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THE LANCASTER FARMER 



[May, 



Widgeon, from 65 to 60 miles an hour. 



Wood duck, from 55 to 60 miles an hour. 



Gadwall, from 60 to 70 miles an hour. 



Redhead, from SO to 90 miles an hour. 



Blue wingtail, from 80 to 100 miles an hour. 



Green wingtail, from SO to 100 miles an 



Broadbill, from 85 to 110 miles an hour. 



Canvas back, from 85 to 120 miles an hour. 



Wild geese, fi-om 80 to 90 miles an hour. 



For the above table I aai indebted to Mr. 

 D. W. Cross, an old duck shooter and a care- 

 ful student of the habits of water fowl. I 

 have not the slightest hesitancy in believing 

 him right, for the experience of others with 

 whom I have shot ducks, coupled with my 

 own more than corrobrates the assertions. 

 When I have held ahead of a string of blue 

 bills, say at least ten feet and kill the fourth 

 or fifth duck in the string, I have been strong- 

 ly impressed that the speed they were flying 

 was like the traditional greased lightning, re- 

 membering that the charge of shot left my 

 gun (No. 4 shot, say,) with an initial velocity 

 of 1,800 to 2,000 feet per second. It will be 

 seen that long experience and good judgment 

 is necessary to know where to hold the gun 

 in order to become a good duck shot. — Pitts- 

 burg Chronicle. 



MY EIGHT-ACRE FARMING. 



Eight acres of sandy loam, light, fine and 

 level, all in one piece near the house and barn ; 

 no stone, no fences, no waste, every foot tilla- 

 ble, no time lost in going to and from work ; 

 horse, wagons, harness and tools, last indefi- 

 nitely, having the least wear and tear possi- 

 ble. Having a good market near for vege- 

 tables and a good one for milk at the door, I 

 raise both, and so one thing helps another on 

 land and in market. Having the land and 

 market and the crops to be raised decided 

 upon, the course is open to success, if the land 

 is worked right. A small farm is no disgrace ; 

 it takes more brains to work a small than a 

 large one and get a living from it. 



My father said to his son more than a score 

 of years ago : 



"• You have too little land ; no man yet 

 ever got rich from his own labor ; do not spend 

 your time trading around in a half-bushel 

 measure ; sell out ; get more land and do a 

 business that amounts to something." 



Very good advice to a man with money to 

 pay for a big farm. But all cannot have big 

 farms ; a place in this world is left and must 

 be filled by the small landholder who can only 

 buy a small tract, but who has the sagacity to 

 see that it will answer his purpose in the line 

 of agriculture. Land there is, and plenty of 

 it, for all ; but it is only the right use of it 

 which brings success. 



A neighbor of mine thrives on his farm of 

 twenty acres, makes money and lends it to his 

 neighbors who have more land than they own. 

 He was warned he would starve on his barren 

 land by those who are now borrowing his 

 money. Another neighbor finds sixteen acres 

 of the best of land too little to furnish three 

 persons a living. I have received letters ask- 

 ing how it is that I raise so much, on so small 

 a surface. To all inquirers I say, "Come 

 and see." We are in operation summer and 

 winter, and always busy. Just now we have 

 three cows ; sell milk at four cents per quart 

 at the door ; market $10 worth of vegetables 



a week ; run a small hot-house, and a month 

 later shall have hotbeds in operation. Not 

 much cost for help either ; I have in the 

 family a boy fifteen years old ; he and I do all 

 the work this winter and have time to play. 



Do I raise all I feed the cows V No. Why 

 should I. With the best sweet-corn fodder % 

 per ton, delivered ; bran, $20 per ton, and 

 cottonseed and corn meal cheap at retail ; I 

 can buy feed cheaper than I can raise it. I 

 house for winter use from eight to ten tons of 

 hay, etc., from my four acres in grass; but 

 that is not enough. I have manure, all of 

 which goes back to the garden ; and the crops 

 are good, as you can well believe. There is no 

 time of leisure. Every month of the year 

 is full of work which pays, and yet we 

 have time to rest. We rise at sunrise and 

 stop work at sunset all the year round ; no 

 haste ; but just enough pressure of work to 

 keep one alert, active, and moving steadily 

 on.— TF. H. Bull, West Springfield, 3Iass. 



SPARE THE TOADS. 



There is no better abused, and probably no 

 more useful creature in the garden and upon 

 the farm than the toad. The apt simile, 

 " like a toad under a harrow," tells the story 

 of his wrongs. And now that our harrows 

 are armed with steel teeth, and are supple- 

 mented with clod crushers and cultivators of 

 various types for comminuting the soil, the 

 sorrows of the toad are intensified, and he is 

 threatened with extinction in all cultivated 

 fields. Stay thy hand from slaughter, tiller of 

 the soil. The toad is as useful in his place as 

 the implements of tillage you drive over his 

 back so thoughtlessly. " The jewel in his 

 head" is not tbeie, but in his capacious 

 stomach, that always has room in it for one 

 more bug, one more worm, that destroys the 

 food of man. Watch his habits for a day, and 

 observe the lightning thrusts of his tongue as 

 he scoops in your enemies, and you will have 

 a better appreciation of his work, and of his 

 place in good husbandry. If your gf^rden is 

 without toads you can aflbrd to purchase them 

 for stock. They pay good dividends, as surely 

 as superphosphate. — American Agriculturist. 



HOW TO COOK AN OLD HEN. 

 I may, however, mention an experiment 

 that I made lately. I kill a superannuated 

 hen— more than sis years old, but otherwise 

 in very good condition. Cooked in the ordin- 

 ary way she would have been uneatably 

 tough. Instead of being thus cooked, she 

 was gently stewed about four hours. I can 

 not guarantee to the maintenance of the 

 theoretical temperature, having suspicion of 

 same simmering. After this she was left in 

 ihe water until it cooled, and on the following 

 day was roasted in the usual manner, i. e., in 

 a roasting oven. The result was excellent ; 

 as tender as a full-grown chicken roasted in 

 the ordinary way, and of quite equal flavor, 

 in spite of the very good broth obtained by 

 the preliminary stewing. This surprised me. 

 I anticipated the softening of the tendons and 

 ligaments, b^it supposed that the extraction 

 of the juices would have spoiled the flavor. It 

 must have diluted it, and that so much re- 

 mained was probably due to the fact that an 

 old fowl is more fully flavored than a young 

 chicken. The usual farmhouse method of 



cooking old hens is to stew them simply ; the 

 rule in the midlands being one hour in the 

 pot for every year of age. The feature of the 

 above experiment was the supplementary 

 roasting. As the laying .season is now com- 

 ing to au end, old hens will soon be a drug in 

 the market, and those among my readers who 

 have not a hen-roost of their own will oblige 

 their poulterers by ordering a hen that is war- 

 i-anted to be tour years old or upward. If he 

 deals fairly he will supply a specimen upon 

 which they may repeat my expeaiment, very 

 cheaply. It offers the double economy of 

 utilizing a nearly waste product and obtaining 

 chicken broth and roast fowl simultaneously. 

 — Pnprdar Science Monthly. 



THE USE OF A DRY WELL. 

 There are certain household wastes which 

 can not be fed to the poultry or pigs, cannot 

 be burned, and will not decay on the compost 

 heap. These, in a country place, where the 

 cart of the city scavenger is unknown, will 

 accumulate. The articles we refer to are old 

 fruit cans ; tinware, past mending; saucepans, 

 which a crack has rendered useless ; old bot- 

 tles and leaky stoneware jugs and jars. These 

 and others will accumulate, and a proper re- 

 gard for neatness forbids following a too com- 

 mon custom of throwing them into the road. 

 If a rubbish heap is established in an out of 

 the way place, enterprising boys will find it 

 and scatter its accumulations. There is but 

 one efl'ective way to dispose of rubbish of this 

 discription — bury it. A dry well is a useful 

 adjunct to every neatly kept country place, be 

 it large or small. In an out of the way corner 

 dig a well or pit, cover it with pieces of plank 

 too heavy for children to remove, and drop 

 into this all kinds of indestructible rubbish, 

 When this well, which need be but a few feet 

 deep, is partly filled, dig another near by, 

 using the earth taken out to cover the rub- 

 bish in well number oue. This effectually 

 disposes of the unsightly accumulations of 

 rubbish, while the amount of labor required 

 is not large, and the incidental drainage af- 

 forded may be beneficial. — American Agricul- 

 turist. 



PRESERVING SALT MEAT. 

 Much of the corned beef and salt pork put 

 up by farmers becomes tainted or completely 

 spoiled during the summer and fall. The in- 

 jury is not caused by using too small an 

 amount of salt. As a rule, much more 

 is employed than is necessary to preserve the 

 meat. Sometimes it contains impurities that 

 cause the meat to contract a bad flavor. Pure 

 salt should be employed for preserving meat 

 and dry products. It costs but little more 

 than that which is impure, and it is more 

 satisfactory in all respects. Meat packed in 

 a barrel and covered with brine becomes 

 tainted or spoiled in consequence of small 

 portions of it or some of the fat or blood it< 

 contains coming to the top of the brine. 

 The air comes in contact with it there, 

 and decomposition takes place. The products 

 of the decomposition of animal substances al- 

 ways have an unpleasant taste and smell, and 

 these in the case of meat in a barrel are com- 

 municaated to the brine and from thence to ; 

 the meat. Meat packed in brine should be 

 cut in pieces with a very sharp knife. This 



