68o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
OCTOBER 12 
THE 
RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
(34 Park Row, New York), 
A National Journal for Country and Suburban 
Homes. 
Conducted by 
ELBERT S. CARMAN. 
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 12, 1889. 
NOTICE. 
T he rural new-york- 
ER is invariably discon¬ 
tinued at the end of the term 
subscribed for. Any copies sent 
to non-subscribers are sent with¬ 
out charge as specimens merely. 
There is not one farm about the 
Rural Grounds, known to the writer, 
that has produced over half a crop of 
the later kinds of potatoes. The very 
early kinds were cut short but yielded 
more than half a crop. The blight, 
to use a convenient word, is not only 
general but universal. 
There are many quail, woodcock, 
rabbits and squirrels in the vicinity 
of the Rural Grounds. The law-abid¬ 
ing farmer will not kill them out of 
season. The ‘ ‘ pot-hunter ” kills them at 
all times, especially just before the law 
is “ up. ” Rarely is he ever convicted. 
Better have no laws at all than those 
which are made in the interests of the 
lawless. 
There is every prospect for a mild 
‘ ‘ boom ” in drainage all through the 
districts that have suffered from too 
much water this season. As we have 
said before now, many farmers ex¬ 
pected a dry season, so that potatoes 
were planted on naturally damp soils. 
The result is now an old story. These 
farmers now generally believe that 
had these damp spots been well 
drained the chances for saving the 
crop would have been much greater. 
And this season has also demonstrated 
the folly of placing tiles too far apart. 
The cases where such spots as we 
speak of have been too well drained 
are hardly worth speaking about. 
Hay dealers in the city inform us 
that it is highly probable that a good 
market for silage could be created if 
the product could be properly baled 
or crated. There has been considera¬ 
ble talk about the best way of pack¬ 
ing or baling green hay or silage, but 
no practical demonstration of the suc¬ 
cess of such business has yet been 
made. The best that has yet been 
done is the baling of the stalks and 
leaves of corn as they come from a 
husking machine that has recently 
been perfected. This fodder is said to 
be in excellent condition for feeding 
and if it could be steamed it would be 
almost as good as silage. The R. N.- 
Y. has held that the ordinary silage 
as used by most dairymen, cannot be 
baled or crated successfully. To make 
a marketable article there must be a 
special treatment of the silage and so 
far as the R. N.-Y. has studied the 
matter, such treatment is best secured 
in the system devised by Mr. Colcord, 
which we have frequently described 
in these columns. 
The R. N.-Y. has frequently read, in 
English papers, of the value of cab 
bage as a food for dairy cows. Most 
American authorities condemn this 
food because they say it will give an 
unpleasant flavor to the milk. We 
have a big crop of cabbage this year 
with but little sale for it. We decid¬ 
ed to try a little feeding experiment. 
The R. N.-Y.’s milk and butter is 
sampled by people who are always on 
the watch for disagreeable tastes and 
odors. Without saying a word to 
them, the writer began feeding a big 
cabbage every night to the family 
cow. It was cut into six pieces with 
a hatchet and put in the cow’s feed 
box to be eaten during milking. This 
feeding has been followed every day 
since then. The cow is ravenously 
fond of cabbage, the flow of milk has 
increased, and the “folks in the 
house ”, have been praising the quali¬ 
ty. of our milk and butter. Possibly 
one can get about as much weight of 
green food from an acre of cabbage 
as from an acre of corn fodder. Of 
course, there may be ways of feeding 
cabbage that will injure the milk, but 
they have not been found in our trials. 
It may also be stated that we have fed 
cabbages to two horses with excellent 
results. The horses are very fond of 
them, and there has been no trouble 
from colic. 
THE R, N.-Y. WOMEN’S POTATO 
CONTEST. 
r jpHE reports of those engaged in 
this contest must be received at 
this office on or before October 15th. 
-- 
st o. 
T HE R. N.-Y. offers a prize of 10 
dollars for the best column 
of “Notes on a Back Number.” Con¬ 
testants may select any number of the 
R. N.-Y. for 1889. They are to write 
short notes in approval or criticism of 
the various topics discussed in that 
number. The articles must not be 
over one column in length. The prize 
is to be given to the column showing 
the most sense, and in which the great¬ 
est number of topics are discussed. It 
is proposed to publish all the essays 
in the form of a “ Discussion ” sympo¬ 
sium. 
POOR CITY MEN AS FARMERS. 
T HERE are hundreds of men in 
New York City, men with fami¬ 
lies to support, who are positive^ un¬ 
able to earn enough money to pay 
their living expenses. We speak of 
honest, sober, hard-working and in¬ 
telligent men, who love their families 
and are prepared to do their utmost 
to earn a living. Inability to handle 
money in the most economical manner 
possible, lack of ready capital, natural 
disadvantages that disqualify one from 
pushing up into the highest rank of 
service; whatever the reason may. be, 
the fact remains that every large city 
can show its share of such citizens. 
What are such men to do? When one 
of them reaches the point of life when 
his senses plainly indicate that his 
powers are beginning to fail, he be¬ 
comes desperate. The R. N.-Y. has 
received a letter from such a man 
which well illustrates one very impor¬ 
tant side of the question. This man, 
has come into possession of a little 
place of 12 acres—four acres cleared— 
on Long Island. There is a family of 
seven, old and young, depending on 
him for support. At his city work he 
cannot make ‘ ‘ both ends meet. ” Now 
he asks : ‘ ‘ Can I make a living for 
my family by working my little farm?” 
He has read some of the books that re¬ 
cite the great fortunes made by florists, 
gardeners or poultrymen on a few 
acres. Like many another city man 
he says: “If they can do that, I can !” 
So he asks the R. N.-Y. to tell him 
honestly what his chances are in the 
country. To obtain a fair answer, we 
have placed the questions before some 
of the most practical farmers on Long 
Island—men who have for years stud¬ 
ied the profits and the losses of agri¬ 
culture on just such land as our ques¬ 
tioner owns. Their answers will, as 
we believe, open the way for one of 
the most thoughtful discussions that 
the R. N.-Y. has ever undertaken. 
Surely the question of properly balanc 
ing our city and country population 
is of the greatest importance. 
HOW ABOUT SORGHUM SUGAR? 
r pHERE is nothing in recent agri- 
X cultural experiments in this coun¬ 
try which has given rise to so many 
confident hopes to be followed by vex¬ 
atious and often costly disappoint¬ 
ments as the numerous attempts at 
the profitable manufacture of sugar 
from sorghum. It was only a few 
years ago when we were assured by 
the “best authorities” that it could 
be done on almost every farm on 
which a good crop of corn could be 
grown, in most of the States. A mul- 
titude of experiments were made; the 
manufacturers of rollers and evapo¬ 
rators did a fine business; reports of 
successes came from all sides. Are 
those rollers and evaporators^keeping 
company with useless chums^and 
other worthless patent devices about 
the farm buildings now, or have they 
been sold or bartered as old metal? 
How is it the successes haven't been 
repeated? Even where the business 
was encouraged by State and Nation¬ 
al bounties it is either dead, dying or 
languishing. Kept up by State and 
National support and encouraged by a 
particularly favorable climate, it is 
yet ‘ ‘ promising ” in Kansas. There 
the “diffusion process,” from which so 
much has been expected, and the 
patent process which promised so 
much have been tried together; but 
Secretary Rusk, who has just returned 
from an inspection of the nulls, de¬ 
clares that he cannot say that the in¬ 
dustry is as yet on a profitable basis. 
Three or four of the chemists who are 
drawing comfortable salaries are, how¬ 
ever, ‘ ‘ still hopeful of favorable re¬ 
sults ;” but the Secretary frankly says 
that unless improvements are made in 
the business, he is “very doubtful 
about the profit of making sugar from 
sorghum cane.” Well, the improve¬ 
ments may be made, or new processes 
may be discovered, or the price of 
sugar may go high enough either 
through the extortion of the Sugar 
Trust or the withdrawal of European 
bounties on beet sugar and consequent 
curtailment of its manufacture, or 
several other things may happen to 
make sorghum-sugar making a profit¬ 
able business; but who can yet see 
any indications of so desirable an 
event ? 
AN AMERICAN DAIRY CONTEST. 
F OR a number of years the R. N.-Y. 
has urged the managers of dairy 
exhibitions to adopt the English plan 
of “working dairies.” These “dair¬ 
ies ” are simply public competitions in 
which butter-makers, working under 
uniform conditions as regards cream 
and tools, strive to produce the best 
samples of butter. We expected that 
the managers of the Wisconsin farm¬ 
ers’ institutes would start the matter 
in this country, but the managers of 
the Bay State Fair are first to organ¬ 
ize and push such a contest. At the 
fair to be held in Boston next week 
there will be three such competitions: 
1, between butter-makers using cream 
raised by cold, deep setting; 2, be¬ 
tween those using cream from a sepa¬ 
rator ; 3, a sweepstakes prize for the 
winners of the first and second pre¬ 
miums in the first two classes. In 
England these contests are designed 
for women alone; at the Bay State 
Fair both men. and women will com¬ 
pete. The following points regarding 
the manipulation of the cream are to 
be observed by the judges: 
Straining cream into churn. 4 
Intelligent use of the thermometer.. 0 
Ventilation of churn. 8 
Speed and management of churn.... 6 
Judgment in stopping the churn. 20 
Time in churning. s 
Straining the butter-milk.!. 4 
Washing butter in churn. 10 
Cleanliness in handling. 8 
Using the butter-worker. 8 
Making up butter, or packing. 8 
Grain or texture of butter. io 
100 
Each candidate is required to pay 
an entrance fee of $5, which will be 
refunded on the .completion of the 
work. In connection with the con¬ 
tests. short talks on dairy matters 
will be given by some of the best dai¬ 
rymen in New England. We shall 
watch the result of these contests 
with considerable interest. It will be 
noticed in the rules that 52 out of 100 
points are given to the operations that 
affect the texture or granulation of 
the butter. This shows how very im¬ 
portant this matter is—it is the opera¬ 
tion most generally neglected by poor 
dairy people. The R, N.-Y. wishes to 
say m this connection that a great 
many people seem to believe that it is 
impossible to make sticky or salvy 
butter in a churn that contains no 
floats or paddles. This is a great mis¬ 
take. Over-churning in any of the 
revolving or swinging churns will 
surely produce a sticky, pasty mass 
of butter. 
TELLING RESULTS OF THE R. N.- 
Y’S. FERTILIZER EXPERI¬ 
MENTS. 
r piIE R. N.-Y. considers itself fortu- 
X nate in having quite an area of 
very poor soil on which to experiment 
with fertilizers. It is because the land 
is already fertile or at least well pro¬ 
vided with one or more of the food 
constituents supplied by so-called 
“complete” fertilizers, that the exper¬ 
iments made by farmers for a season 
or so prove little or nothing or are al¬ 
together contradictory. For about 14 
years the R. N.-Y. has made trials 
with different quantities of fertilizers 
to find out how large an amount could 
be profitably used. Those made at 
the R. N.-Y. farm on Long Island, 
which is in a high condition of fertili¬ 
ty in every part, gave no further in¬ 
formation than that 200 pounds per 
acre would give as large a crop as 
w r hen 2,000 pounds were used. In or¬ 
der to get the desired information it 
would be necessary to carry on the 
same trials for many years, the same 
as Dr. Lawes has done at Rothamsted. 
Not so on the impoverished soil of 
the Rural’s experiment plots in New 
Jersey. Here the answers come at 
once, and the testimony Is direct and 
convincing. The soil wants nitrogen, 
potash and phosphoric acid and it 
must have them, or paying crops can¬ 
not be raised. We have shown this 
as the results of six seasons of the 
same trials. And it has been further 
shown that the potato crop will be 
profitably increased by the application 
of as high as 1,700 pounds of high- 
grade potato fertilizer to the acre, while 
m some cases the increase has paid 
the additional cost of 2,200 pounds. 
Our report for the past season is not 
quite ready. But two plots have been 
harvested and weighed. Here is the 
result in round numbers per acre: 
FIRST SERIES. 
Plot 1. 
Natural soil 
161 
bush. 
“ 2. 
440 
lbs. fertilizers 190 
t i 
“ 3. 
880 
tt a 
212 
tt 
“ 4. 
1320 
tt tt 
278 
tt 
“ 5. 
1760 
tt tt 
330 
tt 
“ 6. 
2200 
tt tt 
308 
.< 
SECOND SERIES. 
Plot 7. 
Natural soil 
154 
bush. 
“ 8. 
440 
lbs. fertilizer 
187 
11 
“ 9. 
880 
tt tt 
216 
tt 
“ 10. 
1320 
it It 
246 
it 
“ 11. 
1760 
it it 
297 
U 
“ 12. 
2200 
U it 
330 
it 
It will be seen that, with one excep¬ 
tion, the yield increases as the fertil¬ 
izer increases. In the first series, 2,200 
pounds of fertilizer give 22 bushels less 
than 1,760 pounds of fertilizer; while, 
in the second series, the larger amount 
gives 22 bushels increase. 
The above tables show, in a general 
way, just what is shown by all pre¬ 
vious experiments upon this or simi¬ 
larly poor soil in the same or a neigh¬ 
boring field. 
BREVITIES. 
“ Domestic Fruits at Auction.” Read 
what is said on this subject. See page 685. 
A HEN that will not scratch and a cow 
that is not greedy for her food are the ani¬ 
mals that are better dead than alive. 
Potato diggers like the R. N.-Y. No. 2 
Potato because the tubers are ‘‘all in a 
bunch.” A skillful man can throw all the 
tubers out at one forking. 
At Suffolk County Fair, Riverliead, L. I. 
a first premium was awarded to E. E. Mos- 
ier, of Riverliead, for the Rural No. 2 Pota¬ 
to. About a dozen specimens were shown. 
They were remarkably uniform in size and 
shape. 
The Rural New-Yorker is much im¬ 
proved in appearance with its new dress 
and changed “ make-up. ” 1 am pleased to 
note this evidence of deserved prosperity. 
The R. N.-Y. stands in the front rank of 
agricultural journals of the world. 
Ionia County, Michigan. 
C. F. Huntsman. 
We can not find space for all the reports 
kindly sent to us of the R. N.-Y. No. 2. 
Of one thing our readers may feel assured: 
we shall print the bad as well as the good 
reports without any discrimination. The 
R. N.-Y. is interested only in showing up 
this potato as it is. Up to this time, our 
opinion of it is that it is the most valuable 
late potato (where it succeeds) known. 
The picture of Mr. Terry’s tools has ex¬ 
cited a good deal of interest. We hope to 
follow it with pictures of the tools used on 
a Massachusetts farm, and also the tools 
used on farms in Alabama, Dakota and 
Colorado. A Western lady suggests that 
we ought to show the tools used by Mrs. 
Terry in her kitchen. This is a good sug¬ 
gestion, and we hope to be able to carry it out. 
I FIRST became acquainted with the Ru¬ 
ral New-Yorker by sending my address 
for a five weeks’ trial trip. At that time I 
was taking three farm, one political and 
two religious papers. As my time expired, 
I dropped two of the farm papers and sub¬ 
stituted the Rural in their place, and feel 
much pleased with the change. I receive 
the bulletins from the experiment stations 
of N. Y., and would rather pay for them 
than not. receive them, but I like the Rural 
the best. ALBERT ROBINSON. 
Erie County, N. Y. 
