1903 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Hope Farm Notes 
Haro Les30N3.— We get the Inside truth 
oi .soiiio things only after liard work and 
strenuous sweating. Strawberry culture at 
Hope Farm is one of these things. It is 
easy to sit in a chair and read what these 
experts say about keeping the fruit clean, 
but wait until you get down on your knees 
in the patch and stay there day after day 
pulling weeds until the ends of your fingers 
are raw! All this and more must be done 
If you expect to grow clean strawberries 
on a weedy farm. Our two worst mistakes 
in growing strawberries were starting them 
too soon after an old sod and trying to 
grow I'cas betw'een the rows last year. We 
turned oyer an old sod and grew a crop of 
fodder corn. The next Spring we set straw¬ 
berry plants, and before August, in spite of 
almost constant horse work, the bed was 
alive with grass. Then came other neces¬ 
sary work, and before we could get back to 
the berries the patch was like a meadow. 
Jlany people are badly fooled by an old 
sod. They turn It oyer, and because it is 
;.ut of .sight they imagine it is dead. Not 
a bit 01 it. Just when they don’t want it 
up it bobs again as it has in part of our 
patch. It beats us. We shall get all the 
fruit we can out of the patch, then plow 
and plant potatoes and keep the hoes go¬ 
ing until that sod is dead. On another part 
of the field we had plants set in August. I 
struck an economical turn of mind, and 
fell that the patch ought to support a dou¬ 
ble crop. So we put Notfs Excelsior peas 
between the strawberries. This so inter¬ 
fered with cultivation that neither crop was 
kept clean, and now, while not quite so bad 
as the other patch, it is bad enough. Here¬ 
after when we raise strawberries we shall 
raise them alone. On our soil there is no 
other way to keep them clean. 
You’re a smart man not to know that 
long ago! 
Well, we are certainly smarting for it— 
but some people don’t seem to learn the 
les.son as quickly as we did. The Hope 
Farm man will keep the strawberry ground 
clean this year if he has to do it with a 
club. 
Farm Notes.— The season is still cold and 
late. Our heavy soil is hard and caked, so 
that we have not done much plowing. 1 
do not believe in plowing up great lumps. 
While they may be partly smashed down 
■with harrow and dra.g I have never known 
■such soil to do as well as when it is plowed 
at the right time. We are plowing less 
tlian ever before this year, but I am giving 
each acre better culture and more fertilizer 
than ever. . . . Most of the grass in our 
neighborhood is very short and unless we 
have rain soon there will l)e a shortage of 
hay. Our own grass never looked better. 
'I’he “Clark” field beats anything I have 
seen. I think this is partly due to the ni¬ 
trate of soda which we used early in April, 
and largely to the careful seeding. This is 
one benefit from Clark’s method which is 
not always apparent the first year, I think 
the thorough preparation of the soil gives 
the grass plant a better root and a firmer 
gras]) on the soil, so that it will live longer 
and improve with age. Where sod is sim¬ 
ply lipped over with the underside culti¬ 
vated. we will often get a fine stand and 
actually a larger crop the first year than 
with the Clark method. The second or 
third year, however, the old sod will be 
heard from, and will fill the new seeding 
with weeds and foul stuff. Such a meadow 
will have a much shorter life than one 
seeded by Clark’s method. For a perma¬ 
nent meadow I would work and chop the 
soil all I could before seeding. For grass 
in a short rotation I doubt the profit in this 
intense working. 1 feel sure, however, that 
one great secret of successful grass culture 
in the North is the use of some form of 
soluble nitrogen—like nitrate of soda or 
liquid manure early in the Spring. . . • 
<Jur old mother cow “Jersey ’ has passed 
away. She had seen her best days, and 
her teeth were gone. This old girl brought 
great scandal upon me twice by breaking 
into the orchard and eating apples, until 
she got as drunk as a lord! She did this 
once while I was a candidate for the Legis- 
’ature on the temperance ticket. 1 forgave 
the old cow all this out oi consideration 
for her many sterling virtues. I bought 
her six years ago and paid $40 for her and 
her young calf. She has had live calves 
since—four being good heifers. We have 
two of these heifers now—fine young cows 
worth at least $10 each. Including hide and 
tallow of the old cow we received $47 for 
the calves that were sold. She was a good 
milker, and while we did not weigh her 
milk every day we uid enough weighing to 
convince me that during these six years 
she g.ave us at least 25,000 pounds of milk. 
She consumed at least five tons of grain, 
the rest of her feed being home-grown fod¬ 
der. That is the nearest 1 can get to the 
financial record of good old Jersey. If a 
cow can be said to have moral character I 
put this old lady well up on a front seat. 
• • • It will be remembered that last year 
we expected an invasion of 17-year locusts, 
and I prepared for them in various ways. 
Among other possible reenforcemonts Prof. 
J. R. Smith sent us some egg clusters of 
the Praying mantis, an insect that regards 
a locust about as the Graft regards roast 
turke.y. We hung these egg clusters on 
shrubs and low trees so they could hatch 
at the proper time, but se.nething was 
wrong. Either the eggs were not fertile or 
the temperature left her nest—at any rate, 
we never saw over a dozen of the insects. 
As the locusts did not come either we found 
no fault. Last Winter Prof, omith sent us 
another lot of eggs, of a Chinese variety 
this time. I have heard people say that 
they were “ruined by Chinese cheap labor,” 
but when an insect from China offers to 
work for me for as little monev as these 
did, I will surely take them in. When the 
box came Hugh put it away in a kitchen 
closet and forgot about it. We never 
thought of it again until late in April, w’hen 
the Madame got to that closet in her house¬ 
cleaning. Then we opened the box and 
found 15,000 or more cf those insects hatch¬ 
ed out! We got them around on the farm, 
and thinking we had blundered into a smart 
thing, I wrote Prof. Smith about it. This 
•s what he says: 
“You aie a nice sort of a fellow to take 
charge of an experiment! You have had 
only one bit of luck in the matter, and that 
is that you discovered the little fellows 
before they had started to eat each other 
up. The temperature is not exactly what 
they delight in under ordinary conditions; 
but I hope that they will hold their own 
where you have distributed them. Under 
outdoor conditions the insects have not 
hatched yet, there being too iittle of their 
natural fopd now running about. How¬ 
ever, we will hope for the best, and It is 
at least a satisfaction to know that the 
eggs were fertile.” 
That’s hard, but it was the greatest hatch 
ever known at Hope Farm! Uo I believe 
that one insect can be used to kill another'? 
Certainly! I feel sure that before many 
years this thing of setting buv against bug 
will be nearly as useful as J^aris-green. 
Labor and Money.— Last year the chil 
dren organized the Hope Farm Garden As¬ 
sociation. The Graft was president and I 
was made director. They raised a fair 
crop, but the organization was not a com¬ 
plete success. The president felt that his 
olHcial position should exempt him from 
work. The secretary was leady to write 
up the records, but didn’t want to hoe corn, 
'i'he director lost much time in keeping the 
(-•ther otticers at their dutv. This year wi 
have a new scheme 'I'he children go in 
partnership with me. I furnish ground, seed 
and fertilizer—they put un the labor and we 
are to divide the crop evenly Their favor¬ 
ite crops are potatoes and Lima beans. 
'Lhey know how to raise these crops, and 
there is always a good sale for them. The 
Graft has one piece of ground that he hoed 
and raked until it was liKe an ash heap. 
Then he dug out shallow trenches about IS 
inches apart and put his potato seed one 
foot apart in the trench, and covered it 
lightly. Then the whole patch was covered 
with strawy stable manure about two 
inches thick. As this manure was mostly 
from shredded cornstalks tnere were few 
w'eed seeds in it. The little fellow toiled 
hard at this job until Hugh told him that 
he might raise $15 worth of potatoes! 'i'hen 
he quit work and sat down to think what 
he would do with the money' . . . Near 
the front of the farm is a ti ugh old piece 
of ground where the sod has beaten us 
badly thus far. We planted currants there 
this Spring before plowing, and then rip¬ 
ped over the sod with one horse. The lit¬ 
tle boys are at this sod wUh their hoes 
knocking and cutting it and turning the 
roots up to the sun. It is a slow but sure 
way of killing out the grass, anu we intend 
to try to raise a big crop of potatoes under 
a mulch between the currar-ts. Some ten¬ 
der-hearted friend will be likely to start up 
and say that I am overworking these little 
chaps, and that I s'.iall make them hate 
the farm. Don’t worry about that for a 
moment. These little felloat have begun 
to learn early in life the most helpful les¬ 
son that can come to anvone. No man has 
any right to enjoy anvthing that he did 
not work for and earn! Honest labor ought 
to be the standard of value bv which an 
honest man measures what society gives* 
him. I am well aware that this does not 
always w,ork out right, for many live in 
luxury who never knew what it is to toil. 
That does not change the truth of it, how¬ 
ever, and my little boys shall grow up with 
the clear understanding that they can have 
nothing that they will not earn. The chil¬ 
dren are already beginning to understand 
that there is a “labor question,” and that 
property has many different forms. For 
example, one of m.v neighbors is grt atly in¬ 
terested in apple growing. He recently 
made a statement about like this; 
“A w’ell-grown apple tree of good variety 
is worth $100. The ordinary crop from it 
one year with another will brin.-^ $10 or 
more as we sell fruit. With the expenses 
taken out this leaves more than the $100 
will bring when left in a savings bank!” 
I could not dispute the statement. 'I'he 
Bud heard it and thought i*^ over for a 
while. Finally her little brain surrounded 
the following proposition: 
“Father, you have about 5o0 apple trees 
planted. You say one apple tree is worth 
$100 You are a rich man!” 
Now that is better reasoning than some 
older people give when they run to put 
their money into wildcat sc hemes. I sat 
down on the hillside and tried to explain to 
the little girl what must be dene to my 
apple trees before th'^y could ever earn the 
interest on $100. You try that with a ques¬ 
tioning child, my friend, if you want to 
understand what it means to develop a 
paying orchard. h. w. c. 
391 
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