1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
483 
HOPE FARM NOTES. 
The Little Graft. — I came out of the 
city with the Madame one everting re¬ 
cently, and we wondered who would 
drive over to the station for us. The 
men folks were busy sowing cow peas. 
Across tne road by the store stood old 
Major and the wagon with the little 
Graft at the lines, trying to look as wise 
and uignified as though hisi little bare 
feet could reach from the seat down, 
lie held the lap robe in place so that his 
bare legs would not show. The faithful 
little driver had come alone through the 
woods and lo'ne'ly places. The boy and 
old horse had saved the time of a man 
and a plow animal. The little chap 
drove home proud enough—his shoul¬ 
ders thrown back and his neck stiff with 
dignity. Olu Major didn’t care, for he 
shuffled and shambled along with as few 
unnecessary steps as possible. The fact 
that this little fellow had actually be¬ 
come a useful, working force at Hope 
Farm was startling when we remember¬ 
ed how he came to us. I have never 
told the Grafts story, though several 
people have asked for it. He will not 
be able to read this for some years yet. 
How He Came. —Shortly a. cer the lit¬ 
tle nud was born the Madame became 
interested in the Children’s Home So¬ 
ciety, which seeks to find homes for or¬ 
phans or neglected children. A little 
baby was left on a neighbor’s doorstep, 
and we kept him for a short time. This 
brought the Madame close to the work 
of the society. Rev. M. T. Lamb, of 
Trenton, is the president, and I’ll tell 
you that he looks a grey-bearded angel 
as he goes around with these little tots. 
How they do love him! One night not 
quite five years ago who should appear 
at our house, out Brother Lamb, leading 
a chunky little fellow by the hand. We 
had heard of this boy. He was not con¬ 
sidered a desirable one by those who 
were seeking children to adopt. The 
l'ittle cnap seemed to feel his position 
keenly. It was pitiful to see him get off 
in a corner an^. rub his sleeve over his 
eyes. Poor little chap—his parents had 
abandoned him—he had run up against 
a mighty hard world. After some 
coaxing—aided by a b'ig slice of bread 
and butter—the Madame induced him to 
take ~is sleeve out of his eyes. When 
he got a good look at her he ran and 
held on to her for dear life. Before he 
went to bed the little waif went up to 
look at the little Bud—asleep in her 
crib. 
Why He Stayed. —Next day Brother 
Lamb went off and left the boy for “a 
few days." We have had him ever 
sfince! He was not at all'l the sort of boy 
I wanted. His foot was twisted, and 
there were great scars on his legs, 
where tne cords had been cut. He had 
spent months in poorhouse and hospital. 
His throat was in frightful condition. I 
will be honest and say that he seemed to 
me a very unpromising and unattraCc.ve 
child, ‘ if I am to nave a boy in my 
family, why can’t I have one that I 
want? Why must I take the first rag¬ 
amuffin that comes along?' That’s 
about what I sam and I have lived to 
regret that I said it. The Madame said 
little except to remark that we would 
better be careiul how we treated a gift 
of this sort! What do you think of 
calling a broken little waif like that a 
(jiftt We tried .to find a home for him, 
but tnat seemed impossible. The finger 
of fate seemed to point at me and say, 
“Thou adt the man!” Except for a 
“temper,” whicn all true steel should 
have, he seemed a good little ooy. Well, 
I mustn’t make a long story of it—we 
had that throat cured, and with good 
food and plenty of exercise the little legs 
grew straighter and stronger. He just 
hung on, and has grown to us now like 
a genuine graft. Nobody know's how 
old he is or jusc where he came from. 
He had his share of bad habits, but most 
of them seem to be breaking off as he 
grows older. When he came he was 
crazy for meat. We have known him to 
sneak away and steal it—the craving 
was so keen. He had been fed mostly 
on potatoes, skim-milk and brown bread, 
I should judge, and his little body craved 
bone-forming food. The Madame didn’t 
let him have meat because he craved and 
cried for it; she fed the craving out of 
him with oatmeal, fish, fruit and vege¬ 
tables. It has gone now and we can 
trust any of the children to go away and 
refuse to eat what we have prohibited. 
He is a little chap—tough and wiry—a 
good little fellow, but needing a firm and 
just hand to keep a check rein on his 
wishes and desires. 
What About Him. —“If he were our 
own child,” says the Madame, “I doubt 
whether he would be more satisifactory.” 
The little fellow has conquered prejudice 
and made a corner for himself in our af¬ 
fections. My own boy would probably 
show at his age more of the tendencies 
that have made me hate myself a good 
many times. The Madame first thought 
that it would be a grand thing if this 
little Graft could become a minister—a 
true man of God. What an outcome it 
would be if this little parcel of wreck¬ 
age—thrown up by the ocean of life, 
could himself go along the snore seeking 
for other broken and wrecked lives! We 
don’t know what he will make. He is 
a great farmer just now. He drove me 
home the otner night and salid, “I just 
want to show you something awful 
pretty up here!” When he got to the 
right point in the road he pulled up 
the willing old Major and pointed across 
the valley. “See,” he said, in his soft 
gentle voice, “there’s that light green 
Timothy, ohen the brown rye, then that 
dark green potato field and two kinds of 
green on the trees!” It was indeed a 
beautiful sight, with the shadows sailing 
along the hills and the sun in hot pur¬ 
suit. I was glad that the brown eyes 
of this little poet could realize all this 
beauty, while thousands of farmers live 
unhappily amid such scenes because 
there is “nothing to see—nothing to 
know.” 
Hay Notes. —We have managed to get 
our hay in without serious damage. 
One load was caught in a shower. The 
boys started late at raking up and a big, 
black cloud formed in the northwest. 
These clouds have a habit of splitting 
at the upper end of our ridge and going 
off to east and west, but this one evi¬ 
dently meant business. The boys made 
the hay fly, but ueiore they could get it 
all on the first big raindrops began to 
pelt. They came down the lane at a 
lively gait. The big load of hay swept 
under the brancnes that hang over from 
the orchard like a great fragrant chest 
of tea. Charlie was on the load, and 
Hugh ran to open the gate. Uncle Ed 
came behind with less speed and more 
dignity. They were all soaked, but 
young hay and young flesh are not in¬ 
jured by a little water. As a simple 
rule for haymaking I like to have it cut 
in the early forenoon and raked and 
cocked up before night. The next day 
open the cocks to the sun and air, and 
haul in during the afternoon. With 
goou weather this will make good hay, 
but every rule must be modified more or 
less. The oats are fine this year, and I 
think the credit is chiefly due to the 
formaldehyde with which the seed was 
soaked. The smut has always nearly 
ruined our former crops. 
All Sorts. —Of our new fodder crops 
sorghum seems ahead of Kaffir corn the 
first week in July. Millet has started 
slowly this year. Cow peas are making 
a fine growtn. The Soy beans are 
growing well. The boys make more or 
less fun of my “imported bacteria” 
scheme. Well, we’ll see about that 
later. . . . The older Scion seems 
to be something of a naturalist. He 
doesn’t make good wages in the field 
because ne stops to pick up crickets and 
bugs. He caught a box turtle recently, 
and had it tied by a string. Some of 
those men who buy $10,000 horses and 
other high-priced animals never have 10 
per ceni of the pride in their fine stock 
that the Scion has in his turtle. . . . 
The end is not yet with the Potato 
beetles. For some reason the striped 
rascals have congregated on a strip oi 
Rural Blush potatoes. We have been 
forced to use poison again and again on 
this strip. I must admire the taste these 
bugs display, for Rural Blush is the 
standard of perfection as a table potato. 
. . . . Our windmill has kept us 
well supplied with water thus far. 
There has been wind enough to keep the 
tank wen filled. We can use 1,200 
quarts of water every day to good ad¬ 
vantage. It is a great luxury to have 
this constant supply of cold delicious 
water constantly in reach. 
As fast as the earlier peas are pulled out 
we scratch up the ground and plant 
new rows in the track of the old ones. If 
there is anything in this idea of special 
bacteria the new crop ought to do bet¬ 
ter just wnere the first crop grew. Peas 
as well as humans may well travel in 
the footsteps of their worthy forebears. 
. . . . No evidence of blight has yet 
appeared in the potatoes. I nave not 
yet used Bordeaux on all the potatoes. 
Perhaps this is a mistake. The time to 
apply ior a life insurance is when you 
can stand a good examination—not 
after your lungs, or heart, or kidneys 
begin to cry out. We ought to insure 
the potatoes before blight gets a start. 
h. w. c. 
Notes from a Kentucky Farm. 
As you rarely have any Kentucky notes, 
and as the prevalent opinion is that we 
here raise only tine stock and politicians, 
1 thought i would give you the menu that 
grows on our little place (.a spot, fairly 
rich, ol' 450 acres), intended for men and 
beasts—not unlike many others, so that to 
those who have an idea that the West 
grows all the field crops and the East the 
horticultural products, I would say come 
to Highland Place, and stay a day, and one 
may change his views a little. We could 
give the traveler to eat just now from the 
garden and orchard, fresh, of course, ap¬ 
ples, peaches, strawberries, raspberries 
(.eight sorts), blackberries, dewberries, cur¬ 
rants, gooseberries, cherries, tomatoes, 
cucumbers, beans, peas, onions, cabbage, 
potatoes, beets, radishes, lettuce, aspara¬ 
gus, pie plant, for we have 50 acres given 
to these. We could furnish him a leg of 
mutton from a flock of 500 sheep, a roast 
pig from a lot of 50 pigs, a veal or a beef, 
a broiler or a few hundred; we could give 
him his choice of 50 saddle horses to ride 
about on, or a few drivers, and if he would 
continue his visit later in the season we 
could add pears and grapes in quantities, 
plums, watermelons and canteloupes from 
two or three acres, a loaf of bread from 
3,000 bushels of wheat or a hoe cake from 
3,400 bushels of corn; he could not well eat 
the oats, rape. Crimson clover, Red clover, 
cow peas, Timothy, hemp, Blue grass, etc., 
that he would find growing, but he could, 
if he used tobacco, get a cigar or a chew 
from 30,000 pounds crop now growing. 
With the exception of a little more fruit, 
any other farm of similar extent, and 
many are twice as large, in central Ken¬ 
tucky, could furnish as much. No trouble 
to make money here; the only trouble is to 
save it. Our excellent free macadam turn¬ 
pikes afford temptations to go to town 
greater than the average farmer’s family 
can withstand, it is just now the fad for 
wealthy men in the East, especially New 
York City, to buy farms In Kentucky and 
live here all or a part of the time, mostly 
with the view of raising stock. At least 
five millionaires have recently located on 
farms near Lexington, two of them among 
the very wealthiest in America. More 
cattle, sheep, wheat and tobacco are being 
raised; less horses, hemp and corn. 1 
have been in almost all the States, but 
nowhere have I seen as great a variety of 
crops as can be successfully grown in Ken¬ 
tucky. In addition to those I have men¬ 
tioned cotton, rye, barley, and flax grow 
well here. In fact, I know of no crops that 
central Kentucky cannot successfully grow 
except those of the tropics—exotic grapes 
and gooseberries and rice possible excep¬ 
tions. J- m. a. 
Woodford Co., Ky. 
Awful Taxes.— The Hope Farm man 
gave us the figures as to land taxation 
in his locality in New Jersey a short time 
since, and the comparison with that which 
exists in some sections “out West” here 
is interesting, to say the least. For all- 
fired, socialistic, “single-tax,” street-crowd 
property-confiscation methods, “for the 
benefit of the people,” come out here. Un¬ 
improved land, within a mile of where I 
write, and which can be bought for less 
than $10 per acre has an annual tax of 
over $2 per acre assessed against it; and 
is bonded years ahead at that rate. The 
subscriber knows of real estate in the ad¬ 
joining county of Whatcom, that no one 
will buy at $5 per acre, being offered at 
that, which is taxed at $2.50 per acre, or 
50 per cent of its valuation per annum. 
Of course, such taxation is largely not 
paid, and the neighbors who do pay, have 
to make it up. J. f. c. 
Skagit County, Wash. 
Whiteweed Hay.—H ave just returned 
from a trip to northern New York, via 
Washington, Philadelphia, New York City, 
Albany, Saratoga, etc., and have been in¬ 
terested in the meadow fields along the 
line. Most oi them that you see from a 
distance look as though the country was 
yet covered with snow, but by comparing 
it with those fields near the railroad one 
finds that it is not snow but White-top 
and white daisies. Wouldn't it be a good 
idea to find out what first-class seed 
dealer sold that seed, and also find out 
what the average amount of seed would 
be on an acre of white daisies? Am in¬ 
clined to the opinion that it would be 
the most profitable business now going 
for farmers, especially if it can be sold 
for grass seed, as it seems to have been. 
Louisa, Ky. J. H. N. 
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r* • i i 
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