1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
HOPE FARM NOTES. 
Old Timers Going.— The country to the 
west of Hope Farm Is about as wild as you 
will find anywhere east of the Ohio River. 
Yet, we are within 26 miles of New York, 
and not over seven miles from the Hudson 
River. Some of our western friends may 
think that “back East” is one long village 
with few wild places left. From our hill 
at night, looking to the east, one may see 
a perfect blaze of lights from the scores 
of little towns within sight. To the west 
there is hardly a light to be seen—perhaps one 
or two farmhouse windows will be alight. 
A contest has been going on among the 
Bergen County hills In some respects not 
unlike that which England is pushing 
against the Boers in South Africa. This 
county was settled by the Dutch. They 
were a farm-loving people, and the old 
timers have made a brave stand against 
modern ideas They are going now, and 
soon they will be swept aside and forgot¬ 
ten. 
New Against Old.— The old Dutch farm¬ 
ers felt sure that the good Lord intended 
our hills for farming and nothing else. In 
the old days the farms paid. There was 
money In rye, potatoes and hay, but the 
railroads have changed all that, and now 
every State in the Union and half a dozen 
foreign countries thrown in compete with 
Bergen County. The Yankees east of the 
Hudson saw this change coming, and they 
were quick to adapt themselves to it. One 
reason why they were quicker than our 
Jerseymen was because they lived on beans 
and flshballs, which are brain formers. 
The Dutchmen ate too much pumpkin and 
milk and rye bread, which are body-form¬ 
ers, and Induce a man to use his head as 
a battering ram instead of a machine for 
getting out of the way. There was soon 
produced in the city a class of people who 
ran envious eyes over our hills. The city 
had used them up, and they needed our 
sunshine and our air. They wanted to cut 
up the farms into building lots and put up 
little towns. The old timer wanted to 
stick to his farm, and so the contest began. 
The End Coming.— It was not unlike 
England crowding in on the Boers because 
they stand in the way of "progress” and 
civilization. Our old Dutch farmers stood 
by their farms stoutly, and I have always 
admired their pluck. The commuters voted 
"good roads,” high schools and other pro¬ 
gressive things, but the farmers came up 
and paid their taxes and still hung on. 
They have held on for years, but now they 
are going. Death is the great “civilizer” 
after all, and the old idea of rye and potato 
farming goes into the grave with them. I 
hope they won’t hear the bang of the trol¬ 
ley or see the glare of the electric light 
that will surely ring and shine over their 
last resting place. It will be years before 
some of our farms are given up. There 
are farmers who would gladly sell, but 
they are too far back from the railroad yet. 
For my part I can honestly say that I 
should regret to have some prospector find 
oil or coal on Hope Farm, or to have some 
town promoter get his eye on it. Not 
yet, let us hope. I want this hill for a 
home and a farm, and I would rather 
struggle and pay the mortgage than to get 
some great value out of it and have to 
endure a mine or some promoter’s town in 
our beautiful valley. 
Saving the Farms.— The question came 
up at our farmers’ institute as to what to 
do with our land. In our towns and cities 
people buy tracts of waste land, make them 
more attractive and sell them at a great 
profit. Cannot a farmer work this same 
game? Why not make our farms more 
productive and increase their earning ca¬ 
pacity? The railroads have brought us 
into fierce competition with the West and 
South. Why not follow these railroads 
back and see what these distant farms 
have that can beat us? We shall find, I 
think, that they beat us chiefly in the cost 
of fertilizer and feed, and in the use of 
Improved machinery. If we find that tney 
get ahead of us because they use cow peas 
and clover for feeding crops, or the silo 
for feeding stock, we must graft the cow 
pea into our waste fields in Bergen County, 
and make them produce corn with which 
to fill a silo. Fruit and fodder are the 
crops for our hillsides, as I view it. We 
need a creamery right in our neighborhood, 
and I mean to talk creamery until we get 
one. 
Farm Notes.— This is a Winter of freeze 
and thaw. By night the ground is frozen 
solid, and by noon it is soft mud. This 
makes bad roads for the buggy wheels, 
but It is just the thing to break up our old 
sod which was plowed in December. I 
have been expecting to plant potatoes In 
hills, so as to work them both ways to 
keep down the grass. It looks now as if 
the sod would be thoroughly killed out, so 
that we can safely use the planter and 
plant in drills.We now feed a 
little oil meal to the stock. Oil meal is 
to horses and cattle what cut bone or 
animal meal is to hens. It tones up the 
system, and make a good "balance” when 
too much corn Is fed. We have been feed- 
87 
lng sweet corn to all the stock. It proves 
to be more constipating than field corn. A 
handful of oil meal is a great corrector. 
Many of our farmers use “horse feed,” 
which is ground corn and oats. We think 
it pays to mix in one-fourth its weight of 
bran.The Winter is so mild 
that we have the stock out at pasture 
every day. They do not pick up much 
feed, but the exercise does them good. A 
man with half an eye ought to see the ad¬ 
vantage of what I may call cultivated pas¬ 
tures—where crops are grown away from 
the stock until all ready for feeding. We 
can keep the stock in a small inclosurc 
with racks at the side, cut green feed from 
another field, and throw it to them. This 
requires more work, but think what a 
saving It will be!.In former 
Winters we fed the stock almost entirely 
on sweet cornstalks as roughage. This 
year the stalks are not eaten so well. Old 
Major formerly ate the stalk down to the 
butt and then sucked that dry. He’s no 
fool, however. He knows that in the mow 
over his head there are tons of good hay. 
He also knows that his good friend, the 
Madame, will let her voice be heard in the 
land in case his ribs become too prominent. 
.It is good weather for hauling 
manure. Ah! ha! some friend will say, “I 
thought you were the chap who would not 
buy manure!” You are right—as usual. 
I do not buy manure, but there is a good- 
sized pig-pen full of it at the old place, a.io 
I shall certainly have it hauled and put 
on the pear orchards.John 
Gould was at our institute, and he camo 
to Hope Farm for dinner. I have been 
very much interested in his plan of using 
Canada peas and oats as a cover crop afier 
corn. When the corn is cut and shocked 
he sows the peas and oats on the ground, 
and chops them In with a Cutaway. This 
crop grows well through the Fail and 
Winter, and is dead in Spring. It is surer 
than Crimson clover. I shall try It next 
Fall—using the Winter oats from Dolaware. 
Perhaps they will live through the Winter 
and give Spring pasture.The 
ducks have begun to lay, but the hens aie 
lazy enough. We ran out of grain for 
our mash, so that we couldn’t feed meat 
properly. How quickly the eggs stopped 
coming! 
Kitchen or Parlor.— We have a room at 
Hope Farm which the Madame fondly 
hopes to turn Into a parlor some day. It 
is the downstairs room close to tne road, 
and the former owner must have spent 
some money In decorating the walls and 
putting up a mirror and mantel. The floor 
is rough and uneven and it would require 
a thick and expensive carpet. Some farm¬ 
ers smile or sneer at their wife’s desire for 
a pretty parlor. I think I can understand 
why a woman likes to have at least one 
room In which to express some of her 
ideals. Life at best Is pretty close to a 
grindstone with many of us, though some 
take pride and pleasure in knowing that 
good tools have been made keener and 
more useful by grinding against them. 
Just as a good woman may well have some 
thoughts and ideas which are so much 
hers that she should keep them even from 
her husband, so she may well have one 
room in the house that is not intended to 
earn or save a dollar. That’s true—and 
yet! Our kitchen floor is also rough and 
uneven. We have decided to have a hard¬ 
wood finish put on these floors when we 
can, but we can’t do it all now. 
"We will fix the kitchen floor first!” 
says the Madame. 
Like other women, I suppose she has her 
ideals about her parlor, but these ideals 
might be like sandpaper to her soul if they 
made some of the practical things of life 
too practical to live with. I have seen 
young married women spend money that 
ought to have paid mortgage Interest for 
poor parlor furniture, and then cook their 
bloom and beauty away over a broken- 
down stove. An ideal in mind is sometimes 
more useful than 13 of them In the house 
when their presence makes one more than 
ever a slave to the common drudgery of 
life. 
Winter Work.— What are you doing this 
Winter? The Hope Farmers find plenty to 
do, though it is not work that brings in 
any immediate returns. We have three 
horses and a pony, a cow and a heifer, six 
pigs and about 60 hens and ducks. These 
are well cared for, and it makes quite a 
chore. We haul out manure about as fast 
as a good load accumulates. The barns 
and buildings need a great deal of fixing. 
There were, all told, over 50 broken panes 
of glass when we came here. There are 
20 or more dead or worthless apple trees to 
be cut down and made into fire wood, be¬ 
sides hundreds of rods of worthless old 
rail fence to be picked up and piled for 
fuel. Nobody knows how many old fence 
corners there are to be burned out and 
grubbed. Some 350 trees are to be pruned. 
A long stretch of fence Is to be painted 
with a homemade paint. The harness and 
tools are to be looked over, and put in 
shape for the Spring work. At the back 
of the farm are three fields that are to be 
burned over and cleared with the grub 
hoe, so that we can sow cow peas on them 
about the first of June. By April 1 we must 
have a year’s supply of fuel in the shed. Yes! 
Yes! There is work enough. We have 
little time to stop and tell stories while the 
sun shines. It is all preparation, but none 
the less important. h. w. c. 
We appreciate very much your article on 
sharpers who caught buyers of western 
New York on certain varieties of peach 
and plum trees. It Interested me very much, 
as we were foolish enough to invest $125 
in the same varieties. j. l. w. 
Huntsdale, Tenn. 
Cow-Pea Sowing. —In growing the South¬ 
ern cow pea we have usually broadcast the 
seed and harrowed it in. This has given 
fair satisfaction, although we are con¬ 
vinced that it would pay better to drill the 
seed and cultivate it during tne season. As 
we do not own a seed drill, we have found 
broadcasting the easier method. We find 
that in Maryland and Delaware many farm¬ 
ers drop the seed by hand, planting in much 
the same way that they sow fodder corn. 
The drills are made with a small plow, or 
with a furrower or marker. Then the seed 
is dropped evenly by hand, and covered 
with a harrow or cultivator. In some 
cases, too, the .ground is marked both ways 
as for corn, and the seed is dropped in hills, 
four or five seeds to the hill. The crop is 
cultivated the same as can be done with 
corn, and the result is usually very satis¬ 
factory. 
A Stump Burner.— In issue of January 
20, page 37, is an inquiry regarding portable 
furnaces for burning stumps. There was 
such a device invented by a Georgia man, 
which consisted of a cone-shaped sheet- 
iron body with stove pipe top, and having 
a door or damper on one side close to bot¬ 
tom. By placing this over a stump, and 
putting a quantity of kindling in at the 
door, it was easy to start a fire, which usu¬ 
ally destroyed the stump. I have seen this 
in use in Florida, but can give no particu¬ 
lars as to place of manufacture. When a 
boy, having nothing to else to do, I often 
used an old piece of stove pipe as a smoke 
stack for an imaginary furnace. It had 
to be leaned against some support and, in 
the woods, a stump was handiest. Before 
the play became wearisome there was much 
less stump. If T. H. N. could get a section 
of old boiler, a brief experiment will show 
whether it is useful to him as a stump de¬ 
stroyer. Q. a. G. 
For the land’s sake, use Bowker’s Fer¬ 
tilizers. They enrich the earth .—Adv 
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