172 
THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
of this fact, I have used it among my cattle three 
times per week, mixed with salt, for three or 
four years. In that lime I have not lost a sin- 
gle COW', or ." teer, or ox, by this disease; in the 
meantime, some of my neighbors have lost near- 
ly all the cattle they owned. 
I will give you a stronger case than the one 
above mentioned. One of my neighbors who 
lost all his cattle, had a neighbor living within 
two hundred yards ot him, who had several cat- 
tle which ran daily with those that died, and his 
cattle all escaped. He informed me that he 
made it an invariable rule to giv'e his cattle sal. 
and lime every morning. 
I have no doubt it is a sure and infallible re- 
medy for bots in horses, and a preventive of 
murrain among cattle. J. W. J. 
C O iVI M U N 1 C A T I O N S . 
Sta.vfordville, Putnam County, ) 
October 17, 1843. J 
Messrs. Editors— As I have seen no piece in 
your valuable paper on the subject of making 
pork, and curing and preserving bacon, I shall 
undertake, in this communication, to give you 
my practice in that branch of husbandry, and 
will say, in the outset, that if “A Lover of Good 
Ham,” or any one else, has ever tasted of better 
ham than I can show at this lime, they have ate 
of ham that was not preserved in a Southern 
climate. As to my own part, I have never seen 
better — not even the Baltimore and Smithfield 
cured hams. 
On the subject of making pork, I shall have 
but little to say, except that hogs intended ior 
pork, the ensuing winter, should be kept in a 
thriving condition, from the time they have the 
benefit of the harvest-fields. My practice is to 
keep them in growing order, and the first field 
of corn I gather, which is in September, 1 
separate the hogs intended for pork, and give 
them the pick of the field; always having an- 
other field ready by the time they have consum- 
ed the peas, &c. on the first; in addition to this, 
I give them one feed of corn per day, with salt 
about three limes a week. By the time they 
have had the run of all my corn and pea-fields, 
in this way, it will be the last of November or 
first of December. (I will here say that 1 ne- 
ver suffer my stock hogs to go into my pea-fields, 
as it ultimately proves to their injury.) I then 
get them in a small lot and feetl them on corn to 
harden their fat. I now have a place for scald- 
ing, &c. put in readiness, as the hogs are by this 
ime fat; and by no means miss the first weather 
that will be sale to kill hogs after they have been 
in close feed a few days. And for the purpose 
of saving the offal, Slz. well, and doing every 
thing in good order, I slaughter about half; al- 
ways selecting the best. Then put every thing 
in order for the next killing, which I have done 
in from 10 to 15 days. By making two killings 
of my pork, I manage the whole business in 
belter order than I could do if I had it all on 
hand at once. 
If the weather is unfavorable for saving pork, 
I have always found it best to kill in the eve- 
ning, and let the hogs hang out all night. By so 
doing the cutting up is performed much easieri 
and the pieces can be cut smooth and nice, 
which is very important. In this case I have 
the meat salted up as fast as it is cut out; but 
if the pork 4s killed in the morning, I have it 
cut out late in the evening, and spread on the 
smoke-house floor, on boards, tor the night, and 
sprinkle a little salt over it, to draw out the 
bloody w'ater, and early the next morning I have 
it all taken up and salted well; first trimming 
every piece smooth and nice, by taking off' the 
little fragments, &c., and am sure to have more 
salt put on than the meat will take in — then I 
know there is no lack for salt. In cutting out 
mj' pork, I make but six pieces of a hog alter 
the head is taken off, viz: two hams, two shoul- 
ders, and two sides, and do not take the ribs 
from the side pieces, as doing so is an injury to 
the balance by giving it a chance to rust where 
the ribs come from. 
In salting, I use about half a pound of salt- 
petre to a 1000 lbs pork, (only on the hams and 
jowls from 1000 lbs.) and I always use hogs- 
heads to salt the hams in. If I have not hogs- 
heads enough to hold all my pork, I use boxes 
for the sides; but have always found meat to do 
better to lie in the brine than to have the brine 
drip from it. It depends on the weather as to 
the length of time I let pork lie in brine. In 
common weather four weeks is enough, if it be 
very cold five weeks is best, if it be a warm 
lime, three weeks will do. To make good ba- 
con, pork should be killed early enough to go 
through the salting process by the first of Janu- 
ary, by which time it should be hung up to cure. 
1 salt my meat in one house and cure it in an- 
other. The only particular advantage that I 
know of in this is, that the first killing of pork 
can be curing while the other is in salt. My 
meat being hung up, (for this a dry, windy time 
is best,) after the first day I have a smoke under 
it every day, (except it be a very dry, windy 
time,) till it is thoroughly cured, which will be 
by the last of February; about which time, and 
that the dryest day we can get, we have as much 
of it taken down as we wish, and have plenty 
of good hickory ashes sprinkled on the flesh 
side of each piece, and have as many shelves, 
at a convenient height round the smoke-house, 
as are wanting to lay up each piece ot bacon, 
side by side, with the skin side down. There is 
nothing more to be done till this bacon is want- 
ed lor use, except about mid-summer it may be 
examined to see if any worms have collected 
under it; if so, they must be killed. As to 
skippers, they have not been known in our bacon 
for years. The bacon we leave hanging we 
have smoked occasionally with very fine chips, 
and sprinkle a small quantity of ground sul- 
phur over each parcel of chips. This wdll 
clean out the flies, &c. 
If any one of your readers should object to 
the use of ashes on bacon, as it is hard to clean 
off, I would advise them to put their bacon 
down in salt or charcoal, either of which is, per- 
haps, preferable to ashes; but in the use of either 
boxes must be used instead of shelves. 1 should 
have used salt long before now to keep bacon in, 
but never can have it ready for the purpose. 
I must now say something about the $moke- 
house, as with a shackling, open house, I con- 
sider it almost impossible to make arid save 
good bacon. To all others I prefer a framed 
one, closely weatherboarded, well shingled, and 
so close in every particular, that a fly canno* 
find its way in wd'ien the door is shut. My own 
is prett}'' much of this order, and is rat-proof 
To make a smoke-house rai-proof is very im- 
portant, as rats are very destructiv'e in a meat 
house, and the object is easily accomplished and 
the building costs but a trifle more. It is done 
by having two sets of .‘^ills, and letting one set 
in the ground, and placing the other set, with 
which the house is framed, on the set that is let 
in the ground, then weatherboard from the upper 
edge of the lower sills; ram the dirt well to the 
outside, and drive thin heart plank and confine 
to the sills on the inside, taking care to ram the 
dirt well round the inside, and if the door and 
weatherboarding be well done, and the roof be 
tight as It should be, 1 will warant that a rat ne- 
ver gets in before the shingles rot so that he can 
cut them. 
Allow me, in conclu.sion, to inform your cor- 
respondent A. B. L., of Newnan, that I shall 
comply, in a short time, with his request, and 
give him my method of ditching hill sides. 
Yours, respectfully, 
John Farrar, 
Bibb County, September 29, 1843. 
Gentlemen — If there is any thing desirable in 
life, it is to improve in every thing that is bene- 
ficial to, or that tends to better the condition of 
mankind. The man who takes no interest in 
the great improvements that are, and have been, 
going on for a series of years, must be a strange 
being. In the last fifty years, the farmers and 
mechanics have carried their improvements to 
an extent alike honorable to themselves and 
beneficial to mankind. I am now receiving a- 
paper from Boston in less time, perhaps, than I 
could have received one from Savannah thirty 
years ago. So much for improvement and en 
terprize. But with such facts as this, and a 
thousand others of the kind, before our eyes, 
we find men among us that are not only idle, and 
doing nothing to advance this great work of im- 
provement, but are actually doing what they 
can to retard its advancement. This is certain- 
ly strange. Wealth is the fruit of labor; — if, 
therefore, labor is properly directed, it must in- 
crease the wealth of the country. I have seen 
many strange things in life, but the way that 
agriculture, agricultural improvement, and ag- 
ricultural papers are treated among us, is cer- 
tainly one of the strangest things I ever saw. It 
is admitted that agriculture is of more impor- 
tance, in a pecuniary point of view, to the peo- 
ple of Georgia, than any thing else, or, perhaps, 
than every thing else, and after all there is little 
done to improve it. I have long thought that 
one of the great causes of so much idleness and 
vice among us is, the slovenly manner in which 
agriculture is conducted among us. When a 
youth is called upon to display his physical pow- 
ers under circumstances that promise nothing 
but endless labor, without either profit or plea- 
sure, it is not strange if he becomes disgusted 
with such prospects, and, in the end, becomes an 
abandoned victim of vice — indeed, it is just 
what we might expect, according to the common 
law' of cause and effect. I wish that parents 
