402 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
MAY 23 
“ Too Much of a Good Thing ! ” 
J. A. L. Fisher, Central Bridge, N. 
Y.—I wish to make a complaint against 
The R. N.-Y. It has been the means of 
getting me into trouble. It had the kind¬ 
ness to mention me as one of the parties 
who had Rural New Yorker No. 2 Potatoes. 
This was the means of flooding me with 
letters asking for prices, etc. Of course I 
answered them, and my potatoes were all 
sold off in a hurry. Now, here is where the 
trouble comes in—I am still receiving or¬ 
ders and have to return the money. As The 
Rural was so kind as to give me this free ad¬ 
vertisement, may I not further tax its gen¬ 
erosity by asking it to put a oneck on such 
orders by mentioning the fact that I have 
no Rural New-Yorker No. 2 Potatoes. I 
am convinced that the R. N.-Y. is a valu¬ 
able advertising medium ? I am also con¬ 
vinced that it is fearlessly fighting for the 
best interests of the farmer in every con¬ 
ceivable manner, and the best that I can 
wish it is the success it deserves. 
Cotton-Seed Meal as Stock Food. 
J. S. Woodward, Niagara Co., N. Y.— 
I often notice in The Farmers’ Club of 
The Rural inquiries as to the safety of 
feeding cotton-seed meal to animals and 
especially to those that are pregnant. Now, 
we have been feeding it for the past four 
years and have fed it liberally to all classes 
of animals when pregnant as well as when 
not, and we have yet to see the first in¬ 
stance of its being injurious, except as a 
hog feed. We feed a car-load each winter 
and feed pregnant animals right up to 
parturition, and I don’t believe there is the 
least danger in its use. I would recom¬ 
mend, however, that it be mixed with some 
food not so highly nitrogenous, both for 
safety and economy. It is a well estab¬ 
lished fact that the rations for animals 
should be properly balanced with a 
view to the end sought, both for the health 
of the animal and the profit of the feeder, 
and cotton-seed meal is about as far from 
a proper balance as any food used, its nu¬ 
tritive ratio varying from 1 to 1.4, ac¬ 
cording to the closeness of the extraction 
of the oil. But I have never seen any food 
that was better to balance a ration like 
Timothy hay or corn meal than cotton seed 
meal. To get the best results from its use, 
it should be fed with ensilage or some sort 
of roots. 
That Terrible Hired Man. 
F. J. Rowley, Shiawassee County, 
Mich. —What a pity it is that the subscriber 
who wrote that article in The Rural of 
April 18, did aot live in the days of slavery; 
then he would have been enabled to treat 
his farm heip as he seems to want to treat 
them now. While I am willing to admit 
that there are some farm hands that can 
be justly charged with most of the faults 
mentioned, I find they are an exception and 
not the rule. He says that they get the 
highest wages and claim every cent of them, 
as though claiming all the wages agreed 
upon was a sin. I expect that if a man 
agreed to work for, say, $20 and only de¬ 
manded $10 per month, he would be satis¬ 
fied; that is, if such a thing as satisfying 
him were possible. He grumbles because 
the men have the teams out at night and 
so unfit them for work through the day. I 
would like to remind him that it is no one’s 
fault but his own if he allows such conduct. 
He says that the hands leave off work at 
four or five o clock to do the chores. If 
they do his hands are an exception. The 
average farm hand leives off work when it 
is so dark that he cannot see and then does 
the chores by the light of a lantern, while 
his employer sits in the house and reads his 
paper or talks politics with some neighbor. 
Oh those terrible mirried men who work 
and live on the farm! A man who stops to 
take a bite or a drink every half hour, as 
he says his does, must either have a tremen¬ 
dous appetite or be a hard drinker, but if 
this grumbltr would feed his men a little 
better at his own table that trouble would 
abate. The experiment is worth trying at 
least. He says the men get the best wages 
no matter how worthless they are. Ac¬ 
cording to my experience in this section, a 
good man can command good wages while 
a poor hand cannot get work, at any price. 
He says that the hired man’s wood is cut 
and hauled while his own wife has to bring 
her o* n. Well, if that is the case I would 
be ashamed to own it, and I think he could 
learn a much needed lesson from his hired 
man. I find that the average farm hand 
treats his employer about the same as his 
employer treats him, and who can blame 
him ? 
Flavor Affected by Locality. 
H. C., McLane, Pa.— On page 286 of The 
Rural New Yorker, in commenting on the 
remarks of F. S. W., Des Moines, Iowa, to 
the effect that the Fordhook Squash does 
not succeed with him, the editor says his 
locality is perhaps not suited to it; for it is 
a kind that is highly praised elsewhere. I 
would like to ask if locality has anything 
. to do with the quality of vegetables. A 
Massachusetts man on page 242 told of his 
method of growing vegetables for direct 
delivery to his customers in a city near his 
farm. He said he grew the kinds that his 
customers liked best, and that for summer 
squash Cocazelle suited them the best. I 
tried this variety in this locality last sum¬ 
mer, and while the yield was abundant the 
quality was so poor that I did not care to 
plant any this year. On page 293, third 
column, The Rural asks what experience 
farmers have had in planting sweet corn 
for a succession. I had sweet corn from 
the last Sunday in July till the last Sunday 
in October. The kinds planted were an 
early Tom Thumb variety distributed by 
The R. N.-Y. some four or five years ago; 
the Black Mexican and The Mammoth Late. 
There was a break of a few days between 
the Tom Thumb and the Black Mexican. As 
these were planted only tor a private family, 
the quantity of each was not large. 
A New Use For Ensilage. 
John Gould, Portage County, Ohio.— 
The valuable testimony of the dairymen in 
relation to the spring care of milch cows 
conveyed a fund of excellent experience, 
and afforded a new line of testimony for the 
silo, that had not before appeared elsewhere. 
I wish to add a word in the same line. This 
spring my ensilage lasted for 17 days after 
we began to turn the cows out to pasture. 
There was no such great rush for grass, as 
I had noticed in the days of hay wintering. 
The cows almost from the first rejected hay; 
but would eat the ensilage up clean and 
without objection. The change from “ hay 
to grass ” when ensilage formed part of the 
ration, did not produce any marked change, 
except to increase the milk yield ; for the 
$28 per ton grain ration was continued, and 
there was not a case of grass “colic” or 
any noticeable scouring. One of the dairy¬ 
man’s chief concerns about his milking 
stock is to see that they are not subjected 
to violent changes in food, as well as 
weather ; and ensilage after the soiling 
crop in the fall, and as a means of bridging 
over to grass, is among the most valuable 
adjuncts of the dairy. The cow that has a 
succulent ration like good sound ensilage, 
does not require changes of food during the 
winter to keep up the appetite any more 
than she does on a good Blue Grass pasture. 
My cows ate their last basket of ensilage 
with the same apparent relish they did the 
first over six month ago, and Julian Rogers 
of New York, who feeds ensilage the year 
round and has no pasture, tells me that on 
good ensilage his cows—94 of them—never 
are “ dainty ” or off their feed. 
Another Wide-Tired Man. 
B. S. W., Cutchogue, N. Y.—Improve¬ 
ment in roads seems to be attracting a deal 
of attention and comment. One can hardly 
take up a farm paper without finding some 
ideas on road improvement. I think that 
about the cheapest way improvements can 
be made—and, moreover, it would be a 
benefit to the farmer when drawing heavy 
loads about the farm—would be to do away 
with narrow-tired rut diggers and use four- 
inch tires on heavy wagons and trucks. I 
use the rut diggers myself, but propose to 
change to wide tires. I am convinced the 
change will pay. I am of the same opinion 
as S. R., of Wayne County, that if there is 
to be any legislation on the matter it should 
begin with the width of the tires for heavy 
wagons, for if a wide tire does cut down 
into the mud it leaves a much better track 
for a light wagon and there will be less 
danger of cramping the wheels. Last 
March one of my neighbors shipped 1,000 
bushels of potatoes and drew them over a 
mile of road that comes under my charge, 
the work being done in about four days. 
The ground froze during the nights and 
thawed out during the days, so that the 
ruts were both rough and deep. If that 
work had been done on wide tires I could 
have smoothed the roads down with two 
horses as easily as I did with four and in 
less time. In this and adjoining places the 
change is being made gradually. Nearly 
all the new farm wagons are built with 
wide tires, and those that have them think 
them a great improvement on the rut dig¬ 
gers. 
"What Are You Growling About ? ” 
A. C. Bates, Indiana. —What have we 
all been grumbling about “ anyway ? ” 
Was all the fuss got up for a big scare ? 
Was it simply that one party should lose 
and the other gain ? Was it that some 
demagogues should get in office, and others 
get out. We hear very little grumbling now. 
With wheat so high in price and so promis 
ing for the future; with such meadows and 
pastures as we have and such good pricfs 
for meat; with such very fine promises for 
fruits of all kinds, how can we grumble ? 
Then again, “ tin cups are not 10 cents f ach ” 
as they were in some districts in Ohio last 
fall, and sugar is on the free list, while 
labor is remunerative and easily employed. 
How can we find fault with anything now? 
Let us all go to work hopefully and confi¬ 
dently and at least wait till ’92 to grumble 
and try to affect the elections. 
An Ensilage Heretic’s Sermon. 
A. T. T., Franklin Park, N. J.—I have 
read with interest the various communica¬ 
tions from Rural contributors regarding 
the silo. None of them, so far as I have 
seen, has said anything except in its favor. 
Of course so unanimous a verdict should be 
taken as proof that the advantages that are 
claimed for it have an actual existence. It 
cannot be that so many are deluded as to 
Its virtues, and yet, like the recalcitrant 
juryman who said he never saw eleven such 
stubborn men as the rest of the jury were, 
I must raise my voice against the praises 
with which the “ woods are filled.” I have 
a silo myself, so I am not basing my protest 
on theory alone. I built it in 1881. I have 
filled it repeatedly, occasionally with almost 
everything that would make cow feed— 
field corn, clover, Timothy, sorghum, rye; 
with enough, in fact, to enable me to say 
that I have tried a sufficient variety to 
know something about the benefits of it, 
if there were any. I have watched the 
effects of ensilage, figured on the profits and 
the losses of it, and in the end am an utter 
apostate from my first love When I counted 
the labor of handling the heavy stuff, the 
machinery for handling and cutting and 
filling the silo, and the fact that my horses 
could not safely eat it after all my trouble 
in preparing so “succulent” a food, I said : 
“ No more for me.” The silo was all above 
ground and preserved the ensilage per¬ 
fectly, and there was no fault to be found 
with it. Perhaps some silo contributors 
can do more work with the same number 
of men than I can when filling, but my 
men worked as hard as they could. A 
Daniels 16-inch cutter sent a tornado of 
chopped stalks sailing into the depths. The 
growth was long and heavy, the distance 
for hauling short, and still when I sat 
down to multiply and add and reached a 
(Continued on next page.) 
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