i89o 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
23i 
streams, some game, milk a part of the 
year and a few vegetables and berries. 
They only raise “field corn,” having little 
knowledge of our delicious sweet corn for 
the table. In short, their idea of agricul¬ 
ture is simply corn, from which, in the har¬ 
vest season, they strip off the leaves, and the 
stalk is left standing, as being worthless 
for fodder. What grows in the woods 
forms the chief pasturage for cattle. Where 
Northern men have put their fields into 
grass the yield is abundant, and the whole 
region, if properly tilled and managed, 
would afford excellent grazing. There are 
thermal belts wherein luscious fruits can be 
grown, but outside of these belts late frosts 
are apt to injure both fruits and early vege¬ 
tables. 
From the garden whe-e we lived we had 
very fine potatoes, cauliflower, peas, toma¬ 
toes, corn, cucumbers, cress, lettuce and 
cabbage in abundance. Frequent showers 
kept everything green and growing and 
made the curing of hay difficult. Water¬ 
melons were brought to the town from the 
“ low country ”—one man brought a wagon¬ 
load from 50 miles away, and sold the mel¬ 
ons for prices ranging from 25 to 35 cents 
each. Seventy-five cents a day is the aver¬ 
age wage of a farm laborer at Highlands— 
he boards himself—and this is a large in¬ 
crease on what he received a few years ago. 
The town, for many miles around, forms a 
market for both labor and produce, and 
every man of energy, from the North or 
West, who settles in the mountains, is in 
more than one way 
a valuable mission¬ 
ary. The poverty of 
the mountaineers 
is always unneces¬ 
sarily increased by 
their complete lack 
of thrift. In the 
fall they will sell 
their corn very 
close, say, for 50 
cents per bushel, 
and before the 
winter is over be 
obliged to buy corn 
for which they 
must pay one dol¬ 
lar. They contract 
debts at the stores 
in the summer, 
which often swal 
low up the proceeds 
of the corn crop; 
and so it goes on 
from year to year 
without any head¬ 
way having been 
made. 
Coffee is always 
expensive, and 
when it cannot be 
had, various substi¬ 
tutes are made use 
of — dried and 
ground chestnuts, 
also dried and 
parched yams. But 
“store” coffee is 
bought if possible, 
for the childreu as 
well as adults drink 
it. Tobacco, too, is 
a necessity, and if the children are particu¬ 
larly delicate, they begin to use tobacco 
early. The women often at 15 years of age, 
as well as the men, use tobacco, and the 
former have a habit of filling the soft, 
chewed-up end of a short stick with ground 
tobacco (snuff) and smearing the inside of 
the mouth with it. This is called “ dip¬ 
ping,” the stick taking the place of the 
tobacco quid. It is sometimes a little 
startling to see a fairly tidy and decent- 
looking girl squirting tobacco juice from 
her mouth (the teeth disappear early), but, 
taking everything into consideration, she 
would be very foolish to forego a “ pleas- 
ure,” which all about her enjoy, and, more¬ 
over the use of it herself, makes her, like all 
tobacco users, dead to the disgusting out¬ 
come of the vice, 
I saw a good many mountain men from 
time to time, and always in passing re¬ 
ceived a respectful salute—a touch of the 
hat, and a “good-morniu’” or “good- 
evenin’,” if then afternoon. I never heard 
any dialect at all approaching that which 
Craddock (Miss Murfree) puts into the 
mouths of her characters. A mountaineer 
would say : “Logs air easier drug when 
they’re skun ”—instead of “ Logs are easier 
hauled when the bark is off ’’—and be guilty, 
with every breath, of speaking ungrammat¬ 
ically, as he knows nothing of grammar. 
What value they place upon education was 
fairly illustrated by “ Old Picklesinner,” a 
famous hunter, when he said: “ Why, my 
children will all git married, and then the 
eddication will all be wasted.” 
The mountaineers have a peculiar way of 
placing the accent on the final syllable of 
words ending in merit, which is made use of 
by Richard Malcolm Johnston in his stories 
of Southern life. In speaking to their 
horses or oxen (they saddle and ride the 
latter the same as they do the former) in¬ 
stead of saying : “ Stand still, there 1 ” or 
“ Be quiet! ”—they cry out with vehem¬ 
ence, “Look at him!” or “Watch his 
movements 1 ” A horse that is fleet of 
foot is “soon-footed” and the smartest horse 
of a team, is the “sooner” horse. A 
“sooner man” is one quick and deft, and 
an early comer,is a “soon-comer.” From 
this use of soon by the mountaineers, prob¬ 
ably originated the term “ sooners” as ap¬ 
plied to the earliest of the Oklahoma set¬ 
tlers. ‘ ‘He happened to a accident,” is their 
way of saying that he met with an acci¬ 
dent. The mountaineers walk rapidly, al¬ 
though their movements appear slow, but 
with heads bent well forward they get oyer 
the ground with a long, lope-like gait, that 
a low-country man would And it hard to 
keep up with. 
A young Northern woman, who for years 
has been familiar with the mountain life, 
told me that upon one occasion, when 
obliged to stop over-night in a cabin, she 
was “ entertained ” by the method employ¬ 
ed by the mountaineer mother in govern¬ 
ing the youngsters. In the mild, unemo¬ 
tional tone peculiar to the mountaineers 
she said to one child: “If yer do that 
agin, I will cut yer throat.” Again, “If 
yer cry any more, I will kill yer and still 
another time: “If yer don’t do that, I’ll 
put yer inter a box with a rattlesnake.” 
The children, as a matter of course, used 
to such idle threats, gave them no heed—so 
common-place can even such frightful 
words become to their ears. The women 
have no regular method in work, doing 
their washing any day when most con¬ 
venient, and mixing up a batch of hot 
bread for each meal. Some of the men have 
a fondness for the fiddle, but their perfor¬ 
mances thereon indicate nothing more than 
a loafing pastime. I have been in church 
made up largely of mountaineers, when the 
hymns read off : “ Oh, Happy Day, etc.,” 
and “ When I Can Read my Title Clear,” 
were sung but by one man, the congrega¬ 
tion showing no disposition to “join in.” 
They all listened attentively to.the Baptist 
preacher, who addressed us so many times 
as a "death-bound congregation,” that I 
turned repeatedly to look at the laddie’s 
fresh and nappy face, to make sure that I 
was still in the land of the living. They 
came to church in various ways,—on horse¬ 
back, on foot, in lumber wagons filled with 
chairs, bringing the babies and lunch 
baskets along, and making a full day of it 
with morning and afternoon services. 
They are ingenious in loading a horse, and 
to see chickens on horseback is a curious 
sight. The feet of the chickens are tied 
together, a dozen or two in a bunch, and 
the bunches are then suspended from the 
saddle at each side of the horse, where 
they hang heads downward, looking scared 
ana uncomfortable. 
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. 
rEvery query must be accompanied by the 
name and address of the writer to insure atten¬ 
tion. Before asking a question, please see if it 
is not answered in our advertising columns. 
Ask only a few questions at one time. Put 
questions on a separate piece of paper.] 
SOILING CROPS. 
Several Subscribers .—Tell us about soil¬ 
ing cattle, what crops to grow, when to 
cut, how to feed, etc. 
Ans. —Mr. Frank E. Emery of the Geneva 
Experiment Station, gives us the following 
information. The R. N.-Y. will be pleased 
to hear from others. 
“On the silbject of soiling cattle I must 
claim to be a novice. My experience in 
that line of feeding promises to be 
richer in each succeeding year, for I 
believe in the system and expect to prac¬ 
tice it. It has been one of my duties to 
provide the food for the young animals in 
the test of dairy breeds begun at this sta¬ 
tion early last spring. At the beginning 
of this feeding we had roots raised in 1888. 
These were the first green food and were 
fed until the earliest crop was ready, on 
May 10th. From a recent bulletin the fol¬ 
lowing calendar showing the succession in 
feeding, is taken: 
Roots to May 10. 
Alfalfa to June 13. 
Spring sown rye to July 5. 
2d crop.—Alfalfa to July 5-25. 
Oats and peas to July 31. 
Maize to August 7, 
Oats and peas to August 10. 
Maize to August 17. 
3d crop.—Alfalfa to August 22. 
Maize to August 27. 
3d crop.—Alfalfa to August 31. 
Hungarian Grass to Sept, 15. 
* Maize to September 15-October. 
Then followed the fourth cutting of Al¬ 
falfa, the last of green foods. Roots and 
silage make up the succulent from then un¬ 
til green rye (fall-sown) or Alfalfa starts 
the succession this coming spring. The 
reason for thenumerous changes from July 
to September was that the maize was being 
cut and analyzed, and unless it was util¬ 
ized it would have been wasted. When 
planning for the crops some of the animals 
reported upon in the bulletin were expect¬ 
ed ; but it was unknown how many, or 
what their ages would be, hence how large 
the area to plant for them should be, could 
only be guessed at. We planted one acre 
of spring rye and nearly three of peas and 
oats (one bushel of peas to two of oats). 
The corn was cut from the general field. 
The rye was sown first and was followed 
in succession by Hungarian Grass. One 
acre of peas and oats was also followed by 
Hungarian Grass. The rye was sown first, 
and a week later one acre of peas and oats, 
and so on for the other acres. Most of the 
peas and oats were not needed green and 
were cut for hay. They were followed by 
no succession crops as was intended, be¬ 
cause there was more green food in sight 
than our stock needed and other work was 
pressing. The Alfalfa, which was the 
backbone of the year’s green feeding, was 
all cut from about IX acre besides making 
over one ton of hay. None of our other 
crops are large and this one is compara¬ 
tively small beside what may be produced 
under the most favorable conditions. I be¬ 
lieve this give.* * a year’s experience, so far 
as green food goes. One could suggest sev¬ 
eral articles to be included with what we 
fed, such as clover, barley and Prickly 
Comfrey. But modifications occur and one 
needs experience to adjust the areas and 
amount of crop expected to the number of 
animals. Our green crops have been cut 
one day before they are fed. More or less 
hay and grain have been fed. I would not 
advise the omission of some grain at any 
time, but hay can be dispensed with. The 
grain ration should be increased or dimin¬ 
ished in proportion to the amount of the 
real food material contained in the other 
feed. With good, green clover or clover 
hay much less is needed than with green 
rye or maize. The number of acres re¬ 
quired to keep a cow a year will of course 
vary largely with the state of fertility to 
which the land can be raised. The possi¬ 
bilities are such that I believe it entirely 
within reason to change the question to, 
how many cows can be kept on an acre, or, 
at least, how much more than one cow? A 
daily ration of 50 pounds of corn silage 
with 11 pounds of clover hay, two pounds 
of cotton-seed meal and five pounds 
of wheat bran would make a pretty pass¬ 
able feed for a 1,000 pound cow. The 
9 % tons of silage, or two tons of clover 
hay required for a 
year can be easily 
grown on half an 
acre. It would re¬ 
quire little of the 
cow’s product to 
pay for the differ¬ 
ence between the 
cost of the grain 
and its manurial 
value. More cows 
and a greater va¬ 
riety of crops than 
in this supposed 
case make a suc¬ 
cession of crops in 
the soiling system 
possible in order to 
cover a year, and 
on account of this 
succession greater 
yields can be pro¬ 
duced by using the 
land longer, thus 
virtually increas¬ 
ing its capacity to 
keep more than one 
cow per acre. 
Silage should be 
included in any 
course of soiling, 
not alone because 
it is a cheap suc¬ 
culent food for win¬ 
ter ; but because it 
can be fed at any 
time of the year 
when needed, or it 
can be carried over 
from a year of 
abundance to 
one of scarcity. 
Maize that ripens in the climate where it 
is grown is undoubtedly the best crop for 
silage. From five to three acres and from 
that down to one per cow ought to cover 
the range of area necessary to support a 
herd in this Empire State. Location, cli¬ 
mate, fertility of his acres, and skill of the 
practitioner, will determine at which end 
of the estimate each man who soils will 
find himself. 
COMPARATIVE VALUE OF COTTON-SEED 
MEAL, BRAN AND HIGH-GRADE 
FERTILIZERS FOR MANURIAL 
PURPOSES. 
T. F. P., Baltimore, Md .—I am going to 
plant melons, using a half bushel of stable 
manure in the hill; and want to supple¬ 
ment this with a fertilizer, or an equiva¬ 
lent. Would it be cheaper and better for 
me to use cotton-seed meal at $24 per ton 
mixed with bran at $17 instead of a high- 
grade fertilizer at $44 ? 
ANSWERED BY PROF. S. W. JOHNSON. 
Here follows a statement of the per cent, 
of the fertilizing elements in cotton-seed, 
bran and Mapes’s Complete Manure for 
Light Soils: 
Cost. 
Phos. 
per 
let) 
Mtro- 
acid 
Pot¬ 
ton. 
lbs. 
Ken. 
available. 
ash. 
Cotton-seed 
«1 -A) 
7 
3 
2 
Bran 
17 
.83 
3« 
2 
1* 
Mapes’s Complete 
M.; 44 
2,30., 
5« 
88l 
IL Bran we must rule out as too costly. Its 
PINK SEEDLING TEA ROSE. From a Photograph. See First Page. Fig 68. 
