854 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
DEC 28 
In fact, we do not believe in a sink at all. 
It is healthier and neater to have a large 
barrel on wheels, which may be emptied 
twice a day. Sinks and privy vaults are 
nuisances. Your other questions will be 
answered later. 
Discussion. 
A VERMONT MAN “GOES WEST.” 
L. H. R., Fort Atkinson,Wis.— In the R. 
N.-Y. of December 6, I see several letters in 
reply to questions in regard t o the abandoned 
farms in New Hampshire and Vermont. I 
wish to say a word on that topic myself, as I 
am fully convinced that most of the reasons 
advanced by those correspondents are mis¬ 
leading and false. Before giving the rea¬ 
sons for the abandonment of so many 
farms in Vermont I wish to say that I 
always lived in that State until about a 
month ago, and have made some study of 
the matter, and after looking at the sub¬ 
ject from all sides I thought it decidedly a 
good time to go west. Now for the reasons: 
1. We in Vermont are no nearer markets 
in regard to the cost of transportation than 
the farmers in any of these Westei-n States. 
In other words, the farmer in Vermont can 
sell his bogs, beef cattle, butter, potatoes, 
etc., at just the same prices as the farmers 
in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa can 
theirs, and for no more. 2. The land in 
Vermont being hilly and stony, it is not 
possible to grow as many acres of crop with 
the same labor as in the Western States 
where the land is level or slightly rolling, 
and free from stones. 3. If the Vermont 
farmer wants to buy feed of any kind he 
must pay double price for it as compared 
with what it can be bought for here. When 
I left Vermont, a month ago, bran was sell¬ 
ing for $16.00 per ton and corn-meal for 
$17 per ton and those were the lowest fig¬ 
ures that had ever been reached there so 
long as I can remember, the prices often 
running from $20 to $25 per ton. The 
prices here are $8.50 for bran, and $7.00 for 
new corn on the ear. Now, does any one 
think that the Vermont farmer can make 
pork, beef or butter and sell it at the same 
rates as the farmers here can, with feed at 
one-half the price which the Vermont farm¬ 
er has to nav ? 
4. The winters are from two to four 
months longer in Vermont than they are 
here, so that the people there have a much 
longer season for feeding their stock and a 
much shorter season for doing farm work, 
to say nothing of being blocked up in five 
to .‘ even feet of snow for four to six months 
each year. 5. To my mind the most im¬ 
portant of all reasons for the low prices of 
Vermont farms lies in the fact that every 
.tan or woman who has a few dollars to 
'J.Ait at interest, instead of letting it out at 
j,n honest rate of six per cent, at home, 
must either put it into some Western mort¬ 
gage company in Kansas, Nebraska or Da¬ 
kota, or, even worse, send it to some of the 
many mushroom cities in the West and 
South, in expectation of getting eight or 10 
per cent, or even more for it ; but in many 
cases they lose even the principal. Now, I 
consider that the price of articles is regu¬ 
lated by three things—supply, demand and 
ready money, and as the ready money is all 
sent out of the State an important factor 
is wanting and prices go down, and as the 
supply of farms for sale increases they take 
another drop, and there being little or no 
money and plenty of farms for sale demand 
soon ceases and there is a crash in prices, 
just as there is at the present time. Mr. 
H. O. Hadley makes the following state¬ 
ment in the Rural: “The only reason 
why there are so many deserted farms in 
the State is because the young men of to¬ 
day are too lazy to work.” Perhaps that 
is the reason in his State of New Hamp¬ 
shire; but the case is different with the 
young men of old Vermont who have always 
stood in the front ranks for their energy 
and ability. 
The reason why young men depart from 
the farms of Vermont is that they have 
looked the matter squarely in the face, and 
have seen their fathers and neighbors 
growing poorer and poorer year by year 
owing to the constant decrease in prices 
and the constant discriminations made in 
favor of the West by our railroads, and 
one by one they have arrived or are arriv¬ 
ing at the same conclusion—that they can 
make more money in the rich and growing 
West than they can in the poverty-stricken 
East. 
The New Hampshire farmers who have 
told readers of the R N.-Y. the reasons 
why so many farms in their State and Ver¬ 
mont have been abandoned as unprofita¬ 
ble, are, nearly all, men who have farms 
for sale. It?is therefore essentially to their 
interests to represent matters in the most 
favorable light to possible purchasers. All 
the world over, whenever a'man wishes to 
sell his business, whatever it may be, really 
because he couldn’t do well in it, he is cer¬ 
tain to tell a different tale altogether to a 
would-be purchaser. The R. N.-Y". did 
well in calling attention to the subject and 
getting one side of the story from deeply 
interested parties; but, of course, it could 
not expect to get the truth about the mat¬ 
ter from such a source. 
VARIOUS TOPICS. 
C. C. W., Grand Bay, Alabama.— In an 
article by Dr. Henry Stewart in a late 
issue of the R. N.-Y., he speaks of the pe¬ 
culiar medicinal properties of the cotton 
root, and says the oil of the seed has the 
same properties. Now, if this is so, 
what quantity of the oil would be required 
to produce any effect upon a human being? 
Is not most of the cotton-seed oil now 
made used as human food in some form or 
another—as an adulterant in lard and olive 
(?) oil, and in other ways? I don’t 
know how it is in any other places; but in 
Mobile refined cotton seed oil can be pur¬ 
chased of any grocer, and is largely used in 
lieu of the miserable stuff called lard by 
the citizens for all sorts of cooking and 
shortening, and it is good too, but like many 
other so-called good things, its use may pro¬ 
duce very serious results. Who knows? 
One of my new neighbors is a man from 
Missouri, and the other day while reading 
the news of that blizzard out West, he re¬ 
marked that he was thankful that he was 
out of the range of such things, and 
he didn’t propose to face any more of 
that sort of thing as long as he could 
make a decent living here, and he had done 
very well so far, and as soon as he could 
get his fruit orchard to a bearing age he 
hoped to get along still better. When 
this man went back to his old home a lit¬ 
tle more than a year ago he told the people 
there what he had seen here and about 
some of his experiences, but he added that 
his stories looked too big and the people 
would not believe them. The above is 
brought to mind by reading on page 775 of 
the R N.-Y. what Mr. Burpitt has to say 
about Georgia and the Island of Jersey. 
Suppose he were to return and tell those 
people about what he had seen and learned 
in Georgia: would they believe him ? I 
doubt it. 
The R. N.-Y. asks, on page 776, what is 
an acre of apples or peaches, quinces or 
pears worth when just coming into bear¬ 
ing. Well, I don’t know how much the 
trees are worth, but I know the net value 
of the fruit from one acre containing 108 
Le Conte Pear trees seven years old. The 
first crop, this year brought $026.40 
and the trees are full of fruit buds for next 
spring’s crop. I have not found the sort of 
apple that does well here. Peaches are 
unreliable. Of plums I believe the Japan 
sorts, like Kelsey, Satsuma and others, will 
pay well, as they bear large showy fruits of 
good quality, which stand transportation 
well, and can consequently be sent to dis¬ 
tant markets at a season when they will 
sell for enough to give the grower a profit 
after a division with transportation com¬ 
panies and commission merchants. 
I want to say “Amen,” to Mr. Terry’s 
Thanksgiving for fruit. To-day is Thanks¬ 
giving Day and we have just gathered the 
last of the fruits of the season—some Chinese 
quinces, many of which weigh 2)4 pounds. 
The season began with the first week 
in March, when we gathered our first mess 
of strawberries, and ever since we have had 
some sort of fruit. For about eight months 
out of the 12, we can enjoy fresh fruits be¬ 
sides having melons from June till frost, 
if we plant in succession, and this we do, 
and seeds from the first melons planted at 
once produce a second crop. 
CLOVER AND ABANDONED FARMS. 
E. P., Jewett, N. Y.—The issue of the 
R. N.-Y. for December 7, was an unusually 
good one, especially the letter of Mr. 
Tei-ry and the articles in regard to aban¬ 
doned farms. I am a believer in clover and 
always have been, and I think Mr. Terry’s 
way of farming excellent for his farm, and 
at first thought I felt like saying: “ Let 
us go and do likewise.” But, Instead, let us 
stop and think before we jump in—Have we 
all Mr. Terry’s sub-soil to work on? Is not 
Mr. T. doing with his clover what could be 
done with a sub-soil plow ? I think from 
my own experience on different kinds of 
land, that many who may try to follow Mr. 
Terry’s footsteps to wealth will find, to 
their disappointment, that, they have not 
his sub-soil, and that no clover will grow 
without constant manuring. I have known 
apparently worn-out land to produce as 
abundantly as Mr. Terry’s by the use of r a 
sub-soil plow, and the supply of fertility 
seemed to be almost inexhaustible. I can 
only say : “ Happy is the man who has 
a farm with such a reserve for 
time of need,” and I am sorry we 
are not all so fortunate. If others try 
experiments like Mr. Terry’s I would like 
to hear from them. This is an important 
question, for if clover will do in all cases 
what it has fcr Mr. Terry then we farmers 
in the East are on an even footing with the 
owners of the new lands of the West and 
we are or will soon be rich men. 
Now as regards abandoned farms: As 
far as my observation goes, really no farm 
is left to be abandoned. The farm was 
sold years ago in its products—butter, 
pork, etc. There would be as much sense 
in asking such a farm to produce profitable 
crops as there would be in asking the skel¬ 
eton of a horse to rise and work. The young 
men who leave these farms know to their 
sorrow that nothing can be produced on 
such land without capital to restore the 
fertility and repair the dilapidated build¬ 
ings. This capital they have not and they 
do not know where to get it, so they leave 
the farms to their fate. I am sure it is 
owing to the farmers’ fault that farms are 
in this condition, for while the large ma¬ 
jority of farms have deteriorated greatly in 
the last 20 years, a few have improved, 
and where the farm has improved the 
farmer has grown wealthy. I really do not 
think that farming has in the past had its 
share of brains. The parrot will croak that 
times are hard and “ farmin’don’t pay ” 
until more capital and more brains are put 
into farming and until then farms will 
continue to be abandoned. 
AGAINST THE SILO AGAIN. 
A. T. T., Franklin Park, N. J.—I 
notice that it is charged that in my article 
of November 2, regarding the silo and the 
injury to milk by feeding silage, I have not 
plainly stated whether my silage Was from 
corn well matured before it was cut or 
from green stuff, and it is also charged 
that I was not definite enough as to manner 
of storing it in the silo, etc. The com was 
quite green when cut in the field and was 
quickly chopped and stored in the silo, 
where it was well tramped, covered at 
once and heavily weighted immediately. 
It would weigh 45 pounds to the cubic 
foot when taken out, and was moderately 
acid in taste, and when fed emitted an odor 
about the same as that of “ barley grains.” 
That there is a deleterious principle in this 
feed which is manifested in the milk, I 
think has been fully proven in the action 
of the condensed milk factories throughout 
certain portions of the dairying districts 
contiguous to New York City. These ab¬ 
solutely refuse to buy milk from cows that 
have been fed on silage. It is alleged that 
this action was not taken until heavy 
damage had resulted from the quality of the 
goods made from silage-fed cows. I am 
not prepared to deny that this obnoxious 
factor is eliminated in “ sweet silaee, ” and 
furthermore I will not assert that because 
I have never seen sweet silage, such a pro¬ 
duct has no existence except in the im¬ 
agination of some silage enthusiast; but I 
will say that I have made silage from a va¬ 
riety of materials and stored it in a variety 
of ways, put it up fast and slowly, and it 
has never yet been my fortune to obtain 
absolutely sweet silage. Relatively some 
of it has been sweet, but only as compared 
with some that was offensively sour. 
ABOUT POTASH. 
F. A. B., Rochdale, Mass.—Do you put 
sugar into your turnips when you 
prepare them for the table ? I should 
think there was sugar in this cel¬ 
ery it tastes so sweet What very sweet 
strawberries these are ! What is the name 
of them ? Crescent. Why I thought the 
Crescent was a sour berry ? It is with some. 
The above are actual questions which the 
writer has repeatedly answered at his table. 
The secret ? Simply lotsot potash. I mean 
by that, two or three times as much as is 
generally used or even more. I have used 
for years large quantities of wood ashes ; 
also the Mapes Potato Manure at the rate 
of 1,200 pounds to 1,500 pounds per acre. I 
cannot get much barn-yard manure. I have 
raised celery on the same spot several 
years in succession, and this year the best 
crop I ever had. I have also grown pars¬ 
nips year after year on the same spot and I 
sell them all in the fall. People say that 
they thought parsnips did not get sweet 
till spring; Isay “Sometimes they don’t; 
but mine do.” I have never experienced 
any trouble from using very large quanti¬ 
ties of potash in the form of ashes, except 
in the case of beets and potatoes. They 
will be more or less scabby in ground on 
which too large quantities of ashes have 
been applied. I have had about 1 }4 acre 
in a market garden for the past eight 
years and have kept it in good condition 
almost wholly with the Mapes manures 
and wood ashes, with occasionally a barrel 
or two of hnely-ground bone on my small 
fruits—soil; a clayey loam. 
THOSE CHEESE SYNDICATES. 
Col. F. D. Curtis, Kirby Homestead, 
N. Y.—It is understood that an effort has 
been made to purchase and put under one 
management a considerable number of 
cheese factories. If, as the result of such 
purchase, more uniformity can be had in 
the quality of the cheese and a better grad¬ 
ing, and this at a lower cost on account of 
doing business on a larger scale and there¬ 
by purchasing the material required at less 
cost, then the en ire plan is a good one. If, 
on the other hand, the motive is to squeeze 
the price of milk down to a lower figure the 
movement is all wrong. I do not under¬ 
stand how such a combination can cut 
down the price of milk, for it is only facto¬ 
ries which will be purchased not the farm¬ 
ers. The farmers will still have the liberty 
of personal and co-operative action. The 
spirit of co-operation is not an evil spirit 
providing there is not too much Mammon 
in it. Farmers need more of the co-opera¬ 
tive spirit to reduce the cost of production 
and to induce more uniformity in the quali¬ 
ty of farm products, and especially where 
they are manufactured. I understand that 
it is New York City capital which is behind 
this project. A combined interest in the 
manufacture and sale of cheese can be 
made to work good if there is not too much 
trickery in it. We shall see. 
COAL ASHES AND CLOVER. 
A. J. D., Hackensack, N. J —In a late 
issue of the R. N.-Y. any person who has 
had experience with coal ashes is requested 
to state the results. The soil where I 7e- 
side is sandy, and so light that when the 
wind blows it drifts in ridges, and nothing 
would grow on it except beans. I tried to 
get a sod on it by sowing Timothy, but it 
died out. A few years ago, however, one 
of our church masters informed me that 
there was a big lot of coal ashes in the 
church cellar and that he would give it to 
anybody who would haul it away. I hauled 
about 20 loads and spread it over a two-acre 
lot, and then with a light dressing of 
stable manure, I plowed it under and 
sowed clover seed, and to-day I have just 
as fine a sod on that lot as anybody can 
find in this county. I know it is the first 
time that sod has been on that lot in 30 
years, and for how many years the same 
had been the case before I came here, I don’t 
know. 
WORTH NOTING BY CORRESPONDENTS. 
E. P. S., W. Bridgewater, Mass.—I have 
often thought that if contributors, in giv¬ 
ing their experience, or the results they 
have obtained, would always mention the 
condition under which they had worked, 
what they say would be of more value to 
others than it often is. A dry season does 
not give the same results as a wet one. 
Chemical manure will do better on some 
soils than on others. Some soils seem to 
need barn-yard manure. Some crops do 
very well with chemical manures only, 
while others will do nothing with barn 
manure. 
NALYSES OF FER¬ 
TILIZERS.—Readers 
of the R. N.-Y. should 
study the bulletins is¬ 
sued by the various ex- 
periment stations, 
which give analyses of 
commercial fertilizers. 
Let us give a few in¬ 
stances to show in what 
way they may be bene¬ 
fited : According to a 
late bulletin issued by 
the N. J. Experiment Station, as pointed 
out by Dr. Collier in the Husbandman, of 
the samples of ground bone analyzed there 
were. 10 which gave an average value of $40 
per ton, the average selling price being but 
$32—that is, their real value was 26 per cent, 
greater than the jn-iee asked, for them. On 
