1000 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
• 723 
HOPE PERU HOTES. 
A Lazy Frost.— Up to October 15 Jack 
Frost had failed to ring the doorbell. 
This is three weeks later than usual, and 
several crops made the most of his de¬ 
lay. The Velvet beans have formed both 
flowers ana seeds. I do not, however, 
consider them valuable enough to try 
again. We uave no further use for Vel¬ 
vet or Soy beans. The late varieties of 
cow peas, like Clay and Wonderful, are 
forming seed, but I still consider Early 
Black best for our latitude. . . . We 
have grown a fair crop of peanuts. 
Uncle Ed brought the seed from Florida 
and we planted them more for fun than 
anything else. The late season has en¬ 
abled the plants to make a crop of nuts. 
To tne children this is about the best 
crop on the farm. . . . The second 
crop of cow-pea vines, where we cut the 
first for hay, is quite large. In an ordi¬ 
nary season this would be little or noth¬ 
ing. . . . Those southern potatoes 
which were planted July 8 have ma¬ 
tured. Most of the vines died naturally, 
and the tubers are nearly full size 
though, as i have said, there are only 
two or three in a hill. . . . About 
August 1 we planted Early Minnesota 
sweet corn in the missing hills of this 
potato field. We have actually had a 
fair number of ears from this corn, and 
beans planted at the same time have ma¬ 
tured. These are some advantages of 
this late season. 
Autumn Reflections.— I wonder 
whether you have ever spent a couple of 
hours of a Sunday afternoon about as 
follows: It is the middle of October. 
There was a steady rain all night, and 
Nature has not even wiped the sweat off 
her face. The air is full of a heavy 
drizzle of rain, and the far-off hills look 
wet and gray. The crows fly croaking 
out of the cornfield. You think of the 
potatoes undug in that wet hillside. The 
rain is leacnmg out that corn fodder. 
There is so much to be done before Win¬ 
ter comes, and this drizzle spoils .it all. 
You sit down on a stone wall and look 
out over the valley. The children have 
been following after, but you have been 
so absorbed with your own thoughts 
that you hardly knew they were there. 
Their eyes follow yours across to the 
far-off hills, but there they stop, while 
yours go on year after year away back 
to childhood. There you sit like an old 
boy, thinking a perfect jumble of 
thoughts in the old faces and old forms 
near at hand, until the Bud pulls your 
arm and says. “Father, it’s raining!” 
Sure enougn, a big raindrop hits your 
nose and rolls along it to the end. You 
can only see the home valley now, ana 
you realize once more that you are a 
fat man with graying hair and a ten¬ 
dency to rheumatism sitting on a damp 
stone wall. The Madame probably has 
dinner ready, and with the little Bud 
holding tight to your hand down the 
hill you go smiling after all. And what 
for? Why, to think that year after year 
Nature has gone into mourning over the 
ruin of her beautiful dress, only to come 
out again fairer and more hopeful than 
ever. Eat your dinner, old man! Eat 
your dinner and be thankful there are 
not more things over the hills that you 
do not like to think about. 
Windfall Apples.— The high wind 
blew many of our apples from the trees. 
I wanted io see what such fruit would 
bring, so we picked up four barrels of 
fruit and shipped them to a New York 
commission uouse. Here is a copy of the 
returns: 
Four bbls. of apples at .S5.$3.40 
Commission .34 
Freight .1.04 
Total .1.38 $2.02 
That makes about 50 cents a barrel 
net. Tne apples were worth more than 
that if we figure their food value, but 
when I saw the vast piles of fruit that 
were rushed in after that gale I was sur¬ 
prised that they brought what they did. 
The market was crowded with windfall 
fruit, and it could not realize its true 
value. Billy Berkshire and his friends 
are paying us fair prices for the bruised 
fruit. 
Potato Digging. —Mr. William Ban- 
ford, of Mecosta Co., Mich., sends this 
interesting account of his method of 
handling potatoes. 
How about digging potatoes? Will the 
Hope Farm man tell us how much it cost 
him per 100 bushels to put them in piles 
with his Hoover digger? We have tried a 
number of different diggers but have 
thrown them on one side and dig with the 
fork. We hire for $1 per day, and one man 
will dig 75 to 90 bushels per day. One man 
will pick up for two to dig if he is a 
hustler. I smooth off the ground for a 
circle of about eight feet in diameter, put¬ 
ting the soil into a ridge around the circle 
to keep the potatoes from rolling off. A 
circle of this size will hold 40 or 50 bushels. 
Cover with tops and then with a light cov¬ 
ering of earth. They will be perfectly safe 
until the holidays. I do this for two rea¬ 
sons. When I am digging I want to use 
every minute until the work is done. When 
I haul them to the cellar direct from the 
held I am sure to have some rotting when 
I move them; I do not put them in unul 
the middle or latter part of November; 
when I am ready I pull the dirt and tops 
off with a hoe, take the hoe and pull the 
dirt from the ridge on one side, and with a 
potato scoop I can till the crates as fast 
as a man wishes to load them. What x 
want to sea through the Winter goes into 
the cellar; those 1 keep over till Spring go 
into pits. My pit is seven feet wide and 
three feet deep, with two boards in the 
bottom, so 1 can use the scoop. Make the 
pit as long as you need, but no wider; 
mine is in clay ground. I have used it for 
10 years. I fill it nicely full, not rounding 
it too much; cover with a good coat of 
straw and eight or 10 inches of earth; then 
draw some potato tops from the field and 
put one foot thick over the pit. They are 
much better than manure. The ground will 
not freeze under them if there is any snow. 
To take them out commence on the end of 
the pit with the shovel board in, pull off 
the tops and dirt. Take out as many as 
you want, putting some straw over the 
potatoes when you are through, and put¬ 
ting the tops and dirt back over them until 
such a time as you wish to handle again. 
They will be perfectly safe. Shall we sell 
this Fall? 1 say no; potatoes are a short 
crop. The market will be filled and prices 
will go down. By the holidays prices should 
be on a firm footing. w. B. 
Stanwood, Mich. 
Cost of Digging. —It has cost us all 
the way from three to twelve cents a 
bushel to dig and put into shed or cel¬ 
lar. The cost of digging with the Hoov¬ 
er depends on several things—length of 
row, yield, strength of team and force 
of pickers. It is a neavy and cumber¬ 
some tool to turn around, and with short 
rows much time is lost in turning. Of 
course you nave to travel twice as far 
and expend twice the work when there 
is out half a yield—as this year. This 
means nearly twice the cost of digging. 
Most farmers in our neighborhood have 
but one good team. To run the Hoover 
successfully requires four of our aver¬ 
age New Jersey horses. Two such teams 
put together for the first time do not 
pull steadily, and we usually find it nec¬ 
essary to have two drivers for at least 
part of the time. We have no hustlers 
in New Jersey who can pick up after 
two such diggers as Mr. Banford men¬ 
tions. Usually half a day’s work with 
our digger will throw out more potatoes 
than our whole force can pick up in a 
day. In many cases we have to leave 
some on the ground over night. When 
I say that some of our potatoes cost 12 
cents a bushel I refer to one lot that 
were planted in a very rocky field. The 
bugs nearly ruined them, and the tubers 
were very small. It required about four 
times as much work to dig them by hand 
as would have been needed for full-sized 
tubers. 
Holding in Field. —W. B.’s plan of 
holding in the field would not suit us. 
We like to haul each day’s digging to 
shed or cellar at the house. Our potato 
fields are so far away that it might pay 
to have a pit or cellar near at nand. We 
shall sell most of our crop before cold 
weather. Every day some customer 
drives to the farm atter potatoes or 
cabbage. It will be a peddler, a grocer 
or some man who wants to buy his 
Winter’s supply. Thus we find it neces¬ 
sary to keep a good stock constantly on 
hand. Of course Wuere one expects to 
ship in large lots at wholesale it may 
pay better to hold in a pit. We find the 
family trade very satisfactory. This 
disposes of the crop m lots of three or 
five barrels, but you must have good 
quality potatoes or your ears will burn. 
I regret to say that our late potatoes do 
not y*em as we hoped they would. The 
vines were good, but there are only two 
or three tubers in a mu. They are most¬ 
ly large and that’s one comfort. It is 
remarkable how many of our customers 
call for small potatoes this year. 
h. w. c. 
FERTILIZING VALUE OF A COW. 
What is the commercial and fertilizer 
value of a dead cow? 
There is not so much fertilizing value 
in a carcass as is usually supposed. In 
one ton of such dead meat there are 
about 56 pounds of nitrogen, 40 of phos¬ 
phoric acid, and only four of potash. In 
the entire carcass this fertilizing mat¬ 
ter is not readily available. As we all 
know, food for animals and plants must 
be finely ground before it is ready for 
use. The cow of average size would be 
worth less than $5 as fertilizer, even if 
one could crush or grind the meat and 
bones. The fertilizer makers have pow¬ 
erful steam tanks and crushers for do¬ 
ing this work, but on the average farm 
it is impossible. Thus it happens that 
the carcass is usually hauled off into 
some swamp or pasture for the dogs to 
work over, or buried in some field. The 
entire bones are often buried near grape 
vines or trees. Some farmers cut up the 
carcass with axes and bury the parts 
in the manure pile. With plenty of 
horse manure in the pile the meat will 
be well broken down before Spring. In 
cold weather the most economical way 
to utilize a carcass is to feed the meat 
to hogs or hens. The smaller bones and 
strips of frozen meat may be ground 
or sliced in a bone cutter. With a fair¬ 
sized cooker good-sized chunks of meat 
and bone may be boiled with small po¬ 
tatoes, cabbage or roots, or cut corn¬ 
stalks, into a soup that will fatten hogs. 
This saves the feeding value of the car¬ 
cass without losing much of the fertil¬ 
ity. How to dispose of bones on the 
farm is a hard problem. The bones con¬ 
tain a little nitrogen and a good deal of 
phosphoric acid. The fertilizer makers 
steam the Dones and then crush and 
grind them. Thus they take out the 
fat and save both nitrogen and phos¬ 
phoric acid. In some cases the bones 
are broken up and mixed with sulphuric 
acid, which “dissolves” them. This acid 
is very dangerous stuff to handle, and 
we would not advise its use on the farm. 
Some farmers tell of softening the bones 
by packing them in layers of wood 
ashes. This has not been satisfactory 
with us. We would rather cut or boil 
the small, soft bones for hens and hogs, 
and burn the larger ones with wood in¬ 
to ashes. 
Women as well as Men Suffer and are made Mis¬ 
erable by Kidney and Bladder Troubles. 
To Prove what Swamp-Root, the Great Kidney Remedy, 
will do for YOU, Every Reader May Have a 
Sample Bottle Sent Free by Mail. 
The fact that women suffer as much 
from kidney and bladder troubles as men 
do is often lost sight of. Many times 
when the doctor’s services are sought, 
he quickly comes to the conclusion and 
attributes everything to female weak¬ 
ness or womb trouble of some sort. 
The bladder is situated in front of and 
very close to the other female organs, 
and for that reason any pain, distress, 
disease or inconvenience manifested in 
the kidneys, back, bladder or urinary 
passage is often by mistake attributed 
to female weaKness or womb trouble of 
some sort. The error is easily made and 
may be as easily avoided by paying a 
little attention to the condition of the 
urine. 
Take from your water on rising about 
four ounces, place it in a glass or bottle 
and let it stand twenty-four hours. If 
on examination it is milky or cloudy, if 
there is a brick-dust settling, or if 
small particles float about in it, your 
kidneys are in need of immediate atten¬ 
tion. 
Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp-Root is used in 
the leading hospitals, recommended by 
physicians in their private practice, and 
is taken by doctors themselves who have 
kidney ailments, because they recognize 
in it the most successful remedy for kid¬ 
ney, liver anu bladder troubles. 
Among the many famous cures of 
Swamp-Root investigated, the one 
which we publish this week for the 
benefit of our readers speaks in the 
highest terms of the wonderful curative 
properties of this great kidney remedy. 
Mrs. H. N. Wheeler, of 268 Boston St., 
Lynn, Mass., writes on Dec. 11th, ’99: 
‘‘About 18 months ago I had a very 
severe spell of sickness. I was ex¬ 
tremely sick for three weeks, and when 
I finally was able to leave my bed I 
was left with excruciating pains in my 
back. Mv water at times looked very 
like coffee. I could pass but little at a 
time, and then only after suffering great 
pain. My physical condition was such 
that I had no strength and was all run 
down. The doctors said my kidneys 
were not affected, but I felt certain that 
they were the cause of my trouble. My 
sister, Mrs. C. E. Littlefield, of Lynn, 
advised me to give Dr. Kilmer’s Swamp- 
Root a trial. I procured a bottle, and 
inside of three days commenced to get 
relief. I followed up that bottle with 
another, and at the completion of this 
one found I was completely cured. My 
strength returned, and to-day I am as 
well as ever. My business is that of 
canvasser. I am on my feet a great 
deal of the time, and have to use much 
energy in getting around. My cure is, 
therefore, all the more remarkable, and 
is exceedingly gratifying to me. 
If kidney trouble is permitted to con¬ 
tinue much suffering with fatal results 
are sure to follow. Kidney trouble 
makes you suffer with pain or dull ache 
in the back, bearing down feeling and 
headache. Kidney trouble irritates the 
nerves, makes you dizzy, restless, sleep¬ 
less and irritable. Makes you pass wa¬ 
ter often during the day and obliges you 
to get up many times during the night. 
Unhealthy kidneys cause rheumatism, 
gravel, catarrh of the bladder, indiges¬ 
tion, stomach and liver trouble; you get 
a sallow, yellow complexion, makes you 
feel as though you had heart trouble; 
you may have plenty of ambition, but 
no strength; get weak and waste away. 
The cure for these troubles is Dr. 
Kilmer’s Swamp-Root, the world-fa¬ 
mous kidney remedy. 
Swamp-Root has been tested in so 
many ways, and has proved so success¬ 
ful in every case, that a special ar¬ 
rangement ha been made by which all 
readers of The Rural New Yorker who 
have not already tried it, may have a 
sample bottle sent absolutely free by 
mail. Also a book telling more about 
Swamp-Root and containing some of the 
thousands upon thousands of testimon¬ 
ial letters received from men and wo¬ 
men who owe their good health, in fact 
their very lives, to the wonderful cura¬ 
tive properties of Swamp-Root. Be sure 
and mention The Rural New Yorker 
when sending your address to Dr. Kil¬ 
mer & Co., Binghamton, N. Y. 
If you are already convinced that 
Swamp-Root is what you need, you can 
purchase the regular fifty-cent and one- 
dollar size bottles at the drug stores 
everywhere. 
