1869.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
363 
Petroleum as a Paint. 
There are two objections to the use of Petroleum as a 
paint—1st, It rvil! not dry; and 2d, it gives out an odor 
that to some people is far from agreeable. We know a 
farmer who had an old buggy from which the paint and 
varnish had cracked off in spots. He painted it over 
with Petroleum, and while it stood in the carriage-house 
it looked 11 as good as newbut the first time he drove 
out it happened to be a dusty day, and when he returned 
the buggy was “a sight to behold.” And no amount of 
subsequent washing and rubbing has removed the dust. 
There it is, and there it will stay as long as the varnish 
and paint underneath adhere to the wood. But Petro¬ 
leum, nevertheless, can be used to great advantage on a 
farm as a preserver of wood. It is not properly a paint. 
No coloring matter should ever be mixed with it. Ordi¬ 
nary linseed oil paint preserves wood by forming a coat 
that excludes the atmosphere from the pores. Petroleum 
penetrates the wood and excludes the air by filling up 
the pores. For light, porous wood, a rather heavy quali¬ 
ty of Petroleum should be used, but for hard wood, such 
as .oak, ash, etc., a Petroleum of a lighter specific gravity 
is best, as it penetrates the pores better. For wagons, 
machines, implements, tools, etc., from which the paint 
has more or less disappeared, there is nothing better 
than Petroleum. For a reaper, where it is important to 
keep the platform from warping, and the frame from 
shrinking, we find Petroleum invaluable. The wood 
should be kept saturated with it. It is poor policy to 
leave machines, wagons, and implements, exposed to sun 
and rain, but when this is necessary Petroleum will do 
much to prevent injury. 
Old barns from which the paint is worn oft’ will be 
much improved by a liberal coat of Petroleum. It can be 
put on with a whitewash brush. The point is to get on 
as much as the wood will absorb. It is better to go 
over the work rapidly and then the next day go over it 
again. For shingle roofs, new or old. nothing is better 
than Petroleum. In making a new roof we would dip 
the shingles by the bunch in Petroleum, until they were 
saturated, before putting them on. This would save the 
expense of applying it on the roof with the brush. The 
sills and timbers of barns and other buildings, in the 
parts most liable to decay, should be treated with Petro¬ 
leum. A good way to do this is to bore a hole with an 
auger into the stick of timber, and fill itwith the oil, and 
as it is absorbed, add more. The hole should afterwards 
be plugged up. The ends of all the timber should also 
be washed over repeatedly with Petroleum before being 
put in the building. In this way, soft maple, black ash, 
and bass wood, may be made durable timber, and as 
useful as oak when strength is not required. We repeat 
that Petroleum is not a paint. It preserves wood by filling 
the pores. It is worse than useless to mix anything with 
it. If it is desirable to paint, let ordinary paint be used. 
But if nothing more is desired than the preservation of 
the wood, use Petroleum—and mix nothing with it. 
Tim Bunker on Ashes. 
Mr. Editor: —You ’ve been printing for 
farmers some fifteen or twenty years, and I 
s’pose you think you’ve had your say on all 
farm topics, and the pond is getting dry. At 
any rate we’ve got folks up here whose ponds 
have been dry this twenty year. Can’t get a 
new idea into their heads any more than you 
can drive a wooden wedge into a boulder. They 
farm it just as their grandfathers did, and would 
use wooden plows to-day if they had n’t been 
driven out of the market by cast iron, and ;U1 
the mechanics had not forgotten how to make 
them. Uncle Jotliam Sparrowgrass, however, 
does get new ideas, but won’t own it. He 
still swears by the Island, and what was n’t 
known in the vicinity of Peconic Bay thirty 
years ago is n’t worth knowing, and can’t be of 
any use to the farming community. The Early 
Rose is the same potato they undertook to start 
on the Island when he was a boi', and South- 
hold was too smart to be humbugged by it. 
The King of the Earlies is the old Rohan in 
disguise, and he would n’t give fifty cents for a 
cart-load on ’em. When he came upon Deacon 
Smith’s big pile of peat ashes he walked round 
it, and stuck his cane into it as if it had been an 
old acquaintance. 
“ Wonder if the Deacon thinks he’s going to 
make anything grow with this stuff. Wood 
ashes now would amount to stlthin’. They tried 
’em on the Island, and the way potatoes and 
grass started was a caution. But this burnt 
peat and turf aint worth the cartin’. A mighty 
sight of trouble he’s talcin’ to skin his swamps, 
and he won’t get a rush for it,” 
“Smith loves work,” suggested Jake Prink; 
“ kind o’ keeps him out o’ mischief.” 
“He’ll make money out on’t, see if he 
don’t,” said Tucker. “Put that creetur’ on a 
bare rock and he’d git rich sellin’ the scrapins.” 
“If he could get anybody to buy’em,” added 
Jones. 
“ Never mind that,” said Jake Frink. “ He VI 
scent ’em with fish ile, and make folks believe 
it was genuine scrap instead of scrapins.” 
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating,” 
said the Deacon, modestly. “Just walk over 
to my meadow and see what a hundred bushels 
of these ashes have done upon an acre of grass.” 
So we had to walk over and see where the 
soil had been eating that sort of pudding. I 
was astonished. Uncle Jotliam was as quiet as 
a scared chicken in the grass. Could n’t git a 
word out of him for some time. The Deacon 
is a master hand to bring folks right up square 
agin solid facts. There was the grass waist 
high, and the heads of timothy waving almost 
like a wheat field. You could see the line where 
the ashes stopped a long way off. Uncle Jotliam 
marched up and down the line and poked his 
cane into the grass to make sure there was no 
barn-yard manure or sea-weed about the roots. 
“Must be a mistake about it somewhere,” 
said Uncle Jotliam. “Never knew peat ashes 
to do anything.” 
“ What will you do with the facts?” inquired 
the Deacon, coolly. 
“Confound your facts,” said Uncle Jotliam, 
swinging his cane. “ I can bring ten facts to 
your one, that peat ashes won’t pay for burning.” 
“Well,” said the Deacon, “this fact I know 
about. The peat ashes suit my land, and I 
shall keep straight on burning until the whole 
farm gets a good dressing. Three tons of herds- 
grass to the acre shows that the land likes it.” 
I guess the Deacon will make a small fortune 
out of that peat bog yet. You see, when he 
got a patch cleared of the brush, he had to pare 
the bog to get it ready for the cranberry plants. 
This was necessary work, whether he made 
any use of the parings or not. He reckons it 
costs about $75 an acre to pare a foot deep. 
If there are fresh stumps it will cost more. A 
cord of these sods will make about four bushels 
of ashes if you burn them carefully. That is 
to say, you must not let the fire burn too free!}’, 
if you want to make the most ashes. You can 
regulate the fires by putting on more peat and 
sods, and by checking the ventilation. He cal¬ 
culates that he can get from an acre about 1,300 
bushels of ashes, worth 20 cents a bushel for 
farming purposes. As the Deacon is forehand¬ 
ed, and does not need to sell the ashes to raise 
money, he markets them at home. If it pays 
other farmers to buy ashes at 20 cents a bushel, 
lie thinks it pays him to make them out of his 
own materials, and use them upon his mead¬ 
ows. Tiiey may not be quite equal to ashes 
made from hard wood, but there cannot be a 
very great difference. There are many stumps 
and roots in the parings not yet decayed. 
These, of course, make wood ashes. Nearly 
all the rest is decayed wood and leaves, and the 
remains of such plants as flourish in swamps. 
Something, of course, is lost in the burning of 
so much organic matter. It would be better if 
we could pass it all through the compost heap 
or barn-yard, on its way to the meadow, but it 
would take a great deal of labor to handle all 
this bulky material. Burning makes short 
work with it, reduces its bulk, and puts it in a 
condition to benefit the fields immediately. It 
is quite possible that the Deacon gains in time 
and in the saving of labor, all that he loses in 
material. At any rate he is doing pretty well . 
in getting rid of his elephant. You see, 1,300 
bushels of ashes at 20 cents a bushel, amounts 
to $200 an acre. Allowing that it costs as much 
to cart and burn as it does to skin the bog, say 
$150 per acre for both, he will have $110 left 
for profit, or to go toward the expense of sand¬ 
ing his bog for cranberries. 
These ashes must be very valuable for most 
farm crops, even where the burnings are not 
purely vegetable matter. Clay and upland sod, 
when burned and pulverized, produces aston¬ 
ishing results upon grass and other crops. An 
English gardener came along here a few years 
ago, and tried some burned clay that he took 
out of a drain, as a top-dressing. It put a new 
face upon all the crops in that garden that sea¬ 
son, and the effects are still visible. I think the 
Deacon’s experiments in making peat ashes are 
worth a good many millions to the country. 
Farmers who own swamps have in them the 
means of enriching their farms to almost any 
extent. It will certainly be safe to pare a few 
square rods, burn the turf, spread the ashes 
upon grass land, and mark the results. If we 
can get a thick, heavy sod, we need not be 
troubled about the other crops in the rotation. 
Bcokertown, Conn., ) Tours to Command, 
Sept. 15 th, 1869. f TnuoTHr Bunker, Esq. 
\ 
How to Get and Keep Good Tarm Help, f 
The complaint of the want of good help is 
very general, if not universal. Mike hires out 
for six months at $30 a month and board, and 
works well until haying lime, when he hears 
that Pat is getting $3 a day at a neighbor’s. 
He gets uneasy and quits. As a consequence 
he is out of work in the fall and winter, and 
barely gets enough to pay his board. The farm¬ 
er has to get a new hand in place of Mike, on 
such terms as he can. We have several sugges¬ 
tions to make to parties who want good help 
upon the farm. Hire by the year. There is 
nothing so much needed upon our farms as 
more labor. With that we can make more 
manure, and more manure means larger crops, 
better dividends, and capacity to keep more 
cattle. There is no difficulty in keeping three 
or four good men busy all the year round, upon 
a 200-acre farm, and, if we have faith in our 
business, in finding the money to pay them. 
It is better for the hired men to be kept con¬ 
stantly employed, and better for their families. 
Take an interest in their welfare, and build 
cottages for them near the farm, or upon it. 
Encourage them to save something of their 
earnings to buy a home with. Men with fami¬ 
lies make the best laborers, and are most con¬ 
tented. Take an interest in their families, see 
that the children go to school, and when the 
boys are big enough, see that they have a 
chance to work and earn money for themselves. 
Help your help, and, as a rule, the}' will help 
you. They will see that their interests are iden¬ 
tified with yours. Treat them as strangers or 
brutes, and they will reciprocate your incivili¬ 
ties. Even a cow will not give down her milk 
under the cudgel. Connecticut. 
