360 



THE ILLINOIS FAEMEK. 



Dec. 



Mansfieiri sent out some 500 poiinds of sorphurri 

 sugar made upon it. Hopes of agriculturists re- 

 kindled. Many planted, and in 1^59, the u?e of 

 700 Cook Evaporators demonstrated tlie success 

 of the sorgho experiment. Acres were multiplied 

 in 1860. and over ]800 evaporators yielded about 

 2,000,000 gallons of uirup, thus saving the North 

 a million of dollars on a single article of house- 

 hold n'~cpssity. Is not sorghum one of the farm- 

 er's true friends in war and hard times? — Herald, 

 Cleveland, Ohio. 



— The above facts may be of interest to our 

 farmers, and we can assure them that we of Illi- 

 nois are not lagging behind — scarcely a neigh- 

 borhood but has its one, two, or three mills fcr 

 making sorghum sirup. 



At the State Fair, we saw one of Cook's Evap- 

 orators in operation ; there can be no doubt as 

 to its VMlue in sirup making over any that we 

 have seen iu operation, except perhaps, those 

 using s'eam. Tiiey make a superior anijle of 

 sirup, are cheap and durable, and have become 

 the most popular. In tlis county several of 

 them are in use; others use evaporafois made 

 with sheet iron bottoms, and wooden sides, th«sc 

 answer a tolerable purpose, but do not make so 

 nice an article as Cook's. Eu. 



A Grain Binder. 



There was one mach.ine wiiich attracted con- 

 siderable attention, and from all that we could 

 gather ot farmers piesent who had used it, meri- 

 ted »11 thf^t it rcc ived. ^Ye refer to a siiip'e, yet 

 nondescript machine called Biunsou's grain bind- 

 er. 1'his hinder is attached to a leaper, and en- 

 ables one mail to bind the grain as fast as it i:^ 

 delivered to him by the raker, without leaving 

 the plitlurui at all. It will be at, once apparent 

 that t'lis not only is a gre-it saving of grain, but 

 a gf-eat saving of labor. The material of which 

 the baud is made Is of small annealed wire, which 

 costs but a trifle — filtesn or twenty cents worth 

 being sufiicient to bind an acre of grain. The 

 sheaves : re bound of any size from a diameter of 

 a quarter of an inch to one of fourteen inches. 

 It is not 'ifficult to operate this machine, and an 

 imporir.ut advantage which is secured \)y their 

 use is best expressed by the language of a farmer 

 ■who had used one, and said to the writer, '-We 

 have got the-e hired men with their high wages 

 in harvest time in a ti^ht place, sir. Thej' can't 

 dictate ter.ms to us any longer, and compel us to 

 surrender at discretion. Neither are we com- 

 pelled to make slaves of our families in order to 

 feed half a score of hungry men. We can do 

 our harvest with the help we ordinarily use on 

 the farm, and without waste, too." That is about 

 as concise a statement of its advantages as a man 

 could make. It has now been used two seasons, 

 and all experiments have been made with a view 

 to its perfection, and al' suggested improvements 

 are at once adopted, if well established. We ex- 



pect it, or some binder, will becom" as essential 

 to the western farmer as the reaper now is. 



— The above we clip from the correspondence 

 of C. D. Br.-igdon, the western editor of the 

 Rural Xew Yorker. We have carefully examined 

 several of these binders, and os yet have seen 

 nothing to give us any encouragement in that di- 

 rection. Straw bands, put on with human hands, 

 will hardly be superseded by wire and iron mus- 

 cles. 



«•» 



A Few Words about Sheep. 



Last fall, several thousand fine-wool sheep were 

 brought, into this section from the east aud sold 

 nt high prices. Nothing was tjilked of but sheep. 

 No other farm stock was so protit;ible. It was 

 so profitable. It was with difficulty we could 

 dissuade one of our Iriends trom purchasing a 

 large fl ck. lie had caught the fever The in- 

 crease of lambs lie said, wduld pay for the keep, 

 and tlie wool and motion would be c ear profit. 

 We argued that when everybody was buying sheep, 

 tliat it was a poor time fur him to bu3'. No 

 dotibt, we said, sheep were a pre fi able stock, 

 but it is possible to p^y too much for them. Peo- 

 ple seem to move like the pendulum of a clock, 

 from one extreme to tlie other. Like sheer, when 

 one junip-^ the whole flock jumps — and that 

 whether there is anything to jump over or not. 



Tliis season wool has been very low, and now 

 these same men who were so sa guine of the 

 profits rf sheep, will viispose of their fl'icks and 

 go into some other business. Such ficklcn ss in 

 intelligent men would be a ni-tter of surprise 

 were it not so common. True, sh-ep have nut 

 paid much the present year ; but is n)t the same 

 true of cattle, of tlie culture of grains, and of 

 the dairy business? To those who steadily pur- 

 sue the business, slieep jiave probibly been as 

 profitable as any other branch of agriculture. 



If tliere were good rea-st n^ for Keeping sheep 

 last fall, there are good reasons now. Wnol is 

 low, but so is everything else. It is a great folly 

 to sacrifice the sheep as wc fear many will do. 

 Like everything else, wool cannot long remain 

 below the cos.t of production. It will ^nd its 

 level This country has never prnducpd more 

 wool than is needed, and will not do so for many 

 years to come. 



It is perhaps true that coarser wools will be 

 more in demand than formetly, and that they 

 will command a relatively higher price than those 

 of finer quality. This is the case at present, 

 owing to the demand for army cloth, and it may 

 be that in future it will be more fashionable to 

 Avear a coarser cloth than it has been for some 

 years past. In England, fine cloth is not as gen- 

 erally worn as it was twenty fivey-ears ago, and we 

 think there is a tendency here in the same direc- 

 tion. It has been for a year or two rather fash- 

 ionable to wear coarser cloths for business suits. 

 This may not materially affect the demand for 

 fine wool, but it would certainly give us a good 

 price for the common qua'ities. 



