IS 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[Jantjabt, 
On a farm properly furuished -svith cellars and 
sheds, of course all implements should be kept 
under cover at all seasons. They ought to be 
off the ground, the wood-work, except handles 
of tools, well painted, and the iron-work painted 
or protected by a simple coating of boiled lin- 
8eed-oiI. But the question may be asked how 
may a farmer protect his implements and ma 
chiuery, when he has not suitable buildings 
which can be appropriated to such a purpose. 
There are several ways in which it )nay be done 
very satisfactorily. The former on the prairies 
with no out-buildings or lumber to make them, 
can set two rows of posts in the ground, about 
16 feet apart, and saw off the tops square about 
three or four feet high, i)in a pole on each row 
of posts for plates, make rafters of poles, and 
pin them to the plates, and split out thin rails 
and pin them to the rafters about one foot apart, 
then cover the whole witli straw two feet thick. 
The straw should be spread on very evenly, and 
after it has settled down and the surface is wet, 
raked lightly so as to turn all the straws on the 
surface down, to carr3'off the rain. The rafters 
should have about " one-third pitcli." This 
will be sufficiently steep to carry off all the rain. 
By nailing or pinning thin rails, like collar 
beams, from one rafter to another, and making 
a straw floor, an excellent warm apartment may 
be made for fowls of any kind. Even geese and 
ducks will ascend to it, cu an inclined plane. 
Such a frame may also be covered with fence 
boards, or saw-log slabs, and subserve an excel- 
lent purpose for protecting tools. If it should 
not carry off every drop of rain, it need not be 
denounced. It is the drying wind and sunshine, 
not rain alone, that injures implements. 
Suspended Bar for Barn-doors. 
Large barn-doors are usually ^fastened to 'a 
perpendicular bar one end of wliicU enters a 
mortise in the beam over head and the other a 
mortise in the floor. The strength of a man is 
generally required to take out the bar, or put 
it up. Our illustration shows a more conveni- 
ent way to manage tlie cross-bar. A round iron 
bolt holds the bar to the middle rail of the door, 
allowing it to turn freely either way. Two long 
gains, one in the floor and the other in the beam 
above the doors, receive the ends of the bar 
when the door supporting the bar is closed. In 
lieu of a gain in the beam over head, a strip of 
scantling is pinned firmlv to the under side of 
the beam, and the upper end of the cross-liar 
•when set erect, comes on the inside of the strip. 
Killing and Scalding^ Hogs. 
J. Comfort, writing from Cumberland Co., Pa., 
gives his process of killing and scalding hogs, 
which has much to recommend it, as follows: 
" I have frequently thought of writing a word 
on the easiest, quickest and most humane man- 
ner of slaughtering hogs. I take any kind of 
5CAI.D1NG HOOS. 
gun that will go "loose," load with, say one 
third charge of powder and a 'plug of hard 
wood, about an inch long and the thickness of 
the ramrod. This I shoot directly into the centre 
of the forehead of tlie hog, and he drops at once. 
The head is not injured, as to meat ; there is no 
danger of the hog biting you. You have no 
hard tugging and lifting to catch and throw 
them, both of which are hard and dangerous 
work, and the hogs will bleed out better, as tlie 
nervous system receives so sudden a sliock, that 
they are not able to draw the blood into the 
lungs, in case the wind-pipe should be cut in 
sticking. It is easy to picture laying hogs on 
their backs, but try it one year ana try shooting 
next, and my word for it, your pen will ever after- 
ward be free from squealing on butchering day. 
" Now as to our metiiod of scalding hogs. 
We set two posts about twelve feet long, in- 
cluding two feet in tlie ground, and about twelve 
feet apart, and connect tlieni by a lieam on top. 
Under this beam, and near one post, I sink an 
ordinary half-hogshead in the ground, and place 
a pulley on tlie beam directly over it, and 
another puUej' on the side and near the bottom 
of the adjacent post. A rope is passed through 
these and attached to the hog's hind leg, and 
then he may be easily hauled up and dropped 
into the tub, then taken out to air and clean ; 
and lastly he may be hoisted up and hooked on 
to the beam by chains to hang. Such beams may 
be arrauged to hang as many hogs as you ma}' 
wish to slay. A common barrel kettle kept boil- 
ing will keep the water in the scalding tub hot 
enongli, by adding hot auet lakiug out cold, to 
continue scalding an indefinite time; all with 
little cost, little fuel, little lifting, and Uie kill- 
ing with little suffering to the animal. All 
tilings considered, this is the best mode I ever 
saw or used for killing and scalding hogs." 
Western Agrictilture. 
J. Wcltou, writing from Winnebago Co., Ill, 
some months since, says : " When I read 
' Western Boy's'' dashing averments in July 
Aineriean Agriculturist of their doings in 
Lasalle Co., I noticed he failed to tell anything 
about the amount of their products per acre in 
that section of our prolific State. The remarks 
of 'C. S. W.,' of Iowa, ill your August number 
are so important, frank and truthful, that I 
would olfer a few in the same spirit. 
" I am constrained to say, that a moiety of the 
farming operations in Northern Illinois are by for 
more slovenly and unproductive, than I ever 
noticed in other Northern States, though our 
natural resources greatly surpass most of them. 
Thirty years ago I visited on the banks of the 
Illinois river, and travelled more or less in La- 
salle and Putnam counties. There the weeds 
were so abundant in some places as to prevent 
one on horseback, from seeing an ox, when 
within a few rods, but the pioneers there know 
how to produce very large ears of corn. Four 
years since I was again travelling near the 
Illinois river, in Putnam county, passing an ex- 
tensive corn-field, in which stalks and weeds 
appeared much more abundant than ears. I 
asked three men, who were cutting up and put- 
ting it into stocks; 'How much more than 
twenty bushels to the acre will this field of com 
average ? The ready response was : ' That it 
would fall short of that by more than one halll' 
with which I fully coincided. 
"I have for many years regarded Indian com 
as preeminently the Western Farmer's crop, and 
it will be difficult to find anywhere a soil and 
climate better adapted to the profitable growth 
of the stalwart plant, than that of our whole 
State, and yet, I am fully persuaded, that the 
two most northerly counties, through whicli 
Rock River runs, have not, for the last eighteen 
}-ears, averaged 25 bushels or even 20 bushels of 
merchantable corn per acre, counting all the 
lands each year, that have been planted in corn, 
though in that time it may have averaged fifty 
busliel basketfuls of ears and nubbins. Never- 
theless, I firnilj' believe, before ten years shall 
have elapsed, that all our well-to-do farmers, 
instead of being satisfied with thirty or forty 
bushels per acre, will not then publish about 
their success iu corn growing, if it falls short of 
seventi/ bushels, and that then more Illinois 
fiirraers will tell how much their corn crop ex- 
ceeded eighty, than can now boast of growing 
over forty busliels per acre, and that th^n, in- 
stead as now, of growing the smaller varieties, 
so as to escape a killing frost, they will grow 
the larger kinds of dent corn, and have their 
whole fields out of the reach of killing frosts 
before the 13th of September, whether the sea- 
sons may prove wet or dry. Of course, the 
above assumptions becoming established facts 
before ten years have passed, most Illinois 
f irmers will have abandoned growing wheat at 
the rate of from three to thirteen bushels per 
acre, to send 4000 miles, to exchange for the 
light fabrics of foreign shops. Therefore : 
" Let lUinoisans, whose lands abound in clay 
subsoils, plow them in the fall not less than 
eight or nine inches deep, while the ground ia 
warm enough to cause the weed seeds to germi- 
nate. Select the eight-rowed corn as early as the 
first week in September, and by all means (not 
ol.ijecting to have it kiln dried) have it dry, cob 
and all before any frost can reach it. If such 
corn ground be prepared in spring and the seed 
drilled in in good time and in the best manner, 
rolling the ground if need be, and liarrowing 
and cultivating it sufficiently, with good 
imijlcments, not using a hoe at all, the farmers 
may rationally hope to gather more than twice 
the usual average crop of sound corn, pro- 
vided always the}' succeed in having only just 
a proper number of plants to a given area." 
