COUNTRY LIFE
HARVEST and Haysel have coincided in my neighbourhood. The meadow hay was cut late. The oats have ripened early. In saving, or salving, hay more use is made each year of common salt. It not only makes the hay more savoury, it prevents heating and enables farmers to cart earlier. It is also being used to sprinkle on rough patches of grass, which would else be left severely alone by the stock. Immense loads of salt are now used annually on one at any rate of our more scientific farms, partly for use as an alternative to potash in the manuring of root crops ; and private gardeners (who have always used it for asparagus) might extend its use to their beets and turnips and parsnips. As to the harvest, every crop looks peculiarly well ; potatoes and wheat, the two most important, look perhaps best. Something like a levee en masse will be needed to secure these and other crops throughout the rest of the summer. The harvest will probably be the biggest that any of us will see, for the ploughed-up grasses will not stand a fourth white straw crop.
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