💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › drugs › MARYJANE › hemphst8.drg captured on 2020-10-31 at 23:16:23.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
? Area: FidoNet - Marijuana Chat ?????????????????????????????????????????????
Msg#: 1692 Date: 06-09-93 22:26
From: Northcoast OH NORML Read: Yes Replied: No
To: All Mark:
Subj: Fairbanks Comp. #8
??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
[...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)