654 
THE RURAL 
NEW-YORKER. 
OCT 6 
x 
shape is the most, difficult to make and re¬ 
quires the most covering in proportion to the 
storage capacity. The pits, or more properly, 
trenches, should be made on sloping, well 
drained land, as water increases the danger of 
frost. The trench should be one foot deep, of 
any -width, hut about four feet is the most, 
convenient, and as long as is needful. Fill 
with potatoes, and ridge them up in the cen¬ 
ter till they slope down to the edge at an 
angle of 30 degrees. Cover slightly with straw 
and over this put a very light covering of 
earth. When freezing weather approaches, 
increase the layer of dirt to a thickness of 18 
inches. Draw a furrow along each side of the 
trench to carry off the surface water. If a 
shed of hoards is constructed over the trench 
to keep off the rain, it makes as good a place 
for storage as a cellar. 
I used to store mv potatoes, especially the 
early ones, in the barn or under a shed till 
t old weather, because I feared that if I put 
them directly in the cellar they would rot. 
But. I have found that if they are dry and 
clean, they can be put at once in any place 
suitable without danger of damage. Putting 
them under a shed necessitates one additional 
handling, and the labor and unavoidable 
damage to the potatoes are both to be avoided. 
Some people profess great respect for 
nature’s way of doing things. I recently read 
an article on this subject by such a person. 
He said that nature put the potatoes in the 
soil, and we should do likewise: therefore pre¬ 
pare a layer of fine, damp soil, then a layer of 
potatoes, then another layer of soil, and so on. 
Now I understand tliat nature indicates that 
potatoes stored to lecep, and not to grow after 
a while, should be put in a dark, cool and dry 
place; but the less soil about them the better. 
The more soil, the greater the danger of sprouts 
ing. Those people who have such great re¬ 
spect for nature’s ways should not. shoe their 
horses, stable their cattle, shear their sheep, 
or pluck their poultry before earing, for nature 
does none of these things. 
I have heard it said that if the cellar was 
perfectly- dry the potatoes might lie put upon 
the floor. I am not prepared to dispute this, 
for I have uever tried it; hut I don’t think I 
ever shall. It looks to me too much like 
tempting Providence. Nor do I consider 
storing in ban-els much better. In these the 
potatoes are apt to become damp. At any 
rate, the barrels should be raised several inches 
from the floor. Do not use any straw in the 
bins or ban-els. It draws moisture and will 
mold, while mice will soon domicile in it. I 
like storing in bins best. Let me tell you what 
sort of bins I use, for apples as well as pota¬ 
toes, or rather how I make them. I saw 
scantlings into pieces three feet long for posts. 
In the center of these I nail cross-pieces four 
feet long. Now I have the frames. I lay the 
floor on the cross-pieces and nail the sides and 
ends to the posts. This makes bins four feet 
wide, sixteen inches deep and twenty inches 
from the floor-. They may be made any length 
desired Partitions may be nailed to the 
posts to separate different varieties. In these 
bins potatoes will keep dry because they are 
away from the floor and the air can circulate 
all around them; and moisture is the one tiling 
to he avoided, for it is the prime productive 
agent of frost and decay. Under the bins I 
store purapldns, squashes, etc. 
The temperature is an important thing to 
he observed. At a temperature of 32 degrees 
potatoes will freeze, and when once frozen 
they are gone forever; and a temperature of 
30 degrees will destroy their germinating 
power, while at a temperature of 50 degrees 
they will germinate. As I have before said, 
about 40 degrees is the right, temperature. 
form {Topics. 
See that the cider barrels are clean and 
sweet before using.Cold weather is ap¬ 
proaching; tighten up the poultry houses so 
that the fowls will be as comfortable as pos¬ 
sible during the Winter. Lay in a good store 
of oyster shells or burnt bone or bone dust, so 
that the hens may have some good shell-pro¬ 
ducing food. Give the house a thorough 
whitewashing. Bee that the perches are 
strong and firmly held up. Fix the nests; put 
in clean straw, and dust a little sulphur in 
them.Set out raspberry and black-ber¬ 
ry plants this month. Deeply plow and cross¬ 
plow the ground, and enrich the land accord¬ 
ing to the requirements of the variety planted. 
Set out raspberries four feet apart each way, 
and blackberries four by five feet, putting 
two or three roots in a place, according to the 
vigor of the kind. Just before the ground be¬ 
gins to freeze, pile the earth in mounds over 
the hills and early in Spring, after liatd frosts 
are over, level it down again. Are you afraid 
to manure your vines? You need not he. It 
will pay you well. The vines enjoy a good 
bit of manure as much as you do your Thanks¬ 
giving turkey. Muck is excellent for them.... 
_Bend down the canes of your choice vines, 
and cover them with soil.Keep your 
elbows off the table during meal time.... 
_Dig up the bulbs of Gladioli, Tube-roses, 
Dahlias, etc., and store away—a cool dry 
room for the first ; a waim place for the sec¬ 
ond, and a dry, frost-proof cellar, for the last. 
.Bank up the celery. K ep the 
grapes in a cod, dry room...Make cut¬ 
tings of grape-vines, and either plant in open 
ground in rich, mellow soil, six inches apart, 
and cover wntb leaves or some other protection 
or bury them in a dry place, and then plant iu 
the Spring.Prune grape-vines. 
Keep the mangolds, beets, and c-arrots from 
the reach of the frosts.... ....If the apples 
are placed in the cellar, see that no specked 
ones are among them, and do not have them 
too deep in the bins. Bee that a good circula¬ 
tion of air passes through the cellar, until 
very cold weather sets in.,."When root 
crops are placed in the cellar, dry sand may 
be mixed with them, as it tends to keep them 
longer and in better condition.See that 
the bee-hives are clean, dry- and tight, and 
that everything possible is done to make the 
bees winter successfully. Have plenty of 
food accessible to the bees. A dry, dark, 
frost-proof cellar or room, of a temperature 
between 35 and 45 degrees F., will form the 
best winter-quarters for bees, and if such a 
place cannot be seem ed, the nearer it comes 
to the standard the better. If left out-of- 
doors, a box roughly made, should surround 
tho hive, leaving on all sides, a space of a foot 
to he packed with chaff or dry straw; a 
wooden tube ma\ lead from the entrance of 
the hive to the outside of the box... ..Rake up 
the leaves,and put them on the strawberry bed. 
Do not let them blow- around the place, hut 
use them iu the hot-beds, for banking up 
around the cellar walls, or for bedding_ 
_Give the fruit trees a wash of lime, pow¬ 
dered aloes, and soot.The political sea¬ 
son is now approaching. Don’t hang around 
the grocery and talk politics; but stay at home 
and mind your own business, and when the 
time comes, vote for the right man.Use 
your sorghum begasse to the best advantage. 
It can be used profitably for fuel or paper 
stock, and cattle and horses relish it. 
Do not feed sorghum seed for milk, as it is of 
inferior quality, but is excellent as a flesh-pro¬ 
ducing food, and is worth more than oats_ 
....Though this mouth is neither very hot 
nor very cold, shelter is an important item in 
the treatment of farm stock. The earth and 
air are dry and in the middle of the day the 
sun is hot; the animals become heated. At 
night the dews chill their heated bodies, drive 
the blood inward, surcharging the internal or¬ 
gans, retarding digestion and assimilation, 
producing congestion iu various parts of the 
body, and by lowering vitality paving the way 
for disease. Hogs suffer most from this cause; 
but no class of farm stock escapes, A light 
cool shelter affording a retreat from the mid¬ 
day sun and a covering to ward off the falling 
dews at night, will prevent these troubles. A 
roof of boards answers every purpose. It is a 
very easy matter to construct all the shelter 
required: yet, for all that, there is no month, 
not even January-, in which stock need shelter 
more than this. Nor is there any time w hen 
it is more neglected... During this month 
horses, cattle, and perhaps sheep, suffer no 
more than usual from disease. Among cattle 
violent diseases are generally absent, hut they 
often cease to thrive and loss of flesh will oc¬ 
cur unless 1 he farmer is very vigilant. The 
Fall mins set in during this mouth and unless 
the sheep have a dry lot and are well bedded 
they will suffer. These cold rains prove hurt¬ 
ful to all stock and they should have dry shel¬ 
ters. Cholera is most virulent and prevalent 
among hogs at this time and the fanner should 
watch constantly for its first appearance.... 
.... The fanner must be vigilant because the 
conditions are all unfavorable to the thrift of 
animals. The change of food must be weather¬ 
ed. For months the animals have feasted up¬ 
on greeu, succulent herbage eusily digested 
and containing a large percentage of w ater. 
Their digestive organs have become accus¬ 
tomed to this food and have adjusted them¬ 
selves to its assimilation. Now the grass 
loses its greenness and succulence and the 
change to dry, hard food difficult of digestion 
is begun. The supply of water is apt to tie- 
come scant and the quality to be unwhole¬ 
some. The air is laden with malaria, dust 
from the earth and dry vegetable fc rowth, 
particles of deeuying animal and vegetable 
matter and the pollen of weeds.Homes 
at w-ork should he fed oats at noon. An oc¬ 
casional feed of rye will do them good. A 
little bitter bark or dried sin art-weed will act 
as good '‘bitters.” An occasional pinch of 
ashes on their feed and salt regularly supplied 
will give tone to the stomach. Homes run¬ 
ning on pasture should bo brought up and 
treated to a light feed of oats, corn, or rye 
night and morning. Give them some bright 
hay to nibble at. Colts should receive 
extra food* they w-ill lose flesh very quickly. 
Chopped feed will he beneficial. Cut some 
green coru for the cows and sheep. If you 
have sown corn, now- feed it liberally. Feed 
a few pumpkins to the cows morning and 
evening and cut some turnips for them aud 
the sheep. Give the sheep and stock cattle a 
few- handfuls of grain and the cow s some bran 
and meal slops. Give the lambs short feeds 
of meal and rye and notice their condition 
closely. Cows, stock cattle, aud sheep w-ill be 
thankful for a semi-oecasional feed of chaff, a 
bunch of hay, and daily allowances of salt.... 
... The hogs suffer most and their food should 
receive close attention. Provide a variety. 
Do not feed com alone. Feed the pumpkins 
that you raised among the corn. Pick up the 
potatoes too small for market and the fallen 
apples not w anted for cider, and feed them to 
the hogs. Bw-ing your large iron kettle in the 
hog lot and cook those turnips you have raised 
on the early potato patch; mix w ith turnips, 
bran, com meal, and a very little salt, and 
feed in troughs. See that the hogs get ashes, 
charcoal, and salt regularly. Save all vege¬ 
table scraps and greasy w-ater and refuse milk 
for the slop barrel, w hich keep one-third full 
of bran and corn-meal. Begin feeding the 
hogs three light meals per day-.It is 
essential that stock should have good water. 
During tile dry months of Summer the creeks 
were converted into chains of stagnant pools 
which received the excrement and bodily ef¬ 
fluvia of hogs, cattle aud horses, and are now 
full of the germs of disease. The Fall rains 
bring to the streams further burdens of filth, 
decay ing matters from the surface of the laud, 
while they are rarely copious enough to create 
such a current in the creeks as w-ill remove 
these impurities. At no other season of the 
year is the water of pools, ponds and creeks 
not fed by living springs, so foul. Farm 
stock of all kinds should be w-aterod from 
wells from which the surface w-ater is 
excluded by banks of clay around the curbs. 
The hot suu of midday, the congestion and re¬ 
act Unary fever produced by the chilly nights, 
the inhalation of dust from the earth and dead 
vegetable growth and the pollen of weeds, 
and the change from greeu, succulent, to dry, 
hard food, produce in animals intense thirst 
that must be allayed by pure, cold water. 
VIEWS ON THE APPLICATION OF 
MANURE. 
w. L. DEVEREATX. 
In no other direction is effort better ex¬ 
pended than in the manufacture of the great¬ 
est possible supply of plant-food in the shape 
of barnyard manure. With careful attention 
to its manipulation, and a keen vigilance and 
personal supervision of its application, the 
farmer’s w-allet may glow fat with no risk 
that his land will grow lean. Though the 
land should not receive any manure except at 
uniform intervals, as every third or fourth 
year, provided a crop of clover intervenes, a 
course of continual cropping may he 
practiced for years without Joss of 
strength in the soil. The excellent 
method of piling and composting and 
the still better one of keeping the manure uu 
der shelter are generally exceptional, the rule 
among farmers being to allow it to accumulate 
iu the open yard from the working down of 
the straw-stack, partly- for food, but mostly 
for bedding, for the barnyard stock. The 
important additions from the stables and 
sheep quarters are also deposited in the yard, 
all remaining intact until the annual drawing 
out of all available manure for the wheat 
crop Quite a large number of farmers, how¬ 
ever, follow- the erroneous practice of lira wing 
out a great portion of the only slightly fer¬ 
mented manure in the Spring for corn aud 
some other erops, instead of keeping it until 
more thoroughly decomposed, and then ap¬ 
plying it to the land for wheat, and also to 
give impetus to the growth of the clover fol- 
lowing.tuus rendering its effects doubly lasting 
and beneficial. 
With a goodly number of horses, cattle, 
swine and sheep, especially sheep, ladonging 
to the farm, euougli manure will he accumu¬ 
lated to cover an area one-quarter as largo as 
that from which their food, und bedding were 
produced: that is, the straw- from 100 acres—05 
being wheat and barley—converted into barn¬ 
yard manure, will cover 25 acres. By judicious 
management the manure may be made to 
cover very well one-third of the area from 
which the “raw materials’’ were raised; tliat 
is, 83 acres may be abundantly- fertilized with 
the manure made from (he straw and hay 
produced on 100 acres. By purchasing feed 
and wintering and fattening stock not lielong- 
iug to the farm, the amount of manure may, 
of course, be increased to auy limit. 
Among numerous ways of drawing out ma¬ 
nure, none is more practical or expeditious 
than the use of tw-o wagons and one team, the 
driver unloading and one man in the yard do¬ 
ing the loading - . If the manure is to be^rawn 
only a short distance, two men are required, 
although I know of an instance where one 
man kept three wagons going, pitching on BO 
loads in one day; but he was completely pros¬ 
trated for a week afterwards. 
There is no other operation to which it is 
more important to call the dose and continual 
attention of farmers than the unloading of 
manure in piles ready- to be spread, both as to 
the right distance of the piles apart and the ex¬ 
act places where the land needs manuring most, 
anil the uniformity snd Straightness of the 
rows. Vast quantities of manure are annually 
wasted, or rather misapplied and over ap¬ 
plied,beiug drawn out in a hurry aud deposit¬ 
ed many times on portions of the field w-hieh do 
not need it the most, a whole load being often 
thrown off in three or four heaps not ten feet 
apart. Likely enough it is only because an 
overabundance isoften applied to theacre,and 
because it is frequently carelessly- spread, that 
the full benefits are not always obtained. 
Even a somewhat scanty but very- uniform 
application nearly always gives better returns 
than a lavish one. Prudence should seek to 
distribute the manure over the largest area 
possible, the aim being to maintain the whole 
field at a uniform, superior medium, rather 
than a small part at the maximum and a 
greater part at the miuimum condition of fer¬ 
tility. 
A wagon load of manure of the usual size, 
contains from 50 cubic feet to half a cord; but 
a squarely-shaped, large load contains 72 cubic 
feet. The number of piles this will make 
ranges from eight to twelve, placed from 20 
to 24 feet apart. A good application should be 
niue piles to the load—six bushels, or eight 
cubic feet to each pile, placed 24 feet apart— 
an interval not exceeding very much the dis¬ 
tance from the hind end of the dump hoards to 
the homes' noses, making eight loads, or four- 
and-a-half cords to the acre. 
Spreading manure by hand cannot excel the 
work of the machine spreader; but the farm 
hand who can, aud invariably does, adroitly 
spread the manure evenly over the land and 
who understands how to handle the fork so as 
to tear every forkful into fragments calcu¬ 
lated to give to a manure plot an appearance 
closely resembling that of a flock of blackbirds 
feeding in the stubble, rather than that of 
ducks or larger fowls, competes very closely 
with machine work, and should certainly win 
his employer’s confidence. A bird's-eye view 
of a manured plot is sometimes like that of a 
great number of immense cart wheels without 
feloes. The spokes are very distinct and the 
hubs still more so. This sort of manuring is 
wasteful. 
The practice of spreading manure over a 
whole field a long time before plowing is maui 
festly- wasteful, although there is much good 
testimony- to the contrary. Manure is spread 
on the surface of plowed ground by mauy tar- 
mem who are zealous advocates of the “top- 
ilressing” system. While it is customary to 
harrow it in as thoroughly as possible, very 
much still remains on the surface, and a great 
share of the elements of fertility are evapo¬ 
rated from it into the air and disseminated 
through that vast store-house aud upper labo¬ 
ratory- of plant food. Manure, when plowed 
in, sustains no loss upward o»* downward in 
ordinary soils. Wa ter is the conveyor, in one 
cuse carrying fertility upward into the atmos¬ 
phere iluriug the process of evaporation, and 
in the other bearing it downward into the 
basement store-house and laboratory, where 
all the nutritive elements are secured aud 
stored from the process of percolation, even in 
case of manure lyiug at the bottom of the fur¬ 
row, and not over 20 per cent, of plowed-in 
manure is in that situation, all of which is dis* 
solved and, having been borne downward by 
water, will have been caught up and retained by 
the soil filter before reaching a depth beyond 
the reach of clover roots. Evaporation occurs 
deep down in the bosom of the soil as well as 
at the surface; but bore aguiu, the soil filters 
into itself all that the vapory water tries to 
carry away. Evaporation operates during a 
greater share of the days of the three open 
seasons. It gathers new imputus from every 
precipitation—from a heavy rainfall, a shower 
or a dew. Percolation, instead of being con¬ 
tinuous, happens ouly in heavy rains, the 
Spring season or rainy years. A twelve- 
month of lysimeter records lately made public 
by Dr. Btnrtevaut, Director of the N. Y. Ex¬ 
periment Station, gives, for cultivated land:— 
percolatiuu, 87.98; evaporation, 62.07percent, 
of the total precipitation, accounting for 
the entire rainfall. In the amount of evapora¬ 
tion and percolation all differences are due to 
conditions of soil aud situation. Borne soils 
allow the free pussage of water, and in these 
moisture percolates more freely and to greater 
