336 



THE GENESEE FARMER. 



without sweet milk, save for the first six or eight 

 weeks of their lives, and with only sour milk, good 

 pasture, shelter, and good hay in winter. 



Competition for the Premiums. — Yoar offer of 

 prizes for short Essays has drawn out a mass of in- 

 formation, enabling you to make the Genesee Farm- 

 er the best practical Agricnltural paper published — 

 one v/hich is read with the greatest interest by farmers, 

 and from which they derive the greatest amount of 

 information which they can and do wse in their busi- 

 ness. 



Farmers' Sons — Will thank M. D. for his well 

 written Essay on making farm life attractive. Farm- 

 ers will gain much by heeding the advice it contains, 

 and remembering the days when they were boys 

 themselves, and what best suited their boyish inclina- 

 tions. Teach them in some measure to depend upon 

 themselves — to think and act as will prepare them 

 to stand up as men hereafter. B. 



JYiagara Co., JY. Y. 



NOTES FOR. THE MONTH.-BY S. W. 



'^ The State Fair at Buffalo. — If the first State 

 Fair at Buffalo was the cap sheaf up to that date, 

 it may truly be said that the late fair was the largest 

 and best of all. Only to think of $16,000 receipts, 

 at a time when money has deserted not only every 

 Bank, but every pocket, save that of the self denying 

 farmer; and the reason why farmers have more cash 

 than others, is not that they earn or receive more, 

 but only that they are more economical and have 

 fewer artificial wants; and I trust that at this time 

 of monetary tribulation, no farmer, or farmer's wife, 

 son or daughter, will covet either the present or pro- 

 spective condition of the fast and fashionable classes 

 of our young America. 



Buffalo is called a commercial city, but if we may 

 judge from the great number and variety and excel- 

 lence of the agricultural and domestic articles con- 

 tributed by htr industrial interests to this fair, she 

 is also a great manufacturing town. One thousand 

 dollar looking glass stood, 13^ feet high in its gilded 

 frame, in Domestic Hall. It was made to the order 

 of a Bank President, tor his daughter. How signifi- 

 cant of the times that were. It took half an hour 

 on the third day to elbow through Domestic Hall, 

 alone, such was the jam of men and women of all 

 nations; but good humor was forbearing, and crown- 

 ed all. Words of admiration were heard in German 

 as well as in English, with now and then an exclama- 

 tion of delight from the lively little Canadian demoi- 

 selle, with her patois icit for ici. 



Great credit is due to the officers of the Society 

 and the City Police, for the order preserved in the 

 great and heterogeneous throng. The orders of Col. 

 Patrick, the superintendent ^-eneral, himself a marti- 

 ne'. were executed by his subs with that rapid but 

 noiseless efficiency which brought to my micd early 

 recollections of man-of-war discipline! I could have 

 sympathized with Secretary Johnson in bis unremit- 

 ting labors had he needed it; but the quiet grace 

 with which he gave the go by to incessant bores, 

 without remitting his labors either of head or hands 

 for '_a moment, convinced me that of all other men, 

 he was the man for the arduous task his office requir- 

 ed continually. 



The location of the fair ground was matchless; 

 with the picturesquely wooded Canadiaa shore on 



the right; the broad lake, with its sail craft and buSy 

 tugs, in front; the city, and harbor, filled with steam- 

 ers, propellers, square and fore-and-aft rigged vessels 

 on the left. It only needed the ocean swell breaking 

 in snowy Avreaths on outer ledge and headland rock, 

 to realize the best views at Newport, R. I., my na- 

 tive town. 



CoLK Graperies. — Horace Williams, on the 

 bank of Buffalo Creek, in the 13th ward, has just 

 completed the longest if not the largest cold grapery 

 in the United States. It is 670 feet long, running oa 

 the N. W. and S. E. line of his lot on the north; it 

 is 12^ feet high, and tightly boarded on the N. W. 

 side, with glazed sash on the sloping, S. E. side; 

 width at bottom 13 feet; ventilated at top and bot- 

 tom. The house now contains nearly 400 vines, 

 which are from 7 to 12 feet long, and very thrifty. 

 Before building, he excavated, 24 feet wide and two 

 feet deep, the whole 670 feet; then filled in with 

 lime fiom glue vats, sods, refuse of glue stock, stable 

 manure, and tan bark saturated with the same. Thia 

 was thoroughly worked over with the soil, and the 

 whole plot covered and raised a little with the exca- 

 vated alluvium- Under the whole drain tile is laid, 

 to take off' surplus water, and the same trench holds 

 bored scantling, through which water is brought from 

 an elevated reservoir, into which it is pumped by horse 

 power from the creek at the glue factory. On this 

 alluvial formation all sorts of fruit succeeds well. He 

 has more than 500 pear trees, principally dwarfs, 

 some of which have borne fruit this second year from 

 the nursery. 



The Season and the Crops. — Sorghum. — One ex- 

 traordinary feature of this season is the frequency, 

 not of showers, but of long continued drenching 

 rains. This has added much to the earth's herbage. 

 Pastures never yielded more in one season; but the 

 corn and barley crop has been diminished by it, and 

 potatoes have suffered from premature decay. Gar- 

 den crops generally are good, particularly onions and 

 cabbages, but Lima beans were late and do not at 

 all ripen; and although frost has kept off' to the mid- 

 dle of October, tomatoes lie green on the ground, and 

 no better when suspended and exposed to the direct 

 rays of the autumn sun. Sorghum now stands 

 over thirteen feet high; the main stalks when suck- 

 ered, are one and one fourth inches in diameter, and 

 are full of sugar, but the seed, though plump, is poor 

 in farina, and refuses to ripen. But when full grown 

 tomatoes hang in bushels on the vines for weeks to- 

 gether, without ripening, owing to the continued cold 

 and wet surface at their roots, we cannot expect sor- 

 ghum to ripen its seed. But it is a good loraging 

 plant, and contains all the sugar even in this climate , 

 that has been claimed for it South. Four stalks cut 

 up in small pieces will fill a pail, and give a cow a 

 much richer slop than the same bulk of watery tur- 

 nips, to say nothing of the fat forming sugar, so nec- 

 essary to still slop fed cows, to enrich their milk. 



Returning from Kansas.— That indomitable young 

 matron referred to in other notes, has returned from 

 Kansas to the old fashioned hills of Chatauque, with 

 a now daily shake of the ague; but, woman- like, sh* 

 lays all the blame to her husband. When the inte^ 

 mittent took him, he had no romance to fall back.^ 

 on, — the promise of returning vernal blossoms to the 

 prairie, the early berries and wild plums of another •■ 

 summer, nor even the substantial promise of the pre- ^ 

 sent corn crop, could amuse him a moment, much le^ 



