1903 
I HE klTRAL NEW-YORKEK. 
5i9 
Hope Farm Notes 
Farm Notes.— The rains kept up until 
July 1. Then we actually had a day with¬ 
out a shower. This day found about three 
tons of clover hay on the ground. It had 
been well washed by rain after rain, but 
we got it under cover at last, though it 
looks like poor stuff. Almost anything in 
the way of fodder will be useful next Win¬ 
ter. for my neighbors are already talking 
about $30 hay. I am glad now that we cut 
the rye early and cured it for fodder. The 
storms have whipped and beaten the ripe 
rye so that there is hardly a good field in 
our county. What we shall do with the 
rest of our grass remains to be seen. It is 
now ripe and getting hard. For best re¬ 
sults it should have been cut 10 days ago, 
but the rains would have ruined it. We 
are hopeful now for better hay weather 
and the grass is so ripe that less sun will 
be required to cure it. We actually had 
three days without a rain, though there 
were two showers. One was Sunday and 
the other July 4. This sunshine, like the 
rain, came upon just and unjust alike, and 
some of the unjust tried Sunday working 
in order to utilize the sun.The 
boys finally planted that cornfield on July 
j. I didn’t like the way they covered some 
of the seed, and so on the “Glorious 
Fourth” I went all over the field with the 
Acme. In order to give this job something 
of the dignity of a “celebration” we made 
a picnic out of it. The field is at the ex¬ 
treme west of the farm—far beyond the 
woods. All the young folks piled aboard 
the wagon and went along. While I har¬ 
rowed with Frank and the “Bird” the 
little folks sat on the stone wall and fired 
off two packs of fire crackers and played 
Indian. By turns they rode around with 
me on the Acme, but it was tough riding, 
for the field is rough and stony. This is 
one of my old “loafer” fields where the 
woods have been trying to crowd in and 
blot out all signs of man’s labor. It might 
have been well to let the field go back to 
the forest, but I made up my mind I would 
save it. One year we had cow peas and 
another year rye, and now after much 
tribulation we have it in corn. This Fall 
it will be planted to apple trees. But 
July 3 is all out of season for corn, they 
tell us. Why. May 20 is the proper time 
for planting. 1 believe our yellow flint will 
give us grain this year! We shall fertilize 
it well, give good cultivation and apply a 
little lime around the hills during the last 
of August. That will hasten the ripening. 
In other words, we will do our part, and 
we think we have the corn that will back 
us up. As for fodder corn, we shall keep 
on planting that all through July, ’ihe 
frost holds off well on our hills, and 
usually 'corn can stand till October 1. 
Mind you—I am not advocating late plant¬ 
ing of corn as general advice. June ought 
to be the best month for corn to grow in, 
but that was out of the question this year, 
and we must do the best we can. 
When the sun finally popped out for a few 
days early in July it was a hard problem 
to decide what to do. I have no doubt 
many farmers were in much the same sit¬ 
uation. We had nearly 10 acres of grass 
to cut, corn and potatoes to be cultivated, 
strawberries full of weeds, onions alive 
with “pusley,” fodder corn to plant and 
a dozen other things pressing all at once. 
The sky was still threatening, and I did 
not dare get down much grass at once. 
We made a fair team out of Nellie and 
Kate and even drafted in old Major on the 
cultivator. The boys were put at the 
weeds, and while the sun lasted we made 
things fly. But the sun didn’t last long 
enough. Cultivating in wet soil is poor 
business, but we had to do it, for the 
weeds and grass were hiding the corn. 
Just what the outcome will be cannot now 
be told. As I write the sky has clouded 
again, and what seems like a long, gentle 
rain has begun! Do we need it? Well, 
hardly, but who is going to growl about 
it? 
Fruit Notes. —This is a hard season for 
fruit lovers. The strawberries were poor 
and tough, and currants and cherries 
nearly a failure. The raspberries are 
plentiful, but about as tasteless as wax 
and sawdust, until the few days of sun 
put a little character into them. We have 
a new seedling blackcap which is better 
than any other variety I have ever tried. 
The berries are very large and juicy— 
quite unlike the dry seedy fruit we often 
get.B. M. Stone, of Pennsylva¬ 
nia, sent me samples of the Missing Link 
apple so that we might have baked apples 
on July 4! Some of these apples were 
grown in 1901. They were still firm, but 
had changed in color to a dull yellow. ’Phe 
girls baked this fruit, but we voted it 
rather poor stuff. The quality was dull 
and lacking. It was a noveltj’^ to eat 
sound fruit nearly two years old, but we 
had Red Astrachans off our own trees at 
the same time, and they were far better 
than any Missing Link that ever com¬ 
pleted the chain. We had apple sauce 
from our own fruit on July 4. and glad 
am I to have “sauce” time come again! 
The last of our Russets were eaten on May 
16. We were thus 48 days out of 365 with¬ 
out home-grown apples. Another year I 
am satisfied that I can keep Russets up 
to June 1. Will it pay to grow Missing 
Link or other low-quality apples to fill in 
the 30 odd days before Red Astrachan and 
Yellow Transparent come on? I think so. 
Vegetables.- On July 4 we were able to 
help ourselves to the following vegetables; 
Peas, lettuce, beets, turnips, spinach and 
parsley. The Early Fortune potatoes were 
large enough to eat, but we do not dig 
them, since they are not more than half 
grown. All vegetables are poor in quality 
this year. The cold, cloudy June has left 
them dull and watery. The tomatoes have 
made a surprising growth. They are on 
the driest soil in the garden, but Philip 
dug big holes and filled them full of rich 
manure, which was well soaked with 
water. Dirt was put on top of this and 
the plants set out well. There were green 
tomatoes as large as one’s fist by July 4, 
and if we ever get any sun to color them 
we shall have our share. The transplanted 
onions are growing slowly. As I have 
pointed out, the great feature of this 
method is the fact that you are able thor¬ 
oughly to fit the soil before the onions are 
put out. Thus you kill off many of the 
weeds without the slow work that must 
be done when the onions are drilled. In 
spite of the long rains our onions show 
little grass. The worst weed among them 
is purslane or “pusley”—most of which 
can be taken out with a narrow hoe. I 
hate the sight of this “pusley.” When I 
was a boy the garden was full of it. I 
spent day after day pulling it, and then 
we had it boiled for dinner and supper! 
It always tasted to me like a boiled “back¬ 
ache.” I happen to know that boiled “pus¬ 
ley” and bread and butter will make a 
balanced ration for a growing boy, yet, 
when I hear some well-fed scientist telling 
people so I feel like making him eat his 
own ration—first getting down on his knees 
to pull it by way of exercise. It is won¬ 
derful what a man will be induced to do 
after getting on his knees in the dirt! 
All Sorts.—a strip of land around the 
hoghouse has alway.s been an eyesore. 'I'he 
ledge comes close to the surface, and in 
dry weather the soil bakes hard, while in 
\Yet weather it is thick mud. I have tried 
rape, corn and sorghum on this strip, but 
none has proved satisfactory. This year 
the dry May baked this soil .so that it made 
a disgraceful appearance. Then the rains 
began to wash it off the rock. We finally 
got it plowed, and on July 1 we gave a 
thick seeding of cow peas with rather 
more 'iMmothy seed than farmers generally 
use. The peas were worked in with the 
Acme and the grass with the weeder. 
The cow peas were up in about 50 hours! 
I never knew the peas to sprout so rapidly 
before. Of course the Timothy has not 
yet been heard from, and to tell the truth 
I do not expect a good seeding. I put it 
in with the cow peas more to see what it 
would come to. If it were possible to seed 
grass with cow peas we could shorten a 
rotation, but where the cow peas grow as 
they ought to few other plants have any 
chattce. I have scattered Crimson clover 
among the cow-pea vines in August with¬ 
out even scratching the ground, and ob¬ 
tained a fair stand of clover—but this was 
largely an accident. I have sown rape, 
sorghum and corn wth cow peas but never 
thought that we got as much from the 
two crops combined as we do from cow 
peas alone.There is much wet 
and soggy land in our neighborhood, and 
it happens that this year much of it was 
planted in corn. I think many of our farm¬ 
ers figured on a dry season. While it was 
Impossible to work with a cultivator some 
farmers took a small one-horse plow and 
turned a shallow furrow up against each 
side of the corn rows—making the furrows 
across the hillside and not up and down, 
so as to avoid washing. This plan has 
worked well in most cases, since the plow 
opened the soil and helped dry it out. One 
trouble with corn in such soggy land is 
that no air can get to the roots, and plants 
need air the same as a man does. The 
deep plowing lets the air in. The scientific 
men sometimes lay down a cast-iron rule 
about cultivating corn, 'i'hey say that such 
cultivation should always be shallow. 1 
have heard a good farmer say that he 
would bring suit against any man who took 
a plow into his cornfield. Our farmers who 
plowed their corn on wet land do not pre¬ 
tend to be scientists, but they did a very 
sensible thing when they plowed. It 
would, however, have been a senseless 
thing had they used the plow in a drought! 
it all depends nu whether you want to 
save water or drive it away. . . . Our 
hills are alive with Summer boarders just 
now. You see them everywhere, and how 
they do enjoy the water that trickles out 
of the hills and the pure air that comes 
down the valley! Hope Farm is trying 
boaiding house in a .small way. We have a 
few humans to fatten. I have heard that 
a successful landlord should be a combina¬ 
tion of Job, Moses and John L. Sullivan, 
and I begin to believe it. However, our 
boarders are ideal. We do very little run¬ 
ning after them. h. w. c. 
Seedling Strawberry Notes. 
For the last three or four years we have 
been raising seedling strawberries, and I 
wish you could have seen the bed that fur¬ 
nished us berries this year. There were 
more than 20 different seedling varieties in 
it, and before it fruited, the housekeeper 
remarked several times that we had an 
experiment on our hands this year, and it 
would probably be all experiment and a 
short crop of strawberries. When the ber¬ 
ries began to ripen she concluded we had 
all we needed, and before the crop was 
gone she was beginning to wonder if they 
were ever going to stop. It would be a 
hard task to select 20 named varieties and 
have as even looking a bed, and one that 
would furnish as much fruit. If they have 
never raised any seedling strawberries at 
Hope Farm they ought to try some just to 
interest the children, if nothing more. We 
find the older people here get quite ex¬ 
cited over them, watching the different 
plants and seeing how near they can come 
to telling what the form and size of the 
berries will be from the size and shape of 
the leaves on the new plants. There is no 
fruit that varies as much in different lo¬ 
calities as the strawberry, and we always 
had an Idea that the best strawberry for 
any locality would be one raised from seed 
there. I have one which was raised three 
miles from here by one of our best straw¬ 
berry growers. With him it is an ideal 
berry, a vigorous healthy plant with an 
enormous load of very large, firm dark red 
berries. It also has a trick of bearing a 
second crop in the Fall, when the conditions 
are right. With us it is very near a failure. 
There are plenty of berries, but they are 
only medium sized, and rough ill-snaped 
things. Most people, when they start to 
raise a new berry, select two promising 
varieties which combine the qualities they 
want, and cross them, and in this forced 
cross I think we have the reason for so 
many failures. 
If you want to succeed, select as many 
varieties as you can get that do their best 
in your soil, but be sure to have none in 
the list that are failures. Then plant them 
in a bed small enough so they can fertilize 
each other all they want, and the kinds 
which are most suitable for crossing will 
cross, and the others that lack the proper 
affinity will be left out. Then select the 
most perfect specimens when the berries 
ripen and plant the seed, and you will be 
surprised to see the number of good varie¬ 
ties you will get, and also at the healthy 
vigorous foliage the plants will have. I 
have one variety in my seedlings which has 
more good points than 1 ever saw in one 
kind before. One large strawberry grower 
who was looking at u last week offered me 
$2 for two plants, and remarked that it 
was a better strawberry than he had oi 
had ever seen. 1 .xm satisfied in my own 
mind that every commercial grower would 
succeed better if he depended on raising 
his own new varieties rather than on test¬ 
ing new high-priced kinds which have been 
ruined by the greed of plant growers sell¬ 
ing tip-runner plants while the price is 
high. When the Sample strawberry was 
first introduced I paid 60 cents a pjant for 
it, and got little stunted plants which took 
three years of careful selection before I 
got the stock so it gave first-class results. 
If I had judged the berry by the first crop 
I got it would have been rejected as worth¬ 
less. H. M. w. 
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