6o4 
September 9 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
before be comes around. The diseases mentioned are 
those quite often found in dairy herds. I can go into 
hundreds of dair'es and find cows afflicted with some 
of the diseases named in that statement; yet the milk 
all goes to market. It is uncertified though.” 
The Food for Certified Milk, 
The article relating to food reads thus : 
It Is hereby understood and agreed that the methods of feeding the 
cows furnishing the certified milk shall be subject to the approval of 
the parties of the first part. The feed and fodder shall consist only 
of nutritious and wholesome materials; such as grass, clover and 
Timothy hay, whole grain, or the entire result of the grist. No mater¬ 
ials shall he used which are or may become Injurious to the health of 
the animals, There shall not be fed at any time or In any quantity, 
either aline or mixed with other feed or fodder, hulls, screenings, wet 
or dry brewers’grains, oil cake, any of the refuse from distilleries, 
glucose or starch factories, dry or wet. any by-product In the treatment 
of grain, low wet meadow grass, or any of the questionable or ex¬ 
hausted feeds or fodders employed either to Increase the milking 
capacity of the animal, or that will produce an Impoverished milk, or 
that will Impart to It unnatural odors or flavors. Nor shall the cows 
be allowed to cat green or worm eaten fruit, carcasses, poisonous 
weeds, or to drink poisonous or stagnant water. 
“ That takes much of the cheaper grains in the 
market out of your hands, doesn’t it V ” 
“ Yes, but there are plenty more with good corn 
meal and bran.” 
“ What do you feed, anyway ? ” 
“ For years I have fed a mixture of 200 pounds of 
the best corn meal, 100 pounds malt sprouts and 100 
pounds bran. This is mixed with water 12 hours be¬ 
fore feeding, and is fed in the form of a soft mush. 
I have given up both linseed and cotton-seed meals, 
and am ready to let the sprouts go and feed only 
sweet corn meal and bran.” 
Your feed bill must be heavy.” 
*• It was over $4,000 for grain alone last year.” 
“ What bulky fodder do you use ? ” 
“ Hay—mostly clover, ensilage, turnips and stalks. 
We also feed some grain-hay—half oats and wheat 
sown together and cut just before fully headed. This 
makes a fine feed for soiling just before green corn is 
ready, or even to cure for hay. It is also a splendid 
way for us to seed to grass. We feed a good many 
turnips, which are fine for use between the end of 
the pasture and the opening of the silo. We feed 
them whole and let the cows eat them while we are 
milking. We use flat turnips or sugar beets. Our 
pasture contains 125 acres, and we are constantly im¬ 
proving it by working and reseeding. It is one of 
our experiments to see how many cows can be past¬ 
ured on one acre. We mow our pastures in August 
and use the crop for bedding.” 
“ You feed ensilage, I see ! ” 
“Yes, but for a long time I thought the doctors 
would throw it out. They made many investigations 
about it, but finally decided that it was a safe food 
when carefully made and fed.” 
“ Would it not have been a sad loss to try to get 
along without the silo ? ” 
“ It would have been inconvenient, but I could have 
arranged it by cutting my dry stalks and steaming 
them and also by feeding more beets. Ensilage is a 
handy food, but by cutting and steaming dried hay 
and stalks I can get all the ‘succulence’ I need.” 
(Under this heading we propose to print questions that seem to call 
fora variety of answers. We ask all who have any experiences or 
suggestions to oiler to talk into The R. N.-Y.’s ear at once.) 
How is the Extractor ?—Why do we not hear more 
about the butter extractor ? Have readers of The 
R. N.-Y. had any experience with it ? Does the pro¬ 
duct of the sweet milk as made by the extractor find 
as ready a market as that from ripened cream ? 
Harwinton, Conn. h. v. t. 
R. N.-Y.—There are some extractors still in use and 
we hope those who use them will answer these ques¬ 
tions. The market for sweet cream butter is limited, 
but constantly growing. 
Is Thompson’s Prolific? —Must Thompson’s Pro¬ 
lific raspberry be set near some other variety to make 
it bear well ? I have a row of 25 plants of that variety 
that produce no perfect berries, though I have fruited 
them two years. On one side of the row I have 
Shaffer’s that bears profusely, and on the other side 
Stone’s Hardy blackberry ; the next row is of Cuth- 
bert raspberries, which bear well. p. g. 
R. N.-Y.—We cannot say. Our specimens are grow¬ 
ing among other raspberries. What do others say ? 
“Phosphate” Hurt the Grain.- —A neighbor was 
induced to try commercial fertilizers on his wheat 
.last fall. An acid phosphate was used on one strip 
across the field at the rate of 200 pounds per acre, and 
on another strip a complete fertilizer at the same 
rate. The field contains 12 acres, is thoroughly un¬ 
derdrained and had been heavily limed. The yield 
this harvest was splendid, but that on the strips fer¬ 
tilized was noticeably inferior, especially in the fact 
that the wheat heads were much smaller than those 
where no fertilizer was used. Now why, in this case, 
did the fertilizers reduce instead of increasing the yield? 
Blairsville, Pa. h. c. b. 
R- N -Y.—We do not know, unless the acid phos¬ 
phate was drilled in so close to the seed that it was 
injured. Some of the superphosphates contain too 
much sulphuric acid, which corrodes or 4 • burns up ” 
the seed. We can kill a child by feeding it poorly 
prepared food, but that does not show that food is 
useless. We would like to hear of other cases where 
the use of superphosphates has resulted in a loss of 
gra ; n. The case as stated by our friend is inexplicable. 
So small an amount of phosphate to the acre could not 
have done much of either good or harm 
Non-Sucking Calf. —My cow dropped a calf three 
days ago, and nothing can induce the little thing to 
suck, though it appears to be healthy. Has The 
Rural ever heard of instances like this ? d. f. h. 
Lawton, Mich. 
R- N.-Y.—No, not exactly. We should consider it 
a desirable quality. Who can duplicate it ? 
Wanted : A Water Carrier —My spring is about 
120 feet distant, and 15 feet lower than my kitchen ; 
is there any better way to get the water to my house 
than by carrying it ? j. h. r. 
Smock, Pa. 
HORSES AND HOES; NEW ENGLAND'S FOES. 
In central Maine, some years ago, lived a well-to do 
farmer who used to say that if he had succeeded at all 
in farming, and he had no other business, it was due 
to the avoidance of two things—horses and hoeing. 
He had noticed, he said, that his neighbors who kept 
more horses than they needed for use got less out of 
them than out of anything else in proportion to their 
cost; that they either neglected their farms for their 
hcrses, or the horses for the farms. It looks so to-day. 
This section is full of horses, yet in a lumber mill yard 
close by 16 of the animals employed are from the West, 
and the only “ native ” is kept to “ run errands,” as he 
is a little faster than his brethren. I doubt if Dr. 
Webb’s Hackney would have met with better patron¬ 
age here than in Vermont. We all want speed and 
are perfectly willing to sacrifice time and money for a 
possible Nelson, whose home is close by, and who, in 
the matter of breeding, “ sets the gait ” for the whole 
State. We sell a good many nice horses, but keep 
idle a host of others that have neither speed, beauty, 
gait nor strength to recommend them. The sheep has 
taken a back seat. A third-rate cow, this old farmer 
said, was good property compared with an idle horse, 
for the cow paid for her keep and needed little care. 
As for the hoe, he said that tool had driven more 
men West than all other causes put together. When I 
look about me now, I think he was right. The hoe 
is still the great implement of torture in New England, 
as well for the boys’ backs as for the lusty weeds. It 
is responsible for more bent shoulders and stooping 
forms than all other causes combined. It is to-day the 
betenoir of Eastern farming, and a short sojourn in 
beautiful New England in June will prove it. 
Take the potato field, for instance. We break up a 
piece in late fall or spring, harrow it with a spring- 
tooth, or some other surface scratcher, and furrow it 
about two inches deep. The potatoes are now dropped, 
and about all the loose soil is hoed over them. The 
“ old man ” has attended to the job thus far, but now 
he turns the piece over to the “ boys.” The field lies 
thus till the vines come up, and the inverted sod also, 
which, left alone, has recovered from its somersault, 
and is growing backward as fast as green manure and 
warm weather can make it. Now comes the universal 
scratching with hoes, which will torment all hands 
till haying comes on, and the weeds finally get the 
upper hand. All the loose earth is now hoed over the 
hill in the frantic race till it is shaped like the pyra¬ 
mid of Ghizeh, and, in 9 cases out of 10, all this dig¬ 
ging is in vain, and a scant crop of 100 bushels rewards 
the toiling wielder of the hoe. No wonder the boys 
want to go West after all this labor, with so trifling 
a return. 
We plant our corn in patches, not strips, and do it 
with a one-horse machine, without pole or shafts, 
attached to the whiflietree by a foot of chain, and no 
snake ever crawled so crooked a course as this thing 
does over the corn field. It is impossible to cultivate 
clean by machinery a field so planted, and here again 
the hoe comes in to fill the vacancy, and all summer 
long the fight goes on. The hoe is one of those ple¬ 
beian tools which many farmers seldom sharpen, and 
for a man to take a file to the field to keep it in order 
would be regarded as hard on the hoe ; it would wear 
it out too fast. 
There are notable exceptions to the bondage to the 
hoe in New England, but I have no doubt that in 
the main the above is true, and I have stated it mikLy. 
A dull hoe is the most repellant tool in the world, and 
an exhibit of such as are used in this part of the 
country, with a few of the crooked spines they have 
made, would go far to show why the Eastern boy left 
h’’s home and kindred, and carved out his fortune in 
the West. If the carving had required a hoe, he 
would have staid at home. 
“ And this in Rome ! ” This in the New England of 
to-day. Is it any wonder that much of Massachusetts 
is to-day growing up to weeds, while the boys are 
flocking to the mills cf all kinds in the towns? I 
don’t believe all this hand labor is necessary, but 
no one who knows the facts will deny their existence, 
and I think that it is right to tell the truth about it, 
and it may be that in time the wrong will be righted. 
The boy who went away from home to avoid the hoe¬ 
ing reminds me of the old farmer whom the doctors 
proposed as a last resort to phlebotomize. Not having 
been educated at an agricultural college, the old 
gentleman did not understand the meaning of the 
word, but asked them faintly if they couldn’t kill him 
in some other way. o, g. paine. 
IN A MAINE GARDEN. 
The few Maine farmers and gardeners who have 
been lucky enough to try the new Horticultural Lima 
pole bean this year ^consider it a decided acquisition. 
It is very early for a Lima, much earlier than Dreer’s 
Bush or any other Lima, either bush or pole. While 
the Horticultural Lima is not so rich and nutty as the 
pole Lima of Jersey, it is the best that can be raised 
in our short seasons ; hence we all call it a jewel. As 
I write (August 26), the lower pods on the poles are 
ripening, big, fat and loDg. It is a hardy, vigorous 
grower and a fairly abundant cropper. The vines are 
large-leaved and stocky, but do not cling to the poles 
very well. 
Another novelty which I like much is Burpee’s White 
Wonder cucumber. It produces immense cucumbers 
that are very solid and crisp and remarkably free from 
seeds. The women of the house like them so well that 
I fear I shall not be able to save any for seed. Put in 
glass jars with White Wax bean pods, cauliflower tips 
and white onions, the little White Wonders make the 
prettiest of white mixed pickles. Try them. 
What is the matter with the squashes this year ? I 
have Metcalfs that are exactly similar to Boston Mar¬ 
rows, and my summer bush Scallops are white pump¬ 
kins with small stems and big scars where the blossoms 
fell off. My Cocoanut squashes grow on bushes, and 
my Hubbards look like a cross between a yellow hedge¬ 
hog and a hard shell “ Nigger ” pumpkin. The middle 
is creamy white, and the ends the darkest of dark 
green. They are all small and covered thickly with 
big, smooth warts. I bought all my seeds from a re- 
li»ble seedsman, save a few which “ Uncle Sam” sent 
me from Washington ; so if there has been any cross¬ 
breeding, it was done away from my garden. I have 
a mind to save some of my strongest “ sports ” for seed. 
If things keep on this way, I shall soon be able to 
gather squash pies all hot from the vines 
The Early Six Weeks potato is the best for early 
market th ; s year. Some may be earlier, but do not 
yield so well. The Early Six Weeks wastes no energy 
in making tops, but puts everything into tubers They 
are just like prize winners, every one. tom ford. 
Bangor, Me. 
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CUTTING THE CORN CROP. 
PRACTICES IN DIFFERENT SECTIONS. 
1. How many hills do you put In the shock? 2. When do you cut? 
3. What tools are used for cutting? Are any of the cutting machines 
in use about you? 4. When small grain follows the corn, what do you 
do with the shocks? 5. What do you consider the comparative value 
of corn fodder? 
Practices of a Jerseyman. 
As a rule, we cut up corn 04 hills to the shock, or 
eight hills square. When very heavy and green we 
sometimes cut 6 by 8 hills, or 48 to the shock. We 
aim to cut as soon as the grain on the ears is glazed, 
provided the weather is not sultry and warm. In 
that case I would defer cutting for more favorable 
conditions, for if cut then the corn might mold in the 
shock. I use the ordinary implement made for cut¬ 
ting. The husking and cribbing of the corn are mat¬ 
ters of convenience—any time before the snow flies is 
early enough for the work. I do not believe the 
fodder is materially injured by exposure. If we wish 
to sow wheat or rye after corn, the custom in this 
locality is to cut and carry off the latter and shock it 
