1905. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
651 
Hope Farm Notes 
Fruit Notes.— The rains were of great 
service to the apples. 1 never saw fruit 
increase in size as ours has done during the 
past 10 days. The Baldwins have begun to 
color, and take it all through we shall have 
more apples than we had last year, and of a 
better quality. I need no more argument 
about the value of spraying to kill the Cod¬ 
ling worm. On some of our sprayed trees 
there is hardly a wormy apple to be found, 
while in former years about two-thirds of the 
fruit could not be sold. I have learned some 
things about spraying too. We have one Fall 
Pippin tree so situated that we could not get 
at it with the power sprayer. The old tree 
is nearly dead except one large limb, which 
last year was covered with wormy fruit. This 
year we sprayed an Alexander tree nearby. 
The wincf was blowing hard, and I noticed 
that it blew the misty spray through the 
branch of the old tree. The power sprayer 
puffs out the spray like smoke, and the wind 
carried it nearly 30 feet. This year, to my 
surprise, the fruit on that branch is clean 
and fair, scarcely a wormy apple to be found. 
This is where the power behind the nozzle 
comes in. With a constant pressure of 120 
pounds the spray is as fine as mist, and when 
we spray with a good wind it is sifted al• 
through the tree, so that every bit of surface 
has its share. This is much better than 
washing off the leaves with small streams of 
liquid, as I have seen done. We sprayed the 
crab apples with Bordeaux and Paris-green. 
Now we pick 10 and 12 baskets each from 
our largest trees. 
Which do you consider the best cooking 
apple? 
Fall Pippin! A well-baked apple of this 
variety will make an old man forget he is no 
longer young, and a young man forget, that 
he hasn't the wisdom of age. 
Name one of the three best eating apples. 
Fall Pippin ! Take this variety when well 
grown and well ripened, and if it doesn t 
melt in your mouth there is something wrong 
with your mouth. 
Name your ideal of a market apple. 
Fall Pippin with a bright red jacket and 
its season extended about three months. 
Would you advise heavy planting of this 
variety? 
No. The dull green color is against it. 
reople demand brighter colors, and life is 
too short to educate the eye of the average 
apple buyer. A few good customers will pre¬ 
fer Fall Pippin after they bake it once, but 
it ripens early, and does not keep like Bald¬ 
win or Greening. I keep on planting a few, 
and my bearing trees are as profitable as any 
I have, but I shall not put in too many. 
Merrill has spent most of the Summer cul¬ 
tivating trees'with scythe and pitchfork. For 
the sake of our reputation as gardeners I will 
not say how many loads of weeds he has 
hauled away from the lower farm. All this 
has been piled around the young trees. In 
addition to this rakings from the hay fields, 
brush and weeds cut along the stone walls, 
leaves from the forest—anything that will 
rot has been used in the same way. The 
result is a growth and color of young wood 
which seems to surprise those wno come to 
see it. Merrill and old Jerry are largely re¬ 
sponsible for the growth of these trees. The 
question is if they had started in to culti¬ 
vate these trees as the experts tell us ought, 
to be done, how many could they have cared 
for, and how much better would they have 
been than those we now have? There are 
three or four sides to this mulching proposi¬ 
tion. We are quite well satisfied with our 
side thus far. 
Russian Sunflowers. —While the peace¬ 
makers of Russia and Japan are trying to 
have their work blessed we may consider the 
following proposition. It offers a chance for 
the envoys of loss and profit to get together. 
The location is not over six miles from Hope 
Farm. 
“Would it be profitable to hire 15 acres of 
uncultivated light sandy soil at $3 per acre, 
and plant same to Mammoth Russian sun¬ 
flower seed? My idea In raising the seed is 
to reserve enough for my own poultry and 
pigeons (200 hens and 200 pigeons) and bag 
the balance for shipment to New York City, 
or wherever the best market is for top prices. 
What is the average yield per acre? Are stalks 
and leaves of any value for poultry and live 
stock? Is it necessary to manure this land 
for such a crop and can two crops per annum 
be obtained, or would it he better to follow 
the Spring crop with, a sowing of Canada 
field peas?" A - D - 
It looks to me that in this contest Loss 
stands to Profit about as the Japs do to the 
Russians. There is a fair demand for sun¬ 
flower seed for poultry feeding. While 15 
acres would not swamp the market, it might 
leave the grower high and dry. I have 
raised small quantities of the seed. You will 
need to fit the ground well, and use a fair 
amount of manure or fertilizer. The sun¬ 
flower requires good soil or feeding. . You 
can cultivate the crop much like drilled corn, 
but it must be kept clean. In some cases 
the green stalks are cut into the silo, but the 
ripened stalks and heads have no feeding 
value. In the Far West they are used as 
fuel. You might get your crop through to 
the ripened seeds, and then fail for lack of 
power to harvest it properly. We have had 
people with less than an acre come and ask 
for help in gathering it. How can you pick 
dry and shell the heads from 15 acres? The 
birds will get a good share. Every crow in 
the county will be on hand. Many stalks 
will blow down and a fair share of the 
seed will rattle out and be lost. You will 
probably end by trying to pick off the heads 
by hand, throwing them into a wagon. Then 
when they are dried under cover will come 
the problem of thrashing! We would not 
think of tryiug it on any such scale on hired 
land. 
As for growing two crops. Canada peas are 
not suited for growing as a late Summer 
crop. You could sow Crimson clover and 
Cow-horn turnips at the last cultivation, to 
be plowed under the following Spring. Speak¬ 
ing without personal experience I would rank 
a 15-acre field of Russian sunflowers with 
ginseng and seedless apples—great for tell¬ 
ing what one expects to do, poor for doing it. 
Standards of Living. —Among the bright, 
lively letters which have come recently is one 
from Kansas, from which I take the follow¬ 
ing : 
“I am an old broken-down preacher, living 
with my boys on a farm, and have no more 
use for your paper than a dog for two tails. 
But it is always clean and entertaining, and 
so homelike that my wife and the boys read 
it and quote it to me, and upbraid me for m> 
failure to live up to your standard, and so 
sometimes it makes my life miserable. It 
does! And the fact is, to be plain and hon¬ 
est, I don’t know of a single fault that I can 
charge up to the paper legitimately.” 
e. o. R. 
Some of these men who were broken down 
while trying to upbuild character are about 
the best citizens we have. As for a “dog with 
two tails,” there are times when a dog Is so 
anxious to express his friendship that six 
tails would not be too many. When our folks 
got back from Florida old Sbep could have 
used 13 to express his feelings. Now in re¬ 
gard to standards of living. Did you really 
ever see a man who in his own life lived up 
to the standard he preached and set for 
others? I never did, and I would travel 
some distance to see one. All through the 
journey I should expect to find a blind man 
or some hopeless cynic whose standard had 
been under foot a time or two. Experience 
in trying to run conduct up to a high stand¬ 
ard has taught me to be quite charitable. 
This charity has the hardest time of all 
when others point out the preachment of 
some distant person, and measure the dis¬ 
tance between that and my daily walk of life. 
The element of human nature is as constant 
as a yard stick to measure such things, and 
I know very well that 10 to one the wife of 
that model is sighing at the lap between his 
practice and the preaching of some other un¬ 
seen philosopher. 
Birthdays. —The cold wet day had finally 
come to an end. Night had settled upon 
Hope Farm with damp hands. I was deep in 
my book when a cheerful little voice piped 
up at my elbow: “Oh Father, won’t you 
come down and tell us a story? You know 
it’s our birthday !” 
Sure enough it was, the two little girls 
were nine and 11 to-day. We found that 
Lars had’ this 16th of August for a birthday 
too. 
“Well, my little girl, I will surely come 
down, but as for the story, I must have unan¬ 
imous consent before I tell it, for some may 
not want to hear it.” 
“Oh.” said the little thing cheerfully, 
“You have Mother’s consent!” 
That isn’t so bad when you consider 
Mother's ability to express the sentiments of 
the Hope Farmers! So I went down to the 
sitting room, where all our folks were 
gathered. There was no lamp, but a bright 
fire in the fireplace brought all the faces 
into view as they ranged about in the circle. 
So with the little girl on my knee I told a 
story of Cousin Woodchuck and Judge Lynx 
that brought out great applause. Of course 
IT would not interest older people, so I will 
not tell it here. We all sat looking at the 
lire for a while, and then Mother asked me 
if I wouldn’t recite “Grigsby’s Station.” I 
presume most country people have heard this 
—which seems to me to rank with “Home 
Sweet Home” as an expression of homesick¬ 
ness. “Where we used to be so happy—and 
so poor” as the poem goes. Sitting there in 
the firelight with this big and strangely 
assorted family around me my mind went 
back to the old years when I tramped about 
the West—speaking this and other “pieces” 
at schoolliouses and churches. When I passed 
around the hat in these old days it some¬ 
times came back nearly empty, but youth and 
hope are great stimulants. I was certainly 
happy, and remarkably poor! 
“Now give us something funny,” said the 
little girl, but though I tried what was once 
called a “rib twister” I didn’t feel like 
laughing. It was well the rest did. 
“Oh. but haven’t we had a fine time!” said 
the little girls as they went to bed. 
So they had ! One of them baked the cake 
"her own self,” and! the other served it. 
They had ice cream and sandwiches, and so 
much fun that the rain couldn’t possibly put 
the spirit of it out—though they planned for 
an outdoor picnic. All the presents they had 
put together wouldn't have cost $5, but they 
have been brought up to be satisfied with simple 
things, and they went to bed happier than 
some children would be with $1,000 worth of 
stuff. We believe in remembering birthdays 
at Hope Farm. Mother’s came four days 
after the tittle girls’. The boys killed five 
chickens and dressed them out behind the 
barn. Mother went to church, expecting to 
come home to a cold-meat dinner, but Aunt 
Jennie hatched those birds into a chicken 
pie that fairly melted in your mouth. It is 
wise to put up the best you have in food 
and feeling whenever a birthday comes on 
the farm. h. w. c. 
OLDS 
NGINE 
ARE USED 
BY THE 
1. s. 
GOVERN¬ 
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tD 
ENGINE 
WITH 
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Insending outthelrlast specifications for 
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ADDRESS 
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