1902 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
MAPES, THE HEN MAN. 
Story of a Day's Work. 
Part II. 
BROODER LAMPS.—Next on the programme come 
the filling and trimming of the brooder lamps. These 
rest on the floor, and are put under the brooders from 
the hall, through large openings in the partition, leav¬ 
ing them exposed to full view from the hall, and giv¬ 
ing them plenty of pure cool air. A long shelf at con¬ 
venient height contains an oil can, matches, lamp 
rag, etc. The lamps are lifted to the shelf, the screw 
cap removed and filled. A puff of the burning lamp 
tells him when it is full. The oil can is always left 
open so that no gas can gather in it to cause an ex¬ 
plosion. Now the lamp is extinguished, the hinged 
burner turned back without removing the tin chim¬ 
ney, and a sharp knife drawn across the top of wick 
tube, removing soot, charred wick, etc. As soon as 
the burner is wiped clean, care being taken to remove 
all particles of dirt from the perforated brass which 
admits fresh air to the flame, the match is applied. 
The burner is still hot, and the piece of emery paper 
above the shelf is so located that the same stroke 
which ignites the match, brings it across the top of 
wick, and lights it, without waiting to see whetner 
the wood of the match is going to ignite. Five quarts 
of oil and 15 minutes’ time are required for the 10 
lamps. They will need no more attention for 24 
hours. The brooders in Nos. 9 and 10 must be got 
ready for the chicks now hatching. They are scraped 
as clean as possible, smeared with kerosene as a pre¬ 
ventive of lice, and the floor under the hover covered 
with sand. They will be nice and warm by the time 
the chicks are ready for removal to-morrow. The 
drinking fountains are next filled with fresh water, 
and the regular morning work is accom¬ 
plished by 8.30 A. M. 
PACKING EGGS.—The work of clean¬ 
ing, stamping and packing the eggs for 
market usually falls to some of the 
women folks, but Jesse relieves them of 
it to-day. There are 845 eggs in the bas¬ 
kets gathered yesterday. These are first 
placed in a large tin pan, and sufficient 
lukewarm water poured over them to 
cover them. With a washrag spread over 
the palm of the left hand he takes them 
out of the warm water one by one with 
the right hand, gives one end of the egg 
a turn against the cloth-covered palm of 
the other hand, reverses and gives the 
other end of the egg a turn, laying them 
In regular rows on a thick soft cloth cov¬ 
ering the long table on which he works 
in the washroom. An occasional egg that 
is badly stained is laid one side, to be re¬ 
cleaned later on with vinegar or Sapolio. 
The heat retained from the lukewarm 
water in the pan, causes them to dry 
quickly, as they lie on the soft cloth, re¬ 
taining the peculiar glow of the new-laid 
egg. Before he packs them in crates, 
each egg is touched with a small rubber stamp, made 
on a very soft air cushion, placing the name and ad¬ 
dress of producer on its shell. Every egg we ship to 
market is expected to carry a little bit of charactei 
with it, and send back in return a little bit of extra 
cash. It will take him about two hours to clean and 
pack the 845 eggs, and while he is doing it I drive to 
town with our regular shipment of eggs, and bring 
back our regular supply of skim-milk. He would 
have had ample time for this also. The advent of 
wife and baby has not spoiled his zest for the boyish 
sport of fishing. Long before my return from town 
he was at the pond, with rod and gun, looking 
for a mess of fish, and a large hen hawk he has had 
his eye on for several days. The chicks two weeks 
old and less got a light lunch of feed before he start¬ 
ed out, from the same barrel as for breakfast. The 
older chicks were getting hungry, too, but must wait 
for their regular three meals a day. 
AFTERNOON WORK.—After dinner the same rou¬ 
tine of feeding the chicks and pigs is gone through 
as in the morning, including the noise. A few dry 
planer shavings are thrown in where there is any 
sign of the pen getting wet and foul. We bed our 
pigs on the plan of the stall-fed steers of England, 
and have no trouble in keeping them clean. He now 
has time on his hands again until three o’clock, and 
improves the opportunity to clean up his buggy and 
harness. At 3 P. M. the buckboard is again loaded 
with mash for the hens, using about 20 pounds less 
than for the morning feed, since a little was left in 
the box. The hens are at liberty this time, and come 
to meet him in large numbers, the wagon often being 
covered with the greedy white beauties. This is ttie 
weak spot in feeding a number of flocks that have 
free range. A little practice, however, enables one to 
.apportion the quite uniformly. 
THE EVENING FEED.—The pigs get their supper 
(same as breakfast) as soon as the hens are all fed, 
and at 4.30 Jesse starts out with five big baskets to 
gather up the eggs. It takes him a few minutes more 
than an hour to gather them and carry them up to 
the house, and he has 804 as the result of the day’s 
work. By 5.45 the chicks are again fed, and the eggs 
in the incubators turned. This finishes the day’s 
work, all except pulling the wire in the brooder house, 
and closing the entrances to the henhouses. He has 
used 260 pounds of feed, costing at $30 per ton, $3.90, 
and 4 V 2 cans of skim-milk, costing 10 cents per can, 
for the laying hens. This is a total of $4.35. The 
market quotation for eggs to-day is 17 V 2 cents. We 
get five cents per dozen above market quotations, for 
our guaranteed eggs at present, or 22(4 cents. The 
804 eggs, which is rather under the daily average for 
the past week, are thus worth $15.07, leaving a mar¬ 
gin of profit of over $10 aside from my prospective 
profits in the growth of the pigs and broilers. This 
is not a big story, but it has the merit of being liter¬ 
ally true. When our henhouses were first built we 
used to close the entrances at night by pressing an 
electric button. The expense of keeping the battery 
charged, and the trouble of keeping the line in per¬ 
fect order has caused it to fall into innocuous desue¬ 
tude. We are now arranging to drop and raise the 
doors by pulling a wire, after the plan in use in our 
brooder house. o. w. jiapes. 
A FARMHOUSE IN NORTHERN NEW JERSEt 
We hear much of farming in various parts of the 
country. Last week two pictures were used to tell 
the story of development on an Oklahoma farm. Our 
western readers will doubtless be interested in learn¬ 
ing another side of the long history of American 
farming which is illustrated by the house shown at 
Fig. 136. This is the farm residence of Dudley P. 
Power, of Westwood, N. J. The house was made over 
from an old stone residence which was built before 
the American Revolution. The walls are of common 
field stone 22 inches thick, built up with clay and 
straw. Northern New Jersey is well filled with these 
old stone houses. In many of them four or five gen¬ 
erations have been “born and raised.” Now, instead 
of pulling them down newcomers from town and city 
are using them for the heart of a more modern build¬ 
ing—preserving the solid walls of the old time but 
adding the comforts and beauty of the new. This is 
a sort of farming which the West thus far knows 
little about but which is going on all over the East, 
especially near the large cities. 
Mr. Power has a farm of a little over 48 acres—40 
of which are under cultivation. This land has doubt¬ 
less been producing crops for 150 years, yet last year 
Mr. Power grew 40 bushels of wheat per acre, heavy 
yields of grass and corn far above the average. This 
is not fertilizer farming for Mr. Power has a herd of 
dairy cows. The farm was in poor condition when 
he bought it, and, instead of trying to restore it with 
fertilizers and green crops, he bought a herd of cows 
and sold milk at wholesale. This business has paid 
a small profit, and the farm is expected to improve as 
it responds to liberal manuring. The possibilities of 
a warm level farm like this, half well seeded to Al¬ 
falfa and half in corn for a silo, are hard to estimate. 
The chief interest in a farm of this sort is the great 
contrast it presents to the conditions found on the 
new farms of the West. Here is an old Dutch farm¬ 
house made over into a beautiful modern residence. 
Even the grounds about it have been filled in and 
“made.” The soil itself is being slowly made over 
and improved with new crops and methods which 
351 
will, in time, make as great a change on the face 
of the farm as the carpenters have made on the 
house! We regard this work of rebuilding old farm 
houses and investing capital in such farms as one or 
the hopeful influences at work in eastern farming. 
WHAT TO DO WITH THE LOCUSTS. 
Usually the only serious damage done by this in¬ 
sect is to recently planted fruit and shade trees. If 
the planting has already been done, and the cicada 
makes its appearance in threatening numbers, it may 
be practicable to protect a limited number of small 
trees and shrubs by covering the tops with thin mus¬ 
lin or mosquito netting securely fastened around the 
stem of the plant below the branches, allowing it to 
remain on the trees during the first two or three 
weeks of June. If the young or old trees are badly 
hurt all of the severely injured branches should be 
cut out during the Summer or following Winter. 
When the main stems of young fruit trees are badly 
injured and the tree does not die before Fall, the en¬ 
tire stem should be cut off just above the point where 
the tree is budded or grafted so that a new and vig¬ 
orous new stem may be started the next Spring. As 
to the preventive effect of a spray of whitewash, it 
would seem to me that the practicability of the rem¬ 
edy was a little doubtful; however, it would be well 
to try it. At Figs. 134 and 135 are shown photographs 
of new and old injuries to maple and apple branches, 
the older ones being cut from the trees 17 years after 
their injury was done. a. d. hopkins. 
Entomologist W. Va. Station. 
Where young trees under two years planted are ex¬ 
posed to attack they ought to be well wrapped with 
old newspapers. This can be done by cut¬ 
ting newspapers into strips about four 
inches wide, and winding them spirally 
around the tree from the ground up to the 
limbs. These strips can be easily fast¬ 
ened at the ground by drawing the earth 
up around the trunk and at the top by 
using a yarn string. This string will al¬ 
low the tree to expand without cutting 
the bark. The paper strips should be 
wound spirally and overlapped, so as to 
give four layers of newspaper over the 
trunk throughout its entire length. The 
female locust will not oviposit through 
this covering, but it will in nowise pro¬ 
tect the top. If the trunk is thoroughly 
protected the top can be cut away so as to 
restore the tree by means of new growth. 
The covering should be removed as soon 
as the insects have completed their period 
of egg laying. Turning a drove of hogs 
into the orchard just as these insects be¬ 
gin to appear will result in destroying 
very many of them. Turkeys also are 
said to eat them readily. The young or¬ 
chards at the Virginia Experiment Sta¬ 
tion have trees in them from one year up 
to 12 years set, and are adjacent to an old orchard. 
The locusts appeared in great numbers in the old 
orchard and also in the young orchard the past 
Spring. One could easily gather up a quart in a few 
minutes, during the period when they were issuing 
from the ground. They took to the trees both old and 
young, and remained for several weeks in the or¬ 
chards, but gradually disappeared toward the middle 
of their season, so that very few were present. Though 
the young orchards presented every condition which 
one would suppose would induce the females to ovi¬ 
posit, we were not able to observe a single case of 
oviposition in the Station orchards, though we were 
careful to make almost daily observation, because it 
was my desire to experiment upon spraying the 
trees with a view of killing these insects, or prevent¬ 
ing egg laying. All of these trees had received dur¬ 
ing the early Spring a thorough treatment with Bor¬ 
deaux spray, which we recommend in our bulletins, 
thus the trunks and branches of the trees were quite 
plastered with that preparation. wm. b. alwood. 
Virginia Exp. Station. 
STIRRING TAR.—In the Hope Farm Man’s way of 
using tar on corn, I think he is a little behind. He should 
put the corn In a pail or tub; cover with water; pour on 
a little coal tar, a tablespoonful or two to the bushel. 
Stir well for a couple of minutes; pour off the water; 
spread the corn on the floor and it will soon dry, as It 
does not get soaked much. We have no trouble in plant¬ 
ing in grain drill or with corn planter. Use but a little 
tar, and there Is no need of mixing with plaster. 
Clarkson, N. Y. B - N - 
TENNESSEE STRAWBERRIES.—While we have had 
more cold weather than is common for this section, 1 
think it has been a very favorable Winter on straw¬ 
berries and other small fruits. As a general thing we 
shall not have as large an acreage of strawberries as last 
vear, but I think the shipments will be as large and of 
much better quality since many of the Michael patches 
have been plowed up and replaced with Lady Thompson 
and other good varieties. While the first few early 
crates will be later than the average year, I think the 
main crop will be early. Beder Wood will soon be in 
full bloom. Ttie recent cold damaged crop a little, but 
to no great, extent. Peach prospects are good for a fine 
crop in this locality. Spring has been very backward 
for beans and other early vegetables. W. H. L. 
Sale Creek, Tenn. -1 
