8o6 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
DEC 7 
the place,’but the yearly expense of cutting 
and hauling it ($40) Is included in the table 
of expenses. If wood had to he purchased 
it would add $10 to the yearly cost, for all 
that is used for fuel can be bought here as 
standing timber very cheap. Clothes are 
bought partially ready made, and a good 
proportion of them are made by the women 
folks at home. No separate account has 
been kept as to the cost of boots and shoes, 
as this is included in the outlay for wear¬ 
ing apparel. 
L. H., Dansville, N. Y.—The following 
table shows the number of persons in my 
family and the principal items of expendi¬ 
ture for living expenses during five years. 
o 
U CO 
o — 
*3 
ku 
c a 
l. £ 
[valent 
adults. 
-O 
CO 
8- 
w D 
• 
x 
u ~ a; 
st for 
i adult. 
*3 
o*C 
3 43 O 
3 *3 
=3 
3 6 
°-s 
*3 © 
3 c3 
55 
3 O 
F. 
>* © 
© 
> 3 «< 
> o 
1875. 
4h>. 
0. 
4h?. 
$45.42. 
$10.09. 
$82.40 
1878, 
4. 
0. 
4. 
43.92. 
10.9°. 
22.10 
1881. 
4. 
1. 
4*. 
57.26. 
12.72. 
34.10 
1884. 
4. 
2. 
5. 
57.42. 
11 58. 
25.20 
188S. 
4*. 
2. 
6. 
65.71. 
10.95. 
88.80 
My books do not show the separate 
items of sugar and molasses, but they are in¬ 
cluded with the tea and coffee (no tobacco) 
under the head of “groceries.” No ac¬ 
count was kept of fruit and vegetables, as 
they were raised on the farm, and it was 
difficult to keep an account of the amount 
used. The price of wheat used for flour 
ranged from 90 cents to $1.30 per bushel. 
J. H. G., Queens County, Long Island. 
—The question of family expenses is a 
delicate one. If the figures are low the 
wife will take them to her husband and 
show him how very economically she is man¬ 
aging the family. If, on the other hand, 
they are high the husband is sure to say to 
his wife: “ I told you so ; we are living too 
extravagantly. It must be stopped.” In 
either case it is not likely that there will be 
any natural change in the method of living. 
The fact is family expenses cannot be meas¬ 
ured as one would measure a gallon of 
molasses or a bushel of potatoes. A small 
amount of expense may not indicate judi¬ 
cious economy, neither would a large expen¬ 
diture necessarily indicate unwise extravag¬ 
ance. It is not the money we expend, but 
what we expend it for—the manner in 
which we expend it—that determines the 
character of our living. When we have 
learned that money is not the end, but only 
the means to an end, we are in a condition 
to live as we ought to live. In the average 
estimate of family expenses I notice that 
the unknown quantity used off the farm is 
estimated roughly or omitted entirely. 
This makes the whole estimate incomplete 
and unreliable. In my cwn case I have 
lived in the country, owned my own house 
and bought everything needed for a family 
of three persons, and about the average 
amount of company. My expenses #have 
been as follows: 
Fuel—five tons coal. $30.00 
“ wood, kindling. 5.00 
Flour—two barrels. 12.00 
Meat. 100.00 
Potatoes—two barrels. 5.00 
Vegetables, celery, etc. 20.00 
Sugar. 15.00 
Coffee. 6.00 
Tea. 3.00 
Butter. 15.00 
Milk. 21.60 
Canned goods. 4.00 
Spices, etc . 10.00 
Fish. 13.00 
Eggs—50 dozen. 12.50 
Clothes. 100.00 
Washing—hired labor. 26.00 
Shoes. 30.00 
$428.10 
In the matter of fuel I have a furnace and 
a range. I find that they do not require 
more than two-thirds of the fuel required 
for stoves, and there is an immense saving 
in labor. I buy my meat in the city at the 
following prices: 
Beef—sirloin steak. 14 to 16 cents 
“ roasting piece. 10 cents 
“ soup “ . 5 to 6 cents 
Mutton chops. 14 cents 
“ roast. 10 to 14 cents 
Pork steaks. 12 cents 
“ sausage. 10 cents 
Milk I pay six cents a quart for. Clothes 
and shoes are bought ready-made in the 
city. I find that it pays to pay cash for 
everything, and buy direct from the pro¬ 
ducer as far as possible. I should say that 
there is at least 40 per cent, difference be¬ 
tween the top “ retail ” price and the lowest 
price of food of the same quality produced 
direct from the producers or in the open 
markets. In common with almost every 
one else in these days of extravagant living, 
my chief expenses are the luxuries—not. 
for the necessaries of life. For example, 
my car fares were more than my meat bill. 
On the whole, I am inclined to think that 
the incidental expenses are greater than 
those which might perhaps be called essen¬ 
tial and this is, I think, true of almost 
every family who live in the modern fash¬ 
ion. It is doctors’ bills, carriage hire—or 
what is the same thing “carriage use”— 
railroad fares, concerts, theaters, etc., 
rather than our meat and clothing bills 
which eat up our incomes. 
FAST-WALKING HORSES AGAIN. 
H. S. W., Little Utica, N. Y.—After 
reading under the head of Discussion, in 
the R. N.-Y. of November 16, the item by 
R. C. F. relating to fast-walking horses, I 
feel impelled to write something in crit¬ 
icism of what he says in that article. 
Now, I. for one, would feel positive, with¬ 
out reading even a quarter as many agri¬ 
cultural papers as R. C. F. tells us he reads, 
that a good, active, smart walking horse, is 
the great desideratum for the general run 
of farmers. Perhaps it may not matter so 
much to the farmer (?) who spends a good 
share of his time driving a fancy horse on 
the road or talking politics in the corner 
grocery, whether his work-team and plow 
and hired man at home are walking at the 
rate of two miles or only one per hour. 
The farmers I have in mind (and their 
name is legion) are those who keep only 
two, possibly, three horses, which are used 
for all farm purposes and for driving on 
the road. For such men fast-walking 
horses are the kind every time. For in¬ 
stance, let a live, energetic man accustomed 
to using a good walking team, start for 
town behind a pair of slow-walking horses 
and his mental sensations will very soon 
tell him which kind he prefers. I, for 
one, would not buy a horse, however 
good he might otherwise be, if he pos¬ 
sessed the fault of being a slow walker. 
Here at home we are of the kind 
who do our plowing and team work 
generally, and I know that a good, fast¬ 
walking business horse (not one of the 
highty-tighty fast-walking fly-aways) that 
will draw a load or an empty wagon on 
the road so that it will not be necessary to 
take a “squirt” to make him move, will 
draw a plow in a perfectly satisfactory 
way, and the hired man will not suffer any 
bodily harm from following; neither will 
the horse’s nerve desert him. Then, again, 
when we hitch our general-purpose horse 
to the buggy to drive either for pleasure or 
business, what is more aggravating than 
that slow, poking gait which makes the 
slow-walking horse a regular nuisance so 
far as travel is concerned. 
Walking with many horses is a habit; in 
fact, it is so with all horses to a certain ex¬ 
tent. Break and work a colt by the side 
of a good, energetic horse and its habit of 
walking will be adapted more or less to the 
gait of the older horse. And very often a 
pair of horses that might have made a fast¬ 
walking team, are ruined in that respect, 
all because their driver is a laggard him¬ 
self. In conclusion, let me say to farmers 
in general: when you are purchasing a 
team for general purposes, search for 
horses that are good, smart walkers, and 
after using them for one week, I will war¬ 
rant you will never want any other kind. 
THE MILK PROBLEM. 
J. J. M.. Whippany, N. J.—There seems 
to be a move on the part of the milk-pro¬ 
ducers of the country sending milk to New 
York City to get out of the grip of the New 
York Milk Exchange, and from what I 
know at present about that movement they 
are putting themselves in shape to accom¬ 
plish it, and until they do that and do it 
effectually, they—the farmers—will never 
get paying prices for their milk. If I un¬ 
derstand the matter, the Milk Exchange is 
composed of about 100 milk-dealers, mostly 
of New York City. They meet once a 
month and “fix”—as they call it—the prices 
to be paid for milk the following month. 
The prices of grain feed or hay or cows or 
the cost of labor to produce the milk make 
no difference to them. They say: “ That 
is the price; take it or keep your milk at 
home or do what you can with it. We will 
not pay any more for it.” The farmers 
have stood this long enough. The time has 
now come to move, and to do it in such a 
way that the farmers can obtain control 
of the prices themselves. 
Look at the prices paid for milk to the 
producers at their shipping points for the 
last 20 years, and what do you find? A 
gradual shrinkage in prices amounting to 
26 per cent.; that is to say, the prices to the 
producers have gradually been forced down 
until there is no money for them in the 
business. How about the consumers? How 
much less are they paying for their milk 
than they did 10 or 20 years ago? Not any¬ 
thing less to speak of. Now does it cost so 
much more to handle this milk and get it 
from the producer to the consumer than it 
formerly did? Not by any means. Then 
where does the money go? I will let the 
question answer itself. Any fair-minded 
man will see where it goes. I contend 
that the producers now have a chance to 
change this entire business and they must 
do it to protect themselves, for the consum¬ 
ers will pay no more than they are now 
doing. Let matters go on in the present 
way 10 years longer and where will the pro¬ 
ducers land? I cannot tell. 
THE DRYING OFF OF COWS. 
C. E. E., Avoca, N. Y.—With regard to 
the drying off of cows, my chief object is to 
keep them up to a full flow of milk as long 
as it can possibly be done with profit, and 
then to dry them off as quickly as practica¬ 
ble. I generally milk my cows until about 
January 1, and aim to have them fresh 
about the first of March, allowing them to 
go dry for two months ; but I find that 
among animals of the same breed it is next 
to impossible to keep some to their milk ; 
while it is almost impracticable to make 
others dry up in the fall and early winter. 
I feed corn-fodder, mangel-wurzel, pump¬ 
kins, and such provender, saving small 
and diseased potatoes to be fed a few weeks 
before calving. I consider the latter very 
valuable feed at that time. From the time 
when I begin to dry off the cows until a 
short time before they calve their principal 
feed is straw. I would not feed this were 
it not that the animals are in a warm loca¬ 
tion where they are protected from cold 
winds. When drying off I milk the cows a 
few times once a day and then cease to 
milk them for a long time, being sure that 
they are dry when milked the last time. 
I always try to keep a heifer to her milk 
very late, thinking that perhaps it may 
make a difference afterwards. A few years 
since one of my cows that I supposed was 
farrow, proved to be with calf and it was so 
late when that conclusion was arrived at 
that she could not be dried off. The calf 
was so poor and weak that I did not try to 
raise it. Another time I bought a cow ex¬ 
pecting to milk her during the winter and 
fatten her for beef in the spring. Towards 
spring I discovered that she was not farrow. 
The calf was nothing but a mere frame¬ 
work with a hide over it. This cow was 
fed high for milk and beef. From my ex¬ 
perience I conclude that the closer a cow is 
milked up to the time of calving or the 
more she is forced to give a large quantity 
of milk, the greater will be the injury done 
to the calf, but I have never noticed any 
injury to the cow. I keep from eight to 12 
cows and sell the butter to special cus¬ 
tomers at fancy prices. 
BUDDED TREES IN THE WEST. 
Prof. J. L. Budd, Ames, Iowa.—A cor¬ 
respondent writing from Brighton, N. Y., 
says: “ I inclose copy of a circular which is 
being sent abroad in some sections: I send it 
to you because it evidently misconstrues or 
misrepresents an article by you to which 
reference is made. Why budded trees 
should be a swindle, I am at a loss to know. 
Do you not think a thing of that kind mis¬ 
leads the public, and really does as much 
harm as the evils it seeks to correct ?” 
The circular referred to is sent by a well- 
known nurseryman of Illinois, who de¬ 
nounces the budded trees as arrant hum¬ 
bugs and quotes the writer in support of 
his views. I reply in the R. N.-Y., as a 
general denunciation of budded trees was 
never intended by me in the article to 
which reference is made. Over large areas 
of the Eastern and Southern States budded 
trees of the apple and other orchard fruits 
are as good as, or better than root-grafted 
ones, but the fact remains that west of 
Lake Michigan the drift soils are relatively 
loose and friable, and our most trying 
winters are often without snow ; hence the 
hardiest varieties on common commercial 
stocks are liable to be root-killed. Of 
course, they might be saved by very deep 
planting on dry soil; but the average 
planter is not aware of this need. Even 
when root-grafted by using a long cion and 
a very short root, we sometimes lose tens 
of thousands of hardy apple trees in the 
nursery if they are not deeply banked in 
the fall; but where properly grafted and 
set, a large part of our nursery trees have 
thrown out roots from the cions before 
they reached the size which planters re¬ 
quire. 
CROSS-FERTILIZATION OF GRAPES. 
G. R. W., Lyndon, Ky.— Reading the 
article about the Colorado Grape in a recent 
issue of the R. N.-Y., calls to my mind a few 
^qestiqqs I woqld like to have austyerqrf Uy 
some of the leading pomologists. J. G., 
says, that having a Brighton and Chasselas 
growing on the arbor opposite each other 
these two vines interlocked their branches 
on top of the arbor, and while in bloom the 
bees were very busy, etc., etc. By all this 
I understand that he wishes to say that the 
bees fertilized one vine with pollen from 
the other. Now my questions are: 1. Is 
it possible for the bees to fertilize a grape 
blossom ? 2. Has any one seen bees so at 
work as to warrant the belief that they 
were fertilizing the grape flowers ? I have 
many thousands of bees and several acres 
of grapes, and after careful observation I 
am certain that I have never yet seen them 
at work on the blossoms. If any one will 
study the nature of the grape blossom, he 
will see that it differs from other fruit 
blossoms: the way the blossoms open forbids 
accidental fertilization; for as soon as the 
caps burst off, the pollen falls on the pistils 
and the grape is fertilized. I don’t believe 
there is one chance in a thousand for a 
grape to cross with another without the 
help of man. There is but one way to fer¬ 
tilize the grape, and that is, to collect the 
pollen of one vine and watch one’s chance 
to place it in the blossoms of the other vine 
as they open. Let us hear what others 
have to say. 
FEEDING FOR BUTTER. 
E. J. M., SIIKLBYVILLE, III.—For making 
butter I feed for winter rations oat-meal 
and corn-meal, equal parts. I find this to 
be as perfect a ration as I cau get for pro¬ 
ducing a good quantity and quality of but¬ 
ter. I feed green-cut clover hay and some 
oats, and straw for “roughness.” Fora 
summer ration when the cows are on good 
grass I feed about equal parts of oat and 
corn-meal and wheat bran. I would not 
advise feeding much corn-meal when the 
animals are on good grass, as, in my opin¬ 
ion, it is likely to produce too much fat. I 
use high-grade Short-horn cows that have 
been bred for butter purposes. I have been 
crossing some of them with thoroughbred 
Jersey bulls the past year. 
J. P., Wawa, Pa.—T he answer to an in¬ 
quiry about the influence of walnut trees 
on fruit trees growing near them, in a late 
issue of the R. N.-Y., might lead some one 
to plant apple trees near a walnut tree. 
Such planting,about 1845, has resulted in the 
death of 12 trees, not oue surviving within 
75 feet of the walnut tree, while the rest of 
the orchard is in thriving condition. I also 
wish to notice some advice given in the R. 
N.-Y. some months since where the suckers 
or root sprouts of the pear were said to be 
suitable for grafts for the pear. I have an 
orchard that was grafted to some extent on 
such stock. The roots are Df course of the 
same character and continue to throw up 
suckers certainly to the great injury of the 
orchard. I think such stock should not bo 
used. 
Up and Down. —Our respected contem¬ 
porary, the Journal of Commerce, speaks 
wise, effective words, under this head : 
The path of life has been described by an 
old writer as an uneven way. Now it is an 
upward stretch, difficult of ascent, but 
rewarding those who climb with the in¬ 
vigorating atmosphere and the glorious 
views from the summit; and anon a down¬ 
ward turn with a slippery surface, until it 
reaches a gloomy ravine, into which the 
sunlight can enter only for a brief period 
at noon day, and which is full of depress¬ 
ing vapors and noxious odors. But in one 
sense the ups and downs of life are almost 
wholly in the mental condition of those 
who are on the journey, and for this condi¬ 
tion the pilgrims themselves are largely 
responsible. There are thousands who 
mourn over this bitter experience, and 
many who rebel against it, and fill the air 
with their murmuring cries, who might 
walk in the sunshine if they would so 
elect. 
This is not mere theory, a poetic vision 
with no substantial basis, but a plain prac¬ 
tical matter of fact, to be taken into the 
every-day experience. A great share of the 
burdens of life are the offspring of the im¬ 
agination. The “ ills that never happened ” 
are the authors of the greatest portion of 
human wretchedness. Looking downward 
is the looking for evil, and the path to every 
one who bends his gaze wholly earthward, 
gjqes down straight into the gulch, qqt of 
