1877.] 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



i5 



Salt for Chickens. 

 A writer in llie Cultivator and Cuiintry Qentleman. 

 strongly recommendB salt us a remedy for chickens 

 suirerinir ft'oni ffaps. He asks wliat ilo we use salt 

 for in almost everytliing we eiit ? It not only fur- 

 nishes no nutriment, pleasure, or anything else, liul 

 Is absolutely a poison ; and that the reason we take 

 it is to prevent undue germination of worms within 

 us. The old-time Hollanders used lo punish their 

 criminals by giving them unsalted food, and they were 

 thus soon literally devoured by the worms which 

 engendered in their own stomachs. Now, what 

 causes gapes in chickens ? ^\'orms. What is given 

 to animals to prevent Ibis? Salt. Hut all the 

 books, etc., say salt will kill ehiekens. So it would 

 ifyou took too much, as they often do through the 

 habit of bolting their food without mastication anil 

 tasting. In brief, and in fact when the weather is 

 damp and eool, always put about as much salt in 

 chick's feed as you would in your own liread, and I 

 will answer for the life of every one. 



Feed Horses Regularly. 

 Almost of more importance than the form in 

 which food is given to horses ar(^ the frequency and 

 regularity of their meals. The horse's digestive or- 

 gans arc not constructed for long fasts. Long inter- 

 vals witliout food produce hunger, and hunger he- 

 gets voracity; food is boiled, and indigestion and 

 colic follow 1 This is doubly true and dangerous 

 with horses doing hard work. They come to their 

 long deferred meal not only hungry but exhausted; 

 not only is the food bolted, but the stomach is in 

 such a state as to be incapable of thoroughly active 

 digestion, and is overpowered by half the amount 

 of food it would otherwise digest. 



Make Feed Racks. 



A stormy day improved by making a few racks to 

 hold hay and fodder I'or cattle, sheep and horses, will 

 return "large profits before suiunier comes, in saving 

 the feed from being trampled under foot and in the 

 mud, and thus wasted and destroyed. Plenty of 

 feedins; racks about the barnyard is an evidence of a 

 careful, painstaking farmer — and only such can make 

 anything now-a-days. It is not those who make the 

 most that thrive best, but it is those who save the 

 most of what they do make. The secret of success 

 Is in saving all that can economically and wisely be 

 saved. 



To Keep Chickens Clean. 



Powdered or broken charcoal is invaluable in the 

 poultry house in keeping it wholesome for fowls, 

 and making a most valuable manure. The fowls 

 will consume a part of it, and are not so liable to 

 disease as where the premises are limited and con- 

 fined. Wash your roosts occasionally with kerosene. 

 This prevents the accumulation of lice in the poultry 

 houses, and fumes of this pungent oil permeate the 

 feathers of your fowls at night and drive the vermin 

 from their bodies. Or sprinkle a little carbolic pow- 

 der on the roosts. 



Safeguards Against Rats. 



Rats are accomplished rope-walkers, and are able 

 to make their way even along very small cords. 

 Conseijuently so long as they eau mount upon the line 

 nothing edible susjiended therefrom is safe from their 

 attacks. A correspondent of the Jloston. Jourual of 

 Cfiemistnj use wires, upon which circular pieces of 

 tin are strung, and hangs his meat, grain etc., be- 

 tween the tin pieces. "The rats cannot pass the tin 

 circles, because as they attemjit to climb over them 

 after walking out ou the wire, the pieces revolve. 



AGRICULTURAL. 



Lime as a Fertilizer. 

 Lime is a necessity in agrieulttu-e, and if the soil is 

 destitute of it, it must be supplied, or the ground be- 

 comes hard atul lumpy, and ceases to produce. Some 

 writers claim that lime, of itself, gives no fertility, 

 but this is a mistake, for I have seen good results 

 from its use where it has been applied on old roads 

 and worn-out fields where there was almost no 

 vegetable matter in the soil. A neighbor had a piece 

 of land which was a high chestnut ridge, and so 

 poor that it would not produce mullein stalks or rag- 

 weed. He first applied fifty bushels of lime per acre, 

 and sowed in wheat and seeded with clover. The 

 wheat crop was not very good, but the clover did 

 well, and when it was full grown, it was plowed 

 down and the land sown in w heat. That was six 

 years ago, and the field has produced good crops 

 ever since. Last winter, about the first of February, 

 I commenced to haul slaked lime on to an old 

 meadow sod , for corn. On the first acre I put one 

 hundred and twenty-five bushels ; then I thought 

 that too thick, and on the rest of the field I put 

 eighty bushels per acre. I planted the field in corn 

 in May, and where the lime was the thickest the 

 corn came up of a better color, and kept ahead all 

 through the summer, and when I came to husk it, I 



could tell the very row where the hundred and 

 twenty-fiye busbies were spread ; the fodder was 

 heavier, and the grain deeper on the col) than where 

 only eighty busbies were applied. I have seen wheat 

 fields where only one-half of the field was limed, 

 and the other half manureil with barn-yard manure, 

 without lime, and lould tell to the very drill row on 

 that part of the field that was limed ; the straw was 

 stiffer and the grain larger than on the part where 

 no lime was applied. I could give many instances 

 in favor of lime as a manure, and when the farmers 

 of this country u.si' as much lime as tli<'y do barn- 

 yard manure, there will be less complaining about 

 poor crops. I hope that some of your many readers 

 will give their views and e.Kperienee with lime. — J. 

 y. 7>., SUj)])eyy Rock, l*a. 



^^ 



"A Broadway Farm." 



Stewart, Astor and Vanderliilt are goue, and now 

 the richest representative of the old families of New- 

 York is Peter Goelet, an eccentric old l)achelor who 

 lives on the corner of Broadway and Nineteenth 

 street, in the most expensive section of the street, 

 r.oclet's wealth is estimated at from twenty to thir- 

 ty millions, the most of it having been made by his 

 great-grandfather and grandfatlier in the hardware 

 trade. It is the old story. \ French emigrant com- 

 menced the hardware trade before the revolution, 

 and by hard work m,a<le monc'y. Every dollar made 

 was invested in farming land's a mile or more from 

 the store down town, and for three generations this 

 has been the rule. What were farming land then 

 is covered with six story buildings now, and what 

 the first Goelet bought for twenty dollars an acre is 

 worth to-day hundreds of thousands. There are 

 two left of them, Peter, the bachelor, being the best 

 known. He occupies several lots on the corner of 

 Nineteenth street and Broadway for a residence; 

 the property being worth, probably, two 

 hundred thousand dollars, and he keeps 

 it that he may have room for a 

 cow, a dozen guinea hens, a stork or two and a fine 

 lot of chickens. " Uncle Peter," as he is called, has 

 a passion for this kind of farming, and he keeps this 

 splendid property idle that he may indulge his whim. 

 He dosen't put a dollar into pictures or books ; he 

 has't a single piece of sculpture , he never takes 

 part in any public enterjirise ; but the money that 

 other men put into such things he squanders on his 

 cow and chickens. Counting interest, it costs him 

 twenty thousand dollars per year to keep that cow, 

 which makes the milk come, I should supjiose, at 

 about a dollar a drop. It is a queer sight — a cow 

 feeding quietly in the busiest part of New York. But 

 this is (ioelet's whim, and perhaps it is as sensible as 

 many other men's whims. lie is over seventy, and 

 has not a child to leave his vast estate to. His ne- 

 phews and niece are all very ricli,but as they have not 

 " Uncle Peter's" quiet tastes, they will not object to 

 adding his millions to their own. 



^ 



Sowing Clover on Grass. 

 The agricultural editor of the Reading Timea and 

 Dcspatcli says : Farmers may succeed in making 

 clover grow on grass land, if the sod is not thickly 

 covered with grass, open in places between the tufts, 

 so as to adroit of harrowing in the seed. Sow the 

 seed quite thick as early in the spring as the ground 

 will admit, and be dry. Then run a fine tooth har- 

 row over the land till the seed is covored, or the most 

 of it mixed with the loosened earth; then roll the 

 land, and in due time a crop of clover will appear ; 

 but it will be in danger of being smothered by the 

 grass, perhajis ; and if it lie, when the grass has 

 grown high enough to be cut by a mower, it should 

 be cut and fed green to stock : and if plaster be sown 

 on the land, as soon as the clover appears, it will get 

 such a growth in a few weeks that the grass cannot 

 check it. Fields that are not wellcovered with grass, 

 may be improved in this manner, or other grass seed 

 may be sown instead of clover, and several kinds of 

 grass seed would be better than one kind. Perhaps 

 it would be better to pasture such lands till the new 

 seeding gets a good growth, ratherthan cut the grass 

 when it is but a few inches high. There is no good 

 reason why farmers should not experiment in this 

 way sometimes. Then let them seed down a ijlowed 

 field to grass next spring, without the usual grain 

 crop. I have known a good crop of hay to be cut 

 the first season on fields thus seeded ; and be sure 

 that you seed with several kinds of grasses, which 

 produce a firmer sward, and one that will stand the 

 frosts of winter better than one kind will. 



Good Yield of Corn. 



Wm. Lambie, Ypsilanti, Mich., reports a yield of 

 900 bushels of ears of corn on ten acres, at a cost per 

 bushel of 7 cents in the car. The interesting feature 

 is the cost per bushel, rather than the yielil per acre. 

 As the land was a reclaimed marsh, and was quad- 

 rupled in value in the process of producing corn at 

 7 cents per bushel, it may be considered a sample of 

 first-class farming. 



Subscribe for The Farmer, the cheapest Agricul- 

 tural Paper published. See terms on first page. 



HURTICULTURE. 



Some Hints on Grafting. 



Sometimes disease will fasten itself on to a tree 

 and jjcrvade its whole system; and when grafts are 

 taken from such a tree the trouble goes with It. In 

 this way a diseased condition is often distributed 

 quite unconscioiisly by the propagator. Sometimes 

 this peculiar condition <loes not produce actual dis- 

 ease, but there is a sort of lack of vigor wliich leads 

 to inferior results. For instance, we often find 

 people with .Seekel pear trees that have hut moderale 

 sized or small fruit; and other people who are aide 

 to boast ol their large Seekel pears. If grafts are 

 taken from these they generally continue to produce 

 large or snmll pears as the case may be. Yet we 

 know that all these came from one original Seekel 

 pear tree and that in some way the degeneracy or 

 improvement came about witliout any seminal agen- 

 cy whatever. The whole ditlerence has been made 

 general by propagation. Now, some people say 

 when a person has a large or fine Seekel pear, the 

 land or the culture just suited it: and if the grafts 

 are taken to other trees undi'r other circumstances 

 the excellence fails and the fruit reverts to Its origin 

 nal inferior condition. But it is not always so. In- 

 deed, it is but seldom that the large and perfect 

 form fails to carry its excellence with it, when the 

 graft goes to a distant stock. 



Now this fact shows how very careful we should be 

 in selecting grafts, to take them only from the best 

 known specimens of the kind we can get. It may 

 also be a question whether it will not pay sotnetimcs 

 to graft over again with the suine kind, when it is 

 approved, but a tuttertree exists. For instance, with 

 the Seekel pear. .Supposing one has atree that gives 

 but a small fruit, and a neighbor has one which Is 

 large and fine, gi-afts from that will give the large 

 kind ; and it may be worth while to sacrifice a year 

 or two of poor fruit in order in time to get much 

 belter ones. 



Independently of all this, there are often fruit 

 trees on one's place that arc so |>oor as to be better 

 to have the whole character of the tree changed, and 

 this is the blessing which the art of grafting confers. 



It may be as well to say at this season that graft- 

 ing is generally more successful when the grafts are 

 taken off early. As the season progresses the sap 

 accumulates in vessels, as every one knows who has 

 pruned a grape vine. If cut late in the spring the 

 vine bleeds ; but it does not if cut now. Pear trees do 

 not exactly ''bleed" if cut late, Imt there is much 

 more sap in the branches in spring than there is now. 

 We cut early to avoid this, and bury the scions in the 

 earth or anywhere where they will be absolutely at 

 rest without being absolutely frozen. — GermaiUoivn 

 Telegraph. 



^ 



Succession of Fruits. 



The so-called small fruits, occupy quite a large 

 place in the general list of fruits for every month. 

 Those wlio have never enjoyed the luxury of a dish 

 of fully ripe strawberries of such varieties as the 

 Charles Downing, Boydens' No. .'W, or even the 

 Wilson— which may be, and should be, on every 

 man's table in .May and June, with the usual ac- 

 companiments of cream and sugar — are to be 

 pitied, especially if it is not by their own negligence 

 that they lose one of the most delightful exercises of 

 a well furnished table. In natural succession the 

 strawberries are followed by the various sorts of 

 raspberries, red, black and yellow, all very 

 "pleasant to the eye and good to the taste," and 

 these in turn are followed by the blackberries ; and 

 although these fruits ripen through the summer 

 months, and are best relished when fresh from the 

 vines or hushes, we can have them almost as good 

 during the late and all the winter mouths, even 

 uniil they are supplanted by crops of the succeed- 

 ing year." The old system" of preserving fruits in 

 sui/ar, pound for pound, as the old rule had it, has 

 been entirely superseded by a process of canning, 

 which preserves much more of the real flavor and 

 quality, costs less, and is, therefore, superior to the 

 fiiriner Uiode. 



In addition, and for variety, we have during the 

 summer months the delicious cherry. Who, that 

 has tieen favored as jour humble servant has, on 

 more than one occasion, to visit when the fruit was 

 at its iirinie, orchards like those of the late Dr. Hull, 

 of well-merited horticultural fame, and to have the 

 choice without limit of nearly or quite twenty 

 varieties of sweet cherries, can ever forget such an 

 event? And who can deny the exquisite flavor aud 

 gratefulness to the palate, of a dish of Karly Rich- 

 mond pitted cherries, as we have them for side 

 dishes at Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years' 

 dinners or supjwrs ? Indeed, I like them and have 

 them home-grown much oftener than on such festive 

 occasions . 



As the months roll on we have the apricot, the 

 nectaTine, the peach and the plum in varieties for 

 the mouths of August and September, and with these 

 and for the balance ol the year, the pear and the king 

 of fruits, the apple, and the last named in almost in- 

 finite variety and of various flavors, sweet, acid, sub- 

 acid, and mild sub-acid, etc., to suit the differeut 



