1901 
679 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
A Sewing Lesson. —The picture shown 
on the first page is a familiar one to 
the Hope Farmers. On every pleasant 
day Grandmother and the little girls 
may be seen out under the grape arbor 
with their needlework. Jack caught 
them with his camera one day in Au¬ 
gust. The two little girls, Bud and 
Scion, are quite expert with the needle. 
'The Bud has nearly finished a large 
quilt and her great ambition is to be 
able to “sew a button on Father’s coat!’’ 
We mean that the little girls shall learn 
to be really helpful. I have heard peo¬ 
ple tell what a wonderful thing the type¬ 
writer has been for woman, since it has 
given her a fair chance in business. That 
is all true enough, but some of these 
same business girls would make bad 
business of the family health if they 
were put into the kitchen to prepare 
meals! I hope our little girls will learn 
how to sew and bake and sweep and 
wash and do all the homely and domes¬ 
tic things that make the housekeeper 
as useful to the country as the house 
builder. Grandmother knows the value 
of all these homely things. She lived 
in the South during the war, when peo¬ 
ple were put to all sorts of snifts in or¬ 
der to live comfortably. It will be no¬ 
ticed that the little girls are barefooted. 
’I'hat is the way our children run all 
through the Summer. We are told that 
it will make their feet large! Will some 
one please tell me what disadvantage 
that will be to strong and earnest peo¬ 
ple who have their share of the world’s 
work to do? I fear that the Bud has 
good-sized feet in her pedigree, anyway. 
School Days.— The Madame has 
started her little school. The Bud and 
Graft and the two Scions and three lit¬ 
tle folks from a neighbor’s make a nice 
little school of seven. It’s remarkable 
how tliese little minds absorb and retain 
what the children hear. It was a touch¬ 
ing sight to me last Sunday afternoon 
tc see the little Bud out on the piazza 
with the old Bible, which my mother 
gave me over 25 years ago when I went 
to Colorado to work on a ranch! That 
little forefinger traveled across the page 
as the child slowly spelled tue words. 
I had no idea she could read it. When 
the Madame took the three other chil¬ 
dren into her schooi she thanked their 
mother for the confidence she showed 
in turning “her precious babies” over 
tc another! i taught school years ago, 
and I am now ashamed to think that 
my main object in doing it was to get 
my salary. I do not say earn it, for l 
did not then realize the great responsi¬ 
bility one assumes when he undertakes 
to guide the mind and form the char¬ 
acter of children. Too many people re¬ 
gard school teaching as they would a 
“job” at sawing wood or “holding down 
a chair.” I do not want my children to 
go near any such teacher if I can help 
ii. Let the Madame have charge of 
their habits until they are 12 years old 
and they will at least start right. 
Lively Cokn. —Hope Farm will have 
to take a back seat on the corn question 
wlien the following report from Con¬ 
necticut comes in: 
1 noticed in ‘‘Hope Farm Notes” that 
corn planted July 6 is already making tas¬ 
sels. I can beat that, as I have sweet 
corn, ‘‘Kendall’s Giant,” planted July 8, 
from which I picked roasting ears to-day, 
September 12. w. l. h. 
I did not refer to sweet corn, but to 
our Rural Thoroughbred Flint, which 
we sowed after rye for fodder. I did not 
expect any grain, but wanted to show 
that a good crop of horse or cow feed 
can be grown after cutting rye and re¬ 
moved in time for seeding to rye or 
wheat again. I do not know of any 
crop that will displace more hay in the 
same time. That is certainly lively 
sweet corn. I regret to say that the 
wind has blown our fodder corn down, 
so that cutting is almost impossible 
without leaving a good part of tlie staik 
on the ground. That’s the worst of sow¬ 
ing corn for fodder. It should be drill¬ 
ed and given a chance to stand up. 
Soy Beans. —The following question 
is from Ohio: 
We raised about 
of Soy beans this 
Farm man tell us 
feed out of them? 
one-fourth of an acre 
year. Will the Hope 
how to get the most 
We never raised any 
before, or saw a<ny growlng^omethlng 
new in this part of Ohio. Q. s. p. 
I am not able to answer from per¬ 
sonal experience. Last year we cut the 
Soy beans before the pods were fully 
dry and fed vines and all to the hogs. 
They cleaned up the whole plant. Our 
cows did not care for the vines and only 
one horse would eat them. In Kansas, 
I am told that they cut and cure the 
vines about like clover hay and thrash 
out the beans, which are ground with 
corn and oats—about two parts each of 
corn and oats to one of the beans. This 
meal is said to be a good mixture for 
hogs, cattle or work horses. The straw 
or vine is fed to sheep or cattle. If I 
had any of it I should run it through 
the shredder with cornstalks and feed 
the mixed fodder. I shall not raise any 
more Soy beans, for cow peas have given 
us, better returns. 
Fall Manuring. —^The following ques¬ 
tions from Canada are hard to answer 
positively: 
Would you advise sowing bone meal and 
muriate of potash in a peach orchard this 
Fall? Soil is levei, a rather light sand, a 
soil which always responds quickly to ma¬ 
nures, but which needs a good deai of 
feeding. Shaii I sow and plow under this 
Fall or wait until Spring? Please answer 
the same question applied to wood ashes 
and barnyard manure. F. t. l. 
On such level land as you mention I 
would be willing to sow the bone and 
potash this Fall. I have done the same 
thing on the lower part of the farm, but 
saw no advantage in it except that the 
job was done at a time when little other 
work was pressing. My own farm is so 
rough and hilly that I use all the ma¬ 
nure on the fields close by the barn. We 
use soluble fertilizers only, and like to 
get them as close to the growing crop 
as possible. We haul manure on the 
level fields of the lower farm in Winter, 
not because it will do more good then, 
but because the work is easier to do at 
that time. Wood ashes and lime are, I 
think, best when put close to the crop 
they are expected to benefit. I would 
therefore use them after plowing and 
just before harrowing for the seed bed. 
In level orchards I doubt if it makes 
much difference when bone and potash 
are used, provided we can prevent sur¬ 
face washing. 
Loss BY Drainage. —No one would 
think of using nitrate of soda in Fall 
or Winter. It is as soluble as sugar 
and the nitrogen will leach away 
through the soil and escape in the drain¬ 
age water. Yet muriate of potash is as 
soluble as nitrate, and so is the phos¬ 
phoric acid in dissolved rocK. These 
things being so why is it safe to use 
potash in the Fall and not safe to use 
nitrate? Because nitrogen is one of the 
hardest of the elements to make chemi¬ 
cal combinations. I may cali Miss Ni¬ 
trogen a “born old maid” with mighty 
little “aflinity” for lime, iron or the 
other young fellows who inhabit the 
soil. On the other hand, potash and 
phosphoric acid have a great liking for 
those other elements and are easily in¬ 
duced to remain with them. Thus when 
nitrogen is dissolved in the soil, if there 
are no roots of living plants to run after 
and catch her, the chances are that she 
will glide past the other lazy elements 
in the soil, and pass on to explore brook, 
pond, river and ocean. Needless to say 
that such voyages bring little benefit to 
man. Potash and phosphoric acid whtn 
thus started, rush to some other ele¬ 
ment and make a new chemical com¬ 
bination with it. In other words, they 
gc to housekeeping right in the soil and 
stay there for the benefit of the next 
crop. Of course, when put on the sur¬ 
face of a hilly field the potash might be 
washed off and lost, but when once in 
the ground it is safe, while soluble ni¬ 
trogen is not unless there are growing 
crops to utilize it. 
Those Lazy Hens. —When the milk 
of human kindness sours we may expect 
a tragedy; but from the following note 
it appears that sour milk makes the 
hen’s life such a sweet song that she 
continues to sound her lay without stop¬ 
ping to feather up: 
O. J. H., on page 615, complains that his 
15 hens refuse to lay and wants to know 
what to do about it. H. W. C., the Hope 
Farm man, tells him that there Is nothing 
for it but patience. Now, we happen to 
have just that number of hens, and the 
way those bipeds turn out the eggs is cer¬ 
tainly something remarkable, and they are 
only mongrels, too. We attribute it to pur 
habit of feeding them thick skimmed miik. 
They have a pailful of it always before 
them in addition to other food, corn, etc. 
Nothing can be better for hen food than 
milk, as it contains all the ingredients 
necessary for egg and feather making. 
Too much gadding or freedom is not, we 
take it, conducive to egg production, so we 
keep them shut in till noon, and they have 
formed the good habit of making their egg 
deposits mostly before that hour, and the 
material required for making eggs is not 
diverted by long rambles, and they just 
have to stay in and eat milk and lay eggs 
for all they are worth, whether they have 
any feathers on them or not. They get 
all the exercise, grass, bugs and things 
they need during their afternoon run, and 
get back early to roost and rest in prepara¬ 
tion for the next day’s biz. j y p 
Hudson, N. Y. j- x. i-. 
Big Sheaves 
result from the use of fertilizers con¬ 
taining liberal percentages of 
Potash 
OUR BOOKS arc not advertising cata¬ 
logues, but are scientific publications, written 
by agricultural authorities. We mail them 
/ree to farmers upon request. Send your 
name and address to 
GERMAN KALI WORKS, 
93 Nassau St., New York. 
There is no doubt as to the value of 
skim-milk. That is just why we do not 
give it to the hens. We feed quarts of 
it to the children. Suppose our friend 
had a nice little milk trade at six o? 
eight cents a quart and four lively lit¬ 
tle folks who clamor for milk five times 
a day. Would it ever be possible for 
any of the milk to get thick enough for 
those 16 hens? Not by a good deal! 
Better thicken the children than thicken 
the milk. The ecstacy whicn a child 
can get out of a cup of sweet milk beats 
the eggs which a hen can skim out of 
sour milk. We can sell or drink all the 
milk our cows give, and therefore the 
hens must get along on cut bone, meat 
or oil meal. You are right in saying 
that “too much gadding” will ruin the 
best efforts of any two-legged worker 
that ever walked the face of the earth! 
Ghost oe Old Advice. —Some years 
ago I read the story of a man who told 
how to get rid of stones. He said he 
took a big swivel plow, turned as deep 
a furrow as he could and then raked all 
the big stones he could into the furrow, 
plowed another over them and so on all 
through the field. Then he seeded to 
grass and had a fine smooth field! I re¬ 
gret to say that in those days your hum¬ 
ble servant often looked through a 
smoked glass at a plausible story. My 
joints were rather more limber too, and 
I jumped at some conclusions instead of 
on to them as should have been done. At 
any rate, I regret to say that I talked 
that system of plowing. “Verily they 
have their reward!” In fitting one of 
our back fields for wheat we struck 
about an acre where some former owner 
had evidently tried that plan! Oh! but 
it was awful! Between Frank’s sore 
shoulder and Charlie’s sore ribs it was 
the toughest job that has yet been tack¬ 
led on the farm. Charlie will tell you 
that the plow hit every one of those 
stondb and then went back and hit some 
of them the second time. These old 
hard-heads kicked and fought against 
being turned up to the sun once more. 
“Why do you come and disturb us?’ 
they said. “We went in here easily be¬ 
cause the farmer told us we would not 
be disturbed! Now we will fight against 
being thrown out!” That’s just it! It 
is easy to start some of these new 
things. Nature likes to try experiments, 
but how she does fight when you have 
to go and tell her that the experiment 
must be plowed out! You can’t make 
her think that it was some other fellow 
who did the first job. If grass would 
only live forever on top of these stones 
it would be all right, but grass, like 
dogs and everything else, has its day, 
and must be started again. It’s a tough 
job to pick the stones by hand, but once 
picked they stay where you put them 
'Still, if my Stringfellow trees do well, 
this scheme of plowing under stones 
ought to work. h. w. c. 
LIME FERTILIZER. 
Special preparation giving splendid satisfaction. 
Correspondence solicited THE SNOW FLAKE 
LIME CO., Bowling Green, Ohio. 
Cider Machinery.—Send for catalogue to Boomer* 
Boschert Press Co., 118 West Water St ..Syracuse N.V. 
A GOOD ROOF 
J. STAVAOAPtD 
mm 
At a Low Price 
is what you get every 
time you use 
SWANKS 
Tlie roof is tlie most 
expensive element 
of repair on all 
i buildings. Wo help 
you make it the 
least expensive. 
Easily laid on new 
__ roofs or over old 
shingles or tin. Becomes as hard and resisting as slate. 
It’»Flre« Wind and Water Proof. Send for free 
samples and circulars. ____ 
THE A. F. SWAN CO., 114 Nassau St., NEW YORIf.. 
traoc 
BUBEBOID 
THE 
POULTRY-HOUSE 
ROOFING 
As a water-proof covering for Poultry-1 
Houses, KUBEROID has no equal. Keeps 
tne houses cool during the warm weather, 
and warm In Winter, and the chicks dry and | 
I comfortable. The sun cannot melt it. 
THE STANDARD PAINT CO., 
100 WiUiam Street, 
NEW YORK. 
LAND DRAIN TILE 
(Car-loads or less). 
Sizes, 3, 2)4, 3, 4, 6 and 
6-lach. 
WILLIAM T.LEGGETT& CO. 
1025 Liberty Avenue, 
Pittsburgh, Pa. 
BRAND NEW STEEL ROOFINO 
Bought at Seeelvers’ Sale. 
Bhaata aithav flat, aorru- 
Kate4or*'W’eriBipad. Ho 
toola axoapt a hatehat or 
btaninerla needed to lay 
the zooOnc. We (armlik 
_ _ _ _ tree with each order 
* enough paint to • I TK 
SlSiS 
ATERING BAS 
lENEY ft SO 
K BOX -30® 
Neverslip Csclks 
are steel-centered, 
self-sharpening calks 
which can be easily 
inserted or removed 
from the shoe on the 
horse’s hoof and keep 
him “always ready” 
and safe from falls in 
slippery weather. 
They save your horses 
and save your money. 
If you’re not using 
them, give them a 
trial this fall and win¬ 
ter. Your shoer will 
sell you a set or we 
will send you a des¬ 
criptive pamphlet on 
application. 
NEVERSLIP MANUFACTURING CO., New Brunswick, N. J. 
