332 
AMEBICAGRIOULTUEIST.- 
[August, 
Among the Farmers. 
New Series.—No. 4. 
COL. MASON C. WELD. 
How to toe of Real Use to One’s Neig'litoors. 
Faniiers are to be depended upon, take them all 
together, to be conservative to the detriment of 
their own interests, even when special effort is 
made to demonstrate to them in a gim-si-benevolent 
way, in what course their real interest lies. The 
only way the agriculture of any long-settled section 
is radically changed,is by individuals coming in,and 
beating the old farmers at their own trade, raising 
better crops, better stock, making better butter and 
■cheese, beef and pork, and of course making more 
money. A man if he really wants to benefit his 
neighbors, makes a great mistake if he undertakes 
to enlighten them, to show or explain his methods, 
theories, etc. No, he must make a mystery of it, 
telling them that they cannot do the same; that 
this and that are his secrets; that they must find 
out for themselves, etc. They must be absolutely 
driven off their own ground before they will 
change. This is actually occurring in all the old¬ 
est and longest settled sections, by the incoming of 
foreigners. The young men have deserted the old 
farms, and all around thrifty foreigners are getting 
possession of them. The Irish—quick, smart, 
practical fellows—get together a little money, buy 
an old place for a little cash, and give a mortgage. 
Things may look like distress, but wife, and boys, 
and girls, all work in the field as well as in-doors, 
and there is money enorigh to meet the interest 
on the mortgage, to keep the family in decent 
■clothes, with a liberal remainder for the chiiVch. 
The German, when he buys, improves things 
Tery fast; everything is neat about his place; his 
living expenses are not half those of an American 
family, and yet he lives better. He has more 
pleasure in his food and in his amusements, and 
more enjoyment with his family, and, as a rule, 
does more reading. He begins with a poor little 
farm, but is ever improving. He goes out to day’s- 
work, while his wife runs the farm. If there is any 
teaming, plowing, digging of cellars, and that sort 
of work, he finds time to do it, and so he turns an 
honest penny wherever he can. He knows that 
manure goes twice as far, aye, ten times as far in a 
liquid, as in a solid state, so his garden, and cab¬ 
bage patch, and tomatoes, and all those half gar¬ 
den crops, are watered with manure water. Thus 
a little manure goes a great way, and he beats the 
whole neighborhood with his “truck,” which pays 
him three or four times as much as any crops the 
native American farmers about him raise. 
Gradually they get into doing similar things on a 
small scale, then on a larger, and finally trucking 
and small fruits, and special crops of one kind and 
another, are, so to sjreak, all the rage. Meanwhile, 
the German has become a rich man, and if he does 
not fall into that besetting sin of thrifty foreigners 
—tavern-keeping, or liquor-selling on a small or 
large scale—he will become a prominent and influ¬ 
ential member of society. Scandinavians, Scotch, 
and Welsh, effect the communities into which they 
come, in very similar, but distinct ways. As a 
rule, I can learn more from Germans and Seotch- 
men, than any other class of foreign farmers. It 
is in raising truck-crops that the Germans excel, 
and it is in live-stock and fodder-crops, that 
the Scotch and English farmers are superior. 
The desire to make money is such an absorbing 
one among the middle class of Great Britain, that 
both Scotch and Welsh are apt to be too sharp, or 
smart for their own good, and this works disadvan- 
tageously to them in many cases, for communities 
soon learn to put themselves on their guard. 
There seems to be less of this sort of thing among 
the English, German and Swedish farmers. 
After all, no new-comer can influence an Ameri¬ 
can community in the Northern and Middle States 
like a progressive American, but as I have already 
intimated, he must not set himself up as an in¬ 
structor, or he might as well teach mules. He will 
have a great deal to contend with. In a real old- 
fogy district, bad roads, poor schools, and either 
Puritanism of a cast-iron stamp, or loose morals 
prevail, and in many sections, both — society being 
divided between the “ Unco Gude,” and those of 
ultra libei'al tendencies, in morals and polities. 
Calves—For tlie Dairy or lor tlie Sliaiiibles. 
I went through, as they say, a lot of veal-calves 
the other day, they were tolerably fat, a uniform 
lot about six to eight weeks old, nearly half heifers. 
It struck me I would see what they promised to 
make if they could become cows, and I was sur¬ 
prised at the number of unusually promising ones. 
There were no Dutch heifers (Holsteins), or half- 
breeds among them. There were many Shorthorns 
and Jerseys, a few evidently of Ayrshire blood, 
and of course a good many—fully one -half—of no 
obvious breed, (natives). Not long before 1 had 
been at one of Kellogg’s sales, and I verily believe 
that I could have picked out from these calves, 
which were all veal before the next day, those 
which w'ould have proved better milkers, if not 
better butter makers, than nine-tenths of those 
sold at one hundred to five hundred dollars each. 
The farmer who does not know enough not to kill 
or sell to the butcher, a calf that w’ill make a 
twenty-quart cowq needs to take lessons of some¬ 
body in the a-b-c of his business. Such a man has 
probably several cows in his herd, which never 
give over ten or twelve quarts of miUc, and very 
likely poor milk at that. 
How to Recognize a Twenty-ttuart Cow 
when she is only six weeks old, is hard to tell, and 
yet I think not so very difficult to do. I do not 
know that I can tell how'. I like a thrifty calf, 
with a good sized head, which is narrow and long, 
broad in the muzzle and betw’een the eyes, and 
narrow between the horns. I do not care if the 
limbs are “ strong,” as they say in Jersey, and per¬ 
haps coarse, but they must be straight; and the 
tail may be even quite coarse at its setting—this 
indicates constitution. Then, from the withers to 
the hips there should be a straight upward slope, so 
marked that if you see the front half of the calf, 
you will think she is a small one, while if you see 
only the hind quarters and loin, you will think her 
very large. In fact, in point of symmetry, the 
front and hind quarters ought not to match, and 
the latter should be by far the larger. I prefer 
long-bodied, open ribbed, flat-sided, deep-bodied 
calves. The skin should be loose and flexible all 
over the body, so that one can grasp a handful al¬ 
most anywhere. The coat must either be long and 
silky, a little rough perhaps, but not harsh, or it 
should be soft and furry. With all this, you should 
find the teats of good size, well spread, and all the 
skin about them, before and behind—that whieh 
will cover the udder—loose, soft, and elastic, show¬ 
ing, as the Scotch say, “plenty of leather.” Such 
a calf will make a good milker if she is bred at a 
year to fifteen months old, and after her first calf 
goes farrow (but not long dry), for a year, or nearly 
that time, to give her a chance to grow. I say 
nothing about the escutcheon, because I do not 
know very much about it, and do not believe in 
half that is said and written about it. Still I must 
say I would prefer a good broad, well-winged es¬ 
cutcheon, of the Flanderine type, for if the es¬ 
cutcheon shows anything, it indicates staying 
power, which is perhaps the greatest merit a cow 
can have. Many a twelve or fourteen-quart cow will 
beat a twenty-quart one in the long run, especially 
in her butter record, the true test of a cow’s value. 
' The amount of butter that a cow will give is in¬ 
dicated by no tell-tale marks that I know of. That 
must be judged by the pedigree and dam’s record, 
if a calf, or by the scales. The unctuous feel of 
the hide, its pliability, the abundance of yolk, (the 
yellow, soapy oil at the roots of the hair inside the 
ear and in the “ butter ball ” in the end of the 
tail) indicate health, and perhaps a tendency to 
fat secretion, either as butter or fat. But some of 
the poorest butter yielders I have ever known, 
showed the most of these qualities, and some of 
the best bad very little to boast of, just enough of 
oil in the skin to indicate good health, and that the 
skin was performing all its important functions well. 
Color in the skin indicates color in the butter. 
I h.ave never seen a yellow-skinned cow, that gave 
pale butter, or a very rich-colored skin in a cow, 
that did not give yellow or yellowish butter all 
through the winter. When the yolk, which gives 
this color in the ears, tail, and skin, begins to 
show in a calf, it will probably never show less, and 
what butter the cow gives will be of good color. 
TUe New Dairy Uaw of New Yorlt. 
I have heard much discussion among farmers in 
regard to the working of the New Dairy Law. 
Some holding it to be impracticable of execution, 
others heartily approving of it. The Law seems to 
me to be a fairly complete one, albeit somewhat 
cumberous, and leaving too much to the interpreta¬ 
tion and decision of the Commissioner. It defines 
clearly what shall be considered as pure and whole¬ 
some milk, stating the quantity of solids, includ¬ 
ing fat, which must be contained in the milk at not 
less than twelve per cent, while the amount of fat 
must not be less than three per cent. Besides it 
declares that milk produced by cows fifteen days 
before, and five days after calving, or by cows fed 
upon food in a state of fermentation or putrefac¬ 
tion, “or upon any unhealthy food whatever,” to 
be unwholesome and impure, without reference to 
its analysis. Ensilage from silos, is made a special 
exception among fermented foods. Thus it would 
seem, that the use of brewers’ grains, starch feed, 
glucose feed, and such like articles of feed is 
pointedly forbidden for the production of milk for 
sale, or for delivery to creameries or cheese dairies. 
Many farmers have felt regret in being obliged to 
use the articles, because otherwise they could not 
compete in the production of milk with those who 
did, even though they knew well that the milk pro¬ 
duced was inferior, if not unhealthful. These, 
and they are our best milk producers, rejoice at the 
law. Some have cancelled their contracts for 
grains, on the ground that they are prohibited 
using them by law. Others will not pit the grains 
as usual, for fear that they will thus render them¬ 
selves especially amenable to the law. Others use 
the grains and pit them as usual. This system of 
pitting consists in buying brewers’ grains in large 
quantities, when they are very low, and filling pits, 
like cisterns, with them, well tramped down and 
covered as nearly air-tight as possible. The grains 
will keep for months without rotting. They be¬ 
come very sour, and yet are eaten with avidity by 
cows. The milk produced by these grains, whether 
sour or fresh, is watery, and lacks richness and 
good flavor. This sourness is the direct result of 
fermentation, and increases with age. Access of 
air, or exposure of the mass to the air, causes rapid 
decay. The substances pass from fermentation 
to putrefaction with astonishing rapidity. The 
brewers’ grains come warm from the “ mash,” and 
never cool; before the heat of the mash-tub is gone, 
that of fermentation begins. They are partly cool¬ 
ed off when loaded into railroad cars, but soon heat 
again. If they are two or three days on the cars— 
say shipped Friday, .arrive Saturday, and cannot be 
unloaded until Monday, the whole surface to the 
depth of three to six inches will be gray with mould, 
black in spots from decay, and the interior as hot as 
a person can bear his hand in. The sweet smell of 
fresh grains is rapidly lost, and the sour, unhealth¬ 
ful mess which is left, is utterly unfit for milch 
cows. The law wisely discriminates against such 
food, and if carried out wiU force the drying of 
these articles, if to be fed, or their use as manure. 
Kemoving Stumps. —There are numerous meth¬ 
ods of removing stumps, and there are many cases 
when it is best to use none of them. It will fre¬ 
quently cost more to rid a field of stumps than the 
land is worth after the stumps are removed. The 
use of a chemical to induce decay, or salt-petre to 
make them burn, is unprofitable, and any method of 
so-called electricity is mere clap-trap, and inouey' 
spent in driving nails and fixing up wires is thrown 
away. Boring the stumps or making a hole beneath 
them, and blasting them with dynamite, or giant 
powder, is the quickest method, but one needs 
to count the cost before engaging in this work. 
