The Greenville times. [volume] (Greenville, Miss.) 1868-1917, 1904-08-13
HAY CROP OF NEW YORK.
Value of the Harvest in the City Alone
Is Estimated at Fifty Thou
sand Dollars.

Ne% York city's hay crop, pubic 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 semirural boroughs, es-
| pecially the boroughs OF Richmond and
| Queens, haying occupies a considera-
BILE number of the inhabitants in the
| last week of June and the first week OF
HJuly. The abundant rains of some
7 weeks ago in effect made the crop, and
hay is running from one and half 10
three tons to the acre.
Haying 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 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-fashioued instruments.
| The cradle, like the horse car. has per-
sisted in New York, although it eXcites
ridicule 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 a 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
| it 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 al the harvest and
there are even cleaners, as in old
| Scrptural times. who follow the hay
makers about the fields to gather a lit
tie harvest of their own. Up at Wake
| field the other day there worked in a
| single hay field policeman, the wife
! OF neighboring shopkeeper, several
hired haymakers and tiny fouryear-
old volunteer, chubby. black-eyed lit
tie girl in an immense straw hat, who
manfully 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 at
harvesting. The picnic ends in a sup
per by moonlight among the haycocks
with profusion of sights and sounds
and odors that create the illusion of
the real country.
In some of the remoter parts of The
Bronx the serious hay harvest is that
OF the Stat 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.