secretary's budget. 421 



it (keeping it full all the time) for a number of days, or washing with 

 water and lye. Fumigate with sulphur. Casks which have contained 

 spirits are very good. 



Put a faucet into the cask, fill it full of juice, and place it in a cool 

 cellar. Then put in the bung, but leave a small opening for the escape 

 of the gas produced in the process of fermentation, and bung up per- 

 fectly tight before fermentation has fully ceased. The cask should 

 now be left undisturbed until spring, in fact, the longer the better. 

 There is no need of bottling cider thus made. Draw from the cask, 

 and if necessary, admit air by the small aperture on top, but never 

 more than absolutely needed to allow the escape of the fluid through 

 the faucet when open. 



To keep apple juice through the winter in an uncured (unfer- 

 mented) state, add one pound of whole mustard seed to the barrel. 

 One ounce of salicylic acid, which is often recommended, will effectu- 

 ally stop all tendency to fermentation, but being injurious, should 

 never be used ; while mustard seed is perfectly harmless. 



A HOME MADE FRUIT DRYER. 



While on a visit to the farm of Mr. J. D. Ellis, Polk county, Ore- 

 gon, a representative of this paper saw a very good fruit dryer that had 

 been built on the place by the proprietor at a cost of about ten dollars. 



This one was made entirely of rough lumber, and answers the pur- 

 pose admirably, though if it were of matched lumber it would no 

 doubt economize much heat and save considerable fuel. 



In dimensions it was about eight feet square and the walls ten feet 

 high, put up in box fashion and rested upon the ground without floor, 

 with battens over the cracks on the outside, roofed with shakes and 

 had no ceiling overhead. Cleats were nailed horizontally up the wall 

 upon which rested other strips of lumber, this forming racks to hold 

 the trays, which were also made of lumber. A common box stove 

 about two feet in length to which was fitted a T joint from which an 

 endless link of common six-inch stovepipe formed along each of the 

 four sides of the building in a horizontal position. At the further side 

 from the stove another T joint sent the pipe through the wall and by 

 an elbow and other joints carried the smoke above the roof and so 

 formed a splendid draft to the stove. 



A thermometer is kept on the inside, and to regulate the heat to 

 the proper temperature a box with slatted sides and a trap door placed 

 in the top of the roof forms a ventilator. If a structure on this plan 

 were made of dry matched lumber its cost would be nominal, and with 

 intelligent management would prove, as even this one does, a great 



