1897 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
355 
is to cause all weed seeds within germinating dis¬ 
tance of the surface to grow and be killed. It may 
then be sown broadcast, but is much better sown in 
drills from 24 to 30 inches apart, and 1% pound of 
seed to the acre. When the ground is so fitted, once 
cultivating and no hoeing will be enough to insure a 
good crop, and the rape will smother out all other 
plants. Two hundred pounds each of bone Hour and 
muriate of potash per acre will have a wonderful 
effect in giving it a strong start, and making a big 
yield. If not planted before June 20, in six weeks it 
will be ready to turn in the stock, and can be fed on 
same field until frozen solid, as it will start up from 
the root a fresh growth as fast as eaten. 
When pasturing on rape, sheep should have an old 
summer pasture on which to run and graze, and also 
have plenty of salt always accessible, and it is very 
much better to feed them a little wheat or rye bran 
every day as a corrective to so much succulence. 
They should never be turned at first upon rape when 
it is wet, either with dew or rain, and never with 
empty stomachs. It is better to take them from a 
pasture in the afternoon and put them in the rape 
field for only one hour the first day. The next day 
after filling themselves on another pasture, they may 
be turned upon the rape after dinner, and if it be so 
arranged that they can go upon an old pasture field 
at will, they will need no further looking after except 
as to salt and dry food. Sheep, especially lambs, 
should not be confined to a rape field, as an exclusive 
diet of rape is very likely to give them the scours, 
and I have seen them sicken and die from this cause. 
As to saving it for winter fodder, it is no more feasi¬ 
ble than to try to make fodder out of a heavy growth 
of cabbage. Its chief and only value is as a late 
summer and fall feed. I have seen sheep digging it 
out of the snow in December and doing well on it. 
If H. F. will try an acre or two of rape, he will never 
again be without it. j. s woodward. 
Niagara Co., N. Y. 
GROWING AND FEEDING PUMPKINS. 
AI.L STOCK FOND OF THEM. 
For a number of years, it has been our custom to 
try to grow a crop of pumpkins with the corn. Grown 
in this way, they are a very uncertain crop. Some¬ 
times the crop is almost an entire failure, and again 
a success. In 1895, from 38 acres of corn, we gathered 
only three loads of pumpkins, and, of course, when 
the crop is so light, they are mostly of poor quality. 
In 1890, from 44 acres, we gathered 76 wagon-loads, 
that would average about 2,200 pounds per load, mak¬ 
ing upwards of 80 tons. As all the land was sown to 
wheat and rye after the corn was in the shock, all 
the pumpkins must be gathered before the seeding is 
done. With a driver, two of us would load and unload 
14 to 15 loads per day. 
We have long since learned that, if we wish a crop 
of pumpkins in corn, we must be liberal with seed at 
planting, and last year, I think that we used 
between two and three gallons of seed. We 
plant corn with a two-horse planter ; each grain 
box holds about one peck of corn, and we put 
in seven quarts of corn and one quart of 
pumpkin seeds, mixing them well with the 
corn. If they sprout and start well, they may 
appear thick at first, but some are destroyed 
in cultivating the corn, and the bugs get a good 
share, so that we never have them too thick in 
the end. On the heavily manured fields last 
year, the crop was more evenly distributed than 
on a field that had not been plowed for several 
years and had not been manured. On the 
richer, low-lying parts of this field, we got 
some of the largest; on the thinner part of the 
field, the crop was very light. Readers may 
wonder how we seeded the land with all these 
pumpkin vines over it. A 20-inch disk harrow 
lapping half way cut them to pieces so com¬ 
pletely that they were very little trouble to us 
when using the drill. 
We always plant pumpkins with all the corn 
planted. Last year, we hoped to sell the surplus 
to the canning factory, but on our own account, we 
failed to make a sale, because the factory owners 
thought ours were not the right kind. It came about 
that two car-loads were topped out with our pump¬ 
kins, and they proved to be the finest they ever bought. 
Rut as the demand was limited, only four wagon¬ 
loads went that way, and they to fill out cars for other 
parties. We sold and gave away about one-third of 
the crop. The remainder, as many as possible, were 
consumed on the farm. Nearly all the stock on the 
farm eat them. Five or six horses eat them in great 
quantities. The three milch cows and heifer have 
all they wish, and they seem never to tire of them. 
We commenced feeding them the last week in 
August, first those that grew between the corn and 
the fence, where they had sun and air to ripen them 
early. Years ago, when we had a “ boom ” crop, we 
tried sheltering them in a long, double-sided rail 
pen, the sides filled with straw and the top covered 
with straw. In that way, we kept them till near 
Christmas; since that, we have piled them out of 
doors, and aimed to feed them out by the time freez¬ 
ing weather came. It was our intention to build a 
rail house protected with fodder for some of the best, 
but the wet weather crowded other work so much 
that we were not able to get it done. All the time 
after they were ripe, our hogs had all they could con¬ 
sume. 
We had five brood sows and a male hog in a clover 
pasture to themselves ; they ate a 30-bushel wagon- 
box full of pumpkins per week, fed twice a day 
thrown over a staked and ridered rail fence ; those 
SOME PUMPKINS. Fio. 157. 
that did not burst open in the fall, were cut with a corn 
knife. We aimed to feed them about what they 
would eat up clean before leaving the feeding 
grounds. The proper way to feed pumpkins to fat¬ 
ten hogs is to feed the pumpkins first and then the 
corn. The pumpkins do not spoil their appetites for 
corn, but corn would for the pumpkins. I think that, 
by feeding pumpkins, we get more corn consumed 
than we could without them, so we are the gainers 
by what the pumpkins put on and the increased 
amount of corn digested on their account. As illus¬ 
trated at Fig. 158, the pumpkins are on the side of 
the temporary fence next the corn field, the hogs are 
in a clover field that will be plowed for corn next 
year. They do much better having the run of the 
clover field than they would if confined to corn and 
pumpkins, and kept in a small lot. Sows that are 
suckling pigs get pumpkins in quantity and a light 
feed of slop, but no corn ; the pigs get corn in their 
wanderings and are very fat. With full feeds of corn 
and pumpkins without slop or grass, both sows and 
pigs would get too fat, which would be a mistake. 
PUMPKIN HANDY FOR HOG FEEDING. Fig. 158. 
While the pumpkins are mostly water, it is in a 
shape that pleases the pig wonderfully well. The 
solids are, in the main, carbohydrates and tend to 
fatten, hence they should not be fed to young pigs 
with too heavy quantities of grain. When we go to 
seed them, we always carry a corn knife to cut them 
open ; a spade is an excellent tool for this purpose. 
We never remove the seeds, because the hogs and 
cows Hire them best, and we are certain that they do 
no harm. When cows are fed pumpkins, they dry up, 
because the grass is short or else because they lay on 
fat too fast. Hogs eat them better when fresh cut; 
if too many are fed, they eat out the seeds and strings 
and leave the solid part; and where this is made stale 
by lying in the sun and air a while, they are slow to 
return to it. When we wish to take out the seeds to 
save, we give the pumpkins a few jolts on the ground, 
turning them over while doing it; then when cut, 
the seeds will be found separated from the strings, 
and are easily washed. 
The canning factory previous to last year, paid 
from $2 25 to $3 25 per ton; last year, they bought 
them delivered on the cars at my station for $1.30 per 
ton—not a very encouraging price, but better than 
let them go to waste. The poultry also had their 
share. Flat pumpkins were selected, cut open and 
placed with the flesh part up—and the chickens con¬ 
sumed all but the rinds. I do not know of any crop 
we could have grown that would have suited us so 
well for all the stock on the farm. We made no 
effort to teach the horses to eat them ; possibly they 
thought stolen fruit the sweetest, as they ate them 
mostly by reaching across the fence. 
Ohio. _ JOHN M. JAMISON. 
"AMERICAN FARM HELP." 
THE LABOR PROBLEM IN C0NNF.CTICUT. 
The unskilled labor problem, although still difficult 
enough, is not so troublesome to the farmers in this 
locality as it was 10 or 15 years ago. Then, pilgrim¬ 
ages to Greenwich St., New York, intelligence offices, 
by rail or boat, were the order of the day from April 
to October. In those offices, the policy of bullying 
and double dealing was a fine art. Wages of men 
engaged there did not rule high, but there were car 
fares, office fees, and dinners to be counted in. Of 
course, part came out of the employee, if he staid his 
month out; but the farmer was never sure whether, 
after all the expenses of importation, he would stay 
longer than till next morning. Cases of professional 
repeating were not infrequent, the man going 
directly back to the city office to hire out over again, 
in collusion, no doubt, with the keeper of the office. 
Lately, many Polish families have settled hereabouts, 
and each Polish house becomes a boarding place 
where the farmer can, generally, pick up common 
labor by the day or month. The quality ranges wide, 
but the expense of changing is so much less than by 
the Greenwich St. plan that it is on the whole an 
improvement. 
Skilled American farm labor is scarcer, and, of 
course, higher; but locality and kind of work, re¬ 
garding which the American is growing more par¬ 
ticular has considerable to do with the supply. In 
the 50-mile radius of New York where I live, popula¬ 
tion is dense enough to make the section more 
socially attractive than in more thinly populated 
country districts. We have twice advertised for a 
skilled man in a journal widely taken in New Eng¬ 
land, and received each time about 30 answers from 
New England and New York State at wages from $18 
to $25 per month with board. The class of applicants 
was quite satisfactory as far as one could judge. One 
was an Indian graduate from Carlisle. That would 
come under the head of American farm help, would 
it not ? A boy in the family who sleeps with the 
hired man, and whose ideas of Indians have 
much to do with scalps and tomahawks, was 
aghast at the employment of this applicant. 
The Indian, however, was finally passed over 
on other grounds. In this section, the imported 
skilled American takes more kindly to dairying 
than to the truck or vegetable farm. I am 
dairying, and have been more suc¬ 
cessful with skilled Americans than my neigh¬ 
bors have been who are engaged in vegetable 
and truck growing. They do better with good 
grades of foreign help. The eastern European 
likes crawling in the dirt better than the aver¬ 
age American who has not grown up in that 
line of work. In summer, foreign help ranges 
from $12 to $16 per month and board, generally 
sleeping in some comfortable outbuilding. In 
winter, he will work for $5 or $10 per month. 
The American gets about $5 more than the 
summer wages, with a small reduction in 
winter. With the small farmer, also, he is a 
member of the family at the table and, perhaps, 
in the pew in church. 
Farm wages, as inmost salaried situations, are 
nearly what they were years ago, when a dollar would 
not go as far as it will now. The wage earner is cor¬ 
respondingly more prosperous than his employer, 
whether he be farmer, tradesman, or manufacturer. 
In this section, for three or four years, farmers have 
but just paid expenses. The hired man, on the con¬ 
trary, has been laying up a good sum of money right 
along, doing so well, in fact, that he is soon able to 
buy a farm for himself, and learn that eternal worry 
is the price of liberty. There are a number of such 
cases within my own knowledge. Polish help by the 
day can, generally, be procured at $1 or $1.25 per day. 
If these men have no families, they live with a Polish 
family, buying their own provisions and hiring them 
cooked by the Polish women. American help by the 
day demands $1.50. Some farmers, tired of boarding 
