1 891 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
3o7 
FARMERS’ CLUB DISCUSSIONS. 
[Continued.] 
8weet Apples for Stock. 
Miss H. B. Coibt, Merrimack Co., N. 
H.—Thirteen years ago last fall there was 
a protracted drought in this section, all 
the mill streams were nearly dry; the shal¬ 
low Tcdd pond which supplied the water 
for the largest grist mills near my home 
showed its mud bottom. Father was ill, 
and I hired a man to go 15 milts with a grist 
of wheat and corn to the mill; he broDght 
back the flour, but could not get the corn 
ground. It was time that the sow should 
have meal; what should I do ? Father 
said: “ Go gather those sugar sweet apples 
in the little orchard, and give her all she 
will eat up clean.” She had been having 
about a half bushel of mixed early apples 
for some time : this was late ia October. I 
think she won d dres3 about 300 pounds at 
that time. I fed her from a bu-hel to a 
bushel and a half of sweet applet for four 
weeks ; then raiu came and I got meal for 
her. She would not eat the soft corn on the 
ear like most of her race. I fed her about 
three quarts of meal per day for three weeks 
all she would eat. Then she was killed ; 
she dressed 467 pounds, and the meat was 
finely larded. The men said : “ You’ll find 
your apple pork soft, if it does weigh 
down.” But we never had sweeter or more 
solid pork, or any that kept better, or 
firmer lard, nor any meat that kept its 
sweetness longer. So much for sweet 
apples for making pork! I should miss 
very much our apples for summer feed for 
my pigs; I don’t know what would fill 
their place. They also serve a first-class 
purpose as hen feed the year around. 
From July until late harvest our poultry 
have the run of the garden and orchard 
where the early apples grow, and know 
where the best trees are. As soon as they 
have their morning feed of corn-meal mush 
they start for the apples. I never have any 
trouble with crop bound poultry from an 
over feed of grain when they have apples. 
They like soft and sweet apples best. They 
also eat all varieties of early and sour 
apples and in late winter Baldwins eagerly. 
I put in several barrels of apples for the 
hens each winter. Their green food now is 
cabbages and apples on alternate days. A 
few years ago we had an abundant harvest 
of apples. We put a large binful in the 
cellar, mixed winter varieties, sweet and 
sour. We fed No. 2 apples to 15 sheep, a 
peck each day, cut up ; and in the spring, 
through March and April, twice as many ; 
and they dropped the largest lambs at 
birth we ever had. We lost none, but 
raised 19. The sheep had a large flow of 
milk, and gave a heavier fleece of wool 
than in the previous year. The same winter 
we gave a peck a day to a farrow cow, and 
she gave a large mess of milk, making 
solid, good-colored, and sweet-flavored but¬ 
ter, and held her flesh well; and when her 
feed was changed in April to four quarts 
of corn-and-cob meal, she did not give 
nearly so much milk. 
WIDE-AWAKE ITEMS. 
Plant the Summer Doyenn6 for the 
earliest summer pear—Giffard to follow... 
The Shaffer Raspberry is the best for 
canning or preserves. 
Is there a better fall pear than Sheldon ? 
Tastes, fortunately, differ. 
Let the young man who is afraid of get¬ 
ting out of a job engage in farming. 
Try the Arlington Favoiite Beet; also 
the Eclipse. Try the Erfurt Cauliflower. 
Early Scarlet Horn is the best cai rot for 
early ; Half-long Stump Rooted for main 
crop. Choose White Plnme Celery for 
earliest, Golden Heart for later, London 
Red for latest. For cucumbers, try Nich¬ 
ols’s, and for pickles the Paris Pickling. 
There is no better mid season sweet corn 
than Concord. New York Improved Egg 
Plant is ss good as any. Try Salamander 
for summer le'tuce, Boston Market for 
late. The English Gray is the best mush¬ 
room. If you want yellow, red, and white 
onions, sow Southport White Globe, Yel¬ 
low Danvers, and Large Red Wethersfield. 
Mohawk and Valentine Beans are among 
the be.-t snaps. The Mohawk is the earlier. 
Red Cayenne is the best pepper for pick¬ 
ling—Ruby King is the largest of peppers. 
French Breakfast, White Tipped and 
Scarlet Turnips are the best radishes. 
Viroflay is the best spinach. Savoy-leaved 
is popular but less productive. The New 
Zealand is best for hot weather.. 
Red-top StraD Leaf is one of the best flat 
turnips—Purple-top White Globe the best 
of all the soft turnips. Try the Improved 
American for a rutabaga. 
Try a plant of the old but beautiful 
Plumbago capensis. It will thrive in rock- 
work or dry places. 
Among the earliest cabbages nothing ex¬ 
cels the Early Wakefield. Choose, among 
old sorts, Fottler’s Brunswick for an inter¬ 
mediate crop, and Premium Flat Dutch 
and Late Drumhead for late. 
Try the Mammoth Etampes Pumpkin 
for pies. It is a late keeper. The Speckled 
Cranberry for a pole bean is among the 
best. 
Sow snap beans once a week until the end 
of August. The Golden Wax varieties are 
the most tender. 
LIFE says that an April fool is the man 
that takes off his winter clothing on the 
first warm day. 
It is now time to sow flower seeds in the 
cold frame. Asters, nasturtiums, balsams 
and the like might be better so vn in pre¬ 
pared plots of the open ground. Sweet peas 
should already have been planted. We may 
now also sow in the open ground snap¬ 
dragon, Drummond’s Phlox, etc. 
The following statement appeared in 
The R. N.-Y. of 1886: “ Cutting off the 
tassels of the corn-plants is conducive to the 
development of setts. It is probable that 
half the tassels could be removed without 
endangering a sufficient supply of pollen 
for the whole fields.” Recent experiments 
by several stations prove the correctness of 
The R. N.-Y.’s statement. 
Do you consider that the weight of a load 
that may be carried over a road depends 
upon the worst place in that road ? 
Is your hellebore ready for the currant 
worm ? It is especially true in this connec¬ 
tion that “a stitch in time saves nine.” — 
Try the Mammoth Sandwich Island Sal¬ 
sify. 
Paris-green (pure) may be purchased at 
wholesale for 18 cents per pound. 
Teach the little ones how to graft. Now 
is the time. 
Etoile de Lyon is one of the best yellow 
Teas for the garden. 
Vick’s Caprice, the new striped hybrid 
perpetual rose, has passed the winter at the 
Rural Grounds without injury. 
The price of white hellebore at wholesale 
is 10 cents per pound In 10-pound lots the 
price is 18 cents. The retail price for a 
prime article ought not to be over 25 cents 
per pound. 
If you would have the earliest and sweet¬ 
est of flowers, plant a bush of Standish’s 
Honeysuckle—also one of Lonicera frag- 
rantissima. They often bloom in mid¬ 
winter. 
The family temper usually takes its tone 
from the parents, and if the father be 
harsh, grumbling, unappreciative, and the 
mother peevish, fault-finding or discon¬ 
tented, how can the children be expected 
to regard home as the dearest spot on 
earth ?. 
The effect of lime to render stiff soils less 
adhesive is well shown by an experiment of 
Prof. Hilgard. Let any clay or tough clay 
soil, he says, be worked into a plastic mass 
with water and then dried; the result will 
be a mass of almost stony hardness. But 
add to some of the same paste half a per 
cent of caustic lime and a diminution of 
plasticity will be obvious at once, even in 
the wet condition; and, on drying, the mass 
will fall into a pile of crumbs at a mere 
touch. In this way clay soils may be made 
“ warmer ” or “ mellower ” by adding 
lime. 
Touch novelties gently—but touch them. 
The R. N.-Y. has ventured similar advice 
before.... 
There is not a recognized breed of cattle 
on the face of the earth that was not, once 
upon a time, a novelty. 
You, reader, were a novelty once. 
What would have become of us had not 
your merits been recognized f. 
The R. N.-Y. dares to say that there are 
such persons as honest commission mer¬ 
chants. Whether it costs more, on the 
average, to find them out than they are 
worth, is a question. 
Plant evergreen trees about the home 
to cheer you during the summer; to de¬ 
light you during the winter. 
During its season what vegetable have 
we more tender and palatable than aspar¬ 
agus ? A bed 40 feet square will, in three 
years, abundantly supply a family of six. 
Now is the time to plant the setts. 
DIRECT PtereUauMMs* 
-Life: “The deer departed— when lN wrltin * to advertisers please always 
the hunter missed him.” me ntion The Rural. 
-Washington Post : ‘‘A combination 
of farmers ought to be a pretty strong 
affair, every one being a hoeist in himself.” 
-Washington Star: ‘‘The trees will 
begin to get their spring clothes out of 
their trunks before long, and cover their 
bare limbs with them.” 
-Life: ‘‘Farmers in Illinois are secur 
ing good results in quinine culture. Five- 
grain pills planted In March begin to sprout 
April 1, and the farmers in that section, 
besides realizing good profits, have ob 
served that chills and fever have complete¬ 
ly disappeared from the neighborhood.” 
‘‘Should Farmers Marry ?—Many of 
our readers are young farmers, just start¬ 
ing out in life, and the question of whether 
it is worth while to marry, is to them a 
very serious one. In most parts of the 
United States it is almost impossible to 
secure good farm help, and the young 
farmer will get more work out of a wife 
than he could out of two hired women. 
Therefore, as a general rule, we should ad¬ 
vise young farmers to marry, and for the 
following reasons: 
“ It costs no more to feed a wife than it 
does a hired woman; usually not so much, 
because if a hired woman does not like the 
food, or does not get enough to eat, she is 
very apt to leave. 
“ You have to pay a wife no wages. Anew 
calico dress each year and an annual visit 
to the circus, or to the county fair, takes 
the place of wages. 
“ A wife will take better care of your 
clothes and grease your boots properly. 
“ Of course, a wife will be more of a com¬ 
panion than a hired woman. After she has 
fed the stock and chopped the wood for 
next day’s fires, she may be tired enough 
to go to bed, but if you tell her to, she will 
read your Homestead and Henhouse to you 
while you take a nap on the sofa. 
“ If she dies it won’t cost much to bury 
her, and it will be easy enough to get 
another.” 
-Agriculture: “Practical men say 
that the reason why land requires to be 
limed anew after a longer or shorter inter¬ 
val depends primarily on the fact that the 
lime tends continually to sink deeper and 
deeper into the soil. Were it not for this 
peculiarity, they can see no reason why one 
good dose of lime should not serve for a 
century.” 
“ When the farmers of New England have 
come to understand more clearly than they 
do now that the leached ashes they so much 
esteem are really little more than very 
finely powdered limestone, they will prob¬ 
ably begin to use other forms of the lime 
carbonate more freely than they do now. 
- Joseph Harris: “Perhaps the best 
known experiments in the United States 
are those made by The Rural New- 
Yorker.” 
-Western Plowman: “The ‘oneglass 
too much ’ is the first.” 
-Northwestern Agriculturist: 
“Many a broadcloth husband owes pros¬ 
perity to the fact that he married a ging¬ 
ham girl.” 
Insects on Fruit Trees. 
These pests are rapidly multiplying and every 
year their ravages Increase; they destroy the apples, 
plums, cherries and peaches. Yet they can be exter¬ 
minated by judiciously spraying the trees. The Field 
Force Pump Company, of Lockport, N. Y„ have Just 
published a very Instructive treatise on this subject, 
which they will send free on application. 
SIFRUIT TREES 
VINES, PLANTS, Etc.* 
I’luin, Quince, 
_____ hickberry, Cur- 
rants, CJ rapes, Cooneberrien, Ac. Sendforcat- 
alogue J. S. COLLINS, Moorestown. N. J. 
Apple, Pear, Peach, Cherry, 
Strawberry, Raspberry, Bln 
EVERGREENS 
FRUIT & FOREST TREES 
L50,000,000 trees for spring trade. 
(Send for our Catalogue, mention this 
paper, and you will receive a valu- 
t able work (How to Grow Evcrqreeiu) 
_ _’ and coupon good for 5(lc. worth of 
_ _Trees Free. PriceB lower than the lowest. 
Address The E. H. RICKER CO., Elgin Nurseries, Elgin, lit. 
PLANTS AND SEEDS DY MAIL. 
8 dozen bedding plants and 10 packets choice llower 
seeds for $1.00; 8 Pansies, 6 Verbenas, 6 Asters, 6 Eng¬ 
lish Daisies, 2 Carnations, 2 Double Petunias, 4 Lobelias, 
1 Moon plant, 1 Lily, red and yellow. The Flower 
Seeds will produce about 1,000 plants. 20 Choice 
Geraniums, double and single varieties, for $L 00. 
E. FRYER. Delaware, Ohio. 
NUT-TREES, 
CHESTNUTS-Japan Mam¬ 
moth and Giant, Parry’s; 
Japan Walnuts, Jnnnii Golden 
Russet, Idaho and Kleffer Pears, 
Elenguus Longipes, Hardy 
Oranges, and other valuable 
novelties. Small Fruits, Grapes, 
etc. Fruit, Shade and Nut Trees, 
Ornamental Shrubs, Vines, etc. 
Illustrated Descriptive Catalogue Free. 
WM. PARRY, Parry, N. J. 
SEED POTATOES. 
Choice selected Houlton, ArooHook Co., Maine Karly 
Rose, Beauty of Hebron, and all other well known 
varieties. For sale by 
VV. E IMJRYEA’S SONS, 
Produce Commission Merchants, 
119 Warren Street, New York. 
SEETPOTAfOESr 
“ Q+atp Of REST late Potato. 
WM Try it. We have them 
M _ ; _ ^ > pure and vigorous, 
a I IIC Finest Maine Hose and 
Hebron. Send for Catalogue. Lowest Prices. 
DAVENPORT’S Headquarters - 
VZ4t Hock St., PHILADELPHIA. 
Rural New-Yorker No. 2 Potatoes. 
Onion Setts, Flat Dutch Cabbage Seed, Vegetable 
Plants, of Standard Sorts. 
IYI. GARRAHAN, 
KINGSTON, PA. 
ALFALFA CLOVER SEED 
By the car-load or In any quantity. 
Write to W. A. HAWS, 
Las Animas, Bent County, Colorado, U. S. A. 
GRAPE VINES 
Plants of Boat Quality. Warranted trno to namo. Lovoat 
Prices. Largest Steel: and Assortment of Old and Now 
Varieties. Send for Price List. 
BUSH k SON A MZI3SNEE, BnsWerg, Mo. 
—— CL —MU lil-lMR —EBBa—i 
For Shed or Poultry Building I (k 11 V s 
Excellent roof complete. Anyone can lay It. L 
$2 per tOOSq. Feet. > OIIL 
LOW PRICE, 
ATHING PAPER. Water, wind and 
damp proof. Keeps building cool In 
summer, warm in winter. 
GOO Square Feet, $3.00. 
DURABLE, FIRE PROOF. 
Rubber roofing is unequalled for house, barn and all build¬ 
ings; costs half the price of shingles, tin, or iron. 
' It is ready for use, easily applied by any one on steep or flat 
surface, or over old shingles, and Is guaranteed water tight. 
STATE SIZE OF ROOF 
and we will mall special low estimate and full particulars. 
SAMPLE FREE IF YOU SEND STAMP. 
Write at Once. Indiana Paint and Roofing Co., New York. 
WABAN, 
The stock of this Magnificent NEW ROSE (red Mermet) for 
April 15 delivery, is now sold, but we are prepared to book orders for 
a limite 1 number to be delivered May 15. 
PRICES ON APPLICATION ' 
VV. J. STEWART, 6? Bromfleld St., Boston, Mass., 
for New England States (except Connecticut) and 
Quebec. 
ROBERT CRAIG, 49th and Market Sts., Phila¬ 
delphia, Pa., for Pennsylvania, Ohio, and all 
Southern States east of the Mississippi River, and 
District of Columbia. 
THE FOLLOWING AGENTS: 
JOHN N. MAY, Summit, N. J., for Connecticut 
New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Indiana and 
Ontario. 
J. C. VAUGHAN, P.O.Box 688, Chicago, Ill., for 
Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and all States and 
Territories west of the Mississippi River, and 
Canadian territory west of Ontario. 
FAY 
CURRANT 
HEADQUARTERS. 
BEST & CHEAPEST 
•iiv-iai rt a nrc Esther, llockwood, Eaton, Moyer and all others New and Old. SMALL 
NEW GRAPES FRUITS. Catalogue Free. CEO. S. JOSSELYN, FREDONIA, N. Y. 
I 
