418 
[October 
AMERICAlsr AGRIOULTURTST. 
Among the Farmers. 
New Series.-“No. 6. 
IlY ONIi OF THEM. 
A ESliodo Isluiul Coast I<'ai'in, 
A few weeks ago I passed over the farm of a 
sea-shore farmer hi the township of Westerly, 
Rhode Island. It is a neat, weii-tilied farm, made 
rich witli sea weed and good cuitivation. IMany 
tons of keip and rock-weed are annually tlirown 
lip by the sea upon the beach, and liarvested as 
carefully as if it was hay. This goes into tlie jiig 
pens and compost lieaps, and then out upon the 
land, wliicli is cliielly used for growing hay, though 
I saw, an even held of corn and good oats. The 
meadows are thus made “ pei'inauent ” for many 
years, and the hay, chiefly timothy and red-top, 
witli a sprinkling of clover and some other grasses, 
is of e.vcellent quality. The farm is divided ir¬ 
regularly into little four to ten-acre lots by stone 
walls,and on even the smoothest fields the boulders, 
or granite ledges, occupy a considerable per cent- 
age of the land. The outline of the farm, though 
1 believe “all in one piece,” is of astonishing ir¬ 
regularity, being cut into by bays, and coves, so 
that I have no doubt there are ]ilaees where three 
or four rods of fence would safely confine cattle 
upon a plot of eight or ten acres. These inlets and 
coves are full of lish and oy^sters, so that luxuries 
are not wanting. The pasture land is largely given 
up to huckleberry bushes, with bayberry and low 
blackberries. Even this is not altogether jioor 
fanning, for it is claimed, wdth some reason, that a 
“huckleberry pasture” stands the drouth better 
than one from which the bushes have been all 
cleared oil, and the hills left bare and exposed to 
tile full burning lieat of the July and August sun. 
Here and there, in low places between the rocky 
knolls, ponds of fresh water occur of a quarter 
acre to several acres in extent. Many of them are 
within a few rods of the sea, and about the same 
level or a little higher. In dry weather, their level 
is often below that of the ocean at high tide. These 
afford water for domestic and farm uses, practical¬ 
ly inexhaustible, and are scattered conveniently 
about the farms. Hollows, whicli ages ago con¬ 
tained such ponds, but whicli are now tilled up, 
possess the richest soil, admirable for gardening, 
and in all the hollows and swales which are dry, 
very tine, rich, dark soil occurs, in which apple and 
Other fruit trees do very well, sheltered as*they are 
by the hills or knolls. In exposed places, the only 
trees that I noticed were stunted and gnarled 
cedars, stumpy wild cherry and pepperidge trees, 
and even these were huddled under the shelter of 
big rocks, or crowded close to one side of a pool, 
which shows how severe the brine-laden, wintry 
blasts must be. 
Sheep Culture. 
Sand dunes and rocky grazing lands are admir¬ 
able for slice]), and it seems strange that so few are 
kept on the Rliode Island coast. Sea-side resorts 
along the coast bring consumers, wlio are willing 
10 pay the highest prices for good lamb and mut¬ 
ton, to the farmer’s very door. It would seem tliat 
a modicum of business enterprise would induce 
the farmers to respond to this demand, at least 
rather than sell their hay, but the “good old way” 
of doing things is preferred to the extra dollars. 
All Old-Tashioued Dairy. 
In this scrupulously neat and well scoured 
dairy, the only modern innovation was a Blan¬ 
chard churn, unless indeed an ice-house beneatli 
might be counted as one. Long rows of shining 
tin pans occupied the shelves, and in the cheese- 
room there was jileasing evidence, tliat tlic art and 
mystery of cheese-making in private dairies was 
Mot altogether a thing of the past, and like spin¬ 
ning and weaving turned over to the factories. 
Here were tw.enty to thirty-pound cheeses of all 
ages, full milk, half-skim and sage, of excellent 
tlavor and texture, curing, ripening, and keeping, 
no doubt finding an appreciative market, a few at a 
time, among the hotels, which in the hight of the 
season take the milk, so that cheese-making is un¬ 
necessary. I could but think what an amount of 
hard labor would be spared that hard-working, 
thrifty housewife, if only the modern practice of 
deep setting could be introduced. The view seems 
to prevail, that though this may be very well adapt¬ 
ed to factories, it is not the thing for private dairies. 
Treatiiioiit of niilk in the Household. 
Thousands of country people, who have had to 
do with milk all their lives, have no idea that 
modern notions about handling milk are in any 
way applicable to their circumstances, or could be 
employed by them if they wished without great 
expense. The fact is however quite the contrary. 
The butter comes with dilHculty in cold weather, 
is lardy, and of a poor flavor. It meets with a poor 
market anywhere, and is only taken at the country 
store in order to secure the housewife’s trade for 
groceries. Slio certainly takes pains enougli—good, 
thrifty soul. The milk is set in flat pans, brought 
in from the milk-room to the stoi-e-room for fear 
of its freezing, and even brought out at night into 
tlie living-room to keep it at a proper temperature. 
Nevertheless the butter is rarely even passably 
good, and there is a great deal of work about it. 
So the good iieople let the cows go dry in winter, 
simply to get rid of the care of the milk, and of 
milking in cold weather. Now the fact is, the 
cream will rise in deep vessels more perfectly and 
of better qualitj^ in twelve to twenty hours at a 
temjierature of foriy-iive degrees, than it will in 
two days in flat pans at a temperature of sixty de¬ 
grees. Flat pans in common use hold five or 
six quarts. The deep milk “ coolers ” hold about 
sixteen to eighteen quarts. They may be set or 
floated in a small pool, or box, or tub of water, and 
only three milkings are ever in the pool at once, 
while the milk should stand in the flat pans two 
days or more. 
To set thirty quarts of milk tw'o coolers would 
be needed, as against five pans and probably six, 
required on the old plan of setting. The wash¬ 
ing of this quantity of tin tvare is a great item, 
and considering the little satisfaction given by the 
butter, it is no wonder that the small farmers let 
the cows go dry all through the winter months. It 
is a very easy tiling to arrange a “ pool ” for a few 
coolers. I have a dry-goods’ box set close to the 
out-cropping of a spring. The water tills this to 
the hight of twenty inches. In it tin-coolers hold¬ 
ing sixteen quarts of milk each will float. All the 
water from the spring flows througli the pool, and 
rapidly enough to change it completely about once 
in ten minutes. A larger box is placed over the 
pool, and this has a lid wdiich does not close per¬ 
fectly tight, so tliat ventilation is secured. Venti¬ 
lating covers are placed upon the cans. We find it 
works well. The milk remains tweuty-foiir hours 
in the spring, and the skim-milk is blue enough. 
In the winter a half hogshead tub in the outside 
kitchen held the coolers. This was covered with a 
close cover and a blanket or two in very severe 
weather, just to keep the- water from freez¬ 
ing too much. Last winter we used a Moseley's 
Cabinet Creamery, which proved very satisfactory 
and convenient. A little ice in the water is a good 
thing. The water must be changed frequentl 3 -, 
esjiecially if anj' milk is siiilt into it. In winter it 
is just as well to skim at twelve hours as at twenty- 
four. The amount of work thus saved by using 
some deep-setting plan is very great, besides the 
cream is sweet and pure, having absorbed no odors 
from the living-rooms, or from the cooking. The 
skim-inilk is sweet and good for every household 
use, and the butter comes quickly and well, and is 
worth something wlien you get it. 
IFisli 1*0 lids—Carp. 
Some of tlie ponds which I described are very 
deep, others are shallow and proportionately warm. 
The deep ones are jirobably adapted to black bass 
raising, and the shallow ones, many of which have 
a fringe of swampy land and shoal water filled and 
covered with eonfervous vegetation and swarming 
with minute animal life, are certainly admirablj' 
adapted to the growtli of the German carp. 
These fish are said to grow to a large size only in 
warm waters in which subaqueous vegetation 
abounds. This is their chief food, and the warmer 
tile water is the better tliey thrive. I took the 
temperature of some of these ponds, and to mj’^ 
surprise found it at about ten o’clock in the morn¬ 
ing of a jiartly overcast and altogether hazy day, 
and after a week of unusually rainy and cool 
weather, to range from seventy-si.x degrees in the 
coolest and deepest spots which I could con¬ 
veniently reach with a thermometer attached to a 
ten foot pole, to eightj’-six degrees. Eight}-- 
three degrees to eighty-six degrees were, I found, 
tlie prevailing shoal-water temperatures. I shall 
be disappointed if these ponds do not prove admira¬ 
ble iilaces for European carp. Great numbers of 
these have been distributed free by tlie Government, 
as tlie American Agrieultarht has repeatedly stated. 
The carp, as is well-known, is rot a native fish 
of tliis continent. It is easily' domesticated, is ver}' 
hardy, and easily reared, and bears the winter well 
in waters which do not freeze over too solidlj' and 
remain so all winter. They need occasional thaws 
to enable the water to absorb oxygen from the air, 
or for some such reason. Tlie weather along the 
coast being much more variable than it is inland, 
W’ouhl probably give open weather and tliaws 
enough to keep them in tlie best condition. Tliej’ 
do admirably in some of tlie Long Island ponds, 
which, so far as I can judge, are not so vvell adapted 
to their culture as these. 
The carp is highly valued in Germany, and as 
cooked and prepared by the Germans, is very good 
eating. It is, however, far from a first-class fish, 
and will be despised by our shore-dwellers, who 
have been brought up on blue-fish, black-fish, sea- 
bass, striped-bass, all first-class fish, to say nothing 
of porgie.s, weak-fish, and mackerel, which are so 
abundant they are not valued as they should be. 
Nevertheless the earp will sell well. Some are now 
finding their way to the New York markets, and 
are eagerly souglit for. The fish usually sold as 
carp to the unknowing is a chub-sucker, caught in 
the great lakes, a soft-fleshed fish, not nearly so 
good as the German carp, and quite bony. 
My visit to the farmers of the Rhode Island 
Coast has taught me many things that is not easy 
to set down on paper. Visiting may be profitable 
in more ways than one. 
The Leaf-Rollers of the Apple. 
11. D. Barber, Bergen Co., N. J., sends us some 
apple tree leaves which are curled up at the edges. 
This is evidently caused by one of the leaf-rolling 
caterpillars, which drew the leaves together. There 
are several leaf-rollers, which work upon the leaves 
of our fruit trees, sometimes young apple trees ap- 
APPLE LEAF-KOLLER INSECT. 
pear as if the foliage had been scorched and curled. 
Upon examination this will be found due to a smalt 
“ worm ” or caterpillar, which has drawn the leaves 
together to form a shelter under which it may feed 
unobserved, and where it maj’ form a chrysalis and 
undergo its changes. The caterpillars are very 
lively, and when alarmed let themselves down by a 
thread, as shown at a, in the engraving. The leaves 
are folded up to furnish a hiding place, as shown 
at d. When full-grown, the caterpillar fo^s the 
chrysalis, 6, from which, in time, comes forth the 
dark-gray moth, c. The lines in the engraving 
show the actual sizes. The insect here figured is 
Tortrix Cinderella. There are several other species 
of the genus Tortrix with similar habits. Hand- 
picking, at its first appearance, is the best remedy. 
