1900 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
75i 
GROWING AND STORING WINTER SQUASH. 
Though many people raise Winter squashes for their 
own use, but few have gone into the business largely 
on account of the limited market, and the difficulties 
in producing and storing them. One’s first attempt 
to raise Hubbard or other Winter squashes is not 
likely to be encouraging. He plants a few hills in 
the garden, and is fortunate if, after running the 
gauntlet of bugs, beetles and borers, he has enough 
left for a respectable Thanksgiving pie. Where large 
quantities are grown they cannot be marketed at once, 
and provisions must be made for storing where they 
can be kept dry, have plenty of air, and nearly an 
even temperature—50 degrees being about right. To 
get these conditions a special squash house must be 
built where a fire can be kept, and the whole thing 
watched carefully. This industry is carried on to 
quite an extent in eastern Massachusetts, and on 
Long Island. Mr. A. Van Sicklen, of Jamaica, L. I., 
is an extensive grower, raising at times 5,000 barrels. 
His father was one of the first to build a squash 
house in this country. Mr. Van Sicklen showed me 
three well-filled houses. The squashes are stored in 
racks or on shelves around the sides and through the 
center of the building, the idea being to arrange them 
so that no large bulk will be together, and to allow 
a free circulation of air. A fire is needed, even though 
the weather is not freezing, for squashes will not 
stand much chilling, and they should not become so 
damp as to be sweaty on the outside. Like many 
other branches of farming, there is not nearly so 
much profit in this business as formerly. Squashes 
have sold at $6 or $7 per barrel, but $1 is considered 
a good price now, and at present they are selling at 
50 to 75 cents. After deducting the labor and waste, 
there is not much money in them at this. Mr. Van 
Sicklen plants them as a second crop, following early 
potatoes or something of the sort. Plenty of manure 
is needed, so that they may make a quick, strong 
growth, and have a fair chance for life in the race 
with their enemies. Poultry people have often been 
disgusted by the actions of young turkeys, which, 
without any visible cause, will suddenly conclude 
that life is not worth living. Squash vines will some¬ 
times act in the same way, wilting and dying all at 
once. Some root disease is supposed to be the cause, 
but the trouble is not extensive, and the exact na¬ 
ture of the disease has not been studied out. 
w. w. II. 
SOME FREAKS OF LIGHTNING. 
Lightning is still one of the most uncertain quan¬ 
tities. Scientists and practical men have studied elec¬ 
tricity until they can do almost anything with it, and 
calculate with the greatest accuracy what effect any 
given conditions will produce, when dealing with 
what is known as dynamic or current electricity. But 
when it comes to predicting the visit or the effect of 
a visit from electricity in the form of lightning the 
wisest man can say but little more than the most 
ignorant. It was said for a time, and I presume is 
now, that the electric current always takes the path 
of least resistance, and for aught I know this is true. 
When a man gets his barn well filled with new hay, 
the heated, moistened air that rises in a column from 
it is said to make an excellent conductor (compara¬ 
tively speaking) for lightning to descend directly to 
the barn and set it on fire. They say it is especially 
true of a barn situated on a hill or elevation. But 
only a few weeks ago a stroke of lightning ignored all 
the barns on all the hills around, and struck the barn 
of a poor man down in a hollow, with trees on al¬ 
most all sides. Trees, being green wood, are supposed 
to be good conductors of the electric fluid, or whatever 
the stuff is, nobody knows. But I have several times 
known of its omitting to follow a tree tnat seemed 
to stand in a very accommodating position, and striKe 
a choice cow that stood only a very few rods away, 
on lower ground, and in the open. Once, when my 
father was returning from the hayfleld during a 
shower, he was passing through a pasture, his course 
lying parallel to the edge of a piece of woods, and 
about 10 rods from it. Lightning struck the ground 
in the pasture between him and the woods. In those 
instances it would hardly seem that trees offered 
much inducement for the electric current to deviate 
from its course, if such it has. 
Last Summer a farmer was getting a load of hay 
from the field after a shower had begun. His son, a 
lad about 12 years of age, was on the load of hay. 
There were trees not far away, but the lightning paid 
no attention to them; struck the lad on the shoulder 
and followed down one side of the body, and then 
somewhere, I suppose, but no one knows where, for 
it left no records of its further travels. The boy was 
considerably burned, especially on the body under 
the place where was his suspender buckle; also the 
leg opposite the trousers pocket, where he carried his 
knife and a small wallet having a metal clasp. The 
clasp was quite firmly melted together. As the elec¬ 
tricity left the foot it took the trouble to split the 
shoe into the smallest fragments. The boy recov¬ 
ered without serious results. 
A curious circumstance happened over a year ago. 
A farmer went into the house and laid down on his 
bed to await the clearing after a storm. He fell asleep, 
and while enjoying the nap lightning struck the 
house, it came down the chimney, went to the bed 
and threw its occupant out upon the floor, changing 
his position so that he lay on the floor with his head 
toward the foot of the bed, and leaving him uncon¬ 
scious. After a little time he regained consciousness, 
FELLING A BIG TREE WITH AXES. Fig. 287. 
and in a few weeks was better than before, for he 
was cured of rheumatism that had troubled him for 
some years. I hardly think this a safe medicine 
though, in the hands of the inexperienced, n. n. l. 
BIG TREES OF CALIFORNIA. 
The Division of Forestry of the United State De¬ 
partment of Agriculture has issued, in Bulletin No. 28, 
a most interesting account of California’s big trees, 
from which we reproduce Figs. 287 and 288. From this 
we learn that, in point of age, these big trees, the 
giant redwoods, are the oldest living things; their 
majestic beauty is unequaled, and they now exist, un¬ 
der natural conditions, only in 10 isolated groves on 
the west slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and 
nowhere else in the world. They are a surviving pre¬ 
historic genus of trees (the Sequoias), once widely 
distributed over the globe. Before the glacial period 
SMITH’S CABIN. Fig. 288. 
the Sequoias flourished widely in the temperate zones 
of three continents. There were many different spe¬ 
cies in Europe, Asia and America. When the ice 
fields moved down from the north the vegetation of 
that long-distant period gave way, one kind after an¬ 
other, until it became a memory only represented by 
a few fossil remains. When the ice finally receded, 
only two species survived, the Big Tree (Sequoia 
Washingtoniana) and the Coast redwood (Sequoia 
sempervirens). The Coast redwood exists only in a 
narrow strip of the coast range, 10 to 20 miles wide, 
extending from the southern border of Oregon to the 
Bay of Monterey, while the Big Tree exists only in 
small groves scattered along the west slope of the 
Sierras, from the middle fork of the American River 
to the head of Deer Creek, a distance of 260 miles. 
Most of the groves of Big Trees are privately owned 
and are in danger of destruction; lumbering is rapid¬ 
ly sweeping them off. Forty mills and logging com¬ 
panies are now working on them. The southern 
groves show some reproduction through which they 
may be perpetuated; in the northern groves the spe¬ 
cies hardly holds its own. The Calaveras grove was 
the first one discovered, having been found in 1841 by 
John Bidwell. In 1853 one of the largest trees was cut 
down; after the bark, which was 15 to 18 inches 
thick, had been removed, the diameter of the solid 
wood was 25 feet. One of the largest of the trees was 
over 400 feet high, with a circumference of 110 feet 
at the base. The tree shown in Fig. 288, Smith’s Cabin, 
was for three years the home of an old trapper, An¬ 
drew Jackson Smith; it has been hollowed out by fire. 
The burnt-out interior is 16x21 feet. The age attained 
by these big trees is an unsettled question, but scien¬ 
tists have decided that their average rate of growth is 
one inch of diameter for every 12 years, which would 
make a tree 25 feet through 3,600 years old. John 
Muir says that these trees doubtless live 5,000 years 
or more; barring accidents, they seem to be immor¬ 
tal, being exempt from all the diseases that afflict 
and kill other trees. It is saddening to think of the 
destruction wrought by short-lived man upon these 
giants, which have defied the forces of Nature for so 
many centuries. The lumbering in the redwoods is 
extremely wasteful; their very size makes it impos¬ 
sible to treat them like ordinary trees, and the Na¬ 
tional Government has been unable to control it. In 
its endeavor to preserve and perpetuate some of these 
wonderful trees, the Division of Forestry has a prob¬ 
lem of some difficulty. It is evident, too, that the de¬ 
struction of the older trees has rendered the chance 
of survival more precarious for the younger ones. It 
is saddening to think of the destruction, during 60 
years, of so many specimens, which are absolutely un¬ 
equaled, so far as is known, by any other trees on the 
face of the earth. 
A TALK ABOUT GRAFTING. 
There seems to be a tendency among so-called pro¬ 
fessional grafters to convey the impression that graft¬ 
ing is an art requiring a large amount of skill and 
practice. While to become expert may require much 
practice, and a fair amount of mechanical ability, to 
become a good grafter requires less practice than 
much of the common work done on the farm, such 
as digging potatoes, etc. There are many reasons 
why farmers and fruit growers should learn to do 
their own grafting, and especially the young people. 
A professional grafter often cuts his scions in large 
quantities, and I have known them to cut many hun¬ 
dreds from trees whose variety I was sure they did 
not know, often relying on their own overestimated 
ability to judge of the variety by the looks of the tree. 
If the owner does the work himself he is apt to take 
more interest in the future care, and if the tree is 
large the entire top should not be changed at once. 
Grafting is one of the things that should be taught 
in our rural schools, and if properly done the chil¬ 
dren always take a lively interest. It also makes an 
interesting subject for institute work, and I always 
like to take a small tree and do the different methods 
of grafting, especially whip and side-grafting, show¬ 
ing just how to hold the knife and scion, and how to 
use the other tools, which cannot be shown on paper. 
Whip-grafting can often be used on large trees by 
inserting in a small limb that starts out of the large 
one near where it should be grafted, and not cutting 
the large one until the scion has made a start. A new 
beginner will often make as large a per cent live as 
a person with more experience, as he is apt to be more 
careful in setting the scion and do the waxing more 
thoroughly, although it may look more bungling. If 
the scions have been carefully saved and the work 
properly done 95 per cent of plums, pears and apples 
should live. While one cent per scion at time of set¬ 
ting and two cents to insure is the old price, the work 
can be done much cheaper on all but very large trees, 
and on these it is better to do the work by the hour. 
These remarks refer to grafting with scion, as bud¬ 
ding requires more skill, and, in my opinion, should 
generally be left to the nurseryman, as very few farm¬ 
ers make a success of raising their own trees. 
Lowell, Mich. _ l. j. p. 
Cold Storage Rooms.— The making of barns with cel¬ 
lars into cold storage plants has often been tried, and as 
a rule with unsatisfactory results. Some of these changes 
have occurred under my own observation, and I have 
never seen a successful one, though undoubtedly they are 
to be found. It would be necessary to remove and re¬ 
construct the whole building, do away with the cellar en¬ 
tirely, and put both storage and ice rooms above ground; 
that may be the intention of the writer, the proposition 
is not perfectly clear to me. A cold storage building to 
be a good one should not be a remodeled barn, but be 
built from the foundation up as a cold storage; nothing 
else would satisfy me if I wished to be sure of success. 
A. W. WILLIAMS. 
