317 
4888 THE RUlBAk NEW-YORKER 
sale, at prices below the actual worth of the 
buildings alone. The newspapers of Massa¬ 
chusetts, and of the other New England States 
are pretty thickly studded with advertise¬ 
ments of farms for sale, but these advertise¬ 
ments do not, in my opinion, represent one in 
ten of the farms which can actually be bought 
for less than the cost of the buildings alone. 
Now, I ask where or how can there be more 
conclusive proof that farming does not pay? 
My wife and I are growing old. I am daily 
toiling on my farm at hard, monotonous and 
disagreeable labors, disagreeable because they 
are not profitable, yet must be pursued v ith- 
out relaxation, as the only means of keeping 
the wolf from the door. Our older daughters 
are now married and gone from home, and I 
am thankful to say that they have not mar¬ 
ried farmers. Our son, too, has fitted him¬ 
self for the profession of medicine, and has 
“gone West to grow up with the country.” 
Much is said about farming in the West, but 
I see very little to encourage the belief that 
agriculture in that section is very much more 
profitable than in this. I am considerably in 
debt, and fear that I never shall be less so, 
and I know that the rate of interest is raised 
here in New England by the draft of large 
amounts of money taken hence to be loaned 
at still higher rates to the farmers of the West. 
How can the prosperity which the West, 
boasts of be real, or at any rate enduring, 
when the indebtedness of the people there is 
so great, and so rapidly increasing? 
I am still pursuing the common, mixed 
farming which has been followed in New 
England from the start, as the best way, poor 
as it is. I have not succeeded in establishing 
any profitable and permanent specialty, and 
I do not see many of my neighbors who make 
a claim that they have done so. I make but¬ 
ter, and I keep sheep - , I raise a few apples; I 
turn off more or less of various things, all 
bringing in a little money, and keeping us 
alive. But the fact remains that my buildings 
are running down and my farm is running out, 
and being now sixty two years of age, the 
prospect ahead is, that if I live ten years long¬ 
er there will not be very much left of the in¬ 
heritance I received from my father. On the 
other haud, one of my brothers (both of them 
starting with little or nothing) is worth at 
least $50,000, and the other is very nearly, if 
not quite, a millionaire. 
^firscmoiT. 
TALKS WITH FARMERS. 
R. N.-Y.—Your horses always look well and 
never seem to be sick or unable to work. How 
do you keep them so? 
Farmer A.—I made up my mind when I be¬ 
gan farming that a good horse was worthy of 
the best care that can be given him, while a 
poor horse is not worth keeping. I treat my 
horses as I would like to be treated myself. 
When I come in from a day’s work I know 
that a good bath does me good, so I never 
leave a horse without cleaning him off as well 
as I can. It never does me good to drink all 
the cold water I can when I am heated, and I 
always enjoy my meals best when I am 
“cooled off.” I am sure it is the same with. 
horses. When any part of my clothing is 
tight or very much too large, I never can do 
good work; it is just the same with a horse’s 
harness. I like a variety of food prepared in 
a variety of ways. So does a horse. I can¬ 
not treat all my children alike. Different 
kinds of treatment are needed to get them in¬ 
terested in work. It is just the same with a 
horse; you must understand him before you 
can get his best work. Treat a willing, spir¬ 
ited animal as you would treat an “old plug” 
and you will spoil him. I blanket my horses 
every cold day and frequently keep a light 
blanket on them while they are doing work 
like hauling manure on a windy day. When 
I work hard for a short time and then stand 
still in the wind, I am very apt to take cold. 
A light blanket makes the coat look better 
anyway. We feed a great deal of cut rye 
straw which seems to have an excellent effect 
upon our horses. We feed our rye too- 
ground and mixed with bran. Corn we feed 
on the ear. Oats we seldom feed, so our horses 
are not used to them. My horses are seldom 
sick because I study to keep them well. Many 
people would call my treatment “fussy” but 
as I always have my team ready for service, 
I am satisfied to “fuss.” 
R. N. Y.—I understand you have had some 
experience in buying crippled car horses in 
the city. 
Farmer B.—Yes, for the past eight years 
all my horses have been of this class. I have 
made some very good bargains, though several 
horses have died shortly after coming here. 
On the whole, the business has paid me. 
•ft- N.-Y.—Where do you get them? 
Farmer B.— Generally in Brooklyn or 
Jersey City. I have been to the car stables a 
great many times and have become acquaint¬ 
ed with some parties there, so that I am known 
and can get a pretty truthful story about a 
horse’s condition. Then I have a friend in the 
city who watches the papers, and when he 
sees an account of an accident to a car horse 
he manages to find out something about the 
animal, and if it would suit me he lets me know. 
R. N.-Y.—In what condition are these 
horses generally? 
Farmer B.—Most of them are troubled with 
very sore feet. Otherwise they appear to be 
fairly sound, except more or less trouble with 
the heaves. Sometimes we get a horse that is 
almost entirely sound except for a cut on the 
flank or leg. A horse will limp sometimes as 
though every bone in his body was sore, but I 
have found that 90 per cent, of the trouble 
will be generally found in the feet. When I 
get such a horse I take his shoes right off and 
put oil or tar on his feet and let him run on 
pasture till he stops limpmg badly. Then I 
put him at light work—without shoes—and in 
a short time he is able to more than earn his 
board. None of these “sore” horses ever en¬ 
tirely recover, but most of them stop limping, 
and beyond a little tenderness on rough roads 
or when going down hill rarely show any 
lameness. Some never stop limping. 
R. N.-Y.—Are they good for farm work? 
Farmer B.—Not at first. They have to learn 
how to pull. Their work on the horse cars 
hurts them for ordinary farm work. They 
do not know how to back, and it is hard to 
get them to pull up hill. When they learn 
what is wanted of them they do well enough. 
Many farmers in other parts of the State like 
to buy mares in these car stables and breed 
them to good stallions. They work the mares 
enough to pay for their board, and depend 
upou the colt for profit. We do not think it 
pays to raise colts here. There are no good 
stallions near by. and our fields are so small, 
with so much barbed wire fencing, that colt 
raising is considered too risky. Our farmers, 
as a rule, do not think it pays to raise their 
calves since they can buy yearlings for about 
what they get for a young calf. 
THE FARMER’S FLOWER GARDEN. 
PEAS, asparagus, dandelions, and lawn- 
mowers. 
WILLIAM FALCONER. 
Apropos of T. M.’s article, p. 285, I would 
say that taste, style, get-up, finish or what¬ 
ever else you may call it^is, as he suggests, 
half the battle in the flower garden. But 
don’t cut up your ground into a lot of flower 
beds; don’t scatter the beds here and there all 
over the lawn, and don’t make a multitude of 
little beds when a few large ones will answer 
quite as well. Oval, circular and oblong- 
square beds are the best and most convenient 
and we should particularly avoid geometrical 
designs and meaningless filiform patterns. The 
beauty of a flower bed does not consist in its 
form, but in the comeliness of the plants with 
which it is filled. For our flowers we can 
have beds or borders around the house, and 
beds or borders near the roads or paths in the 
vicinity of the house; but never cut out a bed 
in the middle of a lawn. 
The carpet bedding and elaborate designs as 
portrayed with plants in beds in many city 
gardens are sometimes meaningless contor¬ 
tions absolutely void of artistic taste or sense, 
and of all styles of gardening the one to be 
rigidly let alone by farmers. The show itself 
is ephemeral. Most of the plants used are 
clipped and crippled almost beyond identity. 
Can you call them beautiful or artistic? Ne¬ 
glect the carpet beds for a few weeks, stop 
the murderous shearing, and what becomes of 
the pattern? It becomes lost—an indistin¬ 
guishable, indecipherable conglomeration, a 
garden horror, an abomination. Compare 
such a monster with a group of lilies, a mass 
of roses, a bunch of Japanese anemones, or a 
bed of Eheman’s cannas, or even a lot of scar¬ 
let geraniums in robust estate and fiery glow. 
Now there isn’t a farmer in the land who 
cannot grow as good dahlias, roses, lilacs, 
hollyhocks, larkspurs, gladioluses, geraniums, 
coreopsis, irises, paeonies, phloxes and the 
like, as any gardener or florist. The farmer 
has the room, the soil and the cow manure, 
and the farmer’s wife (who, almost always, is 
the gardener) has the love for the flowers. It 
isn’t a matter of dollars and cents with her as 
it usually is with the florist; she has got 
flowers m her heart, and that means abun¬ 
dance in her garden too. 
I’m afraid T. M.’s circular bed banded with 
Golden Feather Feverfew, and filled with 
Drummond Phlox, lacks artistic taste. No, 
that yellow border has no business there; the 
color is objectionable. No need of raising 
Drummond Phlox in a hot-bed, as it is one of 
our hardy annuals, and as easy to raise in the 
open garden as is parsley. By the first of Au¬ 
gust my spring-raised plants get pretty seedy 
and mildewy. I then clear them away and 
replace them with others sown in June, and 
such a bed is filled with asters. The asters 
don’t bloom till the end of July or first of Au¬ 
gust, and are past in five weeks, so what’s to 
decorate the bed before and after they come 
into bloom? Never plant zinnias in so small 
a bed. The annual coreopsis are over by 
midsummer. In borders we can use a mixed 
lot of plants, and have some in bloom all the 
time, but we should so fill the small beds that 
they will appear in well-furnished, showy 
condition all summer long; for instance, a bed 
of geraniums or Cape Plumbago. 
Alpha and Other Peas.—I am glad the 
Rural has come around to my way of think¬ 
ing that Alpha is the best early wrinkled pea 
grown, and as a cropper far ahead of Ameri¬ 
can Wonder. But Alpha is a poor hot-weath¬ 
er pea. I only raise Alphas enough to come 
in ahead of Stratagem or Champion. On 
March 20tli I sowed Henderson’s First of All, 
Burpee’s Best Early, and Laxton’s Alpha, in 
rich, high, sandy land. All came up well, 
and Alpha quite as soon as the others, and so 
far has kept ahead of them. On April 11th, 
in rich warm sandy land I sowed a large as¬ 
sortment of peas for comparison and trial. 
Yesterday, April 25th, I examined them: 
Only Alpha and Henderson’s Blue Beauty had 
come to the surface of the ground, but all 
were sprouting and looking well except Amer¬ 
ican Champion, Stratagem and Sutton’s Roy 
al Jubilee, of which some of the peas showed 
an inclination to rot, the Jubilee being a good 
deal the worst. The cause of the rot is un¬ 
doubtedly the coldness of the ground, for this 
is one of the coldest and most backward 
springs we have had for several years. 
Asparagus. —I used to begin cutting about 
the 20th to the 25th of April, but from pres¬ 
ent appearances (April 26) I don’t think our 
“grass” will be in cutting order before May. 
The farmers around here are setting out as¬ 
paragus largely this spring; indeed they are 
planting more extensively than ever before. 
Dandelions. —We are now enjoying some 
of the most delicious dandelion greens any 
one could wish to eat. We began cutting 
them April 14th. They last in good using 
condition for some three or four weeks. The 
variety is the large, broad-leaved. We sowed 
them the first week in April, last year, in rows 
a foot apart, kept them clean in summer, but 
didn’t protect them in any way in winter. 
They don’t flower at all the first year. The 
following spring they are cut and used, then 
the roots are lifted or cast away. This year 
I sowed on April 2 for next spring’s supply. 
Lawn-Mowers. —Yes, the Philadelphia is 
an excellent mower, light to work, and not 
apt to get out of repair. But for an all-pur¬ 
pose machine, I prefer the Excelsior. It is a 
“roller” machine, and heavier than most of 
the others, but with it we can cut on high, 
narrow verges, or on other awkward places, 
which we could not conveniently do with 
anything other than a “roller” machine. Our 
men work 16-inch Excelsior machines 10 hours 
a day and day after day in summer, and seem 
to like the job If I had a level lawn only to 
cut, I should prefer a Philadelphia, Easy, or 
some other of the light machines, but where 
verges, banks, uneven surfaces and the like 
have also to be attended to, I believe the Ex¬ 
celsior has no superior. 
STRENGTH FOR A GREEN-HOUSE 
ROOF. 
One of the lessons of the late blizzard was 
the necessity of thoroughly bracing green¬ 
house roofs. The device shown at Fig. 135 is 
a form of bracing which materially strength¬ 
ens the house and lessens the liability of 
spreading, while it in no wise interferes with 
the architectural appearance of the house. It 
consists of pieces of gas pipe or solid iron rods, 
bent in the form of a bow or arch and placed 
say 20 feet apart down the center of the house. 
The bottoms of the rods are inserted into the 
tops of the posts supporting the bed. A 
thread is cut on the bottom of the pipe or rod 
and a nut, a, put on, the nut resting upon a 
washer, b, which covers the whole top of the 
post. As a matter of course, its length and 
form can bo modified according to the size 
and form of the house. The device is not 
patented. 
pomolcijical, 
DRAINS IN THE ORCHARD. 
sec’y j. s. woodward. 
The uniformly high price for apples during 
the past winter has revived the apple plant¬ 
ing fever, and many who have good strong 
land a little too retentive of moisture are ask¬ 
ing: Will it pay to underdrain 
LAND FOR AN ORCHARD? 
It will pay much the best, if one has it, to 
use land that does not need any drainage for 
orchard planting; but there are many soils 
that would make very good orchard lands if 
relieved of their surplus moisture. Whatever 
may be true of the prairie soils of the West, it 
would be worse than folly to plant apples in 
New York on lauds where their roots for a 
month or two must be immersed in water. 
The theory, so often, and so persistently 
urged by Mr. Johnson, of Illinois, that the 
best place in which to put an apple orchard is 
on flat or even wet land, with no provison for 
drainage, would if followed in the apple sec¬ 
tion of New York, result in a “hope deferred 
that would make the heart (of the planter) 
sick,” and awfully sick too. Our apple trees 
are not by any means amphibious; they are 
very sensitive to too much water. A little 
surplus water in the early spring, or a few 
days’ flooding at any time before the weather 
is too warm, , iay do little or no harm, but I 
