1892 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



813 



breakfast, rode 12 miles, and found ihc nuin 1 

 waiitod to soc, just Ki'ttinfj; up from the hrcaU- 

 fiist-tablo. Perhaps he lias no moitfjaKe to 

 lift, so it is his own business. Hut in f^oing 

 about th(> country as I have been doing lately 

 (and I think I never eirculated among '"our 

 homes " and "our neigh hors" in all my life as 

 F have of late) it has seemed to me as if a great 

 part of the farmers seemed to think it vacation 

 time, or they are ofT at a summ(>r resort; or 

 that, during the month of October, crertj day is 

 SiDKUtij. No doubt farmers suffer many wrongs 

 that ought to be righted; but 1 am sure it is 

 al.so true that they do not put in as many hours 

 of good steady hard work— or, at least, a great 

 many of them — as do our masons, our carpen- 

 ters, or those who work in factories where they 

 are working for wages. This mattx^r of stop- 

 ping to talk and visit, and talking i)olitics. Is, I 

 am sure, nftcti carried to too great lengths. My 

 conscience would trouble me if [ were to do it. 

 I believe in being sociable, and perhaps I need 

 to cultivate this very virtue; but my conscience 

 would trouble me. if my crops were suffering, if 

 I should stop to visit when the weather is so 

 favorable. May be these friends had no crops 

 tliat were suffering; but I tell you the thrifty 

 farmer <»?»v(i/.v has work that is crowding when 

 the weather is nice. 



Ijet me give you just two (jictures that have 

 lately come under my eye. One day a train was 

 obliged to stop on a side-track. I felt as if it 

 were wicked to waste my time, so I strayed 

 across the lots into a barnyard. The |)ro[)rietor 

 declared tliat farming didn't pay. I looked 

 into a hen-roost near by. and the manure was 

 piled up almost to the jjerches. There were 

 great wagon-loads of poultry manure that had 

 probably been there for years. I could )iever 

 stand it to stay on a farm — I should be home- 

 sick and disguste — dif 1 were obliged to stay 

 amid such surroundings as I saw that morning. 

 I exhorted him somewhat about his i)oultry 

 manure, but he had no heart nor energy for any 

 thing— the business did not pay. 



Now for picture second: Yesterday a man 

 brought me a load of Hubbard squashes. They 

 are scarce this year, and I told him I would 

 give him 2 cts. a pound for some nice ones. I 

 paid him ?=7.t)l for what he had on his light 

 spring buggy. Then li(^ infortned me that they 

 grew o]\ four K(pi(ire nulx of ground — just one- 

 fortieth of an acre. I asked him what fertilizer 

 or manure he used. He said he did not use 

 (iny; hut I thought I saw a sort of twinkle in 

 his eye. Then a neighbor let out the secret. 

 lie cleaned out an old poultry-house — no, nol — 

 "chicken-roost" 1 mean -and he got so much 

 manure he did not know what to do with it; so 

 he spread it out on the four rods of ground. He 

 worked it in after a fashion, and planted pota- 

 toes. The ground was too rich, and he did not 

 get any crop. Last spring he plowed up' the 

 same ground very thoroutrhly. so as to g(!t more 

 dirt mingled in with the manure, and then 

 planted potatoes (ujdln. .Somebody told him if 

 Hubbard squashes were |)lanied among pota- 

 toes the bugs would not bother thetn. .So he 

 put a squa-^h ^(hM in every other liill of every 

 other row of those potatfies. Sure enough, those 

 bugs ni'ver touched those s(|uashes. Do you know 

 why? I do, if you do nut; and I can imagine 

 every bug going off holding its nose in distrust. 

 because of that |)Oultry manure, strong enoiigli 

 to sicken an ox. to say nothing about a tiny little 

 bug. Did this manure come from the same 

 roost I looked at? Well, perhaps not; but it 

 was off in the same direction, and the moral is 

 just the same, any way. I do not know how 

 much the man got for the potatoes on that four 

 rods of ground. 1 undei stood there was a good 

 crop, and that the squashes did not hurt the 



potatoes a speck, and rliv vcrsd. of course, 

 they didn't. You ean grow two crops on the 

 sam(> ground, witliout a /x'f of trouble, if there 

 is food enough for both. I am not sure but that 

 the shading froiTi the liot sun was a /K/ifrtf to 

 both. Did you evi^r notice how things grow 

 when they liave got so large as to cover entirely 

 and shdde the ground? W(>1I, here is an in- 

 stance of two crops grown on the same ground. 

 ihic of the crops yielded at the rata oi $:S04. 40 

 per acre. Keturns from the other have not 

 yet come in. Is there not a little bit of day- 

 light leaking througii the clouds when we con- 

 sider the facts brought out in the above little 

 story ? 



You may ask why 1 am buying Hubbard 

 squashes and paying 3 cts. a pound for them. 

 Well, / have been backsliding. My creek- 

 bottom land was under water so much 1 decided 

 to put tlie scjuashes u|) by the windmill; and 1 

 put them on a piece of ground that I have own- 

 ed for only a little over a year. It is under- 

 drained, but it has not yet been manured up to 

 the highest notch; so, instead of getting 

 squashes by the ton, I got how many? One 

 good big ivIieeUxirrow-lodd! I thought once 

 thatl too would quit farming because it did not 

 pay; but since it leaked out how that man 

 raised his great crop of Hubbard squashes. I 

 tliink I shall gather courage and keep onfarm- 

 in<j. 



MARKET- GARDENING FOR NOVEMBER. 



Even during this poor season we have occa- 

 sional glimpses in the way of pleasant sur- 

 prises. We are just now selling the finest 

 Snowball 6auliflower we ever raised. I think 

 the seed was sown about the 1st of .luly. 

 While heading up. the weather has been so 

 cold that we have had no trouble from the 

 green cabbage-worm, nor from insects of any 

 sort. And another thing, we took pains to tie 

 the leaves up in a bunch over the heads, just 

 as they were lieading out. The seed is exactly 

 the same, namely. March's Snowball cauli- 

 rtower. that gave us in the spring sprangly, 

 sprawling heads, scarcely fit for any thing. 

 They are now compact, nice, and more like a 

 great snowball than any thing else. As W" get 

 from !() to 1.') cts. a pound for them, some of 

 them bring 2.") -cents a head, and 1 guess there 

 are 100 nice heads on four rows, each perhaps 

 .50 feet long. We also had four rows of carrots, 

 one foot apart, rows about 4(K) feet long. The 

 wetness drowned them out so many times that 

 there was not more than half a stand. Not- 

 withstanding, we have about :$0 bushels of 

 carrots. Where the plants were not drowned 

 out. they are so thick that they have crowded 

 each other out of the ground; and in some 

 places almost a peck of carrots would come out 

 in a lump, some of tlunn so large as to v\eigh 

 live pounds. We have just sold 2.5 bushels at 

 forty cents per bushel. At this rate the 

 carrots would give us a crop worth about ?^40f) 

 an acre. The crop had very little work put on 

 it after sow ing the seed. and. indeed, was not 

 even thinned out. I havc^ been assured by good 

 stockgid^N ITS that a busliel of carrots is worth, 

 on an average, as much as oats for cows, horses, 

 or almost any other farm stock. Almost every 

 domestic animal is passionately fond of carrots. 

 And this reminds me, that one day I went to 

 carry a basketful of carrot^ tliroiigli the pasture 

 lot. The .Jersey cow was determined to have 

 them, ami I was eqna ly determined that she 

 should not; and before we got done with each 

 other we had quite a little ■"circus"' there in 

 the midilli' of tlu; lot. She came out ahead, too. 

 for sh<; got quite a i)ortion of my basketful, 

 even if she did not get all of them. F'or sevei'al 

 years we hav(! had trouble in disposing of our 

 surplus carrots, turnips, and mangels; but this 



