1899 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
579 
HOPE FARM ROTES. 
Harvest Time.—A farmer usually 
plants his crop in hope. His faith has 
had a chance to grow during the Win¬ 
ter. He has forgotten some of last 
year’s losses—at least, they are blurred 
by memory. So he goes at his work 
with a hopeful heart, and looks ahead to 
a good harvest. During hoeing and cul¬ 
tivating and caring for the crops, he can 
often feel hopeful, and look for good re¬ 
turns for his labor. His cash lies in the 
ground in the shape of seed and fer¬ 
tilizer, and his labor should be paid for. 
“Get There” seems like a fine place 
while we are on the road that leads to 
it. When we get close to it so that we 
know it as it is, it often seems mean and 
small. Harvest time brings us face to 
face with things. We must clip the 
wings of our estimates, and pull the tail 
feathers out of our boasting. Jack Frost 
is the umpire, and he is more likely to 
say “out” than “safe.” His decisions 
are mostly against the runner. 
The Potato Crop. —This year, we 
tried a new plan. Most small farmers 
are advised to plant a little of every¬ 
thing, and thus have a dozen sources of 
income. I doubt the wisdom of this ad¬ 
vice, except in special cases. I think it 
wiser to plan for the living expenses 
from a few things, and then put in a 
good acreage of the one crop that is best 
suited to the farm and the family. This 
involves a risk, I know, but so does 
everything that requires skill and force. 
So we expected the hens, the small 
fruits and the sweet corn to pay for our 
food and little expenses, and then 
plunged in on potatoes to carry us out. 
The hens have done their duty, the 
small fruits, in spite of the drought, 
kept up their end, and the corn looks 
well. The potatoes have had a series of 
mishaps. The cold Spring delayed the 
planting. Then came the drought. The 
bugs took their turn, and then came wet, 
muggy weather that was a perfect para¬ 
dise for the blight. We have coaxed 
and carried them along, and now it’s all 
over but the digging and selling for the 
early crop. 
Digging Potatoes. —It is easy to write 
that, but as all farmers know, potato 
digging is a tough, hard job. We have 
not far from 15 acres this year. I esti¬ 
mate that, in order to dig the average 
hill of potatoes and get them all out, a 
skilled digger must put in the force 
needed to lift a weight of 60 pounds 
one foot from the ground. Most of us 
would work nearly twice as hard as 
that. We plant in drills, and average 
not far from 12,000 hills to the acre. 
That means, at best, the lifting of 5,400 
tons of earth, vines and tubers in order 
to get out our crop. No wonder potato 
digging makes one thoughtful, especial¬ 
ly when a few weeks of wet weather at 
the close of the season rally the weeds 
and grass until they fairly take posses¬ 
sion of the field. We get an idea, from 
these figures, of the work a potato dig¬ 
ger must do. 
Many Diggers.— I used to wonder why 
there are so many potato diggers on the 
market. I now see that each distinct 
principle is made to accommodate some 
special condition under which potatoes 
are grown. For example, in the light 
sands of New Jersey, potatoes are only 
three inches under ground. Usually 
they are dug before the weeds become 
troublesome. There a light scraping 
digger or a plow with prongs on it will 
do good work. The old Pruyn digger 
still works well there, yet the manufac¬ 
turers abandoned this machine because 
it could not dig out the fortune they 
sunk in it. In some sections, potatoes 
are planted in rough ground—the sur¬ 
face covered with round stones about 
the size of your fist, or large, flat stones. 
A special form of digger is needed there. 
Again, in some fields, the vines are left 
to lie down, and the grass and weeds 
form a perfect mat of tough roots. In 
some parts of the West, where potatoes 
are planted in clover sod, there are 
fewer weeds to dig out. I am satisfied 
that the only digger that will do even 
fairly well under all conditions is one 
of the so-called elevator machines that 
scoops up earth, vines, weeds, stones, 
tubers and all, and sorts them out into 
their proper places. They will do 'it— 
but, Oh! the power that is required to 
run them, and the money necessary for 
machine and repairs! I think we must 
come to consider the cost of digging at 
the' time of planting, and select varie¬ 
ties that will permit us to cultivate until 
late in the season. The Carman varie¬ 
ties, with their upright habit of growth, 
may be cultivated close up to maturity. 
On one field where Crimson clover was 
plowed in, the weeds and grass are back¬ 
ward, and may be handled quite easily. 
Clover is certainly a cleaning crop. 
Deep planting and level culture mean 
hard digging. 
A Question of Power. —I think the 
manufacturers of two-horse potato dig¬ 
gers make a mistake in saying that the 
machines will work under all circum¬ 
stances. If you say that your fields are 
foul and grassy, they will say that you 
have no business to have them so. Take 
our own case. We have one field where 
oats and peas grew last year. We used 
the weeder three times, the cultivator 
four times, and h@ed it once. Three 
weeks ago, it was as clean as could be. 
Then came the rain and fog. It was im¬ 
possible to work in tne fields, and now 
there are weeds waist high, while the 
ground is as green as a lawn with Sum¬ 
mer grass. If we start a digger that has 
a standard in the center, with a double 
plow, it will clog up half a dozen times 
in going a row, and will cover, at least, 
half the potatoes after ripping them out. 
A scoop digger, with no central stand¬ 
ard, and fingers behind the scoop, will 
do better, but unless there is some ex¬ 
pensive cleaning device, it will clog and 
cover many of the tubers, or punch 
holes in them. These machines help, 
but they would not take out all the po¬ 
tatoes; we would have to work after 
them with harrow or cultivator. When 
we dig green vines by hand, we lift 
earth, tubers and vine all out of the 
ground, and shake off the tubers. Can 
this be done by machinery? We got a 
Hoover digger in order to find out. 
Horses Digging Potatoes. — Most 
people are familiar with the picture of 
this machine. It is heavy and compli¬ 
cated. The manufacturers say that two 
horses can haul it, but there are no two 
horses around Hope Farm that could 
make a business of it. We hitched our 
three horses to it. We gave Frank the 
long end of the whiffletree, with Major 
and Dan at the other end. Their heads 
were fastened together, and Frank had 
the advantage of about six inches. Then 
Charlie mounted the seat, let down the 
nose of the machine, and said “Get up!” 
The soil was light but quite wet, and 
the vines were strong. The horses 
started, and the big machine buried her 
nose into the ground and fairly lifted 
up the furrow. She went about a rod, 
and then the wheels stopped, and old 
Major quit and came back so quick that 
Dan nearly turned a back somersault. 
Old Frank said nothing, but kept pull¬ 
ing. The gearing of this machine works 
from the wheels, and the wet soil gave 
the wheels no place to hold on. 
“Let’s put the spurs into him,” said 
Uncle Ed. 
He didn’t mean to put spurs in old 
Major, though he deserved them, but he 
meant spurs on the wheels. These are 
square plates of steel which are fasten¬ 
ed to the rim of the wheel like the spurs 
that drive a sprocket chain. In half an 
hour, we had them on, and then the ma¬ 
chine worked well. It nosed right down 
under the tubers, and carried all it found 
two feet in the air, the earth and small 
stones falling through a grate. Then 
steel prongs reached down and gave the 
vines a kick, knocking off the tubers 
and kicking the vines off to one side, 
while the potatoes fell down behind. It 
did it all, but the power required was 
enormous. Our three-horse rig did not 
work. Major balked at the most unex¬ 
pected times, and when he did so, Frank 
nearly broke Dan’s back, for old Frank 
never dreamed of quitting. When we 
put one horse ahead of the other two, it 
worked better, but the head horse walk¬ 
ed on the row, and crushed some pota¬ 
toes. It is a four-horse machine. 
The Madame is the friend of all un¬ 
fortunates. She says that old Major is 
old enough to be grandfather to the 
other horses. He has done his share of 
work, and now they should do it for 
him. That’s a very fine sentiment, but 
Major didn’t do the work of his life for 
us, while we have to feed him now. 
Three good horses would handle this 
digger under the most favorable circum¬ 
stances, if you could hitch them right, 
but in the majority of cases, four are 
needed. I am sorry to have spent so 
much time on this subject, but it is the 
most important thing for us just now. 
There are many other things to be 
talked of later. 
Various Notes. —Early in the season, 
I said mat house flies and Potato beetles 
were likely to desert us this season. It 
doesn’t do to boast. Both vermin came 
upon us in clouds. I never knew the 
flies to be so bad. We were obliged to 
use yards of “tanglefoot.” Barn flies 
have been torturing the stock, also. We 
have tried half a dozen remedies, but 
the substance known as “Shoo fly” is 
the most effective. It certainly keeps 
the flies away. . . . After all, there 
is no vegetable quite equal to tender 
sweet corn.- Our family will put away 
three dozen ears a day, and call for 
more. . . • Our early cabbage is ex¬ 
cellent this year. Present price is 35 
cents a dozen. Not much profit in that. 
Yellow turnips have been sown in one 
of the old strawberry beds. A small 
patch of turnips will pay well, but it is 
easy in our country to overdo it. The 
celery is out, and looks well. h. w. c. 
MAKING PURE MILK. 
A “Milking Room” at Fairfield. In 
past years, The R. N.-Y. has had much 
to say about the famous Fairfield Dairy, 
from which “certified milk” is sent to 
Newark, Montclair, and other places. 
Mr. Francisco started 20 years ago, with 
an output of 35 quarts per day. There 
are now about 500 cows in the dairy, 
with a daily output of 4,000 quarts. To 
handle properly this army of cows and 
ocean of milk requires the labor of 60 
men, who are organized into squads, 
each to do its regular work. The men 
who handle the horses are not permitted 
to go near the cows, the milkers must 
change their clothes and wash their 
hands before milking, the cows are care¬ 
fully brushed and carded every day, in 
fact, every possible precaution is taken 
to insure absolutely clean and pure 
milk. 
I went to the dairy on July 19, with 
the Essex Co. (N. J.) Medical Society, to 
inspect a new contrivance—“the milking 
room.” There were about 75 doctors 
present, all of whom were interested in 
securing pure and clean milk for their 
patients. Every good doctor knows 
what a large proportion of the people he 
treats are at the mercy of the milk they 
drink. The drugs he uses must be pure 
and of standard strength, or he cannot 
foretell their effect. The milk that feeds 
the children and invalids must be free 
from harmful germs, or it will upset all 
his skill. The Essex Co. doctors keep an 
eye on the Fairfield Dairy, and many of 
their ideas and suggestions have been 
put into practice by Mr. Francisco. 
The latest scheme is a “milking 
room.” This is a light, airy room built 
out from the main stable, with three 
mposslble for any Liquid, that Is Sprayed on 
w, to protect her from Files, In sun of 100 de¬ 
es M as long as “SHOO-FLI’ applied with a 
ish. See "Shoo-Fly ” adv., page500. this paper. 
sides open to sun and air. It contains 
places for 24 cows. The milkers stay in 
this room entirely. The cows are driven 
in and milked, and then driven back, 
while another squad take their places. 
Thus no milking is done where the cows 
eat and sleep, and the milk does not 
come near the bedding and manure. 
The milk is drawn into closed sanitary 
milk pails, which are wiped with a damp 
cloth before the milk is strained into 
the cans. The cans are carried on a 
steel cable, high in the air, to a distant 
milkhouse, where it is quickly cooled 
on a great Star cooler, and at once bot¬ 
tled and packed in ice. From the cow 
to the cooler, few germs have a chance 
to get into the milk, and after that, the 
low temperature has a very chilling ef¬ 
fect on the few that do enter. 
The White Farm.— Last year, we had 
an account of the milk business done at 
White Farm, near Nyack, N. Y. Mr. 
MacKellar writes us that, this year, he 
has 70 acres of corn for the silo. The 
1st of August, he was still feeding en¬ 
silage, but the bottom of the silo was 
getting close at hand. He says he is 
sorry that he has not another silo to 
start on, although pastures are good. 
Certain it is that dairymen who began 
using the silo for pasture are very glad 
to keep up the practice. Mr. MacKellar 
has a quantity of Japan millet this year, 
which has been used for soiling. He 
thinks it would make good ensilage if 
handled properly. In several places, the 
Japan millet has been used in the silo 
with fair results. We want to cut it 
just about the time it would be cut for 
hay-making. Usually, farmers delay the 
cutting of millet too long, and thus make 
a poor quality of hay out of it. One fea¬ 
ture of handling the milk at the White 
Farm is a thick felt case, which covers 
each bottle. The milk is thoroughly 
cooled, and then put into this thick case. 
When put into the boxes, a flat felt 
blanket is put on top, and this keeps 
out the heat so well that no ice is 
needed. 
Preserves 
t 
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In every household. It is clean, 
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It with a list of its many uses 
from your druggist or grocer. 
Sold everywhere. Made by 
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FRAZER c a »»s E 
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Its wearing qualities are unsurpassed, actually 
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FOR SALK BY DIALIKI GENERALLY. 
Novel, 0 ? B,G MON EY_ FOR AGENTS 
Sight’ i ___ ___ 
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|l. 00 porting wboel and leaving spindle clear for oiling. No 
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A Good Wagon 
begins with good wheels. Unless 
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