7o6 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
October 30 
the nitrate—at least, the trees immediately put out a 
new growth of fine, healthy foliage. The peaches 
dropped so badly from the Elbertas that we had to do 
but little thinning. 
*• Now as to results : We have graded our peaches 
for market about as follows The largest were put in 
a flat package holding 36 to 40 peaches. The next 
grade were put in a six-basket carrier, holding nearly 
three pecks. The third and fourth grades were put 
in the ordinary half-bushel peach basket. Aboutone- 
half the Elbertas went in the first and second grades, 
the rest in the third. Of the Crosby, very few went 
in the second grade, two-thirds in the third and the 
rest in the fourth. Hill’s Chili graded some better 
than Crosby. Willetts went one-half in first and the 
rest in the second grade. Wheatlands were all firsts 
except a few that were gummy. Globe graded one- 
half firsts, nearly all the rest seconds 
“ As to yield, Elberta on 100 trees, gave 225 bush¬ 
els ; Crosby, 50 trees, 90 bushels ; Willetts, 20 trees, 
five bushels ; Wheatland. 160 trees, 40 bushels ; Globe, 
40 trees, 20 bushels. From this year’s experience, 
we conclude that the Crosby, Hill’s Chili, Early Craw¬ 
ford and Smock, were not thinned enough for profit 
for any season, and not nearly enough for a dry one ; 
that the Elberta, Mountain Rose, Brigden and 
Stevens’s Rareripe, seem to stand a drought better 
than the other varieties ; that 16 feet apart are not 
enough for Smock and Hill’s Chili on our soil with 
good culture ” 
SOME YOUNG OHIO STOCK. 
On almost every farm, the young stock are a source 
of pride and satisfaction. They are the earnest of 
the future, the promise of what is to be. Fig. 
295 shows a group of valuable young stock to 
be found upon a Geauga County farm. They 
are descended from a long line of the best stock 
of Connecticut’s valleys and Berkshire’s hills, 
who found a home in pioneer days among the 
forests and fertile fields of the Western Reserve. 
The name of this quartette of farmer boys is 
Phillips—Harlan aged 14, Wendell 12, Harry 10, 
and Melville 6. They are genuine lovers of the 
farm, having acquired something of a contempt 
for paved streets and brick walls, by sundry 
visits to the great city of Cleveland, which is 
only a short distance from their home. These 
lads raise potatoes, pop-corn, sweet corn, etc , 
and all for their own profit Each has his reg¬ 
ular duties to perform, night and morning, and 
goes about the performance of them without 
being told—an important lesson in any boy’s 
life. They milk the cows, draw the milk to the 
cheese factory, and drive the team to do many 
kinds cf farm work. Ihey have been carefully 
taught how to do their work and have been made to 
understand that they are learning a trade. Last 
spring tbe oldest three beys gathered the sap 
from 500 Sugar maple trees alone. 
A8 there is no sister, they are taught to do 
many kinds of sister-work, and are nimble with 
the broom, the dusting cloth, the dish cloth, 
etc., and can set a table as neatly and expedi¬ 
tiously as most housewives. They almost en¬ 
tirely abjure pies and cake, but with vigorous 
appetites, born of mingled work and play, call lustily 
for potatoes, bread, meat, beans, oatmeal and milk— 
a ration that is just balanced to suit them. They go 
to the country school eight months in the year, and 
are seldom absent and almost never tardy. Their 
craving for sweets is satisfied by a generous allow¬ 
ance of pure maple sugar and syrup throughout 
the year—a product which they help to make—far 
more healthful and nourishing than any confection 
bought at the stores. They scrap some to be sure (as 
what lively boys don’t?), but at 8 o’clock regularly 
every evening, they pair off, two and two, and good- 
naturedly cuddle down in comfortable beds in their 
own room, and sltep the sleep of sound, healthy child- 
hood. ARP 
Yorkers. The fruit they are buying is termed sec¬ 
onds and windfalls, and comprises everything below 
strictly first class shipping stock. They are paying 
25 cents per 100 pounds for such apples as are suitable 
for evaporating, and 10 cents for the very small and 
inferior grades delivered at the bins. Some days they 
receive as high as 1,000 to 1,500 bushels. The work¬ 
ing capacity of their plant is 450 bushels a day. and 
as they began operations about August 15, and will 
continue to November 15, they will buy and prepare 
for market something like 30,000 bushels of such 
apples as have, up to within a very few years, been 
converted into cider or left under the trees to 
rot and mature a crop of insect enemies. This 
evaporator employs 32 hands, and every one, from 
buyer to wood sawyer, soon becomes a hustler, or 
retires. 
The apples are brought from the orchards to the 
bins in wagons, are weighed and then shoveled out 
like corn. In the bins, two men rapidly assort them, 
delivering such fruit as is suitable for evaporating in 
bushel lots to the peelers in an adjoining room and 
dumping the small and inferior &tuff into a separate 
room to be cut into *• chop ” later on. The girls work 
at the paring machines in pairs. One of them, work¬ 
ing her arm like the piston-rod of a locomotive going 
70 miles an hour, pares and cores the apples, and the 
other, with a rapidity of movement that is amazing, 
trims off the specks, rotten spots, etc. The fruit is 
then placed in cases with open, slatted bottoms which 
are slipped into the bleaching tower, in which sul¬ 
phur is kept burning, and they slowly rise to the 
floor above. There they are taken out of the bleacher 
and passed to the slicers, who rapidly cut them with 
sold to manufacturers of apple jack, sparkling cham* 
pagne, etc., tons of them being shipped direct to 
France for this purpose. 
It will be noted that there is no waste about these 
commercial evaporators. Everything is utilized, the 
same as about the large slaughtering and meat-pack¬ 
ing establishments of the West. Herein lies the ad¬ 
vantage of machinery and aggregated capital over the 
farmer who operates on a small scale. These large 
evaporators do business in a wholesale manner, and 
the materials that would have to be wasted by the 
farmer or small operator, nearly pay the cost of run¬ 
ning a large plant. Then they can obtain higher 
prices for their product, because they can fill large 
orders promptly, and because wholesale dealers 
know that a transaction involving 10,000 boxes re¬ 
quires no more time or expense than one of only a 
dozen boxes. 
A short distance away from the evaporator, I passed 
a low shed covered with apples being dried by the sun 
in the “‘good, old-fashioned way”. They were brown 
and shriveled and covered with dust and flies, and I 
couldn’t help contrasting them with the clean, white, 
beautif ally packed fruit I had just seen. Verily, the 
evaporaled apple is as much superior to the old, 
brown, dust-covered, fly-bespecked, leathern dried 
apple, as Jersey cream is to the thin, cerulean milk I 
used to get when I worked for Farmer C'of e*ist in my 
younger days. kUed grundy. 
(To he continued.) 
APPLE GROWING IN EGYPT, ILLINOIS. 
AN EVAPORATED APPLE. 
(Continued from page 689 ) 
Almost every town in the apple celt of Egypt con¬ 
tains one or more evaporators. They are here re¬ 
garded about the same as grain elevators are in the 
corn belt farther north, and it is no uncommon thing 
to see a dozen or more farm wagons loaded with 
apples, lined up waiting a cbance to unload into the 
bins, while all about the buildings is bustle and busi¬ 
ness. As about all these evaporators are similarly 
constructed, a description of one, and its workings 
will suffice to enlighten thousands of people whose 
ideas of commercial evaporators are, to say the least, 
very hazy. 
In the town of Flora, which is situated very near 
the center of the apple belt, are two, both of about 
equal capacity. One of these is operated by two New 
SOME OHIO YOUNG STOCK. Fig. 295. 
the slicing machines into the beautiful rings so 
familiar to most housekeepers. From the slicers they 
go into the drying loft, a room 20x40 feet square, 
with an open slat floor upon which they are spread 
about six inches deep. In the room below this, are 
three furnaces connected with a network of heat¬ 
ing pipes, which carry the heat to every part of 
the slat floor above, and a roomful of apples is 
dried in about 14 hours, being turned three times 
with shovels. 
boon after it is dried, the fruit is packed in boxes, 
50 pounds in a box, two women and one man doing 
this work. The women lay a sheet of fancy paper 
on the inside of what is to be the top of the box, then 
on this, lay the nicest rings so that one laps over the 
other. Three or four layers of these rings are put 
on, covered with another sheet of paper and the box 
set over them and filled and pressed until 50 pounds 
are in it Then the bottom is nailed on, the box 
turned over, and the top nailed down and branded or 
papered. Wnen the top is removed by the retailer or 
consumer, and the paper lifted, there lie the beauti¬ 
ful rings as the packers placed them, clean and 
tempting enough for anybody. 
The parings and cores are not wasted, by a long 
shot. Leading up from the paring room is a tower 
with a furnace at the bottom. The pariDgs are placed 
in slat bottomed boxes, which are slipped into the 
tower, and slowly ascend to an upper floor. By the 
time they reach the top, they are sufficiently dry for 
sacking or barreling. They are sold to jelly manu¬ 
facturers who convert them into the beautiful apple 
jelly sold at the stores. The cores and small apples 
are run through the slicers, dried in the towers, and 
SEPARATOR SKIM-MILK FOR CALVES. 
The Iowa Experiment Station has conducted three 
careful experiments with raising calves on skim-milk 
as it comes from the separator. A few years 
ago, the prevailing system in the West was to 
allow the calf to follow the cow and take all 
the milk. Since then, creameries have been 
established all over the West. The result is 
that the milk has been used for buttermakirg 
and the cow has become too valuable to serve 
as a mere wet-nurse for the calf. Dairying con¬ 
sists in taking the fat out of the milk, as butter. 
Where butter can be made successfully, whole 
milk is too expensive for calf feeding. Tbe 
problem has been to find some cheap fat that 
can be added to the skim-milk so that the calf 
may secure a balanced ration. Rather than feed 
the calf on skim-milk and a cheaper fat. many 
western farmers abandoned calf raising. Tbe 
recent advance in prices of young stock, how¬ 
ever, has shown them the necessity of finding 
some cheap substitute for butter fat. 
The Iowa Station, in its investigations, has 
followed this plan : Average lots of calves of 
uniform breeding and size, are put in pers 
where they can be made comfortable. Skim- 
milk, as it runs warm from the hand separator, 
is fed with various grain rations, calculated to 
supply the fat taken from the milk in butter. 
The calves have a fair allowance of hay, and 
plenty of salt and water. One lot received oil 
meal and milk ; another, oatmeal and milk ; 
another, corn meal with 10 percent of flaxseed ; 
andfstill'another, pure corn meal. As an aver¬ 
age of three experiments, 9,168 pounds of sepa. 
rator milk, 1,728 pounds of hay, and 703 pounds of oil 
meal, produced a gain of 873 pounds, which cost, on 
the average, 2 8 cents per pound. In another lot of 
eight calves, 9,160 pounds of milk, 1,730 pounds of 
hay, 875 pounds of oatmeal, produced a gain of 927 
pounds, at a cost of 2 1 cents a pound. 
Still another lot of eight calves fed 9 168 pounds of 
milk. 1 731 pounds of hay, 772 pounds of corn meal 
and 84 pounds of flaxseed, produced a gain of 925 
pounds at a cost of 2 2 cents a pound. In one lot of 
four calves, 3 759 pounds of milk, 1 484 pounds of hay, 
and 601 pounds of corn meal, produced 509 pounds of 
gain at a cost of two cents a pound These figures 
show that oatmeal is a cheaper calf food than oil 
meal, and more effective in producing a steady growth. 
Dairy authorities are fond of praising oil meal as 
an ideal supplement for skim-milk. It certainly does 
give good results in calf feeding, yet this experiment, 
as well as the practical experience of thousands of 
farmers, shows that oatmeal is as good for feeding, 
while it is usually much cheaper. Eren the pure 
corn meal gave better results than the oil meal; in 
fact, this experiment brings forcibly before us, the 
fact that oatmeal is of all grain food the best 
adapted to the growth of young stock, be that young 
stock human or brute. Prof. Curtiss says that young 
calves are generally inclined to take more readily to 
oil meal than to corn meal and oats, though there is 
little difficulty in getting them to eat any of these 
feeds. He evidently thinks highly of the mixture of 
ground flaxseed and corn meal as additions to tbe 
skim-milk, although flaxseed is very rich and must be 
fed with good judgment. These experiments clearly 
show that calves can be profitably raised on skim- 
