574 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. AUG. 8 
CHEMICALS AND CLOVER. 
A Farmer on the Hills Talks. 
I read a good many papers, bnt I do not read any that 
sets me to thinking like The Rural. Those ideas about 
arming with fertilizers and without stock are worth a 
great deal to me. Just think what a saving it would be 
to have no manure to handle, no pasture fences to keep up, 
no milking to tie one down at home, no milk and cream 
and butter to handle! What a vast amount 
of labor the new system save 1 *! I hope a great 
many of the farmers in the thickly settled re¬ 
gions will adopt this new departure. We 
poor farmers who live back among the moun¬ 
tains and hills must keep on milking and 
hauling manure, and the fewer cattle kept, 
the better will cattle raising and dairying 
pay those who keep stock. Our fields are bet¬ 
ter suited to cattle and sheep than to grain 
growing, and we cannot well get along with¬ 
out stock. My own farm is better adapted to 
grass than to anything else ; there are a few 
acres where corn, etc., can be grown. But 
there are many farms about here that are 
adapted to grain growing and not to grass. 
The grass land, as we call it, is generally stony, 
hard to plow and wet, and this last counter¬ 
balances many disadvantages. Droughts do 
not trouble us ; wet weather does. Drainage 
is next to impossible. Think of digging 
through hardpan where you cannot take out 
a spoonful of dirt without first loosening it 
with a pick. On top of the hardpan are 12 or 
18 inches of black soil containing many stonep. 
The ability of this land to bear grass is amaz 
ing. Even on the higher parts of my farm it 
is one of the worst weeds we have. While I 
cannot get along without stock, I am glad to 
read the experience of those who cm. The 
best I can do is to turn grass, clover and corn 
into butter and sell that. 
If a man makes more tnan the average 
farmer, he must get out of the rut in which 
the average farmer moves. He must make a 
better article, or put it np in better shape, or 
produce it at a season when prices are higher, 
or make it at a less cost than bis neighbors in 
order to get a better price. All this requires 
skill, and on top of this he needs business 
ability to keep his profits from the clutches of 
the middlemen. Now, butter making requires 
as much skill as the other branches of farming 
or more in order to make it a success, but it 
is confining work. When, however, we think of how busi¬ 
ness men and clerks and workers in almost every occupa¬ 
tion are confined, we cannot complain. And I see that Mr. 
Terry keeps a cow or two, and those New Jersey farmers 
who manure with fertilizers, keep a few cows. A few cows 
make work and our farmers’ wives say they had about as 
lief take care of the milk of a dczen cows as of that from 
four or five—that is, where butter is made. 
Is farming with chemicals and clover going to solve the 
labor problem f It ought to where it can be adopted. It 
takes lots of time to milk on a farm, lots of hard work to 
care for the manure, lots of expense to keep up fences. A 
man who has to milk 10 or a dozen cows twice a day can’t 
do much farm work before breakfast or after supper. If I 
could only get rid of every animal on mv farm except the 
team and the family cow, woulda’t it just be . ice 1 I could 
get at some of the jobs that are waiting to be done, and 
which, as things are, will have to wait a good while longer. 
I am very tired of reading good advice about this and that 
piece of farm work, which it is simply impossible to carry 
out because we cannot get help. Farm implements enable 
me to do much more work than I otherwise could, as well 
as to do it far better. Breed’s weeder has paid for itself this 
season. It will work among stones, but it does not do 
good work on wet or rough land. Then the Planet Jr. 
horse hoe is another tool I coul i not get along without. 
If it were not for labor-saving machinery, I do not see 
how I could get along at all, and if I could adopt the 
chemical and clover farming, I think I could get on a 
great deal better. It is impossible for the men who live on 
stony and hard hill farms to adopt many of the improved 
methods, but too many are slow to adopt those they can 
use to advantage. And the same is true of the men who 
live on the meadow larms. Many farmers neglect to buy 
a piece of machinery that would pay for itself in one 
season, neglect to take an agricultural paper that would 
be worth many times its cost, neglect this and that means 
of improvement. How many dollars’ worth of plant food 
is lost because farmers neglect to keep their manure cov¬ 
ered ! How many dollars’ worth of profit is lost because 
dairymen neglect to improve their stock ! And so the list 
might be extended. Doubtless there are many who could 
adopt the new farming, who will neglect to do so. It is 
disheartening to hear the excuses farmers make for neg¬ 
lecting better methods. 
Perhaps not every farmer can grow potatoes and wheat, 
but most can grow clover, and they can find other money 
crops to grow instead of these. But the outlook for wheat 
is v.'ry good, and potatoes are high once in two or three 
years, as a rule. If a man tries, he can grow crops which 
he thinks are not fitted to his soil. A few years ago, I was 
almost discouraged about growing potatoes; but I have 
been learning more about it every year; last year I had the 
best crop I have ever grown ; this year’s promises to be 
still better. It has been the same with corn; year by year 
I have learned how to produce better crops, sometimes 
getting quite a set-back, but learning valuable lessons. I 
am having good success with chemicals in the hill and 
manure broadcast; in fact, on my soil corn and potatoes 
require hill or drill fertilization. j. w. newton. 
THE PAPAW TREE (ASIMINA TRILOBA). 
This is a small tree indigenous to the Middle and South¬ 
ern States from western New York to southern Michigan 
and southward to middle Florida and eastern Texas ; but 
rare near the Atlantic coast. It attains Its greatest devel¬ 
opment in the Mississippi Valley, and especially along the 
tributaries of the lower Ohio River. Although it is hardy 
around New York, it is only precariously hardy north of 
here. The Papaw tree belongs to the custard apple family 
of plants, and is the only arborescent species of the genus 
belonging to this country; two or three other species, only 
low shrubs, also occur in the Southern States, but are 
not hardy in the North. Although named Papaw tree, it 
is not the Papaw of commerce, which is Carica Papaya, a 
soft-wooded, fast growing plant of tropical America, now 
cultivated considerably in southern Florida. The name 
Papaw has been given to Aaimlna triloba from a fancied 
resemblance of its fruit to that of the Carica. 
As a garden plant, however, the Papaw tree is well worth 
growing for its shapely form and ample, abundant and fine 
foliage, as well as for its fruit. But it should have a shel¬ 
tered place in Northern gardens and good ground always. 
It grows well with us on Long Island, and the epectmenlin 
the Rural Grounds, which I have seen, is a handsome, 
broad-headed bush-tree with a splendid growth of leaves 
and carrying a good deal of fruit. 
The leaves are obovate-lanceolate, nine or ten inches long 
by three or four inches wide, and light green above and 
pale on the underside. The flowers, which appear with the 
leaves in May, are about IK inch across, greenish, chang¬ 
ing with age to brown, and solitary at the leaf joints of the 
previous year’s young wood. The fruit looks like an al¬ 
most cylindrical, very fleshy Windsor Bean 
pod ; it is three to live inches long, oblong, 
rounded, somewhat falcate, and often mis¬ 
shapen from the imperfect development of 
some of its seeds, and these pod-like fruits 
may occur singly, or two, not unfrequently 
three may grow together. The unripe fruit is 
green, but when ripe the flesh is yellow and 
the skin dark brown; it is then sweet and 
luscious to the taste, but it is with the Papaw 
as it is with the Persimmon—we cannot 
reasonably expect as good fruit in the North 
as may be had in the South. WM. FALCONER. 
Glen Cove, Long Island. 
The Common Papaw. 
The specimen whose photo-portrait appears 
at Fig. 206, was transplanted about 10 years 
ago from the border of a low, swampy field 
near the Rural Grounds. It is now about 10 
feet high, and, as shown, well clothed with 
its distinctive somewhat tropical looking 
foliage. It grows in the woods about, but the 
natives are not familiar with it, and the fruit 
is unknown to them. This tree began to fruit 
three years ago. This year it is bearing 
abundantly, sometimes singly; again in pairs, 
triplets, quadruplets, while we fiad as many 
as eight and ten in a cluster. The specimens 
shown at Fig. 207 and at Fig. 208, were taken 
from the tree July 6. The latter also shows 
the average sized leaf with a single fruit laid 
upon it, and the subtending smaller leaves. 
It ripens easily before frost, and the banana 
like flesh is relished by some, though deemed 
insipid by others. It grows to the size of from 
three to four inches in length by an inch in 
diameter, being of a long, cylindrical shape, 
rounded at either end, and the skin very 
smooth and of a greenish-yellow color when 
ripe. The tree blooms early before the leaves 
appear. The three calyx petals are green, and 
within are two whorls of wavy dull purple 
petals, three in each whorl. In a ball as large 
as a pea are the stamens, surmounting which 
is the pistil. The flowers are about an inch in diameter 
with the general form of a little cup. The leaves push 
just as the tree is in fullest bloom. 
Most of the flowers are below the terminal shoots, so 
that when the large, obovate leaves are developed, the fruit 
underneath, which is of the color of the leaves, is rarely 
seen and easily overlooked, even though ODe is searcning 
for it. 
It is an interesting tree, and well suited to small grounds 
or to positions near the dwelling. 
IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF ENSILAGE. 
Charcoal; Adding Water to Dry Stalks. 
1. Would sprinkling salt, air slaked lime, charcoal dust 
or any other substance while filling the silo, be of 
any advantage in checking mold or acidity t 
2. Is it positively known that rain or dew on mature corn 
fodder when going into the silo, has injured it or de¬ 
creased its feeding value ? 
It May Pay to Add Water. 
1. Since adopting the practice of allowing the corn fod¬ 
der to become mature in the field before it is put in the 
silo, I have had such uniformly “good luck” with the 
ensilage that I have made no experiments with any prep¬ 
aration to prevent mold. The silos have been rapidly 
filled with the mature fodder, each in turn receiving the 
cut corn for half a day, and very little tramping has been 
done; yet there has been no loss of ensilage by molding 
save on the surface, where I usually lose about three or 
four inches, cover as I may. I have therefore left “ well 
enough alone.” 
2 . I have positively noticed that when corn is well into 
maturity before it is cut into the silo, rain or dew does it 
no harm. On the contrary, the indications are that either 
is of some benefit. Two years ago, 40 loads were put into 
one silo while dripping with rain, and better ensilage I 
have never seen. Last season 10 loads went into a pit of 
mine right after a smart sho wer, and no part of the ensilage 
was better, and by comparison I think the wet fodder 
came out the brightest. My neighbors, Blair and Root, 
who each put up nearly 800 tons, pay no attention to the 
weather— i. e., if it does not rain too hard—and they both 
confirm my ideas in this matter. A Swedish farmer near 
here actually pours barrels of water on the dry fodder 
while filling the pits, and his ensilage is remarkable for 
its sweetness and unchanged condition. If the fodder 
were not fully mature, and contained an excess of sap, I 
would not care to have much extra water go into the silo; 
but when the corn is in the glazing stage, all the rain 
water that would be left on the stalks after they had been 
carted, run through the cutter and elevated and had 
fallen into the pits, would cause no harm. The crying 
need of the silo to day is a cheap and certain mode of 
covering that will save the loss of about 50 bushels of sur¬ 
face ensilage—the average loss I find in each of my pits. I 
have heard that salt mixed with six inches of the surface 
of ensilage will tend to minimize this loss. I would have 
more faith in two barrels of water sprinkled on the sur¬ 
face about the eighth day after filling the silo, a little ex- 
