i89o 
TlTE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
729 
Business. 
MAKING A TRADE. 
The Pacific Rural Press tells the story of a California 
grape-grower who tried to build up a retail trade for his 
fruit. If sold to commission-men or local wine makers, 
it would bring but §15 per ton. He went to the city, 
secured a small stand and gave out several thousand cir¬ 
culars like this : 
BLACK MALVOISE GRAPES. 
FRESH FROM THE RANCH. 
The grapes you buy to-day 
Were on the vines yesterday. 
FIVE POUNDS FOR 10 CENTS TWO POUNDS FOR FIVE CENTS. 
' Five oounds for 25 cents, including a 15-cer.t lunch basket, and if you 
will bring the basket back i will fill it again for 10 cents every day as 
long as the crop holds out. 
This proved attractive and sales were considerable from 
the start. By good management the grapes were made to 
average §40 per ton. As the Press well says, it is yet an 
experiment as to whether the sale of fruit at retail at such 
low prices can be made permanently profitable, yet it is 
well worth trying. Consumers like such prices, but can a 
man do the business economically enough to make it pay i 
The difference between this man’s retail price and the 
prce he can obtain in the wholesale markets is §25 per ton. 
How much must he sell in order to obtain fair wages for 
his time ? Of course, all producers are not good salesmen, 
and do not possess the qualifications to fit them for open¬ 
ing such a business, while others can make more money 
on the farm. Still, there would seem to be something in 
this for Granges or other farm organizations that can 
afford to send one bright, active man to the city to develop 
the business. __ 
IMPLEMENT NOTES. 
A Little Grinder Saves a Big Toll.— Mr. Clough, 
whose corn fodder was recently described in The R. N.-\ 
gives Hoard’s Dairyman an account of his experience with 
grinding grain by wind power. He uses the grinder and 
windmill made by E. B. Winger. He says : I never was 
so highly elated over a piece of machinery in my life as I 
was when I set up the little grinder. Before I purchased 
it I had been using one of the two-horse sweep mills, and 
while it would grind 10 or 12 bushels per hour, I was 
always getting out of meal, and then I had to grind in all 
kinds of weather, and it would almost kill a team besides, 
while the men would curse the thing. I became very tired 
of this, and began looking for something better, and found 
An English Cultivator. Fig. 322. 
it in the little windmill grinder, that in a good, moderate 
wind will grind only one bushel of grain per hour, but for 
farm use and where the expense of grinding is taken into 
consideration it will beat ail the mills in the world, 
either large or small. With my mill I have ground 3,000 
bushels and it has cost me nothing. The grinder is not 
worn, and is good for 3,000 bushels more. The windmill 
is not worn, and I have spent no time running the mill. 
Now, what is the cost ? I will leave it for the readers to 
say. * The mill grinds slowly but it grinds all the time. 
It grinds while I am working, resting, eating and sleep¬ 
ing. It grinds when it is hot, when it is cold and when 
it storms. It grinds all kinds of grain and to any degree of 
fineness. Tnere is no hauling grain away from the farm 
to be partly rattled out on the road and partly left in the 
mill,and partly blown away when it is returned to the farm 
again. The farmer has saved his five cents per bushel and 
his time, and if it is stormy and he is oat of meal, when 
the grindiug is done at the mill, the trip is postponed and 
the stock is neglected. There is no piece of machinery 
that a farmer uses that will pay for itself so quickly as a 
good windmill, if it is used only for pumping water, and 
yet few farmers have mills, and when they can be put to 
grinding feed they certainly are indispensable.” 
That Corn Harvester.— We are informed by the editor 
of the Louisiana Planter that the corn harvester men¬ 
tioned on page 647, has been found very useful in the 
sorghum fields of Kansas. It will be remembered that this 
machine is nothing but a sled with two fixed knives drawn 
slowly along between two rows of corn or sorghum. The 
machine is a success and saves much hand labor, yet as the 
above authority says “ With each advance of civilization 
there comes corresponding danger; there is danger in electric 
wires, danger in steam, danger in power. The savage fears 
his fellow beings, the civilized man fears the tremendous 
forces which he employs. As example of this truism men 
lose their balance on the sorghum cane harvester and step 
in front of the cane knife and lose a leg. Stark idiots 
stand idly before the knife, a useless rabbit dashes through 
the cane followed by a breathless and more worthless cur, 
the mule bounds away, leaving a writhing human being 
maimed for life. A mule possessed with a devil ran away 
with a sorghum cane harvester and cut a bloody swath 
through a herd of cattle. It needed but the likeness of 
Boadieea with flowing tresses riding on the harvester, 
charging upon her enemies, to repeat the historic fact of 
nearly 2,000 years ago. But the sorghum harvester has 
come to stay and to cut vast cane fields in Kansas. It can¬ 
not take interlaced or prostrate cane, but it helps the man¬ 
ager and saves the owner. The object of all machinery is 
to make one man do the work of many, and the sorghum 
harvester does this.” 
An English Cultivator.— The implement shown at 
Figure 322, is quite extensively advertised in the English 
agricultural papers. It is designed for working up ground 
on which grain is to be sown. It is really a combination 
of harrow and plow and is said to tear up the ground in 
excellent shape. Like most of the English tools, it is heavy 
and cumbersome. 
A Lifting Crane.— The Farm Implement News gives a 
picture of the device shown at Fig. 323, which it found in 
front of a store in Manitowoc, Wis. The standard of this 
derrick is erected by the side of the street, so that one man 
can load or unload heavy articles when no help is around. 
Some of our merchants may find this valuable and there 
are farms, too, where it will pay. 
Attachment for Cultivator.— I want to give the 
readers of The Rural the benefit of an attachment I put 
on my Hudson cultivator last spring to cultivate and weed 
crops at the same time. It is shown at Figure 324. Take 
two pieces of hard wood two inches wide and three-eighths 
of an inch thick and about three-and-a-half feet long, 
which will make two easy springs ; bolt one end of each to 
the front end of the cultivator beams and to the other 
end of the springs bolt a piece of two-by five-inch joist 
about 12 inches long; bore four holes and put in’ small 
Weed Attachment for Cultivator. Fig. 324. 
iron rods for teeth, slanting backward. Remove the 
middle cultivator iron from the cross piece and put it in 
place under the beams; this cross-piece will lift the weeder 
when the beams are lifted. This worked first-rate. By 
fastening the end of the lines to the joist, the weeder can 
be raised at will to cleir obstructions. J. M. OSBORNE. 
Almond Hullers. —In California the largest expense 
connected with almond raising has been that of taking off 
the husks, which only partially open on the trees. After 
“ hulling ” the nuts are dried, bleached with sulphur and 
sacked for shipment. Of late years an “ almond huller ” 
Almond Huller. Fig. 325. 
machine has been used by the farmers of Alameda County. 
A man, with a boy to feed, will hull two tons of almonds 
in a day, formerly the work of eight or 10 men. It con¬ 
sists of irregular hard-wood slats, fastened to an endless 
belt. Bars underneath it are set on spiral springs, which 
can be geared to any size of almond. Those nuts that pass 
through unhulled are picked out and hulled by hand. 
Very few shells are broken in a day’s work. c. h. s. 
Four-Wheeled Dump Wagon. 
On page 647 a subscriber in Columbus, Ind., asked how 
to construct a dump bed on a four-wheeled wagon, so that 
he can dump the load without pitching it out with a 
fork. The wagon manufacturers do not appear to make 
any wagon answering this description. 
The Auburn Wagon Co. write:—“The only thing we 
could furnish would be our dump wagon, with what we 
call contractor’s dump body ; that is, one made with mov¬ 
able joists on the bottom of the wagon-bed, to be lifted out 
when the load is dumped.” 
Kemp & Burpee write :—“ Last year at the State fair we 
saw a wagon which answers the description well, but we 
do not remember the maker’s name. Wagons with mov¬ 
able joists are generally made by almost any one who can 
use a shave. For a dump wagon, we know of nothing bet¬ 
ter than the Kemp Manure Spreader ; for by removing the 
beater we can turn out a little, or the whole of any load 
we can draw, inside of one minute.” 
Home inventors seem rather more successful—with sug¬ 
gestions, at least. Here are a few notes from those who 
read the request: 
Haul Out The Manure.— I would suggest the plan 
shown at Figure 326. Put a rod on each side of the wagon- 
box and fit to stout boards with notches, so that they will 
run readily on the rods. Bolt blocks to the boards, as 
Hauling Out Manure. Fig. 326. 
shown in the picture, and fasten a chain in the blocks. 
Then place the boards as shown, with the chains out of the 
box, and throw in the manure. With the Sherwood har¬ 
ness, which I use, it requires but a moment to unhitch 
from the pole, hitch to the chain, and pull the manure out 
of the wagon-box. This is somewhat on the principle of 
the shire slings, which are so useful in unloading hay. 
Chautauqua County, N. Y. J. H. BROWN. 
A Plank Bottom.—I am now engaged in hauling fine, 
well-rotted manure on a common farm wagon. I remove 
the bed and for a “bottom” use planks 2 x 6 or 2x8 
inches, and for sideboards, good pine boards a foot wide 
and an inch thick. If it is desired to dump a load, it can 
be easily and quickly done by removing one sideboard, 
then turning the first bottom plank upon edge against the 
standards, slipping the next one over and setting it up 
against the first and so on until the load is all off. This is 
an old plan; but I think it about as good as any. It might 
not work so well, however, with long manure. G. F. P. 
Oneida County, Kan. 
A Self-Dumper.— The inclosed sketch—see Figure 327— 
shows my device for dumping. No special running gear is 
needed, as the hind wheels and entire forward axle, with 
the wheels and all, can be used. The outer frame has two 
3 x 5-inch side rails, each nine feet long, with one end 
mortised into an ordinary hind axle one foot from each 
end. The ends of the axle are rounded off and ironed, as 
usual, to receive the hind wheels. At the forward end of 
the side rails a notch 2 % inches deep and 15 inches wide, is 
cut in the under-side, and in it a hard-wood plank of the 
same dimensions and two feet ten inches long is firmly 
bolted. To the lower side of this piece is fastened a bolster 
six inches wide and four thick in the middle, tapering to 
two inches at each end. A staple of five-eighths-inch round 
A Dumping Wagon. Fig. 327. 
iron is set midway in the bolster-piece, projecting four 
inches above it, and is secured by nuts on the lower end. 
A three-quarter-inch hole is bored through the middle of 
the bolster for the king-bolt. Five strong stakes are mor¬ 
tised for each side-bar, the front one, one foot from the 
end: two stakes are set in the hind axle to support the 
tail-board. The side-boards of any desired width, are 
bolted to the stakes and the outer frame is complete. The 
inner or dump frame and bottom are made of suitable 
width and length to fit easily Into the outer. There are 
two side-boards 3x5 inches, and 8 feet 7 inches long, 
and a cross-piece 2x6 inches is framed into the rear end, 
and one 15 inches wide at the front. The bottom consists 
of inch boards nailed to a frame. The front ends of the 
side rails are notched on the under-side like the outer rails, 
to admit the bolster-piece, and a slot one inch wide and 
four long is cut through the front cross piece and bottom 
boards for the staple. This frame is hung to the outer one 
by a bar of five-eighths-inch iron, 3 % feet from the hind 
end. It is held in place by a pin through the staple in 
front, which is removed for dumping. It is made narrow 
in front to facilitate turning. w. s. B. 
