1902 
739 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Hope Farm Notes 
Cow Craving.—H ere is an old familiar 
cry from a good friend in Massachusetts: 
“I have just purchased a young cow that 
has a morbid appetite; eats sticks and 
bites manger, etc. What will cure her?” 
Nature is probably stirring up that cow 
to demand what her system craves. A 
cow takes the food that goes into her 
mouth and sorts it out so as to supply the 
different parts of the body. Mineral sub¬ 
stances like lime and the phosphates are 
needed to build up the bones and repair 
wastes in the body. Unless these minerals 
are supplied in the food the cow suffers, 
and nature’s craving takes the form of the 
‘‘morbid appetite” you speak of. I have 
seen cows gnaw fences and old bones and 
eat and drink all sorts of filth—driven to 
it by a system so starved of minerals that 
it deranged their whole nature. The rem¬ 
edy is to supply these minerals at once. 
When this is done the system stops crying 
and begins its regular work. We feed 
wood ashes to our stock in order to over¬ 
come this trouble. Fine ground bone—a 
large handful each day in the feed—will 
help the cow, while bran and linseed oil 
meal are excellent—the best of the grains. 
I do not much believe in giving “"tonics” 
and medicine when what the animals need 
is something to make bone out of. 
Humans Also?— Yes. I have no doubt 
of it. Some children chew slate pencils and 
develop fearful tastes. There you have 
Nature again struggling to give expression 
to her violent needs. We understand how 
impossible it is to grow a good crop of 
potatoes, grain or fruit without an abund¬ 
ance of lime and phosphoric acid either in 
the soil or in the manure and fertilizer. 
How can a child ever hope to grow good 
teeth, strong bones or a firm brain on a 
diet of potatoes, fat meat and white or 
corn bread? No, sir—food lacking in phos¬ 
phates will dwarf the body, the brain and 
the moral faculties! I consider that the 
use of oatmeal and other entire grains 
which has now become so common is one 
of the best things of modern experience. 
I have heard people argue that it is neces¬ 
sary for children to eat large quantities of 
meat in order to grow proper bones! This 
I regard as great nonsense—a very bad 
thing for the child. If they tell you that 
meat is necessary for bone-making because 
it covers the bone in the animal ask them 
what the bone in the ox or sheep is made 
of! If grain and vegetables can produce 
the hard shinbone of the ox it will provide 
for the skull and teeth of the child. 
But what has bone food to do with one’s 
morals? That’s carrying it too far! 
No. Try going -without bone-forming 
food for a reasonable time and you will 
reach the point where you would willingly 
go and knock your grandmother on the 
head! You might not go like the cow and 
chew old fences and bones, but you would 
growl and scold about old, long-forgotten 
offences, and find bones to pick with all 
your friends and neighbors! The cravings 
of Nature are hard to overcome. They 
sometimes strain the moral faculties be¬ 
yond the breaking point! There is another 
kind of craving, too, that we ought to con¬ 
sider. Sometimes humans become dis¬ 
couraged and hopeless for the lack of a 
little kindly appreciation. They struggle 
on and endure, but their whole nature is 
changed. Their spirits lack the gentle 
sympathy which represents to them about 
what the minerals do to the body of the 
animal. I believe people have been called 
lazy, shiftless, careless or worse when 
really all they needed was a little kindly 
appreciation. Is there any such person in 
your family? Is it Mother? 
Farm Notes.—No really serious frost up 
to October 23. This is an unusually late 
season for us, and could we have known 
just how the cold was to hang off we would 
have delayed picking the apples so as to 
let them color a little more. It’s all right, 
though. They were picked well without a 
bruise or a jar, and will keep like eggs in 
cold storage. We picked Lima beans up to 
October 25. The youngest leaves were 
stung by the light frost, but not seriously' 
hurt.It is high time we got after 
the pullets that persist in flying into the 
trees for roosting. 
You don’t mean to say you permit hens 
to get into trees? 
How are you going to stop it? Every 
year there are a number of fowls that will 
roost in the trees. Whether it is some wild 
instinct far back in the pedigree asserting 
itself or not I do not know. I do know 
that they will fly away from every con¬ 
venience that man has declared a hen ought 
to enjoy, and roost in a cold treetop. 
How did those transplanted onions come 
out? 
They were a success. We did not raise 
any weighing five pounds or more, but we 
had a good yield of the best onions we 
ever grew. We think well enough of the 
plan to try it on a much larger scale next 
year. Philip is now hauling out the ma¬ 
nure for next year's onions. It will be 
hauled to the field—a mixture of hog and 
horse manure—and piled into a compost 
heap. This will be worked over twice or 
more during the Winter—the object being 
to make it as fine as possible. In the 
Spring it will be spread and the soil plowed 
and harrowed again and again before the 
onions are set out. 
What do you find the advantage of this 
method? 
Our soil is naturally cold and late. It 
is next to impossible to fit it properly in 
time for drilling onion seed. We can start 
the seed in flats and in the hotbed, and 
transplant in May so as to give the soil a 
thorough fitting. By plowing and harrow¬ 
ing several times, before the onions are 
set out, we kill millions of weeds, which 
would otherwise be pulled with the fingers. 
The onions are large and fine—easier to 
sell at a good price than the smaller ones 
grown from drilled seed. I will admit that 
the transplanting is hard and slow work, 
but aside from this, every part of the cul¬ 
tivation is easier than the old way. My 
last report was made before the onions 
were fully grown. Since then they have 
developed far beyond what I expected. 
The frost has not touched the sugar beets. 
We expect to pull them the last of Octo¬ 
ber. This is a new crop with us, and we 
are not prepared to say that we know just 
how to do it to the best advantage. The 
tops are so large and fine that we are pre¬ 
pared to go to some little trouble to save 
them for fodder. We plan to pull the beets 
and throw them into small piles—cutting 
off the tops as they' are hauled in for 
storage. The beets have, apparently, 
grown more during the last month of cool 
weather than in any 10 weeks previously. 
I believe they will help drive the grain bill 
off the farm. 
Julia, our kicking cow, is nearly at the 
end of her rope. She is too dangerous to 
have on the farm. She is a good milker, 
but her temper is too keen. She has given 
many a thrust with her sharp horns, which 
only lacked a little- truer aim to do great 
damage. None of that for Hope Farm! 
She is now feasting on pumpkin and corn 
fodder and grain, kept by herself in a box 
stall. Like some foolish humans Julia 
evidently takes all this extra attention as 
high tribute to her character and services. 
Not a bit of it! The butcher is after Julia, 
and when she puts a little more pumpkin 
pie under her hide and over her ribs she 
will make her final kick when, as beef, she 
kicks part of the Hope Farm taxes off the 
books. That will be the sad end of Julia, 
and within 50 feet of her stands old Jersey, 
the good mother cow, who will never be 
sold for beef, but shall have a decent burial 
on Hope Farm when she passes away. 
Old Major peers around the corner of his 
stall to remind Julia that a horse may see 
his best days and yet never fall upon worse 
ones if his character is right! But Julia 
knows too much to take advice—she is on 
the road to beef! 
Our sweet potato crop has been dug. 
The potatoes were of fair quality and some 
of them were large, but the crop does not 
pay here. The same amount of time and 
fertilizer put into a good bed of Marshall 
strawberries would give twice the returns. 
There is some fun in growing these odd 
crops, but as a matter of business they do 
not pay. 
Gun Practice.— I made a bargain with 
the little boys about a patch of straw¬ 
berries. They were to clean it of weeds, 
and in return I was to get a cheap air- 
gun and some darts. I got the gun before 
the berries were cleaned—which was not 
a good business move. The Graft tried his 
hand at making a target. Some of the 
lines wandered a little, but it answered, 
and we put it up down cellar with a candle 
in front of it. Then we had great shoot¬ 
ing after supper. I never saw a man give 
expression to his feelings when he learned 
that he had been elected President, but I’ll 
guarantee he never jumped higher with joy 
than the Scion did when he hit the bull’s 
eye—by accident! This shooting was all 
very nice until I began to ask how those 
strawberries were. I found that the boys 
had not done their work as they agreed, 
so I had to hang the little gun on the wall 
with this statement: “No work, no shoot!” 
It was hard on the little fellows. The 
Graft wanted to know why “no shoot, no 
work” wasn’t the same thing as the other 
statement. It will take a wiser man than 
I am to explain that the first represents 
the statement of capital and therefore 
must be right, while the other means a 
demand from labor, and is therefore revo¬ 
lutionary! After all that is about the size 
of it! But the little boys did their duty 
without any strike, and that little air-gun 
nearly coughed itself short of wind in an 
effort to send those darts into the bull's 
eye! 
So you encourage your boys to shoot, do 
you? 
I encourage them to do any legitimate 
thing that will teach them to steady the 
hand and use the eye accurately. You 
need not think that I send them roaming 
about the country with air-guns to shoot 
whatever they see. No-they never touch 
the gun alone. I load it for them and take 
part in their little practice. I Know of old 
fellows who when they were boys, went 
running off to all sorts of places to do 
some of the things that a boy likes to do, 
because they had no home to do them In. 
I intend to have our little fellows under¬ 
stand that home is headquarters for fun. 
You let me give a boy his ideas as to what 
“fun” is, and I will do more for his char¬ 
acter than I could by preaching to h'im 
after he had decided what his pleasures 
should be. h. w. c. 
Apple Boxes.—J. H. Hale gives the fol¬ 
lowing reasons for using the bushel box 
as an apple package: “The bushel box is 
not only the apple package of the future, 
but of the present. I find growers and 
shippers are taking great interest in it, 
and are beginning to see its advantages, 
and are realizing that because" they have 
always used barrels is no reason why they 
should continue to do. The box as an apple 
package has immense advantages over 
barrels, both for the home and export 
trade. The box is more easily handled 
than the barrel. It does not get rolled 
over and over, and so the fruit comes out 
of storage in better condition. Then the 
apples cool off more quickly in boxes. For 
the city trade the box would prove a great 
thing. Many a family which can’t afford 
to buy a barrel of apples, and hasn’t room 
for it in their flat, could afford a box and 
could take care of it. I think boxes would 
increase the sales very materially. My 
idea is that fancy apples should be graded 
in sizes like oranges, and packed so many 
to the box. I believe the time has now 
come for this, and I shall put up my fancy 
apples in boxes.” 
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Seed Potatoes. —A bulletin from the 
"Vermont Experiment Station states that 
the fungus which causes Potato rot lives 
over Winter only in the tubers. It has 
not been found elsewhere. Thus, the only 
way to spread it is to plant seed potatoes 
containing the germs. Can it be cured? 
Surface washes are useless, for the fungus 
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