1901 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
85i 
TESTS OF CREAM SEPARATORS. 
On 771 we printed a request from a Pennsylvania 
reader for some experiments to test the value of the 
so-called dilution cream separators. This is what 
he wanted done: 
Use 400 pounds of milk, all mixed together. First, 
water 110 pounds, milk 100 In water separator. Second, 
100 pounds milk run through a standard separator. 
Third, 100 pounds milk in Cooley-Stoddard or any stand¬ 
ard creamer. Fourth, 100 pounds milk set In small pans. 
Fifth, after milk has been watered in No. 1, wait four 
hours or more, and then very slowly draw off about 100 
pounds of milk and water, warm it and run the product 
through a De Laval, United States or other separator, 
and see how much butter can be extracted therefrom. 
Then, when these results are tabulated, we shah know 
why. Meantime, I will read and love. The R. N.-Y., water 
the milk and wonder whether I’m an old stupid or why 
watering is of “doubtful utility.’’ e. d. r. 
Pennsylvania. 
The experiment station directors consider that this 
question has been fully settled—therefore they did 
not care to repeat their experiments. Prof. C. L. 
Beach, of the Connecticut Station, has made a care¬ 
ful experiment—the results of which are given below: 
Per 
cent 
Lbs. of Lbs. Lbs. Test of Lbs. of of 
4 p. c. fat in skim- skim- fat fat 
milk. milk. milk. milk. lost. lost. 
Separator .100 4. 85 . 025 p. c. .02125 . 62 
Cooley creamer.100 4. 80 . 29 p. c. .232 5.8 
Shallow-pan .100 4. 85 .55 p. c. .4675 11.68 
.\quatic separator...100 4. 165 .5 p. c. .825 20.6 
In addition to the skim-milk the separator milk 
includes 15 pounds bowl wash, causing further loss. 
In the aquatic separator 100 pounds warm water were 
added. The skim-milk from the aquatic separator 
was warmed up to 90 degrees and was then run 
through a centrifugal separator; 16.5 pounds, which 
were caught from the cream spout of the separator, 
tested 4.8 per cent fat, equivalent to .9 of a pound of 
butter. e’. i.. beach. 
Conn. Exp. Station. 
EXPERIENCE WITH ICEHOUSE AND ICE. 
Ill almost all directions for building ice houses i 
read “provide proper drainage,” which always puzzled 
me, for I could not imagine any need of it, for the 
ice, if properly put in, would not melt enough to run 
out at the bottom. It was several years before it 
dawned upon me that this advice was meant for the 
outside instead of the inside of the building. A 
ground floor is the best floor for an ice house, and 
should be filled in or have a natural elevation just 
enough to keep away surface water from the sides, 
and prevent water from raising to the ice from be¬ 
neath the surface. Level off and spread a thin coat¬ 
ing of oat-chaff or sawdust and it is ready for the ice. 
The simpler the scheme of the building the more sat¬ 
isfactory it will be. It is an easy thing to keep ice 
if a few principles are observed. The building should 
be of wood, as stones or bricks draw heat, and white 
is the least objectionable of all colors. The frame 
should be ceiled up on the inside at least a foot from 
the outside, and the space filled with sawdust. “Why 
not put sawdust between the outside and the ice, and 
save cost of the ceiling?” asks one. Because the 
damp sawdust will rot the frame, and in a few years 
your building will fall down. The ceiling has nothing 
to do with keeping the ice; it is to keep the house. 
A roof that will shed rain and the sun’s rays is 
enough. The air above the ice should be dry, and to 
be kept so must be kept in circulation, and two small 
open windows on shady sides accomplish this end. 
The first layer of ice should receive a good deal of 
attention, and the most intelligent and careful hand 
should be put at this part of the work. The ice should 
be cut true and packed level and close. Fill in six or 
eight inches between the sides and the ice, packing 
firmly, so the cakes cannot move, and then level n,f 
the surface with an adz, filling all cracks. Sprinkle 
on water and freeze all solid. It pays to handle ice 
in quite cold weather, as it is dry to handle, and can 
be packed better. If air-holes are left the air will, as 
it gets cold, settle to the bottom and warmer air will 
follow. There should be no movement of air, a per¬ 
fect expulsion of all air, and the nearer one comes to 
it, the less will be the loss by melting. The second 
layer should be packed smooth side down and the 
long side of the cake out, so as to make as few cracks 
at the side as possible. Adz off and pack sides and 
fill cracks with fine cold dry powdery snow that will 
run down and fill air spaces. Pour on water and freeze 
solid; keep on till full. Sawdust is the best material 
for packing, and the drier the better, but do not make 
the mistake of throwing away the old, unless rotten, 
for new. The new is liable to ferment and heat some, 
while the old has the fire all taken out, and is the 
best for several years. The bottom must be absolutely 
airtight and have no drains or air passages under it. 
A covering six inches deep of the sawdust on the bot¬ 
tom and sides, with the layers solidly frozen, makes 
all airtight, and there will be no melting. The cover¬ 
ing on the top should be two feet thick, and kept dry 
at the surface. In the warming days of Spring the 
surface should be tramped over and all air-holes filled 
to keep all airtight. One should shovel over the saw¬ 
dust a few times, now, and air and dry it ready for 
use. Some haul it out to an open shed or building, 
and then have to haul it back again while tilling it. 
One is usually busy then, and the team is needed to 
haul ice, and I like my plan better. Put a temporary 
partition across one end, say a third of the space, 
and shovel the sawdust to that end, piling it up as 
high as needed to hold it. Commence filling the 
space, and use the sawdust nearest to you as long as 
you can, and then pile the remainder on top of the 
ice and commence at the bottom again. By this 
method some labor is saved, the sawdust is always 
handy, and the litter of it over everything is avoided. 
Cakes weighing about 100 to 130 pounds, 18 inches 
long and 12 inches wide by 12 inches thick, are handy 
to handle, and ordinarily are as large as one wants 
at once. _ c. e. c. 
AUTUMN REFLECTIONS; NATURE'S MULCH 
The Autumn is one of the most interesting periods 
of the year, and it ought to be from every nature ob¬ 
server’s standpoint. .\t this season one has an op¬ 
portunity to study the peculiarities of trees in a way 
not presented at any other time. To me one of the 
most interesting features about Autumn is the man¬ 
ner in which nature protects her own against the 
vicissitudes of Winter. The many precautions she 
exercises go on regularly, smoothly and unfailingly. 
For instance, let us watch the processes attending the 
maturing of leaves. Note how with the gradual 
changing of color tints the leaves become less pliant. 
NATURE’S MULCH AROUND SHRUBS. Fig. 385. 
grow papei’y; how the little joint appears at the con¬ 
nection between the leaf stem and the twig to which 
it is attached, how finally an easy and natural separa¬ 
tion takes place at this point. At this time the twig 
has withdrawn practically all the food content of the 
leaf, which is then really a skeleton made up of 
fibrous tissue composing its veins, cell walls and 
epidermis. To the orchardist the fall of the leaf 
should not in itself be an uninteresting phenomenon, 
for its m’ ’.s not completed as soon as it drops 
from the tree. Let us observe what happens after the 
leaf comes whirling to the ground. Take a walk 
through a park, an orchard, or a cornfield. In the 
park, unfortunately, the enforced rules of tidiness 
which apply to leaves as well as waste paper, prevent 
one from noting the natural disposition of the trees’ 
Summer suits, hut in undisturbed places is it not 
fitting, appropriate and even thoughtful, the way in 
which the wind carries the leaves off the lawn and 
tucks them in little banks and billows about the base 
of the shi’ubs, as at Fig. 385, or covers the herbaceous 
border, or wraps them around the feet of a stray weed 
in the orchard. They are the plaything of the wind, 
and in their dried condition are whisked here and 
there until they finally find lodgment and are at once 
protected and protector—a resting place for them¬ 
selves and a blanket for their guardian. One may be 
interested in knowing the weight of the Summer dress 
of a 10-year-old Norway maple for instance, bummer 
gowns, as a rule, are not weighty. In this case the 
condition is reversed. I was astonished to find the 
other day on carefully gathering and weighing the 
dried leaves which fell from 10-year-old Norway 
maple trees that the crop amounted to 130 pounds, or 
an average of 43 1-3 pounds apiece. While this weight 
of vegetable matter does not represent a large amount 
of plant food it does represent an agent of consider¬ 
able value in its relation to the physical quality of 
the soil. No one who has composted leaves and has 
used this compost as a mulch for the herbaceous bor¬ 
der, the rose or lily bed, can fail to recognize the 
great ameliorating influence of this sort of a dress¬ 
ing upon the physical properties of the soil. Its pro¬ 
tective value in keeping out frost is also considerable. 
These notes are simply dropped by the way in order 
to suggest that a much better use can be made of 
nature’s mulch than is the case when the lawn is 
religiously raked every second day during the Au¬ 
tumn, and the rakings carefully burned. When this 
is done the carbon is simply returned to the atmos¬ 
phere from whence it came, and the almost inappre¬ 
ciable amount of ash is wasted entirely. 
JOHN CRAIG. 
NATURAL GAS ON THE FARM. 
How a Kansas Farmer Uses It 
Part I. 
We have had an extraordinary warm and dry Fall, 
and last night (December 2) it was warm and pleas¬ 
ant. The barometer had begun to rise, indicating a 
cool wave, and when I went to bed I set the cool wave 
signal, so that when the wind changed to the north, 
the large sail would fill out and strike an alarm on 
the farm bell. The big 16-horse steam thrasher had 
finished thrashing millet for me, and stood in the 
hogyard, and if a cool wave came up I had promised 
the owners I would keep it from freezing up. At 2:30 
A. M. the farm bell tolled its alarm, and I got up to 
find a veritable cold wave bearing down upon us. I 
started a fire under the boiler of the thrasher engine, 
saw that the pigs were warm and comfortable, shut 
the storm door to the sheep shed, saw that the Short¬ 
horns were all right in their barn, the bulls in their 
stalls, the horses in theirs; then crossed the yard and 
saw that the two herd boars and the several young¬ 
sters were warm; looked into the brooder and read 
the temperature, visited the incubator, making sure 
it was going along on the even tenor of its way, then 
entered the house, turned up the lights, started the 
four stoves at a merry clip and now I am at my desk 
near a warm fire, under two powerful incandescent 
lights, with the telephone receiver hanging within 
reach, the large bunch of daily mail delivereil at the 
door every day by Uncle Sam, near at hand, and the 
great storm howling without. 
Could an eastern reader of The R. N.-Y. come along 
just now he would see about 26 windows in the house 
throwing out that intensely white light due to incan¬ 
descent burners that are never turned out night or 
day, the great light in the door yard that lights up 
several acres and sometimes the stand fine over the 
hoghouse is light, which lights up the five corrals and 
all the sheds and barns; the light in the feedhouse 
is always burning and a warm glow is sent out 
through the windows, and now at this early hour I 
will tell R. N.-Y. readers all about the uses of natural 
gas on the farm, for this farm and thousands of oth¬ 
ers in this and other western States have all the nat¬ 
ural gas they wish to use for farm purposes. 
So many have such an erroneous idea of this coun¬ 
try. They think it is in the great Staked Plain; that 
it is a desert; that we have no comforts, and many 
other ideas. Kansas is not “out West,” but is the 
center State of the Union, the exact geographical cen¬ 
ter being three miles from .Junction City, Kan., 120 
miles from here. We have all the luxuries that any 
farm community has, and some that few of them have. 
Two steam railroads run east and west on my south 
line; an electric car goes every hour in the daytime, 
and two steam roads go north and south only 1% mile 
from the farm, while two long-distance telephone 
lines pass the door, giving each farmer communica¬ 
tion with the outside w'orld at any hour. Daily rural 
delivery of mail and the daily visit of the creamery 
wagon make our lives easier and pleasanter, while 
the abundant use of natural gas on the farms here 
and in adjoining counties, gives us positive luxuries 
that only the very rich city people can possibly af¬ 
ford. From the Gulf of Mexico to the Canada line 
there is a strip of country that abounds in natural 
gas, artesian water and oil, and thousands upon thou¬ 
sands of farmers in the great gas belt use the gas, so 
I do not want anyone to think that what I do with 
gas is at all unusual, but on the contrary, is common 
h^e. Five years ago the Standard Oil Company se¬ 
cured leases on all this land through independent 
parties that they bought out, built a dozen large 1,600 
retort smelters and rolling mills, also acid plants 
about six to 10 mites west of here, developed the gas 
field and are now holding this part for future use, not 
expecting to drill here for 30 years or more, but they 
have laid large gas mains along every lease, and they 
pay $50 per year royalty for the lease on each 40 acres, 
and give all the gas wanted for use on the farm. The 
main that passes my door comes from a well eight 
miles away, and has a pressure turned on of 290 
pounds per square Inch. This enormous pressure is 
entirely too much and all the gas we can use, hardly 
relieves the pipe any, and as these wells have not 
diminished in 20 years we do not think of being very 
economical with the gas. All the farmhouses and 
school houses near here have a chance to use the gas, 
and it is so common that we think nothing of it, so 
I do not wish any reader to think I am trying to 
boom up my farm, for it is not for sale at any figure. 
.All the towns near here burn gas, and this is truly 
a well lighted and warmed county indeed. 
Allen Co., Kan. J. clarence norton. 
