1901 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
631 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Giving Advice. —Among the letters 
recently received is one containing the 
following: 
You are constanily advising others how 
to manage a farm with apparently good 
advice, and at the same time recording 
your failures with apologies and excuses 
that don’t excuse. You approve the Clark 
grass method—you tried it—you did not get 
Mr. Clark’s result. Reason, your fields 
are not adapted to the method, or some¬ 
thing similar. You should have known 
this before trial was made. Again, you 
say "There is more work on the farm than 
can properly be done’’—surely a condition 
resulting from bad management. Write 
up one crop that you have ever been suc¬ 
cessful with. i. e., that paid for its cost 
and showed a profit, and I am sure all 
your mistakes will be forgiven. h. h. 
Now this gentleman may have seen a 
farm from the windows of a railroad 
train, or perhaps he has read some of 
the articles written by men who farm 
on paper. It is true that several years 
ago I was so full of advice that a good 
deal of it ran over and hit others a hard 
whack. Since then I am frank to say 
that I have tested some of these bits of 
easy advice with sweat-stained dollars 
—and they have shrunk! Which? Why, 
both dollars and advice. That is why I 
give a fair report of many of our fail¬ 
ures. All farmers make mistakes, and 
all fail with some crop aJt one time or 
another. Some farmers take the records 
of such failures out in the back yard 
and bury them—then they put a mon¬ 
ument over the grave with "Success” 
written on it. As a rule, the dead do not 
come back to dispute their epitaph. We 
don’t try that at Hope Farm, for we 
don’t pretend to be model farmers. 
Some Failukes. —Yes, I certainly do 
approve the “Clark” grass culture. 
Correct—we did not raise as much grass 
as Mr. Clark does, yet I am quite satis¬ 
fied that we cuit the heaviest crop of 
grass that ever was taken from the fields 
where we tried it. Ought to have known 
we couldn’t do it? I am not a prophet 
or a mind reader. As we have two fields 
well stocked with grass and good for 
some years I am not going to complain. 
I think our trials have made clear the 
chief point about Mr. Clark’s method— 
you must have certain conditions of soil 
and location just right before you can 
hope to raise grass. You can’t any more 
raise “Clark” grass on a rocky hillside 
than you can make perfect music on a 
piano with half the strings out of 
tune. That is no reason why one should 
keep the hillside in weeds or the piano 
shut tight.Yes, ever since 
June 1 we have had more work on the 
farm than could properly be done. The 
wet season is responsible for that. We 
had our plans laid with great care, but 
the constant rains have washed all the 
stiffness out of them. Our friend seems 
to have an idea that drenching rains on 
a heavy soil will kill weeds and make 
the cultivator work easier. It would do 
me lots of good to see this man take 
the mud out of our cornfield, the blight 
out of the potatoes and Lima beans or 
make the sweet corn ear and the toma¬ 
toes and melons ripen by “good -man¬ 
agement.” My experience is that sun¬ 
shine is needed for these things, but it 
appears that I am wrong. 
Crops that Pay. —My apple crop has 
paid a good profit. The early orchard 
has given a good crop of oats, nearly 
$115 worth of apples, and now has a 
heavy seeding of clover and Orchard 
grass. I do not believe that the apples 
from that orchard averaged $20 a year 
for the 10 years before we started to 
brace it up. Our pig department has 
paid well. I have paid less than $40 for 
purebred stock—the rest are grades 
raised very cheaply on refuse and a lit¬ 
tle grain. We have sold nearly $50 
worth of pigs, besides eating $25 worth 
more, and if a man were to offer me 
$125 for the stock now on hand I should 
laugh—not at him but at his offer! The 
cost of raising these pigs is light, be¬ 
cause we feed quantities of refuse that 
are not salable until they are made into 
pork. In the last five years we have 
made a good profit on two crops of po¬ 
tatoes, and come out about even on two 
more. This year’s crop is as yet a mys¬ 
tery. I first expected a big crop, though 
luckily I didn’t plan to buy a new car¬ 
riage on the strength of it. I judged the 
crop by the tops. When I began to dig 
we concluded that there would be no 
crop at all, and we began to take better 
care of the strawberries in the hope of 
making it up next year. Now the 
chances are for a fair crop after all, and 
the high prices may make a profit. 
Every good farmer knows that farming 
is not a business to be judged by any 
single year, but rather by a series of 
years. Take a crop of wheat. The Hes¬ 
sian fiy may ruin it so that the grain 
will not pay for the fertilizer, to say 
nothing of labor and rent of land. Yet 
that crop may not be a failure, because 
the clover may be so fine that it will 
show results in half a dozen following 
crops. I am starting a peacn orchard 
on the Stringfellow plan. It has cost 
me some little money, and won’t pay a 
dollar for two years anyway. It may 
prove a fanure after all, but even if I 
never get a cent out of it I believe it 
will teach lessons that will be mighty 
profitable. My farm is an old one, and 
it takes longer to make such tough old 
soil yield a profit than it does to make 
an old dog forget his bad tricks. 
Farm Notes. —I have to think of J. 
Whitcomb Riley’s lines: 
An’ all the corn that’s wallered down 
Will elbow up again. 
We had rain after rain and cloud after 
cloud until the fodder corn first went 
down on its knees and there rolled over 
on its back. Why, it was so thin and 
bloodless that the cows wouldn’t eat it. 
Then all of a sudden the sun pulled off 
its coat, jumped into the northwest and 
booted those miserable clouds right and 
left. It left them so weak that they 
gave us a week of bright sunshine. It 
was good to watch that corn. After one 
sunny day a few stalks started up here 
and there in a half-hearted way. They 
seemed to say: “We have been fooled a 
good many times this Summer, Mr. Sun. 
If you mean business this time, say so, 
and we’ll try again. If you are not man 
enough to hold the fort—we’ll stay 
down.” The sun assured them in some 
way that he meant business, and they 
“elbowed up” with a will. Some of the 
corn planted on July 6 is already mak¬ 
ing tassels. The week’s sunshine seems 
to have saved our main crop of corn. 
As we all know, this was planted very 
late, but it is earing well, and the 
chances are now good for more grain per 
acre than we had last year. 
The second cutting of grass will be a 
good one. On these two “Clark” grass 
fields the Red-top made a great show¬ 
ing at first, and I feared for the Tim¬ 
othy. In this second growth the Tim¬ 
othy seems to have come with a rush, 
while the Red-top is taking a vacation. 
We are now only waiting for the prom¬ 
ise of two or three sunny days to cut all 
the late grass.We have a 
little handicap this Fall in the shape of 
a sore horse. Old Frank has not been 
well for some time, and now his shoulder 
is sore. This has been a hard season for 
the farm team on a heavy and hiily 
farm. They would stand still for days 
in a rainy time, and then be forced to 
violent exertion when a few days or 
hours of sunshine came. It is like a 
leak in the engine boiler when old 
Frank flinches at the plow. 
Potatoes. —At one time I about con¬ 
cluded that if our six acres gave us 
enough to feed our big family, with a 
few little ones left for the pigs, I 
wouldn’t complain—at least publicly! 
The tops were all right—but what’s the 
value of a top that has no bottom to it? 
But the potatoes, like the corn, “elbowed 
up” in some way, and at least two fields 
are doing well. One is the place where 
we put the mixture of equal parts of 
nitrate of soda and sulphate of potash 
around the hills early in July. These 
hills took on new life. I notice that 
they kept green and strong, while others 
beside them died. They are still grow¬ 
ing, and the tubers are large and 
shapely. That fertilizer will pay well 
this year, yet I cannot lay it down as 
a settled rule that such late fertilizing 
will always pay. The other promising 
potatoes are in that low, wet field, 
where we put most of our stable ma¬ 
nure. No use talking, I must admit 
that, up to date, those manured potatoes 
are the best on the farm. At one time 
one could hardly see the potato vines 
for the weeds, but we have finally 
cleaned those weeds out, ana find the 
vines green and thrifty, and what is 
better, a big bunch of tubers hanging to 
every Carman plant. Remember that I 
say these potatoes promise well. Wait 
until they are dug! 
Money With “Fur” On It. —The fol¬ 
lowing note has given me quite a little 
thought. It is from a Connecticut man 
who told us of some of the wonderful 
profits in growing tobacco under shade: 
Now, while the Hope Farm man refuses 
a cigar, I do not think he would refuse 
the money a lO-acre field of tobacco would 
bring, nor do I believe he would object to 
growing it if Hope Farm were located In 
the Connecticut Valley tobacco district. 
D. K. 
Now, that is a tough one, but I have 
thought it out with some care. If our 
friend will offer me the money made in 
10 acres of tobacco I will gladly take it, 
but not one cenit would be spent on my 
family or myself. I would give every 
dollar of lit to some place where true 
charity is practiced, or true education 
is attempted, and give it right off. I am 
told that in Connecticut the Legislature 
passes a law to prevent the sale of 
cigarettes, and then turns around and 
provides money to boom tobacco grow¬ 
ing! No, I would not raise tobacco un¬ 
less I was to use it for killing insects! 
If any man thinks to kill the Hope 
Farm mortgage with nicotine we thank 
him for his good intention, but would 
rather have the mortgage keep on eat¬ 
ing than to have it wiped out by money 
from the sale of either rum or tobacco. 
The Madame and the Bud, who are joint 
owners in the property, will back me 
up in this. What a crank that fellow 
is!—you will say. Very likely—I was 
made a crank by seeing alcohol and 
nicotine turn the crank that ground 
honor, health, respectability and man¬ 
hood out of some good friends of mine! 
_ H. w. c. 
Tent Cure for Consumption. 
The following statement from the Bos¬ 
ton Transcript will interest many people 
who are studying the dread disease: 
“As soon as the weather will permit and 
proper locations can be selected there will 
be pitched near Boston the first of a num¬ 
ber of camps for consumptives. This 
camp (and each succeeding camp will be 
like it) will consist of 10 piano-box tents, 
arranged in a circle with an open-air fire 
in the center, and surrounded by a duck 
wall eight feet high. Each of these tents 
will be a consumptive’s home; a consump¬ 
tive will sleep there, even through the 
coldest weather, with no other protection 
than plenty of felt blankets, felt sleeping 
boots, and a two-gallon jug of hot water. 
The tents are made of 12-ounce duck, are 
only seven feet high, with four-foot walls, 
boxed in around the bottom a foot from 
the ground. They will be lined with 
weather paper. The flaps will open to¬ 
wards the fire, the 10 tents making a little 
circle about a clean gravel court. In the 
duck wall which will surround the whole 
will be a single entrance. The people who 
live there will wear one heavy suit night 
and day. They will each of them take one 
quick soapless bath a week, and will eat 
three good hearty meals a day, with coffee 
in the morning and hot chocolate any 
time of the day or night. Their bill of 
fare will include milk, eggs, vegetables, 
bread and butter and meat—chiefly beef, 
mutton or pork, broiled on spits before 
the fire, or roasted in the embers, or 
boiled down into soup. This open life Is 
expected to cure them of their disease. 
The method is the result of experiments 
made last Winter in a tent by a scientist 
whose name has not yet been divulged. 
This man pitched his tent during the 
coidest part of a January which was more 
than usually cold, and stayed in there 
until the early Spring, engrossed in his 
experiments, but finally seeing patients 
and announcing that he wanted as many 
consumptives as possible to prove the 
truth of his theories.” 
“A Field of Grain 
taller than the fence ' 
results from the use of fertilizers con¬ 
taining a high per cent, of 
Potash 
Every farmer can know what fertilizer to use 
with greatest profit and economy, by writing for 
our free books. 
LIME FERTILIZER. 
Special preparation giving splendid satisfaction. 
Correspondence solicited. THE SNOW IfLAKK 
LIME CO., Bowling Green, Ohio. 
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Sheets either flat, corru¬ 
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How to Drain Land r^rofltably. 
On every farm there is probably some land 
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drainage. Properly drained land can always 
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best and most 
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book, “Benefits of Drainage and How to Drain,” 
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118 
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