1899 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
835 
HOPE FARM NOTES. 
Stimulating Weeds. —A few weeks 
ago I spoke of a field in which the wild 
carrots had gone to seed. My idea was 
to burn it over before plowing. Now I 
get this characteristic letter from our 
old friend, J. H. Hale: 
Say, you fool farmer, don’t burn wild 
carrot, grass and weeds. Plow them all 
under. You want all that weed seed as a 
stimulus to better culture. Burn all your 
trash under ground. 
This note was dated on Sunday. If 
Brother Hale takes Hope Farm Notes 
for his Sunday reading there is some 
hope for him yet. “Fool farmer!” The 
fact that I have had that name applied 
to me before leads me to think that 
there may be something in it. This 
scheme of plowing under weed seed in 
order to stimulate better culture beats 
anything I ever heard before. Charlie 
and Uncle Ed have the nightmare now, 
with gigantic weeds and fierce-toothed 
cultivators chasing them in dreams. We 
have all heard of the warts on the clover 
roots that get nitrogen out of the air. 
Brother Hale seems to think that warts 
on the cultivator handles will get nitro¬ 
gen out of the heir or the hired man. 
He may be right in saying that wild- 
carrot seed will stimulate fertility. I’ll 
guarantee, however, that he would get 
mighty few votes at Hope Farm if he 
ran for office next June or July. 
Fall Plowing. —The horses are hard 
at work every fit day turning over the 
sod on our back fields. We have also 
plowed one small field near the house, 
where we expect to have a fruit garden. 
The field has been in sod for several 
years. We have not yet set any straw¬ 
berries on the new place. This old sod 
is fairly alive with White grubs, and it 
would be folly to set strawberry plants 
in it. I have found a small bed in what 
was evidently an old garden, and this 
will be trimmed up for next year’s fruit¬ 
ing. One reason why I am now so anx¬ 
ious to rip up all this old sod is because 
this will destroy millions of these grubs. 
As I understand it, these grubs feed on 
the grass roots until about November 1, 
or until severe weather. Then they go 
deeper into the ground, and make little 
cells in which they pass the Winter. 
They come up the following May, and 
go at the roots again. An early Fall 
plowing would not prove so effective, 
because the grubs might not have made 
their Winter quarters, and 'in that case 
would go down after the plowing and be 
secure. 
Kill the Giuibs. —To plow and stir 
the ground after they have made their 
cells is another thing. After they are 
comfortably settled for the Winter, and 
are shaken up by the plow, they do not 
seem to have sense enough to make new 
cells. They are like some men, who 
can do one thing in one way only. 
When that single plan is upset they are 
all at sea. If the grubs can get deep in 
the ground it doesn’t matter much if the 
soil around them freezes solid, so long 
as there are not changes of freezing and 
thawing. In an open Winter, where 
there are extremes of cold and heat, 
more insects are killed than during a 
Winter when the ground stays frozen. 
When we turn the grubs up near the top 
of the soil the open and shut of the soil, 
caused by the frost, is too much for 
them. The same thing is true of wire- 
worms. Our soil is full of these pests, 
and late Fall plowing will destroy mil¬ 
lions of them, I hope. The same action 
that destroys the insects opens the soil, 
kills grass roots and lets in the water 
and air. 
Next Year’s Garden. —I have told 
how, in former years, Hope Farm was 
used as a boarding place for city horses. 
At times there were 25 or 30 horses on 
the farm at pasture, and well fed on 
grain. They left the soil as rich as 
gold, but as on other stock farms, they 
crowded out the gardens with sod. 
Back of the main barn is a great yard 
or pen surrounded by a high, strong 
fence. It was probably used for a 
breeding pen, and the weeds grew 10 
feet high in it this year, so strong is 
the soil. We have cleaned it up for 
next year’s garden. Lima beans, and 
cabbage and sweet corn will soon take 
the fertility out of that breeding pen. 
It will be plowed this Fall with a one- 
horse plow and stirred deep next Spring. 
After garden crops have had their fill, I 
hope to keep pigs in the pen through 
the Winter, and then use it again for a 
garden. 
Apple Eating. —“Well, Mother, are 
there any apples in the house?” 
“No, I think the children must have 
eaten the last one!” 
That is about the usual dialogue at 
Hope Farm at 9.30 p. m. A basket of 
apples seems to vanish like smoke be¬ 
fore our folks, and a night trip to the 
shed where the apples are kept must be 
made if we are to take our dose of ap¬ 
ples to bed with us. It was a cold, raw, 
uncomfortable night as I came in with 
my basket of fruit. The lights in the 
windows of near neighbors had gone out 
—but far across the valley a farmhouse 
window was aglow. The stock were all 
safe and warm. The windmill stood up 
like a long skeleton as I passed it. The 
white stones along the driveway seemed 
like crawling ghosts. The curtain shut 
all the cold and gloom out of Hope 
Farm. The big Rochester lamp was on 
the table, and a smaller hand lamp on 
the mantel. Inside the big wood stove 
the top of one of the Madame’s White- 
oak trees was throwing out a glorious 
heat, with just enough of snap and 
crackle to the cheerful. Upstairs, the 
Bud, the Graft, anu the two Scions were 
dreaming of to-morrow’s play and 
duties. Grandmother had been looking 
for W. C. T. U. news in the county 
paper. It must have been somewhat 
dull, for she had begun to nod. Aunt 
Patience had gone to bed. Uncle Ed 
had finished his pipe and was about 
ready to follow her. Charlie was so 
busy reading The Man With the Iron 
Mask that he forgot it was past bed¬ 
time. The Cutting was studying her 
lessons for the next day, and her sister, 
the Sprout, was reading the Youth’s 
Companion. The Madame had been 
writing in her diary, but had stopped to 
work a problem in algebra for the Cut¬ 
ting. The two cats were dozing by the 
stove, and the dog lay on the mat out¬ 
side the door, with one watchful eye 
open. The darkness brooded on the 
rocky hills back of us, and the cold, wet, 
loneliness stood guard over Hope Farm, 
but we didn’t care—it couldn’t get in¬ 
side the house. I had barely time to 
finish my apples before “the clock 
struck the hour for retiring.” The cats 
were put out, the doors locked, the fires 
shaken down, and we were soon in the 
same class with the Bud, Graft and 
Scions. 
Odd Mention. —We are pleased, thus 
far, with our drilled well. The water is 
very pure and cold. We hear so much 
about drainage into surface wells that 
we feel glad to think that our water 
supply comes from beneath 100 feet of 
solid rock. Not many germs can get 
through that.Charlie thinks 
that the Scriptural advice to keep your 
eyes in front when you take hold of the 
plow will apply well to this farm. Let 
a man “look back” as his plow point 
strikes a stone, and he will, most likely, 
bieak a rib.Our pigs are 
thriving and growing fast. We have 
one pig now a year old, which we have 
purposely fed on house slop and wastes 
only. He weighs a scant 100 pounds. 
He cost $2.50, and his food has not cost 
25 cents in cash. Would it have paid to 
give him $7.50 worth of grain and more 
than doubled his weight? Would it 
have paid to keep him in clover or rape, 
with a dollar’s worth of bran? I say 
yes, with a capital Y to the last ques¬ 
tion. When I get the exact figures I will 
tell the whole story.Experi¬ 
ments show that when skim-milk is fed 
to little pigs with grain, there is al¬ 
ways a gain out of all proportion to the 
supposed feeding value of the milk. 
Our little humans show the value of 
skim-milk, though we can’t keep one of 
them without it for a “check.” 
H. W. C. 
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