Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1874-05-31
PRODUCTION ONLY HALF THE
FARMERS RATTLE.

commence in Middle Tennessee, and the
task of cutting, threshing and cleaning
wheat for market will be the business
in hand with many of our readers.
Our experience is that a little rye,
cheat, cookie, or heads of smut wheat
damage the quality, and lessen the
price at which this staple can be sold,
considerably more than it costs to go
over a wheat field before harvest, and
carefully cut out all these pests and
burn them that their seeds may be de-
stroyed. No good wheat-grower should
have seed of rye, cookie, cheat or
chess, or yellow dock, on his farm.
Farmers should take pride In raising
and selling wheat so pure and plump,
that four and a third to four and half
bushels viii turn out barrel of super
fine -four. AT sixty pounds to the
bushel, four and one-third bushels give
200 pounds of grain; from this take
l96 pounds of superfne -four, and you
have left sixty pounds of bran and
middlings to pay for grinding, and
four pounds to cover wastage. So
far as wheat fails to reach these
figures, it is badly shrunken in berry,
covered with smut, diluted by rye,
cheat, cookie, or some other nuisance.
In some States the seeds of wild onion
and redroot are great pests II wheat
fields. Cheat is an annual grass, very
hardy and prolific, but not hard to
eradicate if one cuts it every year before
it forms seed. Smut is parasite and
clings to a wheat farm just as many
weeds do from sheer neglect. If its
microscopic germs are not planted with
seed wheat it is rarely, if ever, seen on
the heads of any growing or ripening
crop. Washing seed in bluestone water
or strong brine, would not prevent the
black fungus In the bran or cutiele of
the seeds of wheat, unless the germs
or seeds of these fungusses were washed
off, or killed by the mineral solution.
When life is destroyed they fail to grow
the same as a dead bean or cotton
seed.
Next to cleaning wheat in the field
before cutting it, comes the proper use
of a good fan-mill and sleeves to remove
all chaff, white-caps and foreign seeds,
so far as possible. This work is often
sighted in the hurry of threshing
where many men and horses are en-
ployed. The remedy is to clean the
grain carefully after all other labor is
finished that the crop may go to mar
ket in the best possible condition.
Wheat buyers should be careful to pay
an extra price for an extra article to
encourage improvement in this direc-
ton. There is great deal of excellent
wheat soil in Tennessee and Alabama;
but our farmers do not comprehend the
profits and management witnessed In
California, where it is thought that
forty million bushels of fine wheat will
be harvested this summer. We permit
weeds and grass to take too much of
the strength of our land in wheat.
Clean culture, clean crops, put in
market In first rate order, and at the
right time, will change things for the
better with many who are looking out
for improvements, and perhaps a new
home. There is plenty of clover near
Nashville old enough to cut for hay,
but by a mistake, las it seems to u.s.
we have seen no new cured hay made
from this plant as yet. Blue grass hay
of this years growth is on the market.
Both oat grass and orchard grass mix
well with Clover as hay crop. Both
are earlier than timothy, and more
hardy plants. Potatoes are suffering
for rain; and we have seen none mulch
ed and otherwise treated as we think |
they ought to be to retain moisture.
One of the most common mistakes is |
to allow hay, oats and wheat to stand |
too long out in the sun, dew, and some
times rain, in fields after they are cut |
or sufficiently dry to go into the barn
or under good roof. We are conf
dent, from long and wide observation,
that million dollars a year will not
compensate Tennessee farmers for
their losses from this cause. Good
barns are not appreciated here
as they are in Pennsylvania, New York
and Ohio. Stacks of grain, hay and
fodder properly belong to the medieval
ages, not to the advanced husbandry of
the eighth decade of the nineteenth
century.
Crops are the farmers money, and
his first duty as wise business man is
to learn to take timely and frst-rate
care of them. Cut early and soon
housed, oat-straw makes fair roughness
for stock all winter-equal, at any rate,
to half of the timothy and herds grass
hay that comes to the Nashville
market.
Cotton and tobacco are often depre-
,iated in price, and sometimes largely,
by bad handling before they leave the
plantation.
Production is really only half the
battle of the farmers life He should
Know how to sell his staples to thevery
pest advantage; and then spectators
nay combine against him in vain. |