of potatoes—and that root is the Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus). We can depend upon an average yield of from one thousand to one thousand two hundred bushels of these tubers from an acre of land rich enough to produce fifty bushels of corn. Pound for pound they are equal in nutritive qualities to potatoes. One cow can therefore be subsisted a year on five hundred or six hundred bushels of the tubers, a quantity that can be raised on half an acre of land. But since these roots do not keep over summer, and as the cow will not thrive on them alone, it is necessary to supplement them with dry fodder during winter, and to subsist her on other forage during summer. With the aid of this plant, three-quarters of an acre of land under high cultivation, will nourish a cow during the whole year, and the soil will become rich without any other manure than that derived from the cow. This can be done with little expense, and with no more labor than is involved in ordinary farm culture. It is necessary to begin operations on the farm in most sections of the Middle States, a little earlier than the first of May.
A cow can be subsisted to the best advantage on a small patch of land, by feeding her Jerusalem Artichokes and a little hay or other dry fodder through the winter and part of spring, and soiling her with green rye, clover, and green-corn fodder, the rest of the year. Three-quarters of an acre will, under judicious treatment, yield enough of these products to maintain a cow during the year. If the soil be not in good condition to begin with, that quantity of land may, for a year or two, be insufficient for the purpose, and it will then be necessary to supply the deficiency from other sources; but by proper management the land will, in a few years, be converted into a garden that will afford abundant nourishment for the cow, without pasture or outside aid either in food or manure.
Suppose that a man owns a cow of medium size, or a little larger, that he has three-quarters of an acre of land, that one-third of it, namely, one-quarter of an acre, is in clover, that the remainder is ready for the plow, and that it is early spring-time of the year, he should go to work at once and manure the land liberally, for he will be well repaid for the expense, in the superior productiveness of the soil. All the land, excepting the clover, should be plowed, and one-sixth of the land, that is one-eighth of an acre, should be sowed with oats, with about one-half bushel of seed. One quart of clover seed, and one pint of timothy seed should be sown on the oats. The oats are raised only during the first year, rye being substituted in after years, and the timothy is added for the purpose of increasing the hay-crop in the second year. One-third of the land (one-quarter of an acre) should be planted in Jerusalem Artichokes, early in the season. This root should be planted in hills, three feet apart each way, and cultivated flat, both ways. As the land increases in fertility in future years, the hills may be set a little farther apart. The patch should be stirred two or three times with the cultivator while the plants are young, and afterwards kept clear of weeds with the hoe. The weeds require but little attention after the plant has attained a fair growth. One tuber, or piece of tuber, of about the size of a hen’s egg, is sufficient for a hill, the seed being covered to the depth of two or three inches with earth.
As soon as the season is far enough advanced, one-sixth of the plot (one-eighth of an acre) should be planted in sweet corn. One half of the corn should be set out very early, and the rest about four weeks later, so as to extend its growth, and consequently its availability as green fodder, over a longer period. The furrows should be three feet apart, and the corn planted in drills, [sixteen to twenty kernels to the foot—Ed.] Afterwards the corn should be cultivated two or three times, and kept clear of weeds. When the corn fodder is all disposed of, the corn patch should be plowed, and seeded with about a peck of rye, and a pint of timothy seed, and in the following spring a quart of clover seed should be sown upon the rye. These crops will give the land a complete rotation every six years. The following diagram indicates the proper succession of the crops and shows the plot of land divided into six equal parts, containing one-eighth of an acre each:
Clover occupies two parts, rye one part, and Jerusalem Artichokes two parts every year. Clover follows rye; rye follows corn; corn follows artichokes; and artichokes follow clover. Every year one-half of the clover, namely, the two-year-old clover patch, is plowed, and planted in artichokes. The latter must be planted anew, and not be allowed to grow as a “volunteer crop,” but must be regularly cultivated, and all the plants that come up between the hills destroyed.
The manure derived from the cow during the winter, should be spread in spring on the land intended for corn and artichokes, and plowed down, and that made in summer should be applied to the rye and clover patches in fall. Ashes and a moderate quantity of lime, spread on the clover patch early in spring, will be beneficial, and a peck of gypsum scattered on the young and growing clover, will answer an excellent purpose as a healthy stimulant of its growth.