130. _Harvesting and preserving the Swedes._ When they are ready to take up, the tops must be cut off, if not cut off before, and also the _roots_; but neither tops nor roots should be cut off _very close_. You will have room for ten bushels of the _bulbs_ in the house, or shed. Put the rest into ten-bushel heaps. Make the heap _upon_ the ground in a _round form_, and let it rise up to a point. Lay over it a little litter, straw, or dead grass, about three inches thick, and then earth upon that about six inches thick. Then cut a thin round _green turf_, about eighteen inches over, and put it upon the crown of the heap to prevent the earth from being washed off. Thus these heaps will remain till wanted for use. When given to the cow, it will be best to _wash_ the Swedes and cut each into two or three pieces with a spade or some other tool. You can take in ten bushels at a time. If you find them _sprouting_ in the spring, open the remaining heaps, and expose them to the sun and wind; and cover them again slightly with straw or litter of some sort.[6] 131. _As to the place to keep the cow in_, much will depend upon _situation_ and circumstances. I am always supposing that the cottage is a real _cottage_, and not a house in a town or village street; though, wherever there is the quarter of an acre of ground, the cow _may_ be kept. Let me, however, suppose that which will generally happen; namely, that the cottage stands by the side of a road, or lane, and amongst fields and woods, if not on the side of a common. To pretend to tell a country labourer how to build a shed for a cow, how to stick it up against the end of his house, or to make it an independent erection; or to dwell on the materials, where poles, rods, wattles, rushes, furze, heath, and cooper-chips, are all to be gotten by him for nothing or next to nothing, would be useless; because a man who, thus situated, can be at any loss for a shed for his cow, is not only unfit to keep a cow, but unfit to keep a cat. The warmer the shed is the better it is. The floor should _slope_, but not too much. There are _stones_, of some sort or other, every-where, and about six wheel-barrow-fulls will _pave_ the shed, a thing to be by no means neglected. A broad trough, or box, fixed up at the head of the cow, is the thing to give her food in; and she should be fed three times a day, at least; always at _day-light_ and at _sun-set_. It is not _absolutely necessary_ that a cow ever quit her shed, except just at calving time, or when taken to the bull. In the former case the time is, nine times out of ten, known to within forty-eight hours. Any enclosed field or place will do for her during a day or two; and for such purpose, if there be not room at home, no man will refuse place for her in a fallow field. It will, however, be good, where there is no _common_ to turn her out upon, to have her led by a string, two or three times a week, which may be done by a