542 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
August 12 
fARMERS’ 
DISCUSSIONS 
Lime Water not "Wash.” 
G. M. A , Tamaroa, III —I see some 
comments in a late Rural about the 
Bordeaux mixture recipes; but I have 
read many papers, Government bulletins, 
etc., and The Rural is the only paper I 
have ever seen that tells how to make 
it so that it can be used with a fine noz¬ 
zle, viz., use the lime water for the mix¬ 
ture. The United States Bulletin says 
make a whitewash of the lime, then mix 
with the copper water. But I find the 
Vrrmorel nozzle or any other common 
nozzle won’t spray such a mixture. I 
consider The R. N.-Y. the best farm 
paper I know of, and I have only taken 
it a few months. 
Justice to Keiffer Pear. 
B. B , Farmingdale, III. — I think The 
Rural “ bears down ” too hard on the 
Keiffer pear. While hardly of good qual¬ 
ity for eating, I consider it, when prop¬ 
erly ripened, better than the Ben Davis 
apple, and as good as that queenly look¬ 
ing pear with a sweetened tallow flavor, 
the Clairgeau—at least as the latter 
grows here. It is also better than Bes- 
semianka, Early Harvest or Longworth, 
and many more I could mention. Where 
the best pears can be grown, the Keiffer 
is not wanted except for canning, but we 
are thankful for it here—but let it get 
ripe. Comparing it with a turnip and 
quince, as on page 480, isn’t quite fair. 
R. N.-Y.—No, that is true. The com¬ 
parison is absurd. Charge it to “ poetic 
license.” 
Another Wire Fence Man. 
W. T. S., Chester County, Pa.—A 
dozen years ago I commenced substitut¬ 
ing wire for my old worm and post fences, 
and my Osage Orange hedges. Removing 
the hedges, of which I had long stretches 
in full vigor, was no child’s play. Very 
poor wire cost then 11 cents per pound, 
and I made the panels 10 feet. Now I 
make them a rod, and get steel link wire 
directly from the Cambria Steel Works, 
Johnstown, in two-ton lots, or more, at 
not over four cents per pound. The 
posts, round, six feet long and not less 
than six inches at the top, cost from 0% 
to 8 cents. I use four wires for cattle, 
six for sheep and eight for hogs. At 14 
feet per pound, the estimated weight, a 
10-foot panel of cattle fence would cost 
from 18 to 20 cents. Four dressed rails 
for a post fence would cost here 40 cents; 
the post ready to plant, 20 cents, making 
60 cents for the material of a panel, 
against not over 20 for one of wire. The 
labor (cost) of building the latter is con¬ 
siderably less than that for a post and 
rail fence. The wire fence is more dur¬ 
able than the wooden one, and when a 
post rots off it is much easier to replace 
it with a new one. It is cleaner, as 
there is no shelter to catch weed seeds, 
or to harbor snow-drifts in winter. I 
use it for line fences and for roadsides, 
and no cattle, except maybe a very un¬ 
ruly bull which nothing will turn, ever 
breaks through it. I always feel that 
my crops are safe from cattle if inclosed 
with a properly cared-for wire fence. 
The drawback to it is the kind of fence, 
danger ensuing to horses, either from 
carelessness in allowing wires which 
have become loosened from the post to 
lie tangled about, or, more likely, from 
two sets of horses quarreling and strik¬ 
ing at each other across the wires, when 
they are almost certain to catch their 
feet. I have never had such accidents, 
but some of my neighbors have been less 
fortunate. Fewer Horses, however, are 
turned out to pasture than formerly. 
Taken all in all, I infinitely prefer the 
wire fences to the old wooden ones. 
A Strawberry Report. 
Benj. Smith, Massachusetts. —After 
gx owing strawberries for 33 years, I now 
grow them altogether in hills and keep 
all runners cut off. This season I have 
grown 27 varieties—20 too many—on 
about half an acre of ground. Three- 
fourths of them were Beverlys. Among 
those that proved worthless were the 
E. P. Roe and Dayton. In growing 
strawberries I want those that will give 
me the most and largest berries, last the 
longest in bearing, sell at sight and give 
me the most money. Among those that 
give lots of berries is the Beeder Wood, 
but the color is too light and the berries 
too small. The Beverly comes along 
just about as early. I picked my first 
on June 17 ; on July 22 I picked 14 
quarts, which makes in all to date, 3,035 
quarts—94 bushels 27 quarts. I have 
sold almost all in the home market. I 
sent two crates to Boston which sold at 
20 cents. I have sold No. 2. Beverlys at 
wholesale for 12 to 13 cents, and No. 1 at 
from 20 to 25 cents. No. 1 have sold at 
retail this season at 30 and 35 cents. I 
find a dark-colored berry sells best. The 
different varieties grown this season I 
consider in value in the order in which 
I name them—Beverly, Leader, Barton’s 
Eclipse, Phillip Seedling, Massachusetts 
24, Princess, and the two first are enough. 
Scarlet Clover for Beauty. 
E. L. S., New Castle, Del.— Much has 
been said about the practical value of 
this plant—now a word about its beauty: 
“ Very few know as yet what a pleasure, 
and at the same time how helpful Crim¬ 
son clover is in the kitchen garden, 
even when there is only room for six or 
eight rows of sugar corn. In just such a 
bed on the first of last September I sowed 
seed of the Scarlet clover rather thickly. 
Tn May it was a sheet of crimson bloom, 
at a time, too, when flowers were scarce. 
We cut quantities of it for vases in the 
house, and it is interesting as well as 
beautiful, for after arranging a bowl of it 
with the long heads drooping gracefully 
around the edge, and leaving it a few 
hours, one comes back to find them 
all standing straight up, and in this 
way the stems begin to grow so that 
one can almost see them. They will 
spring up several inches in a day or 
two. As soon as the blooms began 
to fade, we mowed the crop down and 
dug it well into the ground and planted 
corn. It makes the earth light and por¬ 
ous, and we think the corn grown on such 
ground is better and helped in every way. 
A large field of this clover in full bloom 
in the country is a beautiful sight. The 
seed can be procured at any of the best 
seed stores. 
“ Cheese Without Rennet.” 
Prof. H. H. Wing, Cornell. —Cheese 
is essentially milk from wuich a large 
part of the water and sugar has been 
removed. The removal of the water re¬ 
duces the bulk and so aids in the ease of 
transportation of the nutritive properties 
of the milk. The removal of water and 
sugar together renders it easier to pre¬ 
serve the remaining constituents in a form 
suitable for human consumption and cap¬ 
able of being kept in the open air at 
ordinary temperature, without fermenta¬ 
tion and with slight danger of decay. It 
is true that in removing the sugar we 
take away a part of the nutritive proper¬ 
ties of the milk, but if it wereleftin, the 
amount of moisture (more than 30 per 
cent in ordinary cheese) would be suffi¬ 
cient to cause active fermentation of the 
sugar at ordinary temperatures. “ By 
simply reducing the pure, unadulterated 
milk to the consistency of cheese” we 
would not have a substance that could 
be kept in the open air for the reasons 
just stated. Evaporation has not ceased 
with condensed milk as The Rural 
showed several years ago in its articles 
on “ Skim Milk on the Square,” but if 
milk is to be preserved by evaporation 
in a form fit for human consumption it 
must be dried to such a point that fer¬ 
mentation will not take place. Condensed 
milk must be preserved in hermetically 
sealed cans because it has abundant 
moistbre to cause fermentation of the 
sugar. We use rennet, as is indicated 
to coagulate the casein and we do this 
to remove not only the water, hut also 
the sugar. It seems to me self-evident 
that the water could not be so easily and 
cheaply removed by evaporation as by the 
use of rennet. In a vat of milk contain 
ing, say 5,000 pounds, by the use of a few 
cents’ worth of rennet and by simply 
heating the mass from 82 to 98 degrees 
we are enabled to get rid of considerably 
more than 4,000 pounds of water and the 
milk sugar in a couple of hours. In order 
to do this by evaporation we would have 
to raise the temperature of the mass 
from 88 to 212 degrees and then convert 
the water into steam. The few cents 
expended for rennet would buy only an 
infinitesimal part of the coal required to 
do this work, to say nothing of the time 
and labor, and the sugar would still be 
left in the curd. 
Remarkable Strawberry Growing:. 
W., Blair County, Pa. —There is a 
bed in my garden that was planted with 
Cumberland 13 years ago. It has never 
been dug or replanted since, and no other 
bed yielded better or finer berries or has 
m re luxuriant looking plants now in 
July than it. It has never failed to do 
well. The only culture has been the 
strict suppression of all weeds, and the 
cutting out of all old plants that have 
borne fruit twice, and the thinning out 
of their runners to 18 inches apart more 
or less before the beginning of the 
September to November growing season. 
Little or no manure has been used, but 
every year some top-dressing of sawdust, 
old tan, leaf-mold, or other fine strew- 
able litter free from weed seeds has been 
laid on, often very thinly, but the sur¬ 
face is, as a result, dark and friable with 
humus. The soil is a heavy, alluvial 
loam. Peas and sweet corn, my favorite 
vegetables, have done equally well with¬ 
out any diggiDg or stirring of the soil 
more than two inches deep. 
Rye for the Corn Plant. 
John Gould, Ohio. —The picture on the 
first page, in The Rural of July 22, is in 
“spirit” a duplicate of a scene that 
could have been witnessed on my farm 
in the late days of May as we turned the 
rye, top-dressed in the wintei, under 
for the crop of ensilage. This has been 
my practice for several years, and I like 
it better and better. As a neighbor says: 
“Oh, he sows on a little rye in the fall, 
scatters a spoonful of manure to the acre, 
and raises corn 14 feet high.” My usual 
(Continued on next page.) 
In writing to advertisers, please always mention 
The Rural New-Yorker. 
A Veteran 
Mr. Joseph IIelii- 
mei'ich, 529 E. 14Ctli 
St., N. Y. City, in 1802, 
at the battle- of Fair 
Oaks, was stricken with 
Typhoid Fever, and 
after a long struggle in 
hospitals, was discharg¬ 
ed as incurable with 
Consumption. lie has 
lately taken Hood’s Sar¬ 
saparilla, is in good health, and cordially rec- 
omn ends IlOOU’S MAKMAPAKILLA 
as a general blood purifier and tonic medi¬ 
cine, especially to his comrades in the G. A. R. 
HOOD’S PlLLS are hand made, and are per¬ 
fect in composition, proportion and appearance. 
Jos. Hemmericli. 
LEGGETT’S 
DRY POWDER GUNf! 
distributes Paris-Green, London-Purple, Helle¬ 
bore, or any dry powder in any quantity desired. 
By turning the crank a volume of powder is 
forced through the tube, and envelopes the plant, 
bush or tree in a cloud of dust. It is simple, dur¬ 
able and cheap. Four tubes with each gun. full 
length eight feet. Price, $6; express paid east of 
Rocky Mts. Send for circular. Prompt delivery. 
LkUGETT A HKO., 301 Pearl St., New York. 
The 
FAIRBANKS 
€ 
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MILLS 
AND 
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Are WARRANTED to bo 
strictly first-class in material 
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THE ECLIPSE WIND MILL 
the Original Self-regulating Wood Wheel, 
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BALING 
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HORSE AND 
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Address Manuf’rs. 
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Box 11 QUINCY, ILL. 
LANDS FOR SALE. 
Bv the Illinois Central RR. Co., at 
Low Prices and on Easy Terms, 
in Southern Illinois. 
The best farm country in the world for either large 
or small farms, gardens, fruits, orchards, dairying, 
raising stock or sheep. A greater variety of crops, 
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of lands in this country than can be raised in any 
other portion of this State. All sales made exclu¬ 
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Special inducements and facilities offered by the 
Illinois Central Railroad Company to go and examine 
these lands. For full description and map, and any 
information, address or call upon 
E. P. SKENE, 
Land Commissioner I. C. RR. Co., 
78 Michigan Ave., CHICAGO. ILL 
ATTENTION 1 
A8K FOR THIS AXE. 
USE NO OTHER. 
Wood-choppers, try the 
Kelly Perfect Hxe 
It will cut more wood 
than any other axe. 
The scoop in the blade 
keeps it from sticking in 
the wood, and makes it 
cut deeper than any other 
axe. Ask your dealer for 
it. Send us his name if 
he don’t keep it. It is the 
V \1 Anti-Trust Axe. 
y Kelly Axe Mfg.Co. 
_ / LOUISVILLE, KY. 
WALL PAPER 
II buy handsome paper anc 
4c. to 50c. a roll. 
Send 8c. for 100 fine 
samples. SI .OO will 
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prepaid. With year’s subscription, 82.50. 
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