Pboceedings of the Farmers' Club. 425 



with stumps. The fruit grows as large again as it does in a wild 

 state. The vines send out runners from two to three feet each year 

 until the ground becomes covered. 



CIDER VINEGAR. 



Mr. S. Burnett, Vincennes, Ind. — In September, when my apples 

 be^in to fall, I make them into cider. Taking: a barrel of fine 

 cider vinegar, I draw oflf one-half of it and fill up the barrel with 

 new cider. In six weeks it is ready for market. In cold weather 

 it requires more time. Old vinegar and a sour barrel will be cer- 

 tain to do the work if the air can have free access to the contents. 



Mr. A. Tufts, Centralia, Marion county, 111. — One year ago last 

 October, I made a barrel of cider, put a bottle in the bung-hole, 

 and placed it on the south side of a building exposed to the sun. 

 In a week I drew it off very slowly (to expose it to the atmos- 

 phere) into tubs, let it remain four hours, and returned it to the 

 barrel. Ten days after I repeated the process, and when it was 

 seven weeks old I sold it to a grocer for good vinegar, and it was 

 good, an article very seldom to be bought at the groceries. I did 

 the same thing several times before, with the same success. 



CLOVER. 



Dr. J. E. Snodgrass read the following paper on clover as a 

 fertilizer in the Shenandoah valley: 



Inquiries are not unfrequently made by the " outside members" 

 of the Club, as we sometimes designate our more constant corre- 

 spondents, concerning clover as a fertilizer; and when the subject 

 of this plant is thus brought up for discussion, questions touching 

 the management of it have been put, by some of the most intelli- 

 gent of our inside members, which denote a want of light on it by 

 not a few otherwise well-informed agriculturists in this section of 

 the country. Under these circumstances, I have thought it might 

 be well enough to put on paper some of the results of ni}^ own 

 experience, as a farmer in the Shenandoah valley, and of my obser- 

 vation in other portions of the country, where what is known in 

 the South as red clover, is generally used as a fertilizer, as well as 

 a food, with unquestioned success. 



Years having elapsed since the facts of my experience were gath- 

 ered, I thought it safest to be reassured, and therefore I opened a 

 correspondence with my farm overseer, or farmer, as he would be 

 classed in the North (Mr. Jacob S. Strayer, of Martinsburg, in 

 what is now West Virginia), and also with another gentleman — to 



