1899 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
675 
HOPE FARM NOTES. 
Cheap Sweet Corn. —I have never 
known sweet corn to be so cheap as it 
has been this season with us. The 
papers often lament the fate of the Ne¬ 
braska farmer who tries to sell corn in 
a year of plenty. He is no worse off 
than the Jersey farmer who has to sell 
fine sweet corn at 35 and 40 cents per 
100 ears. I can’t understand why the 
price has fallen so. Locally the crop is 
not so very heavy, but other sections 
seem to have shipped heavily to New 
York this year. We used to think that 
sweet corn could not be shipped far 
enough to compete safely with us. It 
was fun to be confronted by this theory. 
Now that the real condition is pricking 
us—we don’t like it. I saw a man in a 
New York restaurant last week trying 
to break his teeth over an ear of field 
corn. Of course, he won’t touch an¬ 
other ear this season. That’s the way 
your poor trash hurts the trade in the 
real article. 
Fi.esh and Blood Harrows. —The 
fertilizer farmer may say what he will, 
but a small flock of some active live 
stock is useful on the farm. Take a 
potato field. Do what we can, there are 
always some potatoes left in the soil. 
With a good portable fence, we can turn 
the hogs in and let them root over the 
field. TalK about your spring-tooth har¬ 
row, a hog’s nose beats it, and will find 
more missing potatoes. The sheep will 
clean up the weeds along the fence rows. 
If I had a small flock of sheep now, I 
would turn them right into the late 
potatoes, and let them eat down the 
crab grass. The vines are dead, and I 
don’t think they would hurt the tubers. 
With sheep to clean up the grass and 
weeds, and pigs to get out the hidden 
potatoes, live stock might be said to eat 
out of the fertilizer bag. Another thing. 
Some farmers see the wisdom of grow¬ 
ing a crop like Crimson clover or cow 
peas, but the thought of plowing it all 
under seems to gall their conscience. 
With hogs or sheep to get it out of 
sight, they would sleep easier, and still 
help the land. Somehow, we Yankees 
and Dutchmen have always tried to keep 
a hog shut up in a pen. Nature meant 
that the hog should use his legs. 
Transplanting Fruits. —We have 
blackberries, raspberries, and currants 
well set on the old place. What shall we 
do with them? The blackberries are 
three years old, and we shall dig up 
what we need, and set them on the new 
place. The currants may be treated in 
the same way—transplanted this Fall. I 
do not think it will pay to dig up three- 
year old raspberries. We have some 
yearling Cuthberts that will do, but I 
think it better to set new plants next 
Spring, rather than to bother with these 
old fellows. They would most likely 
act like old Major on the digger, when 
we called for a full crop. We always do 
more or less Fall transplanting of straw¬ 
berries. I shall take to the new place a 
fair lot of Parker Earle, Gladstone, 
Glen Mary and a tamed wild variety of 
our own, which we hope will be good 
enough to brag about some day. 
Spring Water.— Since we decided not 
to try to pipe the water from the spring 
to the house, we have had a dozen let¬ 
ters urging us to do it anyway. In 
some cases, hemlock logs 10 feet long, 
bored through with a hand auger, and 
connected with metal couplings, are 
used successfully. Those who write this 
way say that the spring water is better 
than any other. I don’t quite see why 
it should be better than water from a 
well drilled down through the solid rock. 
There are three reasons why I gave up 
the spring water. It cost too much to 
pipe it, there isn’t enough water in the 
dry season, and I find, by measuring, 
that the spring is not high enough to 
carry the water above the first floor of 
the house. I want to try that spring 
water for trout breeding about as Mr. 
Scarff suggested last week. I have de¬ 
cided now to put up a windmill, and 
force the water to a tank in the barn, 
and from there to the house. That will, 
probably, make the Madame about five 
years younger! 
Grace Without Meat. —An old dis¬ 
ease that gave me great pain several 
years ago, nudged me in the back last 
week, with a warning twinge or two. I 
take a hint from this old friend without 
waiting for the kick, and have quit eat¬ 
ing meat and drinking much tea or 
coffee. It is quite surprising how well 
one can live without meat. Eggs, fish 
and cheese make good substitutes. It is 
hard, though, to get your mouth well 
watered by the sight of a piece of roast 
beef, and then try to satisfy it with some 
vegetables. I am well satisfied that 
most of us eat too much meat. It’s 
largely nonsense to say that we can’t 
live and do good work without it. Of 
course, I understand that people differ 
in this respect somewhat, yet there 
would be healthier humans and happier 
homes if we would all cut down our 
meat ration by one-half, and give the 
trade to the hen and the cow. 
The Greedy Bugs. —Show me the man 
who says that Potato beetles will not 
eat the tubers. I care not how many 
microscopes he may turn on me, I will 
take him into our barn, and let him use 
his naked eye. As I write, we have 
about 300 bushels of potatoes in the 
barn and shed. The beetles chased us in 
from the field, and thousands of them 
are at work on those potatoes. I have 
not observed that they eat through the 
skin, but they will start at a scab spot 
or a bruise, and eat very rapidly. They 
usually cluster in groups, and eat deep 
down. This thing is getting to be a ter¬ 
rible nuisance. Come on, ye scientists, 
and find some stronger weapon to use 
against these bugs. 
Services of Science. —Our scientific 
friends are sometimes gloomy because 
their ideas and discoveries seem to travel 
on three legs. They go lame somehow, 
for practical people are often slow to 
pick them up. Now here is an illustra¬ 
tion of it. Take kerosene oil. I am 
sure this is one of the most useful of 
household substances. It will give us 
light and heat, and is one of the most 
valuable insecticides in use. It has, 
also, remarkable cleansing qualities. 
The housewives who use it in the laun¬ 
dry know that this is so. Now scien¬ 
tific men have demonstrated that kero¬ 
sene is a great help in washing dishes. 
It cuts out the fat and grease, and quick¬ 
ly evaporates from the plates, so that 
there is no remembrance of it. I feel 
sure this is true, yet I am not eloquent 
or logical enough to get the Madame to 
try it. 
“Put kerosene oil on my dishes? Not 
a bit of it!” 
That settles it! I know that tone! I 
shan’t be able to demonstrate the thing 
until the Madame goes away for a vaca¬ 
tion, and I wash the dishes myself! 
Thus it is that fixed habits—of course, I 
won’t say prejudice—hit scientific sug¬ 
gestion a hard rap, and make it crawl on 
three legs. 
Everything. —Not much Fall plowing 
has been done in our country. The soil 
is still very dry, and breaks up in lumps 
and clods. As a rule, our people do not 
Fall plow much. I hope to turn over 
about 20 acres of tough, hard sod dur¬ 
ing October.The children are 
still running barefooted. They won’t 
have their shoes and stockings on until 
cold weather. Not very “nice.” you 
say? Well, these children are not being 
reared for “show purposes.” We call 
the bare soil a good nurse.It 
seems strange not to see the Crimson 
clover greening over the farm. If I 
were landlord of the old place, I would 
gladly have paid for the seed, and had 
it put in after corn and potatoes. It 
would mean $5 a month extra out of the 
new tenant. If I ever do own a place 
that is farmed by tenants, I will make 
clover and cow peas witness the lease as 
resident partners.I have never 
seen the nut trees so crowded with nuts 
as they are this year. The chestnuts are 
fairly loaded. 
Odd Notes. —The sorghum is giving 
the finest of green feed now. It has 
done better than fodder corn during this 
dry season. Our stock like it. The 
children go about chewing and sucking 
little canes of the sorghum. The hogs, 
I find, thrive on it. In dry seasons, or 
on light soil, I think the sorghum will 
give us better fodder than the ordinary 
varieties of corn.I am quite 
amused to find that many farmers own a 
horse very much like our old Major. I 
h^ve had some letters about these old 
stagers. They are wise old things that 
realize that their best day’s work has 
been done, and ti.ey don’t propose to be 
put at young-horse work if they can 
help it. Old Major is sharp enough to 
see that we wouldn’t hurt him with the 
whip half as hard as he would hurt him¬ 
self on the digger if he undertook to pull 
old Frank. Like many old men, he is 
set in his ways, and he’s too old to hatch 
out new ideas.There are 10 
crab apple trees on the new farm, well 
loaded with fruit. There is quite a live¬ 
ly demand for crab apples from those 
who make jelly. A few trees are profit¬ 
able. Crab-apple marmalade is a com¬ 
pound calculated to make a man fall in 
love with his mother-in-law. 
We tried the plan once more of growing 
potatoes between the rows of young 
raspberries. As usual, the raspberries 
got the lion’s share of the fertilizer. 
This plan of potato growing is a make¬ 
shift at best._ h. w. c. 
BULLETINS BOILED DOWN. 
Practical Agriculture, by Charles C. 
James, Deputy Minister of Agriculture for 
Ontario, has been issued in an American 
edition, edited by Prof. John Craig, of the 
Iowa Agricultural College. It is remark¬ 
able for its condensation, into one volume 
of moderate size, of all the salient features 
of agricultural work, being divided into 
six parts, which include such subjects as 
the plant; the soil; the crops of the field; 
the garden, orchard and vineyard; live 
stock and dairying; bees; birds and for¬ 
estry. There is a list of trees and shrubs, 
with common and botanical names, and a 
list of weeds, with common name, botani¬ 
cal name, and family or order. The book 
contains 203 pages, and 90 illustrations. A 
very useful and instructive volume, and a 
valuable addition to the farmers’ library. 
It costs 80 cents, and may be ordered from 
this office. 
Olives.— Bulletin 123, of the California 
Experiment Station (Berkeley) is devoted 
to olive cultivation, oil-making* pickling, 
varieties, and the diseases of the olive. 
Nine tested varieties are described, and 
48 varieties not yet fully tested are enu¬ 
merated; nearly all of them are of foreign 
origin. Both the tree and fruit are sub¬ 
ject to a large number of diseases in Eu¬ 
rope, but most of these, and some of the 
most destructive, have not yet appeared 
in California. Seven troubles of the olive 
grower are enumerated, which have al¬ 
ready assumed some importance in the 
State; they are the Twig borer, Black 
scale, Sooty mold. Peacock leaf-spot, dry 
rot, bacterial rot, and Olive knot. Methods 
of combating these troubles, and the gen¬ 
eral culture of the olive, are detailed. 
Whole Corn Compared With Corn 
Meal for Fattening Hogs.— This is the 
title of Bulletin No. 59, of the West Vir¬ 
ginia Experiment Station (Morgantown). 
In experiments conducted in 1S97, with 
two lots of hogs, fed corn meal, and one 
lot fed whole corn, for two periods of two 
weeks each, the hogs fed corn meal made 
by far the larger gain. In the second 
period, the conditions were reversed. The 
average of the two periods shows a gain 
in favor of the corn meal, but not suf¬ 
ficient to pay the extra cost of hauling and 
grinding the corn if these are at all costly. 
Nothing is said in the bulletin as to 
whether the meal was fed wet or dry. The 
bulletin summarizes' all the experiments in 
this country along this line, and concludes 
that, unless a farmer is located very close 
to a mill, or has one on his own farm, at 
present prices, it will not pay to grind 
corn for hogs. In experiments conducted 
for the purpose of ascertaining the ad¬ 
vantages of soaking corn for hogs, it was 
shown that soaked corn produced a more 
economical gain than corn meal mixed 
with water. 
Studies in Lime.— An illustration of what 
our experiment stations may do for agri¬ 
culture is found in the results of the studies 
of lime and its effect upon the soil. Lime 
has been used for many years, and farm¬ 
ers observed its good effects, although now 
and then they found that it did not do as 
well as usual. They were unable to under¬ 
stand why these conflicting results were ob¬ 
tained. It was generally thought that lime 
fed the plant as directly as any other fer¬ 
tilizing element. So it did, although it was 
finally found that in many cases, its indi¬ 
rect work In fitting the soil was more im¬ 
portant. Prof. Wheeler, of the Rhode Isl¬ 
and Station, found that plants varied great¬ 
ly in their behavior in different soils. It 
was demonstrated that one chief reason for 
this was the fact that clover, for example, 
thrives best in a neutral or alkaline soil. 
The lime sweetened or neutralized the soil, 
and gave the seed a better chance to ger¬ 
minate and develop. This led to studies of 
other crops, and it was found that they 
varied considerably in their soil demands. 
For example, corn responds wonderfully to 
liming. In one case, at the Rhode Island 
Station, one ton of lime was applied in 
1894. It made a great difference In that 
year’s corn crop. In 1895 there was an in¬ 
crease in the oat crop; the following three 
crops of grass also showed such an increase 
that, as compared with an unlimed acre, 
the crops in a four years’ rotation showed 
an increased value of $45 for four years, as 
a result of the liming. This was due chiefly 
to the neutralizing or sweetening of the 
soil. 
Now comes another fact which has been 
overlooked or not understood up to the 
present time. The lime not only feeds the 
plant and sweetens the soil, but it liberates 
a large amount of phosphoric acid, which 
would otherwise be of little use to the 
plant. The experiments in Rhode Island 
seem to demonstrate this fact beyond ques¬ 
tion. A soil that has been well limed will 
be found to contain more available phos¬ 
phoric acid than it had before the lime was 
used. This is much like being able to find 
and utilize something which before was 
almost unknown or unattainable. This 
goes to show how our scientific men are at 
work studying the forces which the farmer 
may utilize in his business. They really 
make a harness for us to fasten these 
forces, so that we may do our work to 
better advantage. 
Eureka Harness Oil is the best 
preservative of new leather 
and the best renovator of old 
leather. It oils, softens, black¬ 
ens and protects. Use 
Eureka 
Harness 
on your best harness, your old har¬ 
ness, and your carriage top, and they 
will not only look better but wear 
longer. Sold everywhere in cans—all 
sizes from half pints to five gallons. 
Hade by STANDARD OIL CO. 
IF YOU GOULD 
buy a wagon that had everlasting wheels 
WOULD YOU DO IT? Wouldn’tlt 
be economy to do so! Well here show; 
set^of Electric Steel Wheels 
They can’t dry out and get loose; they 
CAN TROT OR BREAK DOWN. Don’tmake 
any difference what wagon you have we 
can lit It. Wheels of any heightand any 
. width of tire. May be the wheels on 
your wagon are good. Iftheyarebuy 
A SET OF THESE and have two wagons— a low 
te ana a high one. Send for catalogue. It 1s 
Electric Wheel Co., Box 
free. 
88, Quincy, Ills. 
Largest manufacturers of 
Steel Wagon Wheels and 
Handy Truck Wagons in 
America. Guaranteed su¬ 
perior to any other make 
WRITS us 
(VI eta I Wheel Co. 
HAVANA. ILLINOIS 
4 Buggy Wheels, with tire on, SG.75 
With Axles and Boxes set, $9-35 
I make all sizes and grades. Carriage and 
Wagon Hardware every description. Cat. 
free. W.W. Boob(Dept.R),Center Hall, I’a 
Novel, a 
Sight 
Seller. 
-f^ PAT . NOV. 2.'97X 
^Combination 
WRENCH AND JACK 
tor Buggies, Carriages A Light Wagons, t 
Removes an d grasps burr while Ja< k 
acts as continua¬ 
tion of axle. sut>- 
PRI0E 
,, .. wuil UL SJLIO, sup. 
•I.OU porting wheel and leaving spindle clear for oiling. ,w 
lost washers No soiled hands. Agents write for special prices 
COMBINA’N. WRENCH & JACK CO., SALEM, OHIO. 
