8i8 
November 28 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
rough hilly country, and has been hard at it ever 
since. He has cleaned many of the fields of stone, 
and by saving the manure from a small well-kept 
dairy has brought the fields into a high state of fer¬ 
tility, so that his hay crop largely exceeds per acre 
that of any of his neighbors. One method not prac¬ 
ticed by his neighbors is not to paJsture his meadows 
in the Fall; cutting the rowen if there is a crop, and 
usually there is one, but leaving a good aftermath to 
go through the Winter. He milks from 12 to 14 cows, 
and makes butter which he retails, making one trip, 
per week for this purpose to town, four miles away. 
He gets 30 cents per pound the year round, which is 
considerably above the market price. His skim-milk 
is fed to calves and pigs, and he turns off consider¬ 
able pork during the year. 
Practically no fertility is sold from this farm in 
any of his products, and by using feed (he feeds bran, 
gluten feed and cotton seed) containing a large 
amount of nitrogen ho is constantly making the farm 
more productive. Think of this if you are feeding 
cornmeal and oat feeds, and then shipping the milk, 
thereby making the farm a little poorer every year. 
Another man, in speaking of this same farmer said; 
“He always keeps his work well in hand,” which is 
another way of saying that he is a shrewd farmer. 
We found several things to emulate in this farmer’s 
methods, whose farm training began at an age that 
might seem late to some of us. 
Just about a mile from the latter place we passed 
another farm where the owner and his wife were dig¬ 
ging potatoes in wet heavy soil, but without a heavy 
crop. His land is low, wet and undrained. Chickens 
and pigs run everywhere, and the carriage top was 
used as a convenient roosting place. We counted 13 
wheel vehicles about the place without shed or shelter 
of any kind. He drives a scrawny team, and the cows 
always come out Spring-poor. He is a hard worker, 
but without ability to plan work or get ahead. One 
man’s place advertises his success as a farmer, the 
other equally advertises its owner’s failure, h. q. m. 
CAN cows GET DRUNK ON APPLES? 
Some Solid Shot from Dr. Smead. 
Some weeks ago the Hope Farm man had an argument 
with some scientific men as to whether a cow could eat 
apples enough to make her intoxicated. The scientists 
were inclined to scoff at the idea, claiming that the tem¬ 
perature of the cow’s stomach is too high to permit the 
formation of alcohol. Here comes the well-known 
veterinarian. Dr. C. D. Smead, with what looks like a 
knock-out blow for the scientists! 
It is true that it does at first thought appear to be 
an impossible thing for alcohol to be manufactured in 
a cow’s stomach in sufficient quantity to cause inboxi- 
catLon, and I do not wonder at the chemists’ poohlng 
at the idea, yet when we come to consider conditions 
as they actually exist in the apple and in the cow it is 
not difficult at all for us to see why alcohol is present 
in quantity sufficient to intoxicate her. In our busi¬ 
ness we have to reason out many problems when we 
have no rules to work them out by. The scientist 
must first have his rule or he can do nothing. Now 
let us reason a little regarding the cow. She is a 
ruminating animal, and has, as we say, four stomachs. 
The first one is simply a storehouse for food to be 
eaten at her leisure; she eats grass or hay, as we say, 
yet during the time we say she is eating, she is only 
storing it. She gets to the meal bin and gorges on 
it, and she is really eating it, as none of it stops in 
the rumen (storehouse), and when she gets more than 
the next compartment can handle it becomes impact¬ 
ed, and we have impaction of the manyplies or sec¬ 
ond stomach, or if it passes this, then it comes in 
contact with the digestive fluids, and if they cannot 
handle it then we have indigestion. All- hay and 
grass or other foods that are not fine she holds in 
the storehouse, and then lies down and begins to eat 
by chewing her cud, making it fine enough to enter 
the second compartment. No single-istomached animal 
does this, hence conditions of digestion are different. 
When the old cow gets to the apple heap or picks them 
up off the ground what does she do with them? She 
gives them a champ or two, just enough to quarter 
them, and down they go info the storehouse, only fine 
enough in part to pass to the second stomach, and yet 
not coarse enough to be raised again into the mouth 
and be again crushed. What is the result? A large 
part of the apple remains for an indefinite time in the 
rumen simply to ferment There are no acids in the 
rumen, nor pepsin to digest it. All it has received is 
the saliva, which is siightiy aikaiine. Thus we see 
we have a fermentation vat or bag created out of a 
cow’s rumen. After the semi-crushed apple has fer¬ 
mented enough, it becomes softened and pulpy, and 
goes on to the second stomach. Fermentation in a 
cow’s rumen at a temperature rarely reaching 100 de¬ 
grees goes on just as readily as fermentation in a heap 
of ground-up apples ready for the press. It is a known 
fact that when apples are ground up and are allowed 
to remain where the temperature ranges from 70 to 80 
degrees fermentation will follow in six hours and in 
12 hours one chemist has told me he had found the 
juice to contain three per cent of alcohol. Reasoning 
from this we can readily see that if the temperature 
was brought up to 95 or 98 degrees the fermentation 
would be more rapid and more alpohol be developed. 
When the old cow had a bushel of crushed apples in 
her runien, that she could not raise into her 
mouth, and were too coarse to pass along where the 
digestive juices could get at them and neutralize the 
ferment alcohol could be manufactured enough to 
make her drunk. 
But there is still another condition to consider; 
when the old cow gets in the orchard she finds apples 
on the ground, some of them with decayed spots in 
them (fermenting). She does not separate the fer¬ 
ment out, but takes it down with the sound part, and 
there we have a ready-made germ ferment to hasten 
the process. When you sit down to eat apples you 
pare out the decayed spots, if any, and when you take 
THE GETTYSBURG PEACH. Fig. 304. Ske Page 830. 
it in your mouth you masticate it, and when swal¬ 
lowed it goes right among acids and pepsins and is 
digested without fermentation, hence no alcohol, and 
the same is true regarding all single-stomached ani¬ 
mals. There is still another condition, and that is 
the chemist in his methods, and here is where he is 
weak by reason of not stopping to think. He starts 
with sound apples, instead of those that have com¬ 
menced to decay, as the old cow does. Second, he 
tries to digest the apple with acids approximating the 
cow’s digestive fluids, and gets no alcohol, and thus 
1 easons there can be none made in the cow. He over¬ 
looks the hours that the apple lies fermenting in the 
old cow’s rumen before any of her acids get at the 
mass. There are some things going on inside the cow 
that the chemist does not know about, c. d. sirEAD. 
AN ANGORA MAN TALKS UP. 
I am a farmer in a small way compared with west¬ 
ern ideas. We keep cows for butter-making, hens, 
geese, turkeys, sheep and last but not least. Angoras. 
I have a rocky hilly pasture of more than 100 acres; 
bushes of all kinds, including birch. For years we 
have mown the bushes, but seldom kill any, but now 
STONE FENCE FOR ANGORA GOATS. FlO. 305. 
that the Angora has come, the bushes have to stand 
back. They are the best paying of all stock enumer¬ 
ated with us, and they have come to stay. It is 
bushes with them, and for a relish grass; they are 
alwa.ys fat, ready for the butcher, and no better meat 
do we have on our table. No sickness, none killed 
by dogs; they come to their house every night without 
help. The most care we have is dipping them twice a 
year. The kids are hardy. We have saved one for 
every doe that kids. Most of them kid in January; 
they are out every day except when rainy. 
Our fence is stone wall (see Fig. 305), two wires; 
posts are on pasture side. That is our way for cattle. 
For Angoras and sheep sticks are driven in the 
wall and nailed on post or stake: top of that are put 
small poles and brush; if no wall then woven wire is 
best. We sell the kids for $6, the does $8, and supply 
the neighbors who have none with meat. Our cattle 
and Angoras go together in pasture. With us there 
is more real gain in one Angora than two sheep. The 
dogs often kill the sheep. Forty cents a pound is 
about the price for unwashed fleeces; ours average 
about three pounds. The kids carry their fleeces till 
the next year in April. john n. jenkins. 
Essex Co., Mass. _ 
THE EDUCATION OF THE BOY. 
Last Spring The R. N.-Y. had a discussion of this 
question. Many of our boys do not care to study 
hard enough to get the proper benefit they should 
from their schools. I cannot see the use in parents 
working themselves into debt to keep such boys at 
school. They should be taught some useful trade; 
make farmers or mechanics of them. If you have a 
boy who will study and endeavor to l^arn, then he 
should have every chance that his parents can afford 
to gain the kn-owledge he craves. If the circum¬ 
stances of his parents make it necessary for him to 
stay at home and work on the farm during the Spring 
and Fall, he can if he has the proper stuff in him 
study enough at night and at odd times to keep up 
with his grade, and he will value the benefit he 
gets from the school all the more. Many of our 
most successful men have attained their education 
under mtich more trying and discouraging conditions, 
and many of our unsuccessful ones have had every 
opportunity to learn given them without any effort 
on their own part. Since my school days the books 
and methods of teaching have been vastly improved, 
but our educators' must call a halt before they make 
it too easy for the scholars. We never properly value 
that which we do not have to work for. 
Not long ago one of my friends asked me what he 
should do with his second son, who would not study 
when sent to school. He was first 'm every game, 
pitcher on the baseball nine, etc., but at the foot of 
every class. His elder brother had earned a scholar¬ 
ship for himself at college, and was rapidly prepar¬ 
ing himself by hard study for a teacher, I advised 
him to put the second boy at work on the farm for 
a year. He did it. At the end of the year he said 
the boy wished to stick to the farm work. Then I 
said: “Let him stay; you will six)il a good farmer 
to make a professional baseball player if you send 
him back to school.” J- e. j. 
Brighton, Md. 
BORDEAUX MIXTURE ALL RIGHT. 
I am thinking now of Mr. Curtis's objection to Bor¬ 
deaux as a fungicide on page 755, on the ground of its 
requiring expensive gear and time to apply. As to 
-the first objection, a very expensive machine is not 
neceissary for the farmer with only a few acres to 
spray, which I judge is the kind Mr. Curtis means by 
“average farmer.” Our spray pump only cost $15— 
mounted on a 50-gallon barrel with hose, T pipe and 
nozzles for spraying two rows of potatoes, and exten¬ 
sion pole for use in orchard. For use in the potato 
field I mounted this barrel on a defunct hayrake, 
which I converted into a spray cart by taking out the 
teeth and cutting off the axle to the right length for 
straddling two rows, and then bolted the shafts rigid 
on top of the axle. The operator stands at one side 
of the barrel, driving with one hand and pumping 
with the other. The T pipe connection on the hose is 
hung at back of cart over the two rows being sprayed, 
or carried by an extra man. Wftli tl is simple rig 
we can put on the copper plate at the rate of one 
acre per hour. Of course this is not rapid enough 
for large growers, but we managed our 11 acres with 
it, and felt well satisfied with Bordeaux as a fungi¬ 
cide when we observed a part of one field that was 
not sprayed the last time go down under the blight 
two weeks in advance of the ripening of the rest of 
the field. 
Our Maine friend’s second objection is a more seri¬ 
ous matter. He says the average farmer does not 
have time to apply Bordeaux. I don’t see how the 
experiment stationis are going to help him there, for 
while they can, and have, worked out better methods 
for us, yet the application of their discoveries to our 
business is an individual matter, and we must “work 
out our own salvation” in this, and I think Friend 
Curtis will agree that whatever fungicide they give 
u's we shall have to fui-nish time to apply it. To my 
mind the man who is working from four in the morn¬ 
ing until dark is devoting too much time to business, 
arid is in danger of letting his work drive him instead 
of driving his work. Our friend struck the keynote 
when he said that Bordeaux is for the specialist. If 
space permitted 1 would like to enlarge on that, or 
better, would like to take it by itself under the head 
of “Specialty on the Farm,” j. f. v. s. 
Versailles, N. Y. 
Why cannot the man who lives on wholesome pork 
and beans make as good a citizen as he who fares on 
chicken, oysters and*wild-duck? 
