1901 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
4o7 
llopeJarmNoies 
Misi'TT WExVniKK— It still rains! We 
had two good days last week and one 
other that seemed to be trying to be 
good, but the force of habit was too 
strong, and it fell—that is, the rain did. 
We were obliged to start the fires in the 
house, the weather was so cold and dis¬ 
mal. Well, we can’t fit the weather to 
g^it_we shall have to fit the crops to 
suit the weather. When I was a young 
man trying to get through college my 
purse was as empty of cash as May is 
empty of sunshine. I did not have one 
full new suit of clothes all through my 
course. I became the victim or the heir 
of a couple of men in a distant city who 
v/ore their clothes until knees and el¬ 
bows made a deep and permanent im¬ 
pression, and then gave them to my 
mother, who sent them to me. I never 
saw these gentlemen, but the one who 
sent me trousers was a man of girth 
and substance. I could give more dig¬ 
nity to his garments now, but in those 
days they set off my figure about as this 
wet May fits my farm plans. I used to 
pin up the slack at the waist and trim 
off the ends with a pair of shears. Hap¬ 
pily the other man had a liking for 
coats with very long tails or skirts, 
which mercifully left much of my at¬ 
tempt at tailoring to the imagination. I 
didn’t go to see the girls often in those 
days, but I learned some habits of taking 
things as they come which I wouldn’t 
sell for King Edward’s wardrobe. Why 
no, I am not ashamed of the fact I wore 
this cast-off clothing. I cast off the 
habit when I could afford to, and not a 
day before. Far better an old coat than 
a new debt. Par better to wait and 
work with faith that the hard condition 
will wear off at last and give a better fit. 
Faum Is Best. —I thought of all this 
as the cold rain bagged out and hung 
about our farm plans as those old 
clothes used to envelop my limbs. We 
must make our crops fit a little better, 
and hang on until we grow bigger. You 
can’t expect a farmer to spend much 
time over poetry, but some lines by Ed¬ 
win Markham have been I'unning in my 
mind. He went down into Wall Street 
during the recent panic and saw the 
crazy rush and struggle of the stock 
gamblers. Here is part of it: 
Is this a whirl of madmen ravening 
And blowing bubbles in their merriment? 
is Babel come again with shrieking crew 
To eat the dust and drink the roaring wind? 
And all for what? A handful of bright sand 
To buy a shroud w'ith and a"^ length of 
earth? 
Oh, saner are the hearts on stiller ways! 
Thrice happier they who, far from these 
wild hours. 
Grow softly as the apples on a bough. 
Wiser the piowman with his scudding blade. 
Turning a straight, fresh furrow down a 
tie id— 
Wiser the herdman whistiing to his heart, 
in the long sliadows at the break of day— 
Wiser the fisherman with quiet hand 
Slanting his sail against the evening wind. 
I have heard people who ought to 
know say that Markham is not a poet, 
but if what he says here is not true 
there is no truth left. Give me a farm 
paid for and stocked, with family and 
friends about me, and you may take 
Wall Street and all it represents. There 
are not millions enough in the Stock 
Exchange to buy the fun I can have sit¬ 
ting on my old stone wall eating a piece 
of bread and cheese that I have honest¬ 
ly earned. So rain on! As the children 
say; “It is good for grass and grain and 
Grandmother’’—and we can’t stop it. 
Rain Notes. —Mind you now, I am 
not finding fault in relating some of our 
mishaps; I’m telling what happened.We 
thought the rain was surely over, and 
put all hands at work hauling manure 
for the late potatoes. The field is on 
the lower farm, naturally wet and slop¬ 
ing to a little brook. We plastered that 
field thick with fine, well-rotted ma¬ 
nure. Nearly all of our Winter’s supply 
went on that small field. Before 20 fur¬ 
rows could be plowed down came the 
rain again for three days. The nitrates 
were leached out of that manure in quick 
order. By this time they may be feed¬ 
ing the fishes in the Atlantic Ocean. You 
give a .Jersey rain full swing and it will 
undo the work of a cement floor in short 
order. . . . Spraying is a failure 
with us this year. Just exactly at the 
right time a cold rain set in, and lasted 
three days, with showers following. 
Under such conditions spraying does 
little good. I sometimes wonder what 
the spraying “authorities” would do 
with their theories were they put on a 
farm in a season like this, with no sal¬ 
ary except what the crops pay them. At 
the time for spraying the corn ground 
needs plowing, the first potatoes need 
cultivating and a dozen other jobs are 
pressing. It is simply a question of 
which to let go. . . I expected that 
the long wet season would ruin the 
cherry crop, but it has started well with 
a full “setting.” 
Soiling Stock. —We have begun in a 
small way to cut green feed for the 
stock. The rye came first. As soon as 
it was large enough Hugh began to cut 
a small load every night. We fed it to 
cows, horses and pigs. The brood sows 
m.ade good use of it, and it furnished a 
fair share of their food. Cows do not 
eat it readily after it gets hard, though 
Julia, our black cow, cleans it up better 
than the others. There was no trouble 
about making the milk taste when we 
fed the rye just after milking. Our 
Crimson clover is in the rye this year. 
'This proves to be a mistake, for when 
the clover is at its best the rye is too 
hard to feed. The stock pick out the 
clover and leave the rye. I would cut 
and cure the whole crop if it were pos¬ 
sible to dry it, but the rain prevents 
that until the rye is too hard to make 
hay. I’hus we shall lose nearly all the 
feeding value of the clover. Another 
year I shall sow clover by itself and use 
wheat in place of part of the rye. We 
are seeding rape and turnips to feed the 
pigs during June and July, and corn fod- 
dei and sorghum for the cows. This 
soiling has its drawbacks unless you 
keep stock enough to make it a business 
and can put men at it for a fair share 
of the time. It is a sort of nuisance, 
after a hard day’s work in the field, to 
take a scythe and cut fodder for a few 
head of stock. We have a small orchard 
of young trees across the lane from our 
pasture. It is now in rye and clover. 
When these are cut we shall drill fodder 
corn to throw over the fence to the stock. 
Live Stock Notes. —The two young 
grade sows gave us 18 pigs between 
them. Both litters are strong and 
healthy. Every pig is white as snow, 
though the sows ai’e grade Berkshires— 
well marked and nearly solid black! 
While these litters are late I think the 
pigs can be sold to good advantage. If 
not we shall have wastes enough to 
keep them cheaply. . . . We made 
our first sale of purebred stock when 
little Billy Berkshire left the farm. He 
is a good one—all but his tail, which 
fell off to a stub. The three little Berk¬ 
shire sows are not for sale. They are 
good enough to help their mother give 
tone to the Hope Farm Berkshires. 
Billy weighed 31% pounds at six weeks 
old. . . . Our “kicker” Julia has 
subsided. Charlie rigged up a device 
for crowding her into a corner where 
there was nothing to kick about. I al¬ 
ways believed in prohibition. She gives 
her 12 quarts and more per day, but still 
looks out of the corner of her eye when 
she sees a milk pail. One thing about 
Julia is that she never “kicks” about 
her food. Straw, stalks, rye—anything 
that she can grind with her teeth will 
make a grist for milk. She would make 
milk out of what the other cows would 
“kick” about if given them for bedding. 
H. w. c. 
When you write advertisers mention The 
R. N.-Y. and you will get a quick reply and 
“a square deal.” See our guarantee 8th page. 
The Hired Man Again. 
Farm Homes.— The labor and tenant 
problem touches all. I quite agree with 
the tenant plan as against the plan of 
boarding hired help. It is quite enough 
for hired help to know so much of one’s 
private business without having them fa¬ 
miliar with family matters also. It is also 
pleasanter for them to be rid of the “boss” 
part of the time. a. w. 
Connecticut. 
Farm Profits.— I see that the “hired 
man question” still takes space. I have 
thought sometimes that as I was but a 
worker and not a scientific man or some¬ 
thing else but a workingman, my opinions 
did not amount to much; but I see that 
others think about as I do. Yes, i could 
make $1,000 profit on 100 acres of tillable 
land in any part of the United States if I 
had the means to work it properly. Of 
course, it could not be done in the first 
year, ad possibly not in the second, for it 
would take a man one year to learn his 
farm and perhaps another to find out what 
the market demanded and where his mar¬ 
kets are. e. h. 
Plymouth Co., Mass. 
Over-Worked.— The man who thinks to 
get two or three times what he pays for 
out of a hired man or boy might with pro¬ 
priety consider himself a back number. 
In 1846 I worked for such a one, a big 
strong man who in the long Summer days 
drove me from daylight till dark, and got 
as much out of me by his side as he did 
himself, and he rested nearly every day 
from noon till four in the afternoon, while 
I was at work. He gave me about $9 a 
month and board, and used up all the day, 
from up in the morning till bedtime. This 
was before the war; farm wages for men 
were $12 or $13 and board; wages now are 
double what they were then, and board 
more than double. Reasoning people won¬ 
der how any man, even the poorest, can 
work at the wages Michigan Farmer says 
he pays and attempt to be satisfied with it. 
Connecticut. h- 
At First Table. —There is a great differ¬ 
ence in hired men, also in the man who 
hires. I have paid good hands $20 a month 
and board, and was well pleased to get 
good men at that. They should have a 
good house to live in if married. ’ 1 have 
worked for $10 a month when I was 20 and 
21 years old; could not find my equal then 
on the farm. I was out in the southwest¬ 
ern part of Monroe Co., N. Y., when 22, 
and a well-to-do-farmer built a good large 
house and moved in, letting his hired man 
live in the old house. The next Summer 
he said he was going to build a new house 
as good as his own for his hired man and 
keep him as long as he was able to work, 
or as long as they both lived. If my mem¬ 
ory serves me right it was ex-Gov. Brad¬ 
ford, of Connecticut, who, when asked by 
some city friends if he thought it right to 
eat with hired help, said: “My wife and I 
have been talking this matter up, and we 
have come to the conclusion tha^t those 
who do the work should eat at the first 
table.” Is not that right? Good farm 
hands first, or as good as there are. 
Pennsylvania. J. H. J. 
For the land’s sake, use Bowker’s Fer¬ 
tilizers. They enrich the earth.— Adv. 
For All Lame Horses 
whether they have 
spavltitty rlni^honee 
splinta, eiirbe, or 
other fomia of bony 
enlargement, use 
KENDALLS 
SPAVIN 
CURE' 
Cures without a 
blemish as it 
does not blister. 
As a liniment 
for family \ise, 
it has no equal. 
l*riee $1, Six for 
$3. Ask your 
druggist for 
Kendall’s Spavin Cure, also “A Treatise on the 
Horse,” the hook free, or address 
DR. B. J. KENDALL CO., ENOSBURQ FALLS. VT. 
We are the largest manu¬ 
facturers of Steel Wheels 
and Truck. Wagons in the 
World. Write for Catalogue. 
Havana (III.) Metal Wheel Co. 
All Fertilizers 
for truck gardens and early mar¬ 
ket crops should contain frem 3% 
to 10% of 
Nitrate of Soda 
if the object is to develop the earliest 
and best yields. Its effects are instan¬ 
taneous, as all the nitrogenoiis content 
is immediately available for producing 
rapid growth. A postal request will 
procure you free pamphlets and Ua! 
of dealers in Nitrate of Roda, if ad¬ 
dressed to .lolin A. IHyers, 12-0 
John St., New York City 
RUBEROID 
■x'zzx: 
POULTRY-HOUSE! 
ROOFING 
As ft water-proof covering for Poultry- 
I Houses, KUBEROII) has no equal. Keepsl 
the houses cool during the warm weather, 
and warm In Winter, and the chicks dry and | 
1 comfortable. The sun cannot meit it. 
THE STANDARD PAINT GO., 
100 WlUiam Street, 
NEW YORK. 
For Best Roofing 
xif /\nA_Hnlf BAnH 
that will last longer 
than shingles or tin 
at one-half the cost, send **stanip for sample and 
price toU. M. SWEET, 62 Wetmore Ave.,Winsted, Ct 
WHEELS 
FARM WAGONS 
'«^any size wanted, any width of 
tire. iliiliH to lit any nxle. 
No hlackMiiiith’N biliH to pay. 
No tires to reset. Fit your old wagon 
with low steel wheels witli wide 
tires at low price. Oiir catalogue 
tells you how to do it. Address 
EMPIRE MFC. CO., Quincy, III. 
How to Drain Land Profitably. 
On every farm there is prob.ibly some land 
that could be made more productive by under- 
drainage. Properly drained land can always 
he worked earlier, and more profitably. The 
be.st and most 
e'-onomical way 
to drain is e.x- 
plained in the 
book, “Benefits of Drainage and How to Drain,” 
which is sent/re« by JOHN H. JACKSON, 
76 Third Avenue, Albany, N Y. 
Cash Supply & Mfg. Co., Dept. 6, 
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HAILED FREll 
if you. answer! 
4 questions: 
*■11 ' — ' . - -M 
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