1878.] 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
255 
on corn-pudding and milk or dish-water. There 
are four of them, and I fiil a two-quart bucket 
with the mixture for eacli meal. After greedily- 
eating up this, thej r finish off with shelled raw 
corn from one ear, which they like to crack. 
They are as fat as it seems possible for them to 
he, and full of fun and life. I have fed their 
mother always three times a day on cooked 
corn-meal and dish-water, finishing off with 
nearly a quart of shelled corn at every meal. 
She is as fat as she was before the pigs were 
horn—I think fatter. Her hags are distended 
with milk a great part of the time, and if I take 
away lier pigs will she not have fever? Must I 
reduce the food of either mother or young 
ones?” Yes. The young pigs will stand high 
feeding until four or five months old, hut they 
should have plenty of exercise. I would stop 
giving the sow the shelled corn, and let her 
have nothing but slops. I would let the pigs 
suck as long as the sow will give plenty of 
milk. The Essex are so quiet, that after they 
have attained their growth they require very 
little food. I am now giving my breeding sows 
no grain of any kind—nothing but grass, with a 
feed of slops made of bran once a day. In the 
winter I give bran and a little corn-meal. In 
the spring, before grass comes, I feed more or 
less mangels. If I had enough, I would feed 
all my breeding sows a bushel of mangels each 
per day from the first of March until the middle 
of May. During the winter I wo'uld feed them 
about half a bushel of mangels per day and a 
little corn or bran. 
The Scott Township Farmers’ Club of Steu¬ 
ben Co., Ind., are disturbed in their minds by 
my statement that ammonia will not escape 
from a well-managed manure heap. They say 
the opposite doctrine has been taught by high 
agricultural authorities; “and now,” they ask, 
“ which statement have we to believe?” Ex- : 
amine the evidence, or, better still, test the 
matter by experiment. If ammonia was scap¬ 
ing from a fermenting manure-heap it could 
readily be detected by the nose, or by litmus 
paper, or by a rod dipped in muriatic acid. I 
want no controversy with any one on a matter 
of this kind; and it is certainly not for me to 
say what a man shall or shall not “believe.” I 
have no sort of doubt that there are thousands j 
of manure-heaps from which ammonia escapes; j 
bnt this is simply because they are badly 
managed. 
After considerable experience in the use of 
petroleum for painting implements, wagons, 
machines, etc., I am satisfied that it is a good i 
thing. But it is necessary to use it freely. The 
great point is to saturate the wood. All the 
pores should be filled with petroleum. I painted 
a new pine wagon-box some time since with 
petroleum. I went over it half a dozen times 
in as many days, being especially careful to ap¬ 
ply the oil at the ends of the boards and to hold 
the brush against them as long as they would 
absorb oil. You will understand what I mean 
if you have ever used petroleum in this way. 
It is astonishing how quickly the oil penetrates 
into the pores. By going over this wagon-box 
repeatedly, I succeeded in getting it to absorb 
over two gallons of oil. I am not afraid to 
have that box exposed to the rain and the sun 
and wind. Merely going over the wood once 
with the petroleum does comparatively little 
good, unless you propose to paint afterwards 
with ordinary oil paint. I would mix nothing 
with the petroleum. Saturate the wood with it, 
and that is all that is needed. Now is a good 
time to do it, while the wood is dry. The pe¬ 
troleum will take the place of the water. 
Elder Roberts, who has recently been in 
Kansas, remarked to me to-day: “You have 
no idea how hard times are in the West. Why, 
a man will draw a load of corn many miles to 
market, and then not get more than $3 for it.” 
No doubt this is all very true; and there is no 
remedy except not to sell the corn. Convert it 
into pork or beef. It must be a poor breed of 
pigs that with pork at $5 per 100 lbs. live- 
weight will not net 50 cents a bushel for the 
corn. It is not probable that we shall again for 
some years see pork as low as it has been for a 
year or two past. The low rates have intro¬ 
duced American pork into many new markets, 
and if we only take pains to furnish a choice 
ariicle, there will be a demand for all the pork, 
hams, and lard we can produce. The Western 
farmers, like ourselves, may well feel discour¬ 
aged, but there is no reason for despair. The 
prospects are brightening. 
How to Start Manufactories in a Farm¬ 
ing District. 
The want of a market, which lies at the bot¬ 
tom of the farmers’ fight with the railroads in 
Illinois, is a serious trouble in many parts of the 
East. The farmers who are near large cities 
and villages do well enough, but there are still 
large districts remote from railroads where 
there is little variety of labor, and the farmers 
have nobody to feed except the blacksmith, the 
shoemaker, the merchant, and two or three 
professional gentlemen. They have to drive 
from twelve to twenty miles to market every 
load of wood, every pound of animal or vege¬ 
table food that is sold from the farm. This is 
a very serious drawback to the profits of hus¬ 
bandry in such districts; so serious, that it dis¬ 
courages effort and sends multitudes to more 
favored regions. The farms are running down, 
the buildings are going to decay, and the price 
of land is even less than it was fifty years ago. 
In many cases the old homestead is a ruin, and 
the land sold for a song to the next neighbor. 
And this happens, too, in places where there is 
good water-power waiting to turn wdieels, and 
abundance of wood and other raw material for 
manufactures. The best remedy for these un¬ 
thrifty regions, in the East certainly, is the in¬ 
troduction of manufacturing industry. Some 
kinds of manufactures, no doubt, are best car¬ 
ried on in cities, notwithstanding high rents, 
costly steam-power, and expensive labor. But 
other kinds can be more profitably pursued in 
the country, where there is plenty of room, 
cheap raw material, and cheap food and labor. 
An agricultural town does not always see that 
it is much cheaper for them to create a home 
market in their midst than it is to carry all their 
products twenty miles to market. They would 
not positively make war upon a man who 
should propose to invest a hundred thousand 
dollars in manufacturing industry in their 
midst, but they would expect to get an extra 
price for the lands watered by the stream that 
was to furnish the power, and they would get 
all the taxes they could out of such an invest¬ 
ment from the start, without any reference to 
the productiveness of the capital. A proposi¬ 
tion in town-meeting to remit taxes to a manu- j 
fticturing company for five or ten years as an 
inducement for them to start a new enterprise j 
would be voted down by a large majority. Yet 
this kind of inducement is often the tiling that 
determines the minds of men of large capital 
who are looking for new localities to start 
manufactories. The advantage of such a diver¬ 
sity of industry to the fortunes of fanners is not 
likely'- to be overestimated. The fruits of such 
investments are visible in all the southern por¬ 
tion of New England, and in many other places. 
The changes wrought by them, even within the 
memory of middle-aged persons, i3 wonderful. 
From the window where we write we look out 
upon a valley with a population of over four 
thousand, where but a few years ago there were 
hardly a dozen families all engaged in the cul¬ 
tivation of the soil. There was no home mar¬ 
ket. Grain was shipped to the distant city, and 
butter and cheese to the South. So small were 
the profits that not much was raised, and there 
was not much capital beside the land, the stock, 
and the buildings. The scene is much changed 
now, and it is all owing to the business enter¬ 
prise of a few individuals who studied the 
natural resources of the valley and developed 
them. Every farm within ten miles of the vil¬ 
lage feels the effects of this large increase of 
wealth and population. There is not only a 
home market for everything the neighboring 
farms can produce, at remunerative prices, but 
supplies are drawn very largely from the West. 
The price of the farming lands lias been doubled, 
and in many cases quadrupled. It lias made a 
good many families prosperous by the rise in 
the price of lands, and the whole business of 
agriculture is elevated to a higher plane by the 
presence of this home market. It is in the 
power of almost any agricultural township in 
the more thickly settled portions of the 
country to vary its industry, and create a 
home market, by holding out special induce¬ 
ments for manufacturers to start new enter¬ 
prises among them. The power and the raw 
material are there unused. Let the new indus¬ 
tries be warmly welcomed. 
-«►-.---- 
Thatching Stacks. 
There is no question but that a large portion 
of the cost of barns and sheds for storing hay 
and grain might be spared. The idea is current 
that barns are necessary to protect the gathered 
crops from damage by the weather, and that a 
large portion of them must necessarily be lost 
if stacked out. With the method of stacking 
in general use in the United States this idea is 
a correct one; but there is no reason why our 
method should not be so improved that a stack 
may be made perfectly weather-proof. In Great 
Britain, where the climate is very much moister 
than ours, and where during the fall and winter 
months it is almost constantly raining, the far¬ 
mers as a rule stack their hay and grain; and it 
is not at all unusual to find stacks of grain twa 
or three years old, which, when opened to be 
thrashed, are in a state of perfect preservation. 
If the English farmers can do this, and thus 
save the cost of expensive buildings, why should 
not we do it? We can if we will. We are 
very apt to think that unless a thing can be 
done in a very short time it will not pay to do 
it, and that any process that requires some ex¬ 
tra time is unprofitable. But with the increased 
value of time, as compared with past years, we 
find an increase in the value of other things, 
and generally it will be found to pay to econo¬ 
mize now, as formerly, not only in labor, but ltt; 
other expenditures. 
The old-fashioned system of thatching stacks 
