Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million: Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Mrs. Hale's Receipts for the Million: Containing Four Thousand Five Hundred and Forty-five Receipts, Facts, Directions, etc. in the Useful, Ornamental, and Domestic Arts
John Stuart Mill · en
1028. _To preserve Carrots, Parsnips, and Beets, all the Winter._--A
little before the frost sets in, draw your beets or parsnips out
of the ground, and lay them in the house, burying their roots in
sand to the neck of the plant, and ranging them one by another in a
shelving position; then another bed of sand, and another of beets,
and continue this order to the last. By pursuing this method, they
will keep very fresh. When they are wanted for use, draw them, as
they stand, not out of the middle or sides.
1029. _To preserve Turnips from Frost._--The best way is to stack
them up in straw in the following manner:--One load of any sort of
dry straw is sufficient for an acre of fifty tons' weight. Pull up
the turnips, top and tail them, then throw them in a sort of windrow,
and let them lie a few days to dry.
First, lay a layer of straw next the ground, and upon it a layer of
turnips about half a yard thick; then another layer of straw; so go
on alternately with a layer of straw and a layer of turnips; every
layer grows narrower, till it comes to a point at the top, like a
sugar-loaf. The last layer must be straw, which serves to keep all
dry. You must observe always when you have laid a layer of turnips,
to stroke or lap over the ends of the under layer of straw, in order
to keep them close or from tumbling out. The heap should be as large
as a hay-cock; the tops may be given to sheep or cattle as they are
cut off.
1030. _Another._--Turnips placed in layers, though not thick,
have been found, after a few weeks, to rot. In some places the
following method is adopted. Lay the turnips close together in a
single layer, on a grass field, near the farmyard, and scatter some
straw and branches of trees over them; this will preserve them from
sudden alternations of frost and thaw. They keep as well as stored
turnips can do. The bare grass is of no value in winter, and may
rather perhaps receive some benefit from the shelter of the turnip.
An immense quantity may thus be stored on a small extent of grass
ground. It is chiefly useful for small farmers, in soils unfit for
the turnip, but who are forced to raise it for milk-cows, or to
support, in the winter, the sheep they feed in the summer on the
commons, and which they keep, perhaps, principally in the night,
on the fields they have no other means of manuring. But it may be
useful, even on proper turnip soils, to save the latter part of the
crop from the sudden frosts and sunshine in the spring, or in an open
winter, which rot so great a portion of it; perhaps a fourth or third
part of what is then on the ground.