574 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
August 23 
Stable farm crops. Prices for grain are now very 
high—so high in fact that an acre of corn brings far 
more money than an acre of wheat. The stalks are 
mostly sold—the same as rye straw. Hewlett & Smith 
have a feed business; an engine and mill for grinding 
grain. They buy oats and mix with their corn for 
grinding, thus obtaining another profit on the corn. 
For many years wheat was grown on this farm, but 
fair trials showed that rye pays better, because the 
straw is very salable, while wheat straw, being 
shorter and more brittle, is not liked by horsemen. 
Of course many farmers will shake their heads at 
this plan of selling stalks and straw away from the 
farm, but the fact remains that this farm is increas¬ 
ing in fertility and producing profitable crops. I am 
not at liberty to give an exact statement of cash in¬ 
come from crops, but the farm pays a good profit and 
gives a larger income than many a 1,000-acre western 
ranch. A ton of rye straw takes from the soil eight 
pounds of nitrogen, 15 oi potash and four of phos¬ 
phoric acid. This will cost in fertilizers about $2.25, 
while the straw will sell for $18 in bundles in this 
market. But what about the need of “humus” or 
vegetable matter? Mr. Hewlett’s reply to that ques¬ 
tion is that repeated trial has convinced him that the 
stubble of the rye and the sod of the grass supply 
all the vegetable matter his soil requires to produce 
profitable crops. It would be a rather foolish wise 
man who would tell Mr. Hewlett that science says he 
is all wrong on the “humus” question in the face of 
his crops and his bank balance! 
Asparagus has come to be a leading crop on this 
farm. It pays well and the acreage will be increased. 
No manure has ever been used on it. Some of the 
stalks are tremendous, and yet so tender that they 
can be eaten down to the end. Sweet corn, Lima 
beans and cabbage are new crops. They all help, and 
can be put in here and there as desired. The big mar¬ 
ket wagon goes to New York regularly, and all these 
crops help to make up a load. Many bushels of car¬ 
rots and yellow turnips are grown, the former sold 
for horse feed and the latter for human consumption. 
The turnips pay fairly well because they can follow 
rye or an early crop. One great advantage these Long 
Island farmers enjoy is the smooth hard road to New 
York. Mr. Hewlett says that a fair-sized team can 
haul 7,000 or 8,000 pounds over this road. That is 
hard for some of us to believe who live in rough and 
hilly sections, where the roads are soft and stony. 
There are 87 miles of smooth road in that one Long 
Island township. It probably cost more to build these 
roads than all the real estate in my township in New 
Jersey is assessed for! 
This fertilizer farm is a busy place during the grow¬ 
ing season. The work is systemized and well handled. 
Mr. Smith makes his headquarters at the barn where 
business is transacted, while Mr. Hewlett gets out 
among the workers and visits every field several 
times each day. He is a practical farmer, and knows 
how work should be done. If a plow or a cultivator 
is out of order he knows how to fix it so it will do 
good work. This constant and thorough supervision 
by a man who knows his business is what makes the 
farm pay. The fact that a farm of this character, 
with naturally light soil, can be kept in good heart 
and a high state of fertility by selling everything that 
can be sold away from it and depending entirely upon 
fertilizers to supply plant food is remarkable! Why? 
Because its results upset ail the calculations of some 
of our wisest writers! It would be a mistaKe, how¬ 
ever, to describe this system and say nothing about 
other elements which are equally responsible for suc¬ 
cess. The location is ideal for this sort of farming. 
It might fail utterly under other conditions. The 
market is one of the best in the world. Long Island 
is cut off in a way that gives grain, hay and straw a 
tremendous price. Potatoes and other products from 
the Island have a-reputation which always gives them 
an advantage over others. Last and most important 
there are strong and clear heads back of this enter¬ 
prise. Mr. Hewlett says he does not believe in “home 
mixing.” Yet he mixes available phosphate from the 
gray matter of the brain in every handful of fertilizer 
that enters the ground. The chemical “phosphate” 
gives the plant life—the brain phosphate gives it 
character. h. w. c. 
THE OR APE CURCULIO. 
In recent years the Grape curculio (Craponius 
enaequatio) has been by far the worst insect enemy 
with which grape growers of central West Virginia 
have had to deal. In 1899 the entire crop of both cul¬ 
tivated and wild varieties was destroyed. In 1900 the 
loss was from one-half to two-thirds of the crop, 
while during the past season of 1901 the curculio 
again destroyed the fruit of all varieties except where 
protective measures were used or where the vines 
grew in the most favored locations. The adult insect 
is an inconspicuous little dark brown or gray beetle, 
one-tenth of an inch long, which appears upon the 
vines about the middle oi June, and at once com¬ 
mences to feed sparingly upon the upper surface of 
the leaves. As compared with the Plum curculio it is 
smaller, shorter in proportion to length, is quicker to 
fly or hop, has the same habit of “playing possum” 
and falling to the ground when uisturbed, and makes 
the same shrill squeaking sound when held between 
the thumb and finger or otherwise confined. In about 
two weeks after its first appearance egg-laying be¬ 
gins and continues from four to five weeks. How 
many eggs each female may lay or over how long a 
period oviposition may extend with a single indi¬ 
vidual I have not determined. In one instance I ob¬ 
served a female ovipositing on August 17, this would 
indicate that either it takes a female several weeks 
to lay her quota of eggs, or that some of the beetles 
emerge from hibernation much later than others. In 
ovipositing the beetle punctures the skin of the grape 
with its snout and without enlarging the hole through 
the skin it eats out quite a cavity within for the re¬ 
ception of the egg. This cavity is doubtless made to 
prevent the growth of the fruit from crushing the egg 
or young grub, an act of intelligence similar to that 
shown by the Plum curculio in cutting the semi¬ 
circular incision around its egg. Oviposition then 
takes place through the small puncture in the skin, 
but one egg being inserted, which is attached to the 
wall of the cavity at the point farthest from the en¬ 
trance. After the ovipositor is removed either a se¬ 
cretion of the insect or the juice from the grape dries 
and hardens in the puncture of the skin, thus sealing 
up the entrance to the chamber during incubation. 
In four or five days a whitish grub hatches from the 
A VETERAN READER-CHAS. F. BARBER. Fie. 232. 
egg. The grub is footless and has a large yellow or 
brown head. It at once tunnels into the center of 
the fruit, where for about two weeks it feeds upon the 
seeds and softer part of the grape. At the end of this 
time it is full grown and leaves the grape, entering 
the ground, where it changes to a pupa from which 
the beetle escapes in about four weeks. The young 
beetles spend the remaining portion of warm weather 
upon the vines, where a number of them may often 
be seen upon a single leaf busily engaged in feeding 
upon the green tissue of the upper surface. With the 
beginning of cold weather they leave the vines and 
hibernate, passing the Winter in the adult form. The 
infested grapes usually drop to the ground before the 
larvae are full-grown, and are somewhat more sub¬ 
ject to rot than the uninfested fruits, yet many of 
them will remain firm until after the larvae have 
quitted them. I have never observed them in either 
the adult or larval form feeding upon any other 
vegetation than the grape. They show but little 
preference for any particular varieties, the tough¬ 
skinned wild sorts being no freer from attack than 
the tender-skinned Diamond or Winchell, and the fact 
that the fruit of one vine will suffer less than that 
of another is probably due to some peculiarity of loca¬ 
tion rather than to any varietal resistant qualities. 
During the month of August last year I found many 
of the curculio grubs which were being destroyed by 
the larvfe of a small Braconid parasite, but this 
check was not sufficient, for later on the young brood 
of beetles appeared in force, and the entire grape 
foliage in many places was given a brown or scorched 
appearance by the numbers of peculiar marks made 
on the leaves by them in feeding. But little thorough 
work has been done here in the way of combating 
this insect, and the fact that it breeds upon the wild 
grape, and flies so readily from one point to another 
will, I fear, render it a difficult pest to control, espe¬ 
cially in regions where wild grapes abound. The 
beetles may be jarred from the vines on to a sheet 
or other device similar to those used in catching the 
Plum curculio, but the method of training the vines 
as usually practiced would render this impracticable. 
My experiments in spraying the vines with Paris- 
green after the young brood of beetles has appeared 
have been sufficient to convince me that in large vine¬ 
yards the insects can be held in check in this way. 
Bagging the clusters affords perfect protection, if 
done in time, and this is the method which I have 
used. Late in June or when the grapes are about one- 
fourth grown one-pound bags of tough paper are 
pinned around the clusters, and left on until the 
grapes are ripe. I prefer the one-pound bags to a 
larger size, for they are more convenient to place, and 
it is rare that a cluster grows large enough to burst 
one of them. fred e. brooks. 
French Creek, W. Va. 
C. F. BARBER—A VETERAN FARMER. 
We continue our list of farmer friends of The R. 
N.-Y. by printing at Fig. 232 a good likeness of Chas. 
F. Barber, of Auburn, N. Y. The following notes are 
from one who knows him well: 
“Mr. Barber was 80 years of age on April 19, 1902, 
and has been a reader of and a subscriber to The R. 
N.-Y. since its evolution from the chrysalis condition 
of the Genesee Farmer. He was graduated from the 
district school of his native town—Colebrook, Litch¬ 
field Co., Conn., in his sixteenth year, having mas¬ 
tered the ‘English Reader,’ ‘Smith’s Grammar,’ 01- 
ney’s Geography and ‘Dabol’s Arithmetic.’ He was a 
farmer from boyhood, among the New England rocks 
on that Colebrook farm of 210 acres, and believes 
that he could walk over its entire length in any direc¬ 
tion and make nearly every step on a granite bowlder. 
Of course it was a dairy farm, for on such land never 
did ‘the plowman homeward plod his weary way,’ 
neither could it be said that ‘oft did their harvest to 
the sickle yield,’ for the scythe took the place of the 
sickle. In 1853 he left the rocks and rills of New 
England for a home in the Empire State—Tioga 
County—and a village farm of 10 acres. He repre¬ 
sented that county in the Legislature at the time of 
the first inauguration of President Lincoln, and after¬ 
ward was ‘the man with the hoe’ on a market garden 
of 14 acres near the city of Syracuse, and from which 
he retired in 1870 to his present and abiding home in 
the city of Auburn. Mr. Barber has come down, or 
rather gone up, from the days when there was no 
travel by steam on either land or sea; from the days 
of the scythe and the sickle, the flail and the wooden 
plow, and in the best of health and bodily vigor, con¬ 
tinues to find in the charms and mysteries of vege¬ 
table growth as developed in his garden, the satis¬ 
fying pleasures and honors that belong to toil and 
the same grand sermons that others find in stones 
and running brooks.” 
CLARK PLAN OF CRASS SEEDING. 
It strikes me that farmers all over the country 
should bear in mind the old proverb, “What is one 
man’s meat is another man’s poison.” I think that 
what would suit Mr. Clark’s ground at Higganum 
would be very likely not to suit my ground in Bridge- 
water. But I have learned how to apply what I knew 
before, and though I probably never shall follow out 
exactly Mr. Clark’s ways I have already used some 
of the practical ideas that I have obtained from what 
has been written about his method and made a suc¬ 
cess so far as I went with them. There is one thing 
about Mr. Clark’s plan that I do not believe in, and 
that is mixing grasses. If I wisned to seed a piece of 
ground, be it one acre or forty, to Timothy and Red- 
top, I should put the Timothy in one place and the 
Red-top in another, and the same with clover or any 
other grass that is to be cut for hay, and I have the 
same prejudice in regard to stock or poultry. A good 
purebred Jersey is a good enough cow for me, and a 
purebred Plymouth Rock is a good enough fowl for 
my purposes. n. c. 
Bridgewater, Mass. 
WE WANT TO KNOW. 
METAL ROOF AND LIGHTNING.—Does any read¬ 
er of The R. N.-Y. know of a barn or other building, 
with metal roof, spouting and conductors, that was 
struck by lightning? If so, was the spouting in good 
condition? t. d. 
Lehigh ton, Pa. 
SPRAYING IN BLOOM.—You know of the law re¬ 
garding spraying while the trees are in bloom. Is this 
a good thing or not? A few years ago we sprayed 
when the trees were in blossom and got a fine crop of 
fine apples. Three years ago some buyers, looking 
over my orchard, said they were experimenting with 
this and found every tree sprayed while in blossom 
had a crop of choice apples. I tried it last year with 
the same success; every tree sprayed was full of 
choice fruit, while trees by their side, sprayed equally 
as well, but not while in bloom, and cared for equally 
as well, did not ripen an apple. This year I intended 
to try it again, but there were so many threats that 
anyone trying it would be fined that I did not do so. 
The result is that we have in our county the smallest 
crop compared with the amount of blossoms that we 
ever raised. s. a. a. 
Holley, N. Y. 
