m» 
365 
THB RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
will say it was her husband’s fault; either he 
would keep the brood sows in the lot next the 
house, or she could not get coops made tight 
enough to keep out the vermin, or something 
or other happened to them that a man of 
average intelligence might have prevented. 
Women in the country are not lazy as a 
general ru'e; on the contrary, they do more 
work in proportion to their strength than the 
men, who among the lower classes are very 
remiss in providing conveniences for their 
households. This has been the case for so 
long that the women have accepted it as fate, 
or rather, they put it down to what they call 
luck. Their constant complaint is that they 
have had ‘‘bad luck with the chickens They 
could seem to raise hardly any at all. The 
young ones were weakly and slept themselves 
to death; or they grew off right peart for 
awhile, then got miny all at once and died. 
Mighty bad year for chickens.” 
When I hear them talk that way, I always 
feel like telling them “luck” has nothing at all 
to do with it; there is no such thing as luck. 
What they call bad luck is bad management, 
and good luck is good management. There 
is a cause for every effect. If the young 
chickens are weak and delicate at first the 
parent stock has degenerated, and when they 
grow off thriftily for a while and then droop 
and die it shows there is bad management 
somewhere. Perhaps they are infested with 
parasites or do not have access to pure water 
and are not.properly fed. The fowls them¬ 
selves are not to blame; no little creature 
comes into the world with a more fixed de¬ 
termination to live, or is more energetic in 
searching for its daily bread than a young 
chicken. Chickens are much less finical in re¬ 
gard to their food than young turkeys, and 
their instinct for self-preservation is much 
greater. 
Young chickens in the spring would be very 
much healthier if the parent stock were 
brought through the winter in better condi¬ 
tion. When they are allowed to roost in the 
trees during the severely cold weather, roup 
is likely to show itself in the spring, and this 
disease proves fatal not only to the grown 
fowls but to the young ones also for months 
afterwards, either through inheritance or be¬ 
cause of their surroundings becoming contam¬ 
inated. During the memorable sleet last 
winter, the fowls hereabouts stayed out in 
the trees for a whole week, in a half starved 
and half-frozen condition. And after every 
bitter spell of weather my neighbors tell how 
their fowls froze to death, as if it were some¬ 
thing very much to be wondered at. Even 
the hens that survive are very poor, begin¬ 
ning to lay late in the season, and of course 
are still later in sitting. 
a farmer’s daughter. 
Logan County, Ky. 
COMMENCING IN THE TIMBER. 
The real-estate man of the beautiful prairie 
regions of the West delights in presenting to 
his readers on his cards, in folders, pam¬ 
phlets, 16-page editions of the booming news¬ 
paper of his booming town, side by side pic¬ 
tures of the start in the woods and on the 
prairies, and a view of the enormous improve¬ 
ments five years afterwards. This is not the 
view to which I wish to call attention. To 
one who has always lived on the prairie 
where almost the first thing thought of is to 
start shade t r ees about the buildings or the 
proposed site for them, there are some things 
hardly explainable in the conduct of a large 
majority of those who make their start in the 
timber. The primeval trees growing near 
the proposed site are almost invariably cut 
down before the buildings are erected, and in 
the rare cases when they are allowed to stand 
for a time they are in course of a few years 
cut down for wood and the yard is left bare 
of shade. Protection from wind and storm is 
not needed at first, but as Sold after field is 
cleared out, the timber belt recedes and the 
storms and winds are felt almost as keenly as 
in the prairie sections. 
Allow me to offer these suggestions: If 
shade and protection are wanted at all, allow 
a sufficient number of the most shapely trees 
to remain standing to afford plenty of shade, 
cutting and training such limbs or unsightly 
portions as may be necessary, in ordor to en¬ 
hance their natural beauty. 
If other varieties are eventually wanted, 
they can be planted among the old sorts, and 
as the trees become crowded some of the origi¬ 
nal ones can be removed as it may be found 
necessary to do so. For protection, leave a 
thick belt of timber on the windward side of 
the buildings and you have at once what a 
prairie farmer will spend time, care and mon- 
oy for a dozen or more years to secure. But 
how often m timber regions do we see build¬ 
ings without a single wind-break nearer than 
the timber outside the fields. When you are 
making the first clearings, draw, at least in 
imagination, plans of the future farm with 
its pasture field and feed lots, and in these 
“Herbrand” Fifth Wheel for Buggies, 
places allow a few trees to remain standing 
and years hence you will be rewarded by the 
greater comfort of your stock, aud the great¬ 
er beauty of your surroundings. You will be 
surprised at the beauty and utility of those 
trees some day; for growing somewhat iso¬ 
lated, they will become more symmetrical. 
Of course, the garden and orchard should be 
close to the house and there the clearing 
should be complete; bnt these can be on the 
side where shade and protection are not need¬ 
ed, and a fringe of timber even here will do 
no harm; while in some exposures it will be 
an advantage. 
So far as my observation goes, when the 
clearing commences it should be a complete 
work, still though in a. hurry to get as much 
land under cultivation as possible, it may pos¬ 
sibly be advisable to allow the large trees to 
remain standing simply “deadening” them 
for the time; but the damage to crops from 
shade and fallings limbs makes this doubtful. 
Where, in a country like this, the timber has 
but little market value except as needed on 
the farm for lumber, rails, or wood, let every¬ 
thing be taken “ clean as you go,” and let the 
land be put into cultivation the same year. I 
notice many going through their timber cut¬ 
ting here and there for wood, etc., and if 
this cutting were done in one place it would 
add quite considerably to their cleared fields, 
while as itis, wherever a tree or brush is cut un¬ 
less the land is put into cultivation at ODce, 
innumeraole other saplings and brush 
growth spring up, making the future work 
much harder. 
Occasionally 'one sees a farm house around 
which Nature has been allowed to retain 
much of her natural forms, and with a little 
artificial work, how soon can a home like ap¬ 
pearance be given to the group of buildings 
which forms the center of the picture. 
Christian County, Mo. J. M. K. 
EXTRACT FROM AN ENGLISH LET¬ 
TER TO A COUNTRY GIRL IN 
VIRGINIA. 
I am much pleased with the copies of “ the 
Rural New-Yorker ” you have been send¬ 
ing me, and interested in the talks upon the 
“ Dark Side of Farm Life ” and also with 
those on the “ Bright Side.” Such a paper 
can not fail to do good. You American 
farmers have more of sunshine than shadow. 
What lives you live and might live! English 
farming differs so much from American that 
my envious eyes are turned toward your 
shores rather than towards the green valleys 
and fertile meadows of my own native island. 
Our soil is very productive; the average yield 
of wheat per acre is very considerably more 
than that of the Uuited States, and it grows 
thicker than it does in America and the 
grains are very plump and heavy. We can 
also grow good oats and splendid grasses— 
very fine, tender and rich. Corn we cannot 
grow; the climate is not warm enough; but 
many vegetables, such as turnips, potatoes, 
etc., do very well as a rule. Still I should 
much prefer the American farmer’s lot. 
The difference is chiefly caused by the differ¬ 
ence in the value of land, and the conditions 
under which it is held. The land here is 
largely in the possession of comparatively 
few, in whose families it has been handed 
down from time immemorial. It is almost 
an article of their creed not to sell any, and, 
in fact, in many cases they have not the 
power to sell it, it having been left by some 
remote owner under an abominable old law, 
called the law of entail, by which the estate 
is vested in the eldest male of the family, and 
passes down from father to son, and to son 
again and so on for generations, each owner 
in turn being only a life tenant. These large 
estates are suDdivided into farms which are 
let to the farmers, always for cash rent. 
There is no such thing as paying rent with 
produce in this country, and land is so highly 
valued here that the annual rent is consider¬ 
ably more than good land can be bought for 
in America. 
Our seasons are uncertain, and often un¬ 
favorable; but, of course, the rent falls due 
whether the crop is good or bad, whether it is 
safely gathered in or rotting iu the soddened 
field. In America, you have such a vast area 
of laud as compared with the population, that 
it is comparatively low in price, and can be 
bought ana sold with the utmost facility. 
You have, as a rule, favorable seasons; if one 
thing does not flourish, another does, and 
there is (as a rule) no rent to pay, and though 
the American farmer does not have as heavy 
crops as ours, he has more ot them and con¬ 
sequently has the advantage all arouud. 
These advantages of the Americau farmer 
again, have this result; with his vast plains, 
the absence of rent-paying, and the more fa¬ 
vorable seasons he can produoe vast quanti¬ 
ties ol! wheat at a low price. This wheat 
which is imported here by millions of bushels, 
can be and is sold at so low a price that the 
English farmer, who of course, cannot get 
more for his wheat or only a little more than 
foreign wheat brings, has scarcely any profit 
whatever, often indeed incurring an actual 
loss. From this cause thousands of acres 
which were formerly devoted to wheat grow¬ 
ing have been turned into grass land. 
So great and severe is the depression in 
agriculture here, that many, very many 
farms in some parts of the country have gone 
entirely out of cultivation, there being no 
tenants for them. This is a very sad state of 
things, and it is difficult to say what is to be 
the remedy. Some would have a tax put on 
foreign cereals, as there used to be in days 
gone by. The immeliate consequence would 
doubtless be to increase the price of English 
and foreign wheat together here. So far the 
English farmer would be benefited, but what 
about the millions of working people of this 
country, who would as another consequence, 
have to pay more for their bread ? The prob¬ 
lem is a very grave one and I do not presume 
to offer a solution of it off hand, and I great¬ 
ly fear that no solution is possible, which shall 
restore prosperity to English agriculture. 
We cannot alter our climate; we cannot 
abolish competition with American, Indian, 
aud Russian wheats--it would be a woeful day 
for us if we could and did. Much advantage 
might result from a thorough reform of our 
land laws, but we are a cautious people; we 
move very carefully in matters of real re¬ 
form. I sometimes think the more urgently 
the reform is needed the more cautious we 
are. But it is not so easy as it may seem to 
out-siders to change laws and customs which 
have become interwoven into the whole tex¬ 
ture of a nation’s life by long, gray centuries 
of use and habit. 
Americans will find many more things dif¬ 
ficult to deal with, say, a thousand years 
hence than they find now. But as things are, 
and will be throughout my time and yours, 
how enviable is the^lotof the intelligent,^indus¬ 
trious American farmer! What a life of 
healthful exercise, of wholesome activity, of 
peaceful rest, of plenty (not necessarily rude) 
of opportunities for self-culture as well as of 
agriculture. 
Ah, that I had stayed and hewed me a 
home out of those woods somewhere I How 
it all comes back to me! Listen how I can 
picture it! I see the substantial brick house, 
or the trim neatly painted frame one, or what 
do I care if it be the hewn log house? There 
is plenty of room in it, plenty of everything 
in it. I hear the sound of happy voices 
through the open window, against which 
nods a fruit-laden bough or the fragrant 
tress of a climbing rose. 
A little distance away is the well-filled corn 
crib and the spacious barn, the smoke-house 
and its savory store and the stables over yon¬ 
der where the good horses are housed. In 
tront of the house stretch acres on acres of 
meadow, down to the stream, where the cows 
are standing knee deep in the cool water. 
Over there to the right is a billowy expanse 
of yellow wheat smiling at the sun, and here, 
to the left, a green ocean of corn blades, 
glossy and bright as they wave their silken 
banners in the breeze. Further away still 
rise the shadowy woods; the silvery beech, or 
gnarled sycamore, the straight-stemmed 
hickory,the ribbed ash, the spreading oak, the 
towering pine. 
Hark, there goes a squirrel rattling up that 
huge sycamore with nimble feet to his aerial 
perch, aud somewhere overhead I can hear 
the tapping of the woodpecker, and over all 
the drowsy hum and chirp of myriad winged 
creatures, basking their little lives out in the 
cheerful sunshine. By and by those woods 
will blaze iu the gold and crimson of their 
autumn glory; the corn blades will hang dry 
and sere, and the golden ears will peep out 
from the bursting shucks. A drove of hogs 
will be fattening over there in the paddock, 
while turkeys stalk solemnly about the house, 
in blissful ignorance of all such fatal epochs 
as Thanksgiving Day or Christmas. The hick¬ 
ory nuts will be ripe and the thorny-hulled 
chestnut, and the young people will be emu¬ 
lating the squirrels, laying up their store for 
the winter. 
And the long winter evenings by the glow¬ 
ing ash or hickory fire, with the basket of 
nuts and apples at hand; or the corn-popper 
hard at work, while the merry story and 
cheerful laugh go round the happy circle. 
Oh, for the fragrant soil, as the springtime 
plowing upturns it! Oh for the young aud 
tender blades of the springing corn; for the 
yellowing wheat waving in the hot July sun! 
Oh, for the golden fields of autumn, for the 
homely joys of winter, all the dear life of 
the farmer in that dear, dear land! 
Ah, how my heart turns to it again and yet 
again; swifter than the electric message that 
flashes in a moment from the Old World to 
the $Few, my love and longing fly to that far- 
off shore, hallowed to me by a thousand 
sacred memories. 
Those who have lived the easy country life 
will find it difficult to understand very clearly 
the position of the working classes in this 
country, and of many in the United States. 
It is true that every condition of life has 
struggles to pass through, and the farmer has 
his, too, and often knows what it is to wish 
that things were a little different. Especially 
is this so since you have put away the old- 
time manner of living. Our boys and girls 
must be sent to college, and a great many 
other wants are creeping in, aud there is often 
a call for more ready money than the farm 
can bring. But compare the lot of even the 
most humble farmer with that of innumer¬ 
able thousands in this country and of many 
in your own land. 
You have the old home and the farm; you 
own it outright; you do not have to pay rent 
to any one for the roof over your head or the 
fields you till. And those fields under God’s 
bright sun and sweet warm rains, produce 
your food,and perhaps even your clothing,too, 
or that which brings it. The trees yield their 
fruits for you, the garden gives its part, you 
have cows in the pasture, chickens, turkeys, 
and what not in the yard, plenty all around 
you. If the owners, the tillers of those fields 
wish now and then for a little leisure, to pay 
a little visit or to have some little excursion, 
they can take it; the corn and wheat grow on; 
the sun and rain play their beneficent part, 
and when the harvest time comes, then all is 
yours, the fruit of the field, and flock and 
herd. And though money, in actual com or 
bills, be sometimes not abundant; what then? 
You can still live, the home is still your own, 
the living is sure. I have pictured in the 
merest outline the lives of thousands of Amer¬ 
ican families who ought to thank God every 
day of their lives that “ their lines have fallen 
in such pleasant places and they have so 
goodly a heritage.” 
Now, try to imagine the position of millions 
in this country, and many in your own 
United States lead much the same life. Im¬ 
agine the difference; they have just so many 
shillings, or we will say dollars per week, a 
fixed, unvarying sum. If kept at home for a 
day or two once in a while by illness there is 
no loss of salary, nor when working late 
hours, as at some times in the year often hap¬ 
pens, is there any extra pay. This weekly 
amount is all there is for everything. The 
houses they live in are not their own, they 
pay a high rent to the owner. They have no 
fields, no flocks of sheep, no cattle, no poul¬ 
try, no fruit trees, large or small. Every par¬ 
ticle of food, flour, butter, sugar—every drop 
of milk, every egg, clothing, coals, gas-light 
everything must come out of this one week¬ 
ly sum. Everything had to be laoored for, so 
much work for so many shillings, and so 
many comforts or necessaries for these shil¬ 
lings. But if that work should cease for even 
a week, the income ceases; there is no back¬ 
ground of fertile fields and sunshine and 
showers to work for them, nothing but their 
daily industry. 
I say it with the fullest conviction, after 
years of struggle in that land and in this, 
that the Americau farmer who is industri¬ 
ous, intelligent, persevering, is one of the 
most favored of men; his lot is, or should be, 
one of peace and comfort, and if there be'such 
a thing as envy in my heart, there is no man 
I envy so much. C.'booth. 
ANSWERS TO, CORRESPONDENTS. 
[Every query must be accompanied by the name 
and address of the writer to insure attention. Before 
asking; a question, please see if it is not answered In 
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VALUE'OF FERTILIZERS. 
P. G., Oswego Falls , N. F.-Wbat is the fertil¬ 
izing value of hen manure per bushel, of hard¬ 
wood Canada ashes per ton, and of stable ma¬ 
nure per two-horse load delivered? The fer¬ 
tilizer is to be used for strawberries on a light 
sandy soil. 
ANSWERED BY PROF. H. H. WING. 
Nitrogen, phosphoric acid and pot¬ 
ash, in the form of commercial fertilizers, 
are worth in the market about 17, seven and 
four cents per pound respectively. For prac¬ 
tical purposes wo may assume that they ap$ 
