1903 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
787 
JUSTICE FOR THE CARP. 
On page 712 is a note concerning the carp, which 
does injustice to that flsh. I quite agree with you 
that we have many that may be better; but we have 
none that can be so cheaply raised in quantity. As 
to the quality, that is almost entirely a matter of 
preparation. The carp is a mudfish—a scavenger. 
It is a veritable hog among fish, and has some of the 
hog’s unpleasant peculiarities in taking food, yet no 
one complains of pork or bacon when properly pre¬ 
pared. The whole secret of using carp is in the prelimi¬ 
nary treatment. Parboil first and get rid of the skin 
and your fish will be excellent in any way you serve 
it. It is essentially a fish for boiling, and a little 
tomato sauce, with acid fiavoring will make it quite 
as good as most of the boiled fish put on the table— 
provided of course that the skin is taken off first. 
The mud flavor in the carp is in the skin; leave that 
on and your fish is practicably uneatable; take it off 
at once and you can make anything out of it that the 
skill of your cook will allow. The carp is one of those: 
things that as a food product we need to know some¬ 
thing about before it is condemned. 
Personally my acquaintance with this fish began 
nearly 15 years ago, when Dr. John T. Brackley was 
cultivating it in southern New Jersey. For several 
years I helped in draining the breeding ponds, count¬ 
ing the spawners, etc., and in sampling the product. 
Charley, the cook, was a rabid shore man, and be¬ 
lieved in the shore fish. He also believed that fish 
roe was no good under any circumstances, and never 
quite regained his good opinion of the writer after 
his insisting upon trying carp roe. But Charley did 
obey orders, and when he was told that the muddy 
flavor in the carp was in the skin, just as it was in 
that of the catfish, he managed matters so that no 
flavor of mud appeared in any of the carp dishes 
served by him. In other words, it is unfair to con¬ 
demn any food product unless we know how to pre¬ 
pare it, and it is equally unfair to reflect upon the 
taste of others until we know the dish upon which 
these others based their opinion. There is no dis¬ 
puting about taste, but let us first be sure that we 
have the same dish before us before we criticise. 
New Brunswick, N. J. [Prof.] john n. smith. 
BEEF CLUBS. 
An Old South Carolina Practice. 
The oldest inhabitant is not able to tell the origin 
of the beef clubs which are maintained in some parts 
of South Carolina. Ask a man of three-score years 
when the first clubs were formed, and you get the 
answer; “I can’t tell, but they had them in the days 
of my grandfather.” As these clubs seem to be pe¬ 
culiar to those parts of the State originally settled 
by Germans—for instance, Newberry, Lexington and 
Orangeburg counties—it seems very probable that 
these early settlers brought this good custom with 
them from the Fatherland or from Pennsylvania. 
These clubs serve such a useful pur¬ 
pose that I have often wondered why 
they are not formed generally in rural 
communities. And yet in all my trav¬ 
eling, having been in every State and 
Territory of the Union except one, I 
have seldom found a neighborhood 
where anything of this kind was even 
attempted; never one community in 
which clubs had been kept up for 
many years. When visiting last Sum¬ 
mer in a county in Virginia from which 
many fine beef cattle are annually 
shipped to England, I was informed by 
my friends that they sent to the 
county seat, 14 miles distant, for such 
fre^h beef as they had on their tables. 
It has often occurred to me that some 
account of the method of carrying on 
these clubs ought to be given to the 
public; and, now that I have some 
leisure at the old family home, I pur¬ 
pose to describe this method for hav¬ 
ing fresh beef every week during the 
Summer and early Fall in this part of 
the country, where no ice can be 
housed in Winter to aid in keeping 
meats fresh during the hot season. 
Clubs of four, eight or 16 members 
may be formed. Here, owing to the 
difficulty of keeping fresh meats in 
hot weather, clubs of 16 are most popular. The heads 
of 16 families form a club and agree to have one beef 
butchered every week for so many weeks, beginning 
usually early in July. The beef is butchered on Fri¬ 
day afternoon, and is cut up, weighed and distributed 
at that time or on Saturday morning. In a little 
blank book a record is kept of the names of the mem¬ 
bers of the club, a page being set apart also for keep¬ 
ing an account of the distribution and weight of the 
beef butchered by each member. The following dia¬ 
gram will show how the beef is distributed, R stand¬ 
ing for round, L for loin, B for brisket and N for 
neck. The numbers at top of columns are intended 
to designate the names. 
Members Order 
in which 
beeves 
are 
to be 
killed. 
of the Club. 
1 
O 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 
8 
1 . John Smith . 
..R 
B 
L 
N 
R 
B 
L 
N 
2. James Jones . 
..B 
R 
N 
I. 
B 
R 
N 
I. 
3. William Wren — 
..Jj 
N 
B 
B 
L 
N 
R 
B 
4. Jacob Davis . 
..N 
T. 
B 
R 
N 
L 
B 
R 
5. Thomas Roe . 
..R 
B 
L 
N 
R 
B 
L 
N 
G. Adam Sill . 
. .B 
R 
N 
L 
B 
R 
N 
L 
7. Charles Wilson... 
..L 
N 
R 
B 
Ij 
N 
R 
B 
8 . Edward Long: — 
..N 
I. 
B 
R 
N 
L 
B 
R 
This diagram is 
for 
a club 
of eight. 
For 
a 
club 
of 16 simply add the additional names and enlarge 
HOME ADVERTISING .\TuHOPE FARM. Fig. 295. 
the table of distribution in the same order. It will 
be observed that this table, as printed, is simply the 
first square, formed by four rows of four letters each, 
quadrupled. Hence at the fifth space from the be¬ 
ginning, reading across or down, we begin again with 
the first letter used and repeat the four letters, and 
so on. It will appear, therefore, that for a club of 
16, we would have the foregoing table quadrupled 
in size or, in other words, the first square formed 
by 16 letters would be reproduced in exactly the same 
order 16 times. Following the order of distribution 
in this table, no member would get the same part of 
the beef for two consecutive weeks. 
It sometimes happens in forming a club of 16 that 
a man of large family may want two portions (or an 
eighth) of a beef each week. This may be arranged 
by permitting him to butcher two beeves. In that 
case his name should be put down twice in the list 
in such an order that he may get a portion of round 
and a portion of neck one week and portions of loin 
and brisket the next. The liver may be divided into 
eight portions. If the club numbers 16. each mem¬ 
ber would get a piece of liver every other week. For 
each member of the club a page of the record book 
is arranged in the following order: 
John Smith's Part Number 
beef. of beef. of pounds. 
John Smith.R _ 
James Jones .B _ 
William Wren . T. _ 
Jacob Davis .N _ 
Thomas Roe .R _ 
Adam Sill .B 
Charles Wilson .I. — 
Edward Long .N — 
Total weight . — 
When the club is formed the price of beef is agreed 
upon, and when the last beef is butchered and dis¬ 
tributed, the final reckoning takes place. Each mem¬ 
ber who butchered a beef weighing less than the total 
number of pounds he received as shown from the 
record book, pays for the deficiency. The money thus 
paid in goes to those members whose beeves weighed 
more than they received in the distributioif. In this 
manner exact justice is done to every member of the 
club. Persons forming a club may agree upon the 
quality and approximate weight of the beeves to be 
butchered. In this part of the country where there 
is little grazing and the Summers are hot, beeves 
butchered in the clubs usually average about 300 
pounds net. Farther north, where the Summers are 
cooler and ice is plentiful, beeves of large size would 
probably be preferred. It need hardly be suggested 
that clubs might also be formed in some parts of 
our country for the purpose of having fresh mutton 
or pork during the Summer and Fall. 
The beef clubs in the vicinity of Selwood, our coun¬ 
try post oflflee in Lexington County, have been in op¬ 
eration for more than a century; even the Civil War 
was not allowed to interrupt them. These two clubs 
of 16 members each have been carried on so satisfac¬ 
torily that we may safely predict that they will last 
at least until country people in this section have beef 
markets easily accessible to them, a time which now 
appears to be in the distant future. 
Lexington Co., S. C. julius n. dreiiek. 
A QUESTION ABOUT RURAL MAIL. 
The rural free delivery commenced last week. It ap¬ 
pears to accommodate some of the people, but not a 
m.ajority. One unfavorable feature appears to be the fact 
that no one can be accommodated at the postoffice. For 
instance, any mall received at the postoffice after nine 
o'clock Saturday cannot be obtained by some of our 
people until afternoon Monday. 
The above clipping from a local paper seemed to 
me to state an error till I made personal inquiry at 
the office mentioned. The fact that a person has ob¬ 
tained his mail once in a day does not usually bar 
him from getting it again. At another oflflee about 
20 miles from this one, I made the same inquiry and 
found that mail is given out to farmers living on 
R. F .D. routes when called for at the oflflee, and no 
box rent is demanded either. My next inquiry was 
whether they served the farmers just because they 
were disposed to be accommodating, or whether it is 
a ruling of the department. The postmaster replied 
that he did not know what would be 
the ruling of the department, but it 
was frequently an accommodation 
the farmers to get their mail at the 
post office, and he always let them 
have it. I doubt if that postmaster 
will lose anything by it. I should like 
to know the practice at other free de¬ 
livery places, and it would not be a 
bad idea to know whether the post¬ 
master has a right to refuse to give 
out mail when he knows that it is in 
his office. H. H. L. 
EXPERIENCE WITH DUST 
SPRAYING.—We have used in our 
large orchards in southern Missouri 
the dust spray, for four years, last 
year on about 400 acres. This year 
the crop being almost killed by frost 
May 1, we stopped spraying. Our con¬ 
clusions are that while not as efficient 
as the liquid, yet the ease of applica¬ 
tion, the time saved in spraying, the 
fact that we can spray when it is too 
wet to get on the ground with a team 
and loaded wagon, that spraying can 
be done while the trees are wet, and 
the impossibility of securing water in 
many of our orchards, have all caused 
us to decide in favor of the dust spray. 
We begin to spray about 4 <A. M. and spray while 
the dew is on until 9 A. M. We use several hand 
sprayers and large machines in a small spring wagon, 
with a boy to drive and a man to work it. One of 
them will do the work of three sprayers. I use five 
bushels air-slaked lime, five pounds Paris-green, 10 
pounds sulphur, and use five pounds concentrated 
lye and 10 pounds blue vitriol dissolved in water. 
Apply at least three times. l. a. Goodman, 
THE HOPE FARM GARDENER AND HIS ONIONS. SHOWING THE 
“SCANT HALF BARREL” SHIPPING PACKAGE. Fig. 296. 
