1858. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



467 



For the New England Farmer. 

 CURRANT WINE—PLUMS, &c. 



A few weeks since, the Farmer re-published an 

 article which I have seen in various other papers, 

 on the subject of currant wine. The article as- 

 sumes that none but the best refined sugar is fit 

 for the currant wine manufacture. Believing this 

 to be a mischievous error, I will give you my ex- 

 perience in the matter. I have been in the habit 

 for several years of making up about a bushel of 

 currants, each year, into wine — finding it a very 

 convenient article for various culinary purposes, 

 to say nothing of its use as a beverage. The 

 quality has been pretty uniformly good, though 

 I have never used refined sugar in the manufac- 

 ture. Last year I purchased a quantity of very 

 damp sugar which came from the bottom of a 

 molasses hogshead, and for which I paid three 

 cents a pound. I send you herewith a bottle of 

 the wine made with this sugar, and if you do not 

 pronounce it a good article, I can only say that 

 "tastes diff'er." The wine will of course improve 

 by age. 



The article of which I send you a sample was 

 made as follows : I picked fi'om my garden about 

 a bushel of well ripened currants. Heating some 

 water in a wash-boiler, I placed the currants, say 

 half a peck at a time, in a tin pail, and placing 

 the pail in the water, scalded the currants until 

 they became soft ; then putting them in a linen 

 bag, squezed them in a portion of the cold water 

 I had measured out for the wine, until the juice 

 was all expressed. In this way I obtained the 

 juice from a bushel of currants in about half an 

 hour ; and I am satisfied that the scalding of the 

 currants very much improves the wine. The 

 quantity of water used was from six to seven gal- 

 lons, and to this mixture was added about forty 

 pounds of the molasses sugar before spoken of. 

 The whole was then put into a well-cleaned cask, 

 the bung of which was left out for two days, then 

 laid on loose for a fortnight, then driven tight. 

 The product is about seventeen gallons of wine, 

 and the only actual outlay in money was a dollar 

 and twenty cents for the sugar, — say about seven 

 cents per gallon ! 



An article in the Farmer of Aug. 28, from Mr. 

 Wait, of Danvers, speaks very despondingly of 

 the plum culture, and expresses a fear that, be- 

 tween the ravages of the black wart and the cur- 

 culio, "that beautiful fruit is likely to become 

 extinct." I have a few plum trees in my garden 

 which do not look very much like extinction. 

 True, the very wet season has caused much of the 

 fruit to rot, and the curculio has bitten a larger 

 share than the law of equitable distribution would 

 seem to -have justified — thus causing a large por- 

 tion of the fruit to fall prematurely from the tree. 

 This is the case particularly with those excellent 

 varieties. Prince's Imperial Gage, and Coe's Gold- 

 en Drop. The heavy rains of Aug. 28 also caused 

 such plums as were near ripening to burst their 

 skins. Despite of all these adverse circumstances, 

 most of my trees are well loaded with fruit. One 

 small tree six years from the bud, of the variety 

 called Drap d'Or, has yielded, as nearly as I can 

 guess, a bushel of very sweet and delicious plums. 

 This variety rots very little on the tree, bears 

 wonderful crops, is not much bitten by the cur- 

 culio, and '. think will prove a profitable variety. 



The same correspondent of your paper speaks 

 of what he calls the sap blight in pear-trees — 

 causing the leaves to turn black and the fruit to 

 wither up. This disease is sometimes erroneously 

 called "fire blight." The late Hon. John Lowell 

 discovered, as he thought, to an absolute cer- 

 tainty, that this blight was caused by a very small 

 insect called the scolytus i)yri, which sometimes 

 eats a circle round the tree in the alburnum or 

 sap-wood, — thus causing a complete interruption 

 in the flow of the sap. The remedy — and Mi*. 

 Lowell found it efi"ectual — is to cut off the limb 

 on the tree some two or three inches below the 

 part affected, and burn it. By this means the 

 disease may soon be eradicated. 



With regard to the black wart on the plum, I 

 have kept my trees pretty free of it by using salt 

 in various forms, and by applying the knife iVeely 

 whenever and wherever it makes its appearance. 

 This disease is also probably caused by an insect, 

 whose bite poisons the sap and causes it to form 

 a fungus, which soon becomes a black and un- 

 sightly excrescence. I do not dread this half so 

 much as I do the curculio. E. c. P. 



Somerville, Mass. 



For the New England Farmer. 

 LETTER FROM MR. HOLBROOK. 



RECLAIMING AND DRAINING. 



• 



My Dear Mr. Brown : — For a few days past, 

 I have had occasion to make frequent visits to a 

 lowland meadow near my residence, and belong- 

 ing to the Vermont State Asylum. The draining 

 and improvement of this tract of land has in- 

 terested me considerably for several years ; and 

 two years ago this month, I gave a communica- 

 tion to the Farmer, describing the methods pur- 

 sued in reclaiming it. 



The meadow consists of about thirty acres of 

 Connecticut river intervale, lying quite low, and 

 subject to overflow from the river when swollen 

 by spring and fall rains, a thaw in the winter, or 

 an uncommonly rainy spell in August. The land 

 was also made wet by a little brook from the up- 

 lands, and by cold springs in various places, bub- 

 bling up from a considerable depth. Before 

 draining the meadow, the flood water did not all 

 pass off" with the falling of the river, but portions 

 of it, together with the waters of the brook and 

 springs, remained to stagnate, or in other places 

 to diminish slowly by evaporation. The land was 

 thus kept wet, cold and sour, and produced little 

 or nothing but the coarsest swale grasses. An 

 ox team could not be driven over much of tlie 

 land at all, and a man could nt)t mow in the M'et- 

 ter portions without going over shoes in water. 



Six years ago this summer, we determined to 

 attempt to drain and reclaim the meadow, and an 

 accurate survey was made with levelling instru- 

 ments, to ascertain the exact lay of the surface, 

 and where ditches could be opened that would 

 give motion to the water and pass it to the river. 

 Favorable routes were found for the water to 

 move off", and two capacious open ditches were 

 accordingly made, starting at a common point at 

 the upper end, sweeping through the lower por- 

 tions of the meadow, by widely separate routes, 

 but uniting in one ditch at the lower end, and 

 from thence to the river. The eye, alone, would 



