1899 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
7 23 
HOPE FARM NOTES. 
Dewey Day. —There was a great time 
in New York when Dewey came home. 
It is well enough to read about this 
great celebration, but only those who 
saw the vast crowds and heard the 
cheering can realize what it meant. 
The great city was crowded with people 
who came from all over the country to 
see Dewey. There were flags every¬ 
where—you could see hundreds of them 
from any position on the main streets. 
Hope Farm is about seven miles back 
from the Hudson River. Our people 
wanted to see the naval parade, so they 
hitched up the horses and drove to a 
point below Fort Lee, on the west shore, 
nearly opposite Grant’s tomb. Major 
and Dan pulled the market wagon, and 
Frank followed with the buggy. The 
big flag was draped over the market 
wagon, and smaller flags made a gay 
show. It was a 30-mile drive, all told. 
They took a big basket of lunch along. 
It seemed as though all northern New 
Jersey had turned out. The shore was 
black with people, and across the river 
at Grant’s Tomb there was a mighty, 
yelling army. The whistles shrieked, 
the cannon boomed, and, witn a great 
parade and show of flags, Dewey came 
sailing home. 
Fighting Farmers. — As I walked 
among those great crowds and saw the 
vast military possibilities of this coun¬ 
try displayed, I kept asking myself: 
“What bearing does all this have on the 
plain, hard-working farmers of the 
country?” Farming is a quiet, peaceful 
occupation. War and fighting come 
harder on the farmer than on any other 
class, for in the end he will pay most of 
the cost, while handlers will hold most 
of the speculative profits of war. I am 
down on war. I have had all I want of 
it. Go back to the New England town 
where I was born, and you will find the 
graves of my father and two of his 
brothers—killed in the Civil War. I 
have another uncle who is drawing a 
well-deserved pension for injuries re¬ 
ceived at the front as one of Berdan’s 
sharpshooters. I claim, therefore, that 
I have some right from my pedigree to 
give an opinion on war. A man once 
explained to me how I could secure a 
pension, but I would be ashamed of my¬ 
self to ask the Government for help on 
such a slim pretext. I consider that 
these four men did about all the fighting 
that one family should be expected to do 
until the Bud’s grandchildren are men 
grown. I know what it means to have 
homes broken up, and children scat¬ 
tered, and I am opposed to the use of 
lead and steel in the manufacture of 
widows and orphans. My father and his 
brothers went to war for what they con¬ 
sidered a holy cause. They didn’t go 
for the fun of it or to see “life” by 
killing somebody, or to get some soft 
job after the war was over. That’s the 
only sort of fight your true-blooded 
American should get into, in my opin¬ 
ion. 
Market Wars.— One of my neighbors 
says I am a pretty cold-blooded Ameri¬ 
can because I can’t see the great results 
that are to follow when our soldiers 
have whipped the Filipinos. According 
to his view that is going to make quite 
a difference in the sale of crops from 
Hope Farm. We are after new markets, 
he says. This “new foreign market” 
talk doesn’t hit me as it used to. Our 
great exporters have been working hard 
for our export trade in meat, bran, iron 
and steel. One result of this is that 
these articles are all higher in price to 
the American. My own opinion is that 
if the American farmer wishes to fight 
for a market he can find a good chance 
to pull his coat right at home. The 
frauds and adulterators who are putting 
“bulk” and poison into our food will 
give them the stiffest sort of a fight. 
The rumshops are stealing more money 
from the farmers of this country than 
our whole foreign trade comes to. They 
take the money that should go to buy 
food, fuel and clothing. If a man feel 
like “fighting beneath the shadow of the 
old flag” let him turn himself loose on 
the saloon question. It’s a queer thing, 
but I have seen fine, strong men who 
would yell and hurrah at a political 
speech, but how they will haul in their 
horns when some one asks them to sign 
a protest against the local saloon! 
Inspiration. —There seems to be some 
peculiar thing about this fighting the 
enemy, whether that enemy be soldier, 
saloon or soil. The quality known as 
inspiration, enthusiasm, “craze,” or 
whatever you call it, makes the differ¬ 
ence between a good fight or a half¬ 
hearted one. There is a principle called 
“avinin” in oats which gives a horse 
vigor and spirit. You can’t get it in 
any other combination of grain. The 
horse doesn’t “feel his oats”—he feels 
his “avinin.” It seems to be much the 
same way with men and women. There 
are a few hard plodders who hang on 
like' bulldogs, but most people are 
steered through life, not by something 
they can actually measure and control, 
but by inspiration, thought or imagina¬ 
tion. There is something vigorous and 
stirring about the thought of war and 
great National power. We can imagine 
more things about the sword than we 
can about the prosaic, humdrum mission 
of the hoe and plow. The sword is 
strong because the particles of steel in it 
press close together with a mighty force. 
A sword of pine would quickly breaK be¬ 
cause the particles are loosely put to¬ 
gether. It is the force of cohesion that 
makes the sword hard and true. Just 
the same with a family, home or nation. 
It’s the way they get together for true 
or false ideals that makes a home or a 
nation strong or weak. You take a 
family on a farm working hard for a 
wrong ideal or half working for a good 
one, and you have a speck of National 
disease which may spread and make a 
bad spot unless you spray it with the 
Bordeaux Mixture of faith and true am¬ 
bition. 
Sweet Corn. —Our last sweet corn 
was sold September 26. It was Ever¬ 
green, and brought 90 cents per 100. We 
picked some for home use after that, 
but none to sell. As usual, the earliest 
and latest corn brought most money. 
During August, when everybody had 
corn, the price fell to 35 cents. As we 
got closer to a hard frost the price went 
up. It was the same way with tomatoes 
—the money was made at the extreme 
ends of the season. It was once so with 
strawberries, but the very early varie¬ 
ties now come into market with late 
varieties from the South. The very late 
varieties pay us still—in fact, about the 
best of all. That is why so many people 
continue to plant Gandy. I used to 
think that it would not pay us to raise 
field corn. I advocated raising sweet 
corn—selling the ears and buying west¬ 
ern corn for feeding. The low price for 
the main crop of sweet corn has upset 
that theory, and I plan to grow 15 acres 
of field corn on the new farm next year. 
Cheap Pork.— We sold a shote the 
other day, dressing about 75 pounds at 
eight cents a pound. What this meant 
was that the butcher gave us a five-dol- 
lar bill for part of the kitchen swill. Of 
course, he wouldn’t have paid that 
money for the swill to be delivered in 
barrels, but when it was put in the bar¬ 
rel of a pig he was glad to get it. I 
started last Spring with four little pigs, 
to see how cheaply pig pork can be 
made. They have not had a bushel of 
grain since May. When the boys clean 
out the stables they often throw a hand¬ 
ful of corn into the manure, but that is 
to make the pigs root it over. These 
pigs have had the swill that got by the 
cats and the dog, and the wastes 
weeds, small cabbage, sweet corn nub¬ 
bins and small potatoes. They have not 
made the growth they would have made 
had they been grain-fed, but they will 
produce at least $30 worth of good, 
sound pork. Why not keep 50 pigs next 
year and make money enough to go to 
Europe? That’s the way some folks 
figure. With rape and sorghum for the 
pigs to pasture on a part of that scheme 
may be possible. We’ll see. 
Odd Mention. —The cold weather 
came with Dewey, and even the hot re¬ 
ception he received could not scare Jack 
Frost away. The leaves are turning red 
and brown. It’s time to pick the Winter 
apples. The stoves ought to be up . . 
. . . We still have several hundred 
bushels of potatoes in the ground. The 
soil has been so wet that the digger 
would not work. It cannot sift out the 
damp soil, and it clogs. The two-horse 
diggers will go through, but they cover 
too many potatoes. We may have to 
come to hand digging after all. 
This is a great season for nuts. We are 
well filled with chestnuts, hickories and 
walnuts. The children just about half 
live on nuts. The crop is so large that 
there is not much local sale. Towns¬ 
people seem to regard nuts as public 
property.The frost has sent 
the Potato beetles crawling for shelter, 
’they did considerable damage to the 
tubers while they lasted, and next year 
promises a perfect deluge of them. . . 
. . I judge that coal will be higher 
than usual this Winter. It’s time now 
to investigate the fuel supply. We shall 
burn all the wood we can—in the big 
stove and in the open grate. I think 
it will pay to buy coal now. 
The “new baby,” or calf, is thriving 
and making a good growth. We boil the 
same brand of oatmeal for her that we 
give to the children. She gets a small 
quantity of skim-milk and hot oatmeal 
gruel. While we don’t expect her to 
give milk at six months, we know that 
she has all the earmarks of a good cow. 
II. w. c. 
A Maine Report.— One of the most in¬ 
teresting volumes of the year is the four¬ 
teenth annual report of the Maine Experi¬ 
ment Station (Orono). This gives a synop¬ 
sis of the more important work clone at 
the Station. Among other interesting ex¬ 
periments is one designed to' show that 
some crops are able to make good use of 
the crude phosphates. The chemists have 
claimed that the rock phosphates must 
first be dissolved or cut with acid, in order 
to make them available. Experiments 
were conducted with such plants as clover, 
turnips, barley, oats, potatoes and toma¬ 
toes, to see if this dissolving is absolutely 
necessary. To part of the crop dissolved 
rock was applied, while with others differ¬ 
ent kinds of insoluble phosphates were 
used. There were also check plots where 
no phosphate at all Was applied. The re¬ 
sults show that such crops as turnips, 
ruta-bagas and cauliflower gave nearly as 
good results with the crude Florida rock 
as with acid phosphates. It is stated that 
rye grown in New Hampshire gives nearly 
as good results with the crude rock as 
with other phosphates, but most of the 
grains seem to require the dissolved rock. 
The experiment is an interesting one, for 
the time may come when we shall be able 
to let certain crops in the rotation dis¬ 
solve our phosphates for us, and thus save 
the cost of the acid. The volume is full 
of interesting notes on butter making, di¬ 
gestion experiments, horticultural matters 
and soil inoculation. We shall have more 
to say about several of these. 
Alfalfa.— Bulletin No. 61 of the Utah 
Experiment Station (Logan), gives a study 
of Alfalfa. This plant is largely used in 
the West, and has given wonderful results 
in the hands of successful farmers. It is 
now making its way east slowly but 
surely, and promises to be equally valu¬ 
able to our small farmers along this coast. 
This bulletin states that the first cutting 
gave the largest yield, and also the best 
quality. It is usually cut four times, the 
first cutting being the heaviest although 
with plenty of rain in the latter part of 
the season, the last cutting will give a 
large amount of fodder. This bulletin 
seems to prove beyond question the great 
value of Alfalfa as a food for stock. It 
gave remarkable results, not only for fat¬ 
tening steers, but when fed to dairy cows. 
UfAIITCn to handle our com- 
VfHNICU piete line of high- 
grade Lubricating Oils and Greases, 
Boiler Compound, Paints, etc., 
and to canvass the farmers, thrashers, mills, etc., 
for orders for next Spring and Summer delivery. 
Salary or commission. Address with references. 
THE A. F. VOAK OIL CO., Cleveland, Ohio. 
Largest manufacturers of 
Steel Wagon Wheels and 
Handy Truck Wagons in 
America. Guaranteed su¬ 
perior to any other make 
WRITS US 
IVlotsil Wheel Co. 
HAVANA, ILLINOIS 
CHEAP GOOD WHEELS 
make the wagon or vehicle new at a 
mere nominal cost. 
$7.50 buys 4 Buggy Wheels, 7-8 in. Steel Tire 
$8.00 buys 4 Carriage Wheels, 1 In. Steel Tlr# 
IT S CHEAPER THAN REPAIRING. 
In fact the high quality of these wheels 
makes repairing unnecessary. Also furn. 
ish axles and set boxes when so ordered. 
Price list No 3.8 and measuring nilesfree, 
Wilmington Wheel Co., ■ Wilmington, Del. 
. .BeforeBuyingaNew 
Harness 
»eud 5 cts. in stamps to pay pontage on descriptive cat¬ 
alogue 100 styles of single and double (Mtk-fnim«l 
Leather Harness to select from. Sold direct to the 
consumer at wholesale price, w® can oave you nwneyj 
KING HARNESS COMPANY. Mfrs. 
212 Church St., Owego, N. Y. 
Three Persons 
sit a.s easy as two on 
a buggy or cutter seat 
when you use the 
NEW I. D. SEAT. 
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THE NEW 1. I). SEAT CO., Rohrerstown, l’a. 
BUGGIES, 
Surreys, Stanhopes, Phaetons, Driving Wagons and 
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EDWARD W. WALKER CARRIAGE CO., 13 Eighth St., Goshen Ind. 
When you buy a 
Lantern 
first see the word 
DIETZ.” 
Dietz Buckeye Dash Lamp 
(WITH BULL'S EYE LENS ATTACHED TO PLATE) 
This is a Lamp that seems to haste been made exclusively for any 
one of various different duties. As a hand, wall or driving Lamp, 
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87 Laight Street, ESTABLISHED III 1810. NEW YORK. 
