18S2.J 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



153 



about the first of Koveinber ami ends early in 

 tlic sprinjr. They are largely transhipped 

 from English ports. 



WORK AND LEISURE. 



Old-fashioned, routine fanners are afraid 

 sometimes that tliey will get out of work, and 

 look upon such an occurreni'c as a sort of 

 calamity. We have known farmers to refu.se 

 to buy tlnesliing machines for the avowed 

 reiisou that to thresh out all their grain all at 

 once would leave them nothing to do in tlie 

 winter exieiit to feed slock, and to pound the 

 rye out willi Hails, and t!ic oats, wlieat and 

 corn by driving hoi'ses over it would furnish 

 them and the boys with the employment de- 

 sired, and keep all hands so employed that 

 ennui need not be apprehended. That was 

 not the word used, but that was what was 

 meant. 



Employment is good, excellent indeed, but 

 tliere can be too much of it sometimes, and 

 particularly of certain kinds. If one wants 

 a son to hate farming and to determine to 

 leave it at first chance, it is only necessary, at 

 least if he is a bright, l)usy tliinker, to make 

 a drudge of him iu tliis way. (iive him no 

 rest. Make it appear tliat you think work, 

 cliiefly for its own sake, is the chief end of 

 life, and if he don't leave at tiie first opening 

 be isn't much of a boy. Work is good, so is 

 medicine, liut both are means to an end, not 

 usually the end itself. Work is honorable and 

 necessary, l)ut people who work merely be- 

 cause leisure makes them lonely, and who 

 cannot find entertainment in reading, or visit- 

 ing other farms to learn nevv methods, or in 

 some of the thousand ways by which intellec- 

 tual progress may be promoted, tells a poor 

 story of himself. He is carrying to excess a 

 thing which is good in its place, and is as 

 much oH' the track in this respect as if he 

 were intemperate in some other form. 



On the other hand there is no virtue in in- 

 dolence. The farmer can justly be busy all 

 the year, because farming is his business. 

 When not actually engaged iu manual labor 

 he can be busy at planning work for the next 

 day, the next week, or the next sea.sou, and 

 finding out all he can as to the best metliods 

 through books, agricultural papers, discus- 

 sions witli neighbors or at agricultural socie- 

 ties, or observations on the work of others. If 

 owning a large farm and at all " forehanded " 

 tliere may be little necessity for him to work 

 at all, as many consider work; he can employ 

 liimself more profitably at supervising, plan- 

 ning and keeping his employees at work— not 

 in any mean or offensive sense, but to .see tliat 

 they work to the best ad\.intage. It is the 

 true principle in farming that the sagacious 

 and clear-bead thinker shall lie at the head 

 of the farming operations, and those who can- 

 not plan shall be in subordinate positions to 

 carry out orders. The general in the ranks is 

 out of iilace, because any good or strong sol- 

 dier can do just as well there as he can, but 

 at the head of a great army his abilities are 

 worth more than many thousands of soldiers. 

 So of the first-class farmer ; the real farmer is 

 more tlian a laborer, and should not be classed 

 iu the same category. 



Leisure is valuable for review, rest and re- 

 cuperation. The man who has none is badly 

 oft'. But usually this is a matter of habit ; de- 



votion to business never should be so grea*- 

 that there is no lei.'iure for anytliing else. It 

 is excess, and excess means an early wearing 

 out and premature death. Work and recre- 

 ation or leisure should be so blended that no 

 sen.se of continuous weariness shall be felt, 

 and it usually can be if people are inclined to 

 use forethought, and not give way to imagined 

 necessities. The necessity — or desire ratlier — 

 to amass a fortune has killed thousands ; and 

 thousands of farmers and others are sliorten- 

 ing their lives and losing the chance for en- 

 joying old age by devotion to manual labor, 

 with nobody to be a real gainer in the end. 

 The necessity of giving thsir children '"a good 

 start" in the world is often made the excuse 

 for this sort of sacrifice ; but it is a poor one. 

 The best start for children is to bring them up 

 properly with well-balanced minds and the 

 capacity to judge of things by their real 

 merits, and they can be depended on to start 

 themselves quite as well as they should. The 

 lesson has been taught too often that the child 

 "started" with abundance of money at his 

 command is, on the average, even more likely 

 to fail wretchedly than the one who has the 

 discipline of adverse circumstances to en- 

 counter. 



STABLE CLEANING. 



Forty to fifty years ago, and we are sorry 

 to say that the evil still exists at the present 

 time at points far away from towns and cities 

 and dense populations, there was nothing so 

 much neglected as the keeping of cow stables 

 clean. As a common rule they were cleaned 

 out once a week — on Saturday — and then it 

 was not so much on account of the comfort 

 and health of the animal and the convenience 

 and tidiness of the milker, as simply because 

 the pile of manure must be gotten out of the 

 way to allow of the putting up and letting loose 

 of the cattle mornings and evenings. We have 

 Seen the manure in the cattle stalls two feet 

 deep of almost clear dung, witli the hinder 

 part of the animal at least one foot higher 

 thau tlie front pan, and the cattle being 

 driven out the pasture field with iiuantities of 

 fresh dung htinging to their flanks, whicli 

 from day to day received layor upon layor un- 

 til it was one disgusting mass, and was left 

 there until it became dry and hard and fell oil' 

 in flakes of its own action. The litter— about 

 a fourth of the quantity cattle now receive — 

 consisted of the stalks of cornfodder which 

 could not be eaten, the weeds left in the hay, 

 the rakings of dirty straw lying about thg 

 outbuildings, and sometimes mixed with a 

 few leaves fiom the woods. The food of the 

 dairy cows consisted of musty corn-fooder, 

 second crop clover and orchaid-grass, badly 

 cured, chaff from the wiunowings of the 

 theresbcd grain, o;Us straw, &c. The cows 

 were of co rse as thin almost as skeletons, 

 and their product of poor milk was about one- 

 half of what would liave been obtained from 

 inoperly-fed cattle. The fact is that tlie farmer 

 took no pride in his live stock. The idea of 

 giving them clean stalls, good ventilation and 

 nourishing food, never entered his thoughts, 

 and if it did would have been regarded as an 

 utter waste of money, without any return. 



But look at the slffliles now of the dairy- 

 stock ! Their stalls are wide, clean and fresh, 

 the cattle themselves .are bright and .sleek, 



with no projecting ribs, and pleasant to han- 

 dle. Well-fed, comfortable in cvery-way, and 

 giving two or three times the (piantity of milk 

 and as rich as it is abundant. The butter 

 from such cows commands twice the price 

 fram its careful manufacture and uniform ex- 

 cellence. At the present time al.so the farm- 

 er feels more pride in his dairy stock than in 

 anything else upon his farm. He finds that 

 they give a double return for all the extra care 

 and cost of their improved treatment, and 

 that he has nothing upon his premises that 

 pays him so well in every respect as they. 



Finding so satisfactory a return from this 

 part of his stock, he extends this extra care 

 in bis purchases of slieei) and swine, and after 

 a few years of trial he discovers that they pay 

 equally well in proportion as his cows. And 

 iu this way his improved .system of husbandry 

 progresses from year to year, and his methods 

 are patterns for his neighbors, until a wliole 

 di.strict is revolutionized and the old harum- 

 scarum ways are utterly abandoned. 



WORTHLESS DOGS. 



Some heartless wietch has been putting out 

 poison again, and this time Mr. Ferguson's 

 dog Daisy is the victim. We have no doubt 

 that any one of the poor brutes thus destroyed 

 were of infinitely more value to the communi- 

 ty than the cowardly carcass of the destroyer. 

 — Pataha Sjtirit. 



This is drawing it pretty strong, and we 

 should jniL'e that the writer w^as an ardent 

 lover of dog-flesh or entertained a desired 

 spite at some suspected party. In any event 

 he is a little too harsh. If the truth was 

 known we should learn, no doubt, that the 

 lamented curs were molesting some poor, liard- 

 working fanner's sheep, who, becoming ex- 

 asperated, put out iioison in .self-defense. It 

 would be a blessing to the country at large if 

 there were more men with nerve enough to 

 do just what this one has done. True, a good 

 and valuable dog might occasionally l>e 

 brouglit to an untimely end, but the country 

 would soon be relieved of one of the greatest, 

 if not the greatest, drawbacks to sheep hus- 

 bandry. In Ohio it has been estimated by 

 competent authority, that the lo.s." sustained 

 by slieep raisers fiom the dei)redations of 

 dogs alone would fully reach the handsome 

 sum of W\000 annually. This estimate 

 might safely be applied to the Pacific Coast 

 in proportionable ratio— as no country can 

 produce so many worthless curs to the popu- 

 lation. A prominent sheep raiser once told 

 us that if people would take care of their 

 dogs he could take care of the wolves, it hav- 

 ing been argued that were it not for the dogs 

 (hounds) the wolves would destroy all the 

 sheep in the community. A good dog is a 

 valuable animal, but he should be looked 

 after by his owner just as much as a herds- 

 man looks after his herd, it will bsbetterfor all 

 concerned. We cannot blame the half-starved 

 dogs that run about .seeking something to 

 eat ; it is the masters who are to blame and 

 should be made to stand the damage done. 



THE BLACK WALNUT. 

 An address delivered last winter by W. H. 

 Ragan, .secretary of the ludiana Horticultu- 

 ral Society, on cultivating the black walnut 

 for profit, contains so much that is valuable 



