46 
The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
January 14, 1922 
| HOPE FARM NOTES 
On this farm there was a dog kennel. 
Ilorses were killed to feed the dogs. 1 
am confronted with the problem of many 
horse skeletons and many other beef 
bones strewn about in a piece of wood¬ 
land. The place looks like a graveyard. 
How can these bones be utilized? I laud 
bone cutter is very laborious to use. Most 
bones are too large for grinder. A. S. 
Iyong Island. 
In Prothero’a “English Farming, Past 
and Present,” we are told that the ex¬ 
tensive use of bones as a fertilizer in 
England dates back to about the time of 
our Revolutionary War. It is said that 
a fox hunter in Yorkshire, on cleaning 
out his dog kennels, found great quan¬ 
tities of bone, which he broke up as well 
as he could and used around trees or for 
potatoes and grain. In 17114 rhere is rec¬ 
ord of an English bone mill which crushed 
bones in a crude way. These fragments 
were sold to farmers for fertilizer. Thus 
you will be following a long established 
en,stoni! In making fertilizer of these 
bones, The problem of “reducing" the 
hard leg. skull and frame bones is about 
the hardest, task the fertilizer manufac¬ 
turers have to deal with. They can em¬ 
ploy powerful stamping and crushing ma¬ 
chinery. and then use sulphuric acid, but 
a farmer cannot afford such machinery, 
and The a<-id is too dangerous for farm 
use. There are mills of moderate power 
which will crush or crack the softer bones 
into a coarse meal. Years ago in New 
England there were many bone crushers 
or smashers located on forms or in the 
little towns. Some of them were run by 
water power, on the principle of a trip 
hammer in a foundry. Others operated 
like a pile driver. There was a big anvil 
on the ground floor. A woOden chute, 
such as we used to push the hay down 
through, ran up from this anvil to near 
the roof. Inside it. was a heavy ’‘ham¬ 
mer.” or block of iron. A rope was tied 
to this hammer and ran over a pulley at 
the top. There was a windlass for haul¬ 
ing the hammer up to the top of the 
chute. Then it could bo released, so as 
to go smashing down upon the anvil. 
The I tones were put on top of this anvil 
and a few heavy blows cracked them into 
coarse splinters. Thus cracked they gave 
fair results on potatoes nr corn. The 
farmers nntu-cd that when these splinters 
were mixed with wood ashes they de¬ 
cayed quicker and gave up their plant 
food faster than when they were used 
alone. In those days farmers knew very 
little about farm chemistry, and could 
not explain why the ashes helped to 
soften the bone. They looked upon fertil¬ 
izer much as they did upon their money. 
It was a thing to hold onto, and save. 
Somehow they did not got. tile idea that 
the most successful fertilizer was the one 
which their plants could absorb and util¬ 
ize quickly ami easily. Nor could they 
see th it the best use of ibeir money would 
be in training their children in thought 
and vision and skill. They could not see 
if. and so for many years the best fertil¬ 
izer was the one that fed out its plant 
food very gingerly and remained in the 
soil for years. Tn like manner their 
money was something to be tied up se¬ 
curely where the young folks never could 
toueli it until the old folks passed on. By 
that time the young folks bad hardened 
into the old acquisitive habit, or had not 
hardened at all. so that they blew the 
money away like a gale of wind. And 
these two things—the penurious use of 
both hones and money—helped to depopu¬ 
late the farming towns. Iiistend of learn¬ 
ing how to make the plant food in these 
hones available at home, the farmers got 
the habit of selling the bones to the fer¬ 
tilizer manufacturers, and then buying 
them back in little dabs as super-phos¬ 
phates. As a boy 1 have spent many a 
day picking up bones in pastures and 
woods—selling them to the local dealer 
at “half a cent a pound,” Then our 
farmers bought “superphosphate” at $80 
or more per ton ! Tn like manner many 
of these farmers invested all they could 
rake and scrape in Western farm mort¬ 
gages. and I hen wondered why their boys 
chased away after father’s dollars 1 There 
were cases where men actually mort¬ 
gaged their farms at 5 per cent and in¬ 
vested the proceeds in Western mortgages 
at 10 to 12 per cent! 
***** 
But what can this man do with the 
bones? If ho has any large quantity he 
ought to have a mill of some kind. There 
are small bone mills that can be run by a 
four to five horsepower engine and crack 
the hoiu-s reasonably tine. Some of the. 
softer bones, like the ribs, cun be 
smashed with a big hammer and run 
through such a mill. The big. dry bones 
must be softened in some way before 
they will grind properly. The manufac¬ 
turers steam them under high pressure. 
If-'a man had a big kettle or cooker he 
could boil those hones thoroughly and 
then smash them with an ax or hammer. 
That would help, or they may be softened 
somewhat by packing them in unleaclied 
ashes. Take a big box or barrel and put 
iti a layer of ashes, then a layer of 
broken bones, then more ashes, and so on 
to fbe top. Kepp the whole thing wet 
with liquid manure or chamber slops. In 
about 100 days these bones will be more 
or less softened. Chemists tell me frank¬ 
ly that they do not know whether the 
process is chemical or mechanical. At 
any rate, the hones are softened somewhat 
and will go through the mill (o hotter 
advantage. I am in hope that this “in¬ 
oculated sulphur” will prove very useful 
for this work. It may perhaps provide 
sulphuric acid in a form which farmers 
can safely use. Do not understand that 
this wood ash treatment will make hard 
shin or skull hones into fine bone meal. It 
certainly will not do so. but it will soften 
the bones and give the small mill or 
crusher a better chance. 
Another, and more convenient way. is 
to burn the bones. This is the easiest 
way. but also the most wasteful. The 
average bone contains about per cent 
of nitrogen and 2.7 per cent of phos¬ 
phoric acid. When you burn a ton of 
bones you drive away (10 lbs. of nitrogen 
—drive it further beyotul recall than the 
money you may burn up in some eostly 
legal proceeding in order to get property 
out of a bank or an "estate.” It is much 
like burning up a .$10 lull with consider¬ 
able change. What you will have left is 
a collect imi of “bone ash,” containing 
about, 700 lbs. of phosphoric acid and 
perhaps the same amount of lime. This 
bone ash is not as "available” to plants 
as acid phosphate, but it is much finer 
and can be spread well. Of course, this 
burning will cost you $10 and more per 
ton lost in nitrogen, hut what you want 
to figure is how much will it cost in 
power, labor and machinery to crush or 
grind the ton of bones! Ill many cases 
you will find that even counting the loss 
of nitrogen it is more economical to burn 
the harder bones and thus turn them into 
a line fertilizer. In order to burn them 
properly, you should make a concrete floor 
somewhere outdoors and make the fire in 
that. In that way you are able to save 
all the ash. For the fire you can use tree 
prunlngs, chips and trash of all sorts. 
Rome farmers make a little house or fur¬ 
nace of stone or concrete, where all farm 
trash can be burned, and thus have the 
ashes ready to handle. Bones can be 
burned in such a place, or they can he 
burned in the household fires where con¬ 
siderable wood is used. The kitchen fires 
will dispose of the bones, or the bouse 
beater. The only thing is to save all the 
ashes from such fires. As to whether a 
man should burn or crush the bones will 
depetid on his own conditions. Some will 
do one and some another with profit. For 
many years bones have been burned as 
fuel. In "The Voyage of the Beagle." 
J>avwin tells of seeing native South 
Americans kill a steer, cut him up and 
make n fire of the bones to cook the meat! 
We must remember, however, that these 
men did not call for beef “well done.” It 
was probably little more than smoked or 
slightly browned on the outside. 
♦ ♦ ♦ # * 
At any rate, every bone should he saved 
and utilized in some way. Most of our 
soils are greatly deficient in phosphorus. 
It is time that many of us got back, part 
way, at least, to the day of small things, 
and began to utilize the wastes. My esti¬ 
mate is that in every township of medium 
size there are annually wasted at least 
100 tons of bones. Some nmn could de¬ 
velop a nice little business in collecting 
and grinding these wastes. Bet him put 
in machinery and advertise that he will 
pay cash for the bones. lie will be sur¬ 
prised to see how they will pour in upon 
him. Children will go hunting for them, 
and housekeepers will make a point of 
saving them, just as they formerly saved 
rags for the peddlers. With some experi¬ 
ence a good farmer will learn how to 
crush and prepare these bones. lie can 
buy potash and nitrate of soda and sup¬ 
ply his neighbors with a home mixture 
that would give great results. There 
would be a fine chance in this for some 
poultry keeper. lie could make a mix¬ 
ture of crushed, dry. hen manure, crushed 
bone and potash, and develop a good 
trade. The trouble with many of us is 
that in our craze for bn)/inu and letting 
others do our work for ns. we have for¬ 
gotten many of the smaller economies 
which were once practiced on the farm. 
This bone saving B one of them. Il7i// 
not do it ourselr-e.it? It would be hard to 
find a better fertilizer for fruit or grain 
and grass to use with clover, bean vines 
or similar crops than a mixture of 
crushed bone and ashes. In the West 
this year thousands of tons of corn will 
be burned as fuel. Thousands of tons of 
bones will be wasted or neglected. That 
means opportunity for some men in every 
county to develop a little fertilizer busi¬ 
ness or make their owns farms rich as 
need be. 
# $ * # * 
The New Year is starting in, and I 
presume you have all taken an inventory, 
both of the material things you possess 
and also your moral assets. Someone 
has said that the world's oldest brand of 
fiction is New Year’s resolutions, 1 im¬ 
agine that is about right. Iu this week’s 
discussion of hones we must not forget 
the tough skeletons which are collecting 
dlist in many a closet, or the bones of 
old “resolutions” which lie scattered 
along the way. Most of us generally sell 
these bones at a low price, and then pay 
about 10 times that price when we buy 
them buck as experience. It’s something 
like these farmers I have told about, who 
sold bones at $10 a ton and bought "su¬ 
perphosphates" at $80. It is a pity we 
cannot use up these hones at home, rt 
is surely better for ourselves and for the 
neighborhood, too, to keep these skeletons 
out of sight and not go retailing them 
out to the neighbors. Then there are 
people who like to "pick a hone" with 
friends or relatives. I have known them 
A “balanced diet” may sound 
confusing to many people 
The facts , as explained 
here , are simple . 
The secret of a “balanced diet” is to have food 
containing all the elements needed for proper 
nutrition. These elements are protein, to nourish 
the tissues; starch and sugar to furnish energy; 
fat to supply heat; and mineral salts to provide 
the material necessary for building nerves, brain, 
and tooth and bone structure. 
Grape-Nuts, the nourishing cereal made of 
whole wheat flour and malted barley, served with 
cream or milk, is a complete food for young and 
old alike. 
Go to your grocer today and get a package of 
Grape-Nuts. Eat it with milk or cream for 
breakfast; or with stewed fruit, jelly or jam, as a 
delicious dessert for lunch or dinner. 
Every member of the family will relish this 
palatable and nourishing food— 
Grape-Nuts—the Body Builder 
“There’s a Reason” 
Made by Postum Cereal Co., Inc., Battle Creek, Mich. 
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