Vol. LXII1. No. 2844 NEW YORK, JULY 30, 1904. $1 PER YEAR. 
A WOMAN'S BUSY DAY 
On a New York Farm. 
As the housewife wakens at the early dawn her mind 
involuntarily goes over the duties of the day. This is 
one of her busy days, and there arc no moments for 
idling. Her toilet is not an elaborate one, and while 
opening the doors and windows for the airing, she looks 
across the beautiful country and gets fresh inspiration 
from the pure air and bright sunshine, and with a silent 
prayer of thankfulness asking guidance for the day, 
she is ready for the multitude of duties. What shall 
we have for breakfast? Coffee, cereal with cream, and 
there is the delicious ham with plenty of fresh eggs, 
carefully gathered the day before, nice cookies and some 
kind of fruit. The milk and butter reeptire first atten¬ 
tion, while the morning is still cool. The cream is soon 
taken from the milk; the butter, which has been care¬ 
fully worked either packed in jars or made into neat 
packages, and the cream made ready for the morning 
churning. In our home there arc no ser¬ 
vants, so occasionally the other half lends a 
helping hand at the churn, but usually his 
time is too precious out among the weeds 
• or in the harvest field to listen to many 
calls from the kitchen. He is more likely far 
out in the corn, Fig. 250. 
We must make some preparation for din¬ 
ner. We usually have two kinds of vegeta¬ 
bles, and if tomatoes are ripe we are fond 
of them this way: Peel and slice large ripe 
ones, put a layer in the dish you wish to 
serve them in, then add a layer of onions 
sliced very thin, sprinkle with salt, then an¬ 
other layer of tomatoes, and so on till the 
dish is full. Put them where very cold an 
hour or two before serving. To-day we will 
have string beans, and when cooking the 
supply for dinner we will add a few whole 
ones to be put in cans and covered with a 
sweetened spiced vinegar for next Winter’s 
use. We use beets the same way. The 
roast of beef must go in early to be thor¬ 
oughly done. For dessert a chocolate pud¬ 
ding, of which we are so fond. To one quart- boiling 
milk add four tablespoonfuls each of grated chocolate, 
sugar and cornstarch, stirred with a little of the cold 
milk; boil till it thickens. Serve with sweetened cream 
flavored with vanilla. We will make some sauce from 
our Early Transparent apples for our tea, and boil some 
of the Sweet Harvest, which when cold and served 
with cream make a very appetizing dish. And now, 
when we make a poverty cake with lemon filling our 
three meals for the day will be provided. I will add 
my recipe for the cake; it is so easily made: One cup¬ 
ful sugar; cupful flour. Break into a cup one egg, 
add to this a piece of butter the size of an egg, then 
fill the cup with lukewarm water. Use two tea¬ 
spoonfuls baking' powder, and salt, for three layers. 
Filling: One egg, one-half cupful sugar, one-half cup¬ 
ful milk, two-thirds tablespoonful Hour; when cooked 
add one grated lemon. Before noon we must surely find 
time to finish the few pieces left over from yesterday’s 
ironing. We like to economize fuel, so we will do 
this while the meat is roasting. Perhaps every wrinkle 
will not be out of the sheets, but what matters? They 
are sweet and clean. We have one great help—a con¬ 
venient kitchen—a picture of which is shown at Fig. 
249. At noon we must not forget to set the bread for 
to-morrow’s baking, and atter dinner we will pick the 
berries that have ripened and put them in cans, pour 
boiling syrup over them, seal them, and drop the cans 
into a boiler of hot water, letting them stand till cold. 
How delicious they will be for next Winter’s use. The 
sweeping and dusting will not be very thoroughly done 
to-day, as that belongs to Friday. The beds having 
been made and rooms put in order there is a little time 
for the few stitches that are always required after the 
week’s wash, and then it is time for tea, which I think 
we enjoy most, being nearer the resting time. Our bill 
of fare for this meal, beside the sauce, apple and cake, 
will be creamed potatoes, soft-boiled eggs, jelly, pickles, 
and lettuce, with homemade bread and butter. 
After tea we gather the cucumbers for pickles. I 
wish you would try my way of making them; I feel 
sure you would like them. Scald the cucumbers twice 
and have them cold and dry when put into one gallon 
vinegar, to which has previously been added one small 
teacupful salt, one large teacupful sugar, one cup¬ 
ful grated horse radish, three tablespoonfuls ground 
mustard, two of alum. Do not heat this, and keep add¬ 
ing cucumbers as you get them. I have said nothing 
about the washing of dishes from the dairy, the -cook¬ 
ing, and the three meals which every housewife spends 
so many hours daily caring for, and to most of whom 
the task looks so disagreeable even on paper. For 
most of the Summer we have been five in family, and 
we have had many bushels of different kinds of fruit, 
currants, berries, cherries and plums, of which I have 
found time to pick my share. Fig. 248 shows part of 
the cans which carry the fruit over Winter. But when 
this is all done there is still the hour for reading and 
rest before bedtime. I said at first this was a busy 
day, but as 1 think it over most of them are busy ones, 
but work makes the days brighter and happier, and I 
firmly believe the farmers’ wives have more time and 
opportunity for reading and pleasure, with an occa¬ 
sional outing, than any other laboring woman. There 
are numberless little duties that each of us perform 
daily that cannot be mentioned. Some one says: “Aren’t 
you very tired and discouraged with this monotonous 
round of duties continually staring you in the face?” 
Tired? Yes, weariness comes to all workers, but 
surely there is no cause for discouragement. It is the 
broadest, most health-giving work one can do. We 
need not be tied down to it, either in body or mind. 
We can be what we choose. nettie e. Rowland. 
R. N.-Y.—Such an array of canned fruit as is shown 
at Fig. 248, next page, makes a pleasant and effective 
sugar coating for zero weather, biting winds and the 
other accompaniments of a long, hard Winter. The 
statement that “we can be what we choose” may be 
disputed by some to whom the work of the kitchen or 
farm seems drudgery. There are cases where it is really 
so, where the housework is done at a great disadvantage 
through lack of kitchen conveniences, and where the 
farm is in the clutches of a mortgage that is squeezing 
the fertility out of the land and the courage and life out 
of its owner. But in very many instances the limitations 
which we find upon our lives are those of our own 
making, so that the assertion that we can be what we 
choose comes nearer being an unqualified truth than 
might at first app ear. 
MORE ABOUT TILE DRAINING. 
Can a ditcher, however experienced, be trusted to 
make the grade at the bottom of a ditch without the 
level that will be all right for laying tile? It has been 
said that a man with a shovel who is used to the work 
and has water to work in is better than an engineer and 
his level. A dependence upon water, however, has 
its drawbacks. It may be that the workmen dislike to 
work in the mud, and certainly they can’t make, under 
the circumstances the final groove which is to receive 
the tile so regular or so firm. It may not 
be convenient to do the work when the ground 
is saturated with water, and few would care 
to follow the suggestion of a noted agri¬ 
cultural writer to carry a few barrels of 
water to throw in the finished ditch to see 
whether it would work or not. And then 
again, when there is water no ditcher is to 
be trusted to get the minimum of fall that is 
possible to use. Fie will rise too fast, as the 
writer has repeatedly seen in practice. Where 
there is plenty of fall and where operations 
are limited, no leveling is needed, but in 
other cases it will be money well spent to 
employ a practical engineer to stake and 
level the various lines and mark the depth of 
cut on each stake. Under-draining with tile 
is expensive work, and when well done is in 
the nature of a permanent of the farm; too 
much pains cannot be taken with it. A fault 
in the grade line may cause sediment to 
choke the tile, and thus make useless a lot of 
work and expense. A bottom cut after a 
string connecting marked stakes will some¬ 
times save enough in useless dirt thrown out to pay 
the cost of having it leveled by one who has had experi¬ 
ence in this particular line of business. There is no 
sort of work where the old saying about being sure one 
is right before going ahead is more applicable. The 
untrained and unaided eye is not to be depended upon 
for laying out a grade. The surveyor’s instruments will 
sometimes show that a field can be drained with less 
work than the eye would estimate, and thus encourage 
starting a job which might otherwise be long delayed. 
DIGGING THE DITCH.’—For digging ditches which 
are to receive tile special tools arc required, and if there 
are no professional ditchers in the vicinity the farmer 
will have to get the tools and instruct the helpers in 
their use. Sometimes the first foot of earth can be 
taken out to advantage with a plow, but care should 
be exercised to get the furrows straight. Long narrow 
spades with slightly curved blades are made especially 
for ditching. After the plow is used if it is thought of 
advantage a line is stretched from stake to stake about 
16 inches to one side of the center line of the ditch, and 
at such heights at each stake so that the line will be 
parallel to the bottom of the ditch when it is finished. 
A ditch of 2 l /> to three feet depth may not be wider 
than one foot at the top if done by hand, for it is made 
as narrow as possible to avoid the throwing of dirt un¬ 
necessarily. The workmen are trained to cut the walls 
straight, with an even slope to the bottom, so as to 
leave a straight line along the bottom to receive the 
tile. In finishing the bottom the grade, a measuring 
BROWN SWISS COW MASCOTT. Fig. 247. See Page 583. 
