12 
AMERICAN AG-RIGULTURIST. 
[Januakt, 
Oil a farm properly furnished with cellars and 
sheds, of course all implements should be kept 
under cover at all seasons. They ought to he 
off the ground, the wood-work, except handles 
of tools, well painted, and the iron-work painted 
or protected hy a simple coating of boiled lin¬ 
seed-oil. But the question may be asked how 
may a farmer protect his implements and ma 
chineiy, when he has not suitable builaings 
v>’hich can be appropriated to such a purpose. 
There are several ways in which it may be done 
very satisfactorily. The farmer 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, pin 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 tlie whole with straw two feet thick. 
The straw should be spread on very evenly, and 
after it has settled down and the surface is wet, 
raked liglitly so as to turn all tlie straws on the 
surface down, to carry off the rain. Tiie 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 
he made for fowls of any kind. Even geese and 
ducks ■will ascend to it,' cn 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 he 
denounced. It is the drying wind and sunshine, 
not rain alone, that injures implements. 
Suspended Bar for Barn-doors, 
Largo barn-doors are usually fastened to 'a 
perpendicular bar one end of which enters a 
mortise in the beam over head and the other a 
mortise in the floor. Tlie strength of a man is 
genoially required to take out the bar, or put 
it jp. Our illustration shows a more conveni¬ 
ent way to manage the cross-bar. A round iron 
bolt holds tlie 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 lieacl, a strip of 
scantling is pinned firmly to the under side of 
the beam, and tlie upper end of the cross-bar 
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 
SCALDIHG HOGS. 
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 the 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 wliich are hard and dangerous 
work, and the hogs will bleed out better, as the 
nervous systen. receives so sudden a shock, that 
they are not able to draw the blood into the 
lungs, ill 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, yonrpen will ever after¬ 
ward be free from squealing on butchering clay. 
“Now as to our method of scalding hogs. 
I’Ve set two posts about twelve feet long, in¬ 
cluding two feet in the ground, and about twelve 
feet apart, and connect them by a beam on top. 
Under this beam, and near one post, I sink an 
ordinary half-hogshead in the ground, and place 
a pulley on the beam directly over it, and 
another pulley on the side and near the bottom 
of tlie adjacent post. A rope is passed llirough 
these and attached to the hog’s hind leg, and 
then he may he easilj'- 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 arranged to hang as many hogs as you may 
wish to slay. A common barrel kettle kept boil¬ 
ing will keep the ■\vater in the scalding tub hot 
enough, by adding hot and taking out cold, to 
continue scalding an indefinite time; all with 
little cost, little fuel, little lifting, and the kill¬ 
ing with little suffering to the animal. All 
things considered, this is the best mode I ever 
saw or used for killing and scalding hogs.” 
Western Agriculture. 
J. Welton, writing from Winnebago Co., Ill., 
some months since, says; “ When I read 
‘ Western Bog's' clashing averments in July 
American 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 onr prolific State. The remarks 
of ‘C. S. W.,’ of Iowa, in your August number 
are so important, frank and truthful, that 1 
would offer a few in the same spirit. 
“ I am constrained to say, that a moiety of the 
farming operations in NortJjern Illinois are by fai 
more slovenly and unproductive, than I evet 
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. T 
•asked three men, ■who were cutting up and put- 
■ ting it into stooks; ‘How much more than 
twenty bushels to the acre will this fielchof corn 
average?’ The ready response-was: ‘That if 
■ivould fall short of that by more than one half, 
with which I fully coincided. 
“I have for many years regarded Indian corn 
as preeminently the Western Fanner’s crop, and 
it will be diflicult to find anywliere a soil and 
climate better adapted to the profitable growth 
of the stalwart plant, than that of onr whole 
State, and yet, I am fully persuaded, that the 
two most northerly counties, through ■which 
Rock River runs, have not, for the last eighteen 
j'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 m.ay have avei'aged fifty 
husliel basketfuls of ears and nubbins. N^^ver- 
theless, I firmly believe, before ten 3 'ears shall 
have elapsed, that all our ■well-to-do farmers, 
instead of being satisfied with thirty or forty 
bushels per acre, %vill not then publish about 
their success in corn gro'tving, if it falls short ol 
seventy bushels,- and that then more Illinois 
farmers will tell how much their corn crop ex 
ceeded eighty, than can now boast of growing 
over forty bushels per acre, and that then, 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 fro.sts 
before the 12th of September, whetiier tiie sea¬ 
sons may prove ■n'et or diy. Of course, the 
above assumptions becoming establislied facts 
before ten years have passed, most Illinois 
farmers ■ivill 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 Illinoisans, whose lands abound in clay 
subsoils, plow them in the fall not less than 
eight or nine inches deep, while the ground is 
warm enough to cause the weed seeds to germi¬ 
nate. Select the eight-roived corn as early as the 
first ■week in September, and by all means (not 
objecting to have it kiln dried) have it diy, 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 harrowing 
and cultivating it sufficiently, with good 
implements, not using a hoe at all, the farmers 
may rationally hope to gather more than twice 
tlie usual average crop of sound corn, pro¬ 
vided always they succeed in liaving only just 
a proper number of plants to a given area.” 
