Willmar tribune., 1904-08-17
HAY CROP OF NEW YORK.
Value Of the Harvest in the Citv Alone
Is Estimated at Fifty Thou
sand Dollars,

New York city's hay crop, public and
private, which is now being harvested,
must be worth fully a million of dol
lars.
The city alone harvests hay from the
many hundred acres of park land, and
the crop must be worth at least $50, 900,
though the park department receives
no such price for it, says the Sun.
All over the upper part of The Bronx
and In other semi-rural boroughs. es-
peclally the boroughs of Richmond and
Queens. haying occupies a considera-
ble number of the inhabitants in the
last week of June and the first week of
July. The abundant rains of some
weeks ago in effect made the crop, and
hay Is running from one and a half to
three tons to the acre.
{ Haytng gives the suburban regions a
new touch of the country. Even where
there are no actual farming operations
going on there is usually some one
with a mower, often the worse for
wear, ready to cut hay for his neigh
bors.
A good deal of the city hay crop is
cut with old-fashioned instruments.
The cradle, like the horse car, has per-
sisted In New York, although it excites
r1d1cule In the real country. Much of
the local hay crop is cut with scythes,
and even the sickle is occasionally
used.
1t is often hard for the local hay
grower to find skilled haymaker, and
wages are SO high in the suburbs that
haying Is not profitable. Some suburb
antics who own acres of hay finds that
1t barely pays to cut and store the
crop.
For this reason most of the local
hay crop is sold standing at absurdly
low prices. Half dozen charitable or
institutions in The Bronx, with large
grounds upon which hay grows, are
glad to turn it over to friends or neigh
bors at nominal rates.
In some such cases all sorts of per-
sons, men, women and children, are
pressed into service at the harvest, and
there are even cleaners, as in old
Scriptural times, who follow the hay
makers about the fields to gather lit.
tie harvest of their own. Up at Wake
1ald the other day there worked ipaa
single hay field policeman, the wife
Of e. neighboring shopkeeper,- several
hired haymakers and tiny four-year.
old volunteer, chubby. black-eyed lit.
tie girl in an immense straw hat, who
manfnlly turned the hay with full.
grown wooden rake.
Suburban haymaking is sometimes
made the excuse for frolic and picnic
to which. urban friends are invited
Then you may see merry girls in smart
gowns and rough straw hats playing al
harvesting. The picnic ends in a sup
per by moonlight among the haycocks
with a profusion of sights and sounds
and odors that create the illusion o1
the real country.
In some of the remoter parts of The
Bronx the serious hay harvest is that
OF the slat marshes, where men with
scythes and cradles venture far out
upon the tidal plains and gather a rank
crop, which is valued not only as a
food for beasts, but is much used by
the market gardeners of the region for
mulching.
Part of the crop is usually stored all
winter long upon bits of fast land, and
nothing gives the wintry landscape OF
the marshes so warm a suggestion OF
summer as these amber mounds
smooth, soft and deliciously rich in
tone, melting into the general coloring
of the level shorn grass.