Ä Area: FidoNet - Marijuana Chat ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ Msg#: 1692 Date: 06-09-93 22:26 From: Northcoast OH NORML Read: Yes Replied: No To: All Mark: Subj: Fairbanks Comp. #8 ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ [...continued from previous posting] [From the Sandy-Hill Herald.] CULTURE OF HEMP. Hemp designed for the seed, to produce the best crops should be planted in drills, three feet apart, so as to give an opportunity of running a plough or corn cultivator between the rows. The plants should stand about eight inches apart. It is in ordinary seasons, considered the best time to plant between the 15th of May and the middle of June. The hemp should be kept free from grass or weeds, in the same manner as corn; although it will not require as much hoeing, unless the ground should be very foul. Hemp when sown broadcast for the lint, directly rises above the weeds and so shades and covers the ground as to prevent the growth of any thing else. As to the time of harvesting the hemp planted for the seed no precise rule can be given, it must depend much upon the judgment. The seed comes to maturity very unequally -- so that you will find the seed ripe on the lower branches and the lower part of each branch when the top may be in the blow. it should be cut at that time which will secure the greatest quantity of ripe seed. As a general rule, however, it should not stand so long to ripen the latest, that the earliest will begin to fall -- fir if it be suffered to stand until all or the greatest portion of the seed is ripened, or tuned a dark brown, you will lose more in gathering, than is lost by the light and imperfect seed when cut earlier. It should be carefully cut with a sickle or hemp hook made for the purpose, great care should be taken not to shell the seed in cutting and securing it. It will well pay for the additional labor to give it a light threshing when it is first cut and before it is bound -- for this purpose a canvass of about three or four yards square should be taken into the field and the hemp within a convenient distance, as it is cut, should be carried to it, and lightly beat with a wythe or small pole, so as to dislodge all the loose seed, which would be exposed to shell and waste in handling or moving. it may then be bound in small bundles of 8 or 9 inches in diameter and set up in stooks to dry. At this time it would be advisable to move the hemp, where it was designed to thresh and secure it, as it could then be done with less waste than after it had become dried -- when it has stood in the stook a sufficient time to cure and perfect the unripened seed, it should again be threshed or beat out either on the canvass as before or on a bed upon the ground (as buck wheat is threshed) or it may be threshed on the barn floor, but as it is a very soft seed it is exposed to much injury upon the floor. It will be found very little labor to thresh out the seed, and the greatest care is necessary to prevent it from shelling and waste, in cutting and securing it -- hence the plan of double threshing is thought on the whole to be the most economical. A wythe or small pole is the best instrument to beat out the see, -- The seed should not be put together in large quantities, but requires to be spread and exposed to the air until it is thoroughly dried else it will heat and spoil. Hemp sown broad cast and designed for the lint, if the object be to secure the best crop without regard to the seed, should be cut about the time the seed begins to ripen, most of it is then in the blow: to look through a field of hemp at this time, in the sun shine, the stalk exhibits a transparent appearance; by cutting at this time, the male hemp is preserved in a perfect state, and becomes injured if suffered to stand until the seed is ripened. But as long as seed shall be valuable as it has been heretofore, the crop is considered the most profitable to cut it when about one half of the seed becomes ripened, in this way you will save a considerable portion of the male hemp (which bears no seed.) And the lint of the female hemp, nearly in perfection, and secure from 8 to 10 bushels of seed to the acre. Hemp sown for the lint should be cut with a strong cradle made for the purpose. Some of the hemp growers in Dutches County use an instrument they call a hemp hook, with which they cut it rather closer to the ground, unless the land be very smooth, than they can with the cradle, but with much less expedition. After cradling it should be exposed to one days sun in the swath and then bound in small bundles and put together in stooks of about 10 or 12 bundles well secured at the top with bands, and suffered to remain so long only, as will be sufficient to cure and dry the hemp and perfect the seed, when it should be threshed and secured from exposure to the weather, which soon blackens the coat and injures its value in the market. -!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- WATER ROTTING. -- Extract of a letter from Mr. Naman Goodsell to Mr. Samuel Swartwout, April 1823, taken from the American Farmer. vol. 5. "I am prepared to show that water rotting, in all cases where it can be done, is, most unquestionably, to be preferred. 1st. It is more durable for all the purposes to which it is applied -- a fact perfectly well known to those who manufacture sack and cordage. 2dly, it is more easily bleached; and 3dly, it will yield a greater quantity of fibre from a given quantity of the plant. My own experiments with respect to the superior durability of water prepared flax, were very satisfactory. I placed on the ground a quantity of flax that had been sufficiently water rotted for dressing, by the side of an equal quantity of unrotted flax, and turned them once in three days, until the new flax was sufficiently rotted for dressing, also; and upon examination, I found that which had been previously water rotted, had lost none of its strength, and that it had not altered in any respect, except in its color, which was a little brighter than when laid out; both parcels were now suffered to remain upon the ground, until the dew-rotted became worthless, when the water rotted was found to be still strong and good. "I repeated these experiments with dressed flax, and with the plant, and found the result the same. This, in my mind, fully established the very important fact, that water rotted flax or hemp is infinitely superior to that which is dew-rotted. "I made an attempt next to ascertain the proportionate loss in weight, in each process of rotting, and found them both nearly equal, viz; about twenty-five per cent; but I found, at the same time, that the produce of this equal quantity of plant differed materially in weight. When it came to be dressed, the dew or land rotted averaged from 12 to 16 pounds of fibre only, whilst the water prepared gave from 16 to 25 per cent. The difference in weight, I consider to be quite sufficient to defray the extra expense of water rotting, whilst the value of the article would be enhanced one third more. My strong desire to investigate this subject fully induced me to make other trials, by boiling and steaming, in order to avoid the rotting process altogether, but I did not succeed in any of them sufficiently to warrant their recommendation to the public. On the contrary, I became convinced that neither would answer. -!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!- [FROM THE ST. ALBANS REPERTORY FEB. 26.] We have just had a conversation with an intelligent farmer from Washington county, N. Y. upon the subject of growing Hemp. He says that he sowed upon wet, marshy land,nine acres to hemp; but owing to the extreme wetness of the season, but five acres of it was considered worth preserving. He sold the lint or stalk of the five acres, in the stack, for $160, and saved 75 bushels of seed, for which he has refused $300. He further says, that the labor bestowed upon the land was but a trifle more than would have been required for Indian corn. He intends sowing twenty acres the next season. By the following extract of a letter from an intelligent farmer of Springfield Mass. to a gentleman in Washington County, N. Y. on the subject of the culture, cleaning and price of hemp, it will be seen by this branch of agriculture has already become systematized in that section of the country: "As to the present price of Hemp, I can only say, that the Connecticut Company, who own and carry on one of Hines & Bain's machines for cleaning hemp and flax, at Long-Meadow, pay us at the rate of twelve dollars per ton for the stem from the field, when thoroughly dried. They hire it stem-rotted at about three dollars per ton. As to the labor and cost of growing a crop, it may be reckoned at something like that of a crop of oats or spring wheat. Our lands produce from two to four tons of stem per acre; thus affording us not only a living but liberal profit. The seed saved from the lint will pay all expenses of tilling the land, harvesting and transporting the crop -- say if within ten or fifteen miles of the machine. Seed is now high, but the present price cannot be relied on, as the country will be supplied. -- Hemp seed, however, is worth as much for OIL as flax seed." [Continued on next posting...] cd Help Fight Back - Support Your Local NORML Chapter! Northcoast Ohio NORML Chapter Contact: John Hartman Phone: +[1]-216-521-WEED -!- ! Origin: Amiga University +[1]-216-637-6647 [Cortland, OH] (1:237/533.0)