I sold my lawn mower and put a short rope around my cow’s horns. To
this I fastened the chain of an old chain-pump. The pump had served its
day, and was now laid aside. This old pump-chain was about sixteen feet
long, and through the end of it I stuck an old iron garden stake into
the ground, and staked my cow out on the lawn. In the chain I put rings
one yard apart, and by running my garden stake through a ring nearer or
farther from the rope around the cow’s horns, I could give her a larger
or smaller circle to graze on, and so let her eat very near to evergreens
and other shrubbery without danger of having them injured. She pulled up
the stake several times at first, but the remedy for this came of itself.
In my desire to make her very secure, I had tied the rope around her
horns too tightly and made her head sore. She ceased pulling, and though
her head soon got well, she has never since pulled up the stake; so that
my mistake in fastening the rope, though it caused me self-reproaches at
the time, really proved a blessing in the end, for had she formed the
habit of pulling the stake up, I should have been forced to discontinue
staking her out for fear of her destroying the shrubbery. My cow seems
to have a spite at shrubbery proportioned to its beauty, and this spite
seems intensified against such plants as she cannot eat. A young cedar,
for instance, she will never pass without trying to demolish it with her
horns. By means of the rings in my chain, I could stake her so that she
could eat up to the edge of an evergreen without being able to touch it
with her horns, and I found the horns the only part that the shrubbery
had to fear, for she never yet has tried to destroy anything with her
heels.
My lawn, under the care of this new one-cow lawn-mower, became the
admiration and envy of the whole neighborhood. The chickens followed her
and scattered her droppings, so that the lawn was always clean. I found
it a great improvement on the old hand lawn-mower, and much less labor,
for the staking out was far less trouble than running the mower. Besides,
I sold the old machine for almost half the price I paid for the cow. But,
strange as it seems to me now, I at first felt a little ashamed of my new
mower, for I got in the practice of staking the cow on the front lawn at
night, and moving her to the back lawn early in the morning.
She did her work so silently in the darkness that my neighbors wondered
much that in so well-kept a lawn they never heard the click of the
lawn-mower.
We have no storms in the summer in this latitude from which a cow needs
any more protection than a tree affords. When it rained I milked her
under the shelter of a beech.
In June, I rented a one-quarter acre lot for two dollars, and for one
dollar hired it plowed and laid off in furrows a little over two feet
apart. In these furrows I dropped corn, the grains two to four inches
apart. I hired it plowed once with a shovel plow. This cost seventy-five
cents. At the first frost, I had it cut and put up in small shocks. A
woman that does washing for me, and occasionally chores about the house,
did this at forty cents a day. She was several days at it, but during
the time performed other work about the house. I think she spent about
two solid days on it. This corn-fodder, with few large ears on it, but a
great many nubbins, made my fodder and grain for the cow for the winter.
Later in the fall, when the corn-stalks were thoroughly cured, I had
them placed against poles set on crotches around the place where the
cow was sheltered during the winter. The stalks were leaned against the
poles from both sides, and made a sloping roof both ways, so as to shed
snow and rain. From these poles I gave the cow an armful of this corn
and fodder night and morning, and though the snow did sometimes lodge on
them, and make my mittens cold, I could generally find a spot on one side
or the other that was clear of snow. This work of putting up the fodder
for winter use cost about two dollars.
My cow had been used to “slops” and meal, and did not take kindly to
whole corn at first. I was advised to husk the corn, and get it ground;
but by feeding her a few small or broken, or soft ears from my hand, she
soon became eager for it, and has learned to grind it as well as the
mill, and at less cost of going to and from, to say nothing of the toll.
But even if she was not as good a corn crusher as the mill-stones, there
would be no loss, for my fowls follow her faithfully, and pick up every
broken grain that is dropped; so the miller’s toll that I save keeps me
in chickens and eggs. Now that the cow had come to eat whole corn, I was
told that she would muss over the fodder, hunting for the nubbins, and
waste the stalks; but by sprinkling a little brine on the stalks when
she became dainty, I found I could make her eat them as closely as was
desirable.