1902 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
627 
Hope Farm Notes 
Farm Notes.—T he sugar beets need rain. 
Rain? Why, are not you the man who 
made such a fuss about wet weather? 
Yes. I am now rather ashamed to say 
that I growled about the wet where I now 
walk over the farm and kick dust at every 
step. We are not actually suffering from 
drought, but a lively shower would help 
us out. The warm, dry weather is doing 
wonders for the corn. It is earing out so 
that there won’t be a deaf hill. With a 
smaller acreage than last year we are 
likely to have a better crop. I tried three 
new varieties of corn this year—all highly 
praised by farmers In various parts of the 
country. Not one of them makes as good 
a showing as our own seed. We picked 
out part of it at husking last year, but 
this Fall I shall mark stalks in the field 
before cutting and let them stand until 
well ripened. I pick thick, heavy ears, not 
too long, but large around. I do not care 
so much for the stalk, but I find that most 
of these thick ears are found on large, 
strong stalks. I am well satisfied that it 
pays belter to pick the best ears in your 
own field than to send off and buy shelled 
corn which may include good and poor. 
Is this true also of potatoes? 
I have not found it so. Even when we 
mark the most vigorous hills and save 
them for seed we are unable to equal the 
yield from northern-grown seed. I regret 
that this must be admitted, for I hoped 
at one time to grow seed potatoes that I 
could talk about for seed! I am forced 
to admit that seed potatoes grown here 
do not equal those from the North. I 
used to grow Rural Blush, which with us 
was the standard for quality. I sold some 
for seed, and knew I picked out the best 
we had. The man who bought them re¬ 
ported that his crop was “so soggy that 
he fed them to hogs!” That’s as bad as it 
would be for the Bud and the Graft to go 
off somewhere to visit and go to cutting 
up so that they would become a nuisance! 
How abouj the Alfalfa? 
I wouldn't give 10 cents for the erop from 
its present appearance, and yet some man 
with a stronger faith than I have might 
buy it at that price and make a small for¬ 
tune. We were told to clip it and thus 
make its hair grow, but you might as well 
run the shears over a bald head and ex¬ 
pect to part it in the middle without using 
a hatchet. Only thin, spindling hairs of 
Alfalfa are to be seen. Have I ever seen 
worse looking things finally brace up and 
come to the front? Yes, and that is why 
1 shall not plow that Alfalfa ground this 
Fall and seed it to grass! 
The yellow turnips grow very rapidly. 
By the first of September they were about 
the size of a lead pencil. With most crops 
no pencil would be required to figure out 
the future of such little things, but the 
yellow turnip is no loafer. It will grow, 
with us, until the middle of October, giv¬ 
ing excellent hog food.Prices for 
potatoes are still very low and I do not 
see much chance for improvement. We 
hoped to hold most: of our crop, but I am 
sorry to say that rot is appearing, and 
we may have to get rid of the greater part 
at a low price. This calls up the follow¬ 
ing question from a New York man: 
“Is air-slaked lime good for preventing 
potatoes rotting after they are dug? What 
is the best way of caring for them when 
dug to prevent rot? They are rather rusty 
now; have been thoroughly sprayed five 
times. I notice an occasional rotten one 
when digging.” 
Lime will not entirely prevent the spread 
of rot, but it will slacken it considerably. 
There are several quite distinct “rots.” 
Most of them may be called disease 
spreading from one tuber to another by 
means of tiny “germs.” To prevent or 
delay this spread the potatoes ought to 
be handled so that the germs will have the 
least chance to grow. When we want to 
keep our seed corn in perfect condition we 
make sure that it is dry and cool. Mois¬ 
ture and heat would start the germ. Our 
plan with potatoes is to pick out all the 
rotten ones as we dig. The tubers are 
spread out in a dark shed on slats raised 
from the ground, so that the dry air can 
pass under and up through them. It is 
true that lime scattered over them as dug 
often holds the rot in check, but the limed 
potatoes are so dusty and dirty that they 
never look well. We seldom use it for 
that reason. 
But if you pick out all the rotten ones, 
how can the rot spread in the pile? 
The germs of the rot are in all or nearly 
all the tubers in such a season as this. 
It is quite possible that a majority of hu¬ 
mans carry the germs of consumption, yet 
in only a small proportion does the dis¬ 
ease really prove master. I am told that 
over U0 per cent of the people in any aver¬ 
age community are deaf—that is, they 
have lost some of their power of hearing. 
This loss is rarely noticed for a man must 
lose half his hearing before he really 
misses it in his ordinary work or pleas¬ 
ure. So with these rot germs. The tubers 
may carry them, but if the conditions are 
kept, right they will not grow and the 
potato may be kept through the Winter 
and eaten as perfectly sound. While It 
pays to pick and use lime for valuable 
seed, or in seasons of scarcity, I doubt 
the wisdom of trying it on a large scale 
in a year of low prices. Rotten potatoes 
are bad things to seed the farm with. 
Accumulating Food.—I find many peo¬ 
ple who are interested in what was said 
on page 563 about using manure on peach 
trees. One objection to such use of ma¬ 
nure year after year is the fact that you 
do not know how much of this organic 
nitrogen you are storing up for future 
use. Part of the nitrogen in the manure 
is available at once—the larger part must 
be decomposed or broken apart before the 
trees can use it. Now this breaking up 
depends on the condition of the soil and 
weather. It may not all be made avail¬ 
able in one year, and, if we keep on ma¬ 
nuring, a large reserve of nitrogen may 
be formed in the soil. There will come a 
season or time when all this nitrogen will 
be made available rapidly and the peach 
tree cannot utilize it all successfully. I 
have heard of a case when a man took 
daily doses of glycerine. A few single 
doses did him no harm, but. it did not all 
pass out of his system, and after a time 
the accumulated efteet actually made him 
drunk, much to his mortification! We 
have all seen people who seem to have 
cracks in their philosophy. I am well ac¬ 
quainted with a man of whom his wife 
has said: “He will stand great provoca¬ 
tion with good nature and take no notice 
of serious troubles—yet all of a sudden, 
and without warning, he will take offence 
at some little thing which most people 
would only laugh at.” Now this good 
lady does not take into consideration what 
I may call the accumulated force of irrita¬ 
tion. An offensive word or fancied slight 
is like available nitrogen to the roots of 
her temper. There is a flash of anger 
which quickly passes away. Her husband 
is slower. He may not flash out at what 
he considers injustice, but it lies in his 
mind like the organic nitrogen in the soil. 
As he keeps good natured ofhers forget 
what he is perhaps thinking over—just as 
the man who manures the peach tree may 
forget the reserved nitrogen left in the 
soil. Finally some little thing stirs up all 
the fancied injustice In that man's heart, 
and he belches out like a cannon using 
all in one blast the little charges of powder 
which his wife fired away as pop-guns! 
Sensible Feeding.— I have no cure for 
such unfortunate people, for the changing 
of human nature may require 500 years! 
I call such folks unfortunate, for they are 
rarely understood by the human pop-guns 
who will not dig into the depths of human 
nature where reserves of good or evil are 
stored away to be made available, often 
by some insignificant thing. Now, I take 
it that farm crops differ in their food 
habits much as humans differ in their 
power to hold their emotions in reserve. 
I believe that many a boy and young man 
has been severely injured by wrong habits 
of eating. The boy is put to work with 
only three meals a day, like the grown 
folks. He is yrowing, and Nature makes a 
constant demand for food. His parents 
laugh or scold when he asks for a lunch 
or “piece” between meals. In self-defence 
he eats all the meat he can, since that 
“stays by”—that is, digests slowly and 
keeps him from getting faint. As a result, 
all the glands in the body are stimulated; 
the boy is sure to have throat trouble, 
catarrh and probably deafness. Had he 
been permitted to eat oftener, as a child 
should, he would have made a stronger 
man. I believe that all hard-wooded 
plants, like trees, do better when their 
food is supplied continuously—a little at 
a time. Take an orchard where hens run. 
We have some Bartlett pear trees at the 
edge of a chicken yard, which, year after 
year, on the side to the hens, beat any¬ 
thing on the farm for size and appearance. 
The cultivation cranks may say this is 
because the hens scratch and wallow in the 
ground around the roots. This may help, 
but I believe the true reason is that the 
hen manure provides a constant supply of 
available food—not too much at any time. 
Yes, indeed, I feel sure that the time is 
coming when we must pay more attention 
to the food requirements of our various 
plants. 
Labob Day.— The children are not very 
clear as to the difference between labor 
and work. Why people should appoint a 
“day” for celebrating the fact that they 
are able to work is beyond them. We 
Hope Farmers may not be very patriotic, 
but the truth is that we put in a fair day’s 
work on Labor Day. Philip went to see 
his friends. There was a steady stream 
of passers-by driving over to the local 
race track, but we concluded that the com¬ 
pany would be a little too fast for our 
horses. I made a bargain with the little 
boys to clean out the raspberries and have 
the rest of the day for their own. Grand¬ 
mother didn’t feel very well, and the 
Madame stayed with her a good deal. 
Charlie dug a row of potatoes in the upper 
field, so as to see what they ought to 
yield. That will tell him whether the 
Hoover digger is lazy or not. I told him 
to take a good row and make the digger 
come up to it. Clara, the white sow, had 
an interesting family of 11. This and 
other pig politics kept Hugh busy. The 
little girls “helped Mother” indoors. The 
Hope Farm man mounted the hill with 
scythe and hoe, and played barber with 
the Strlngfellow peach and quince trees. 
What a beautiful day it was! A stiff 
breeze was blowing, and that lazy wind¬ 
mill was actually at work! Of course we 
all made a showing at dinner. There was 
every prospect of clear weather for several 
days yet, so we decided to try to get the 
Fall grass cut and the potatoes dug before 
corn cutting. Charlie got out the old mower 
and tinkered it up. Hugh looked at the 
Bartlett pears in the shed and found them 
ripening fast, so we decided to send a load 
to market at once. 
"We want some Lima beans for supper,” 
said the Madame, so the little boys went 
with me to pick them. We got a heaping 
basket and as Mother was lying down for 
a little rest we shelled them so as to give 
her a surprise. When that was done I 
kept my agreement with the children and 
hunted for a pumpkin large enough for a 
jack-o’-lantern. We found one in the 
corn weighing 21 pounds. We had a great 
time scooping it out! I sharpened my 
knife on the grindstone and Aunt Eleanor 
carved a remarkable face on that pumpkin! 
While she was doing it I went back to 
my Strlngfellow trees. They were cele¬ 
brating Labor Day by making a growth 
which put to shame the wise men who said 
they would not grow! Supper was all 
right—Lima beans, sliced tomatoes, bread 
and butter, rhubarb sauce—who wants 
more than that? As the darkness fell 
Hugh hitched old Frank to the market 
wagon and drove off to Paterson with his 
load of fruit. Then we lit the candle in 
that decorated pumpkin and put it on the 
front post. On one side was a benevolent 
old face that fairly winked an eye at you 
—on the other was “Hope Farm” in good- 
sized letters. The little folks fairly howled 
with delight and danced and kicked up 
the dust until the Madame called them all 
in for bed. They scrubbed the soil off 
their bare feet and tumbled into bed too 
tired and happy to attempt any nice dis¬ 
tinctions between labor and work! Clouds 
gathered in the sky. The wind fell. The 
windmill stopped waving its arms. A 
thick, heavy, brooding darkness closed in 
upon Hope Farm. Still the calm face of 
old Jack-o’-lantern smiled benignly upon 
us. Poor, weary Grandmother, the Madame 
with her cares and trials, Aunt Elea¬ 
nor with her hard problems, the Hope 
Farm man with his fancied troubles—all 
saw old Jack smiling through his rough 
and uneven teeth! The face never changed 
—it was the candle behind it that gave it 
character! Why that fat pumpkin, perched 
on the gate post, preached me a regular 
sermon —the light behind it all. h. w. c. 
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