1906. 
6o3 
I 
Hope Farm Notes 
Farm Notes. —The rain of July 21 will 
not soon be forgotten at Hope Farm. 
The morning opened dull and foggy, but 
I thought it would clear before dinner. 
Our first job was to cut down a cherry 
tree in front of the new house. This 
tree interferes with another finer one, and 
obscures the view. So I put the boys 
at it, and I got a line on what George 
Washington would have done with his 
hatchet if his father had put him at work. 
It is not the duty of a good American to 
say anything against Washington’s char¬ 
acter. The tree came down finally. Aunt 
Jennie had just arrived from Alabama 
with her three children. She took old 
Jerry in the open wagon with the chil¬ 
dren to drive to the station for her trunk. 
The boy and I went to mowing weeds 
while Merrill raked them with the horse 
rake and piled them around the yyung 
apple trees. Philip was clearing the 
garden of weeds. It was one of those 
sticky days, when your clothes seem 
changing to muscilage. All of a sudden 
a thick wall of fog seemed to drop off 
the western hills upon us. There seemed 
to be no air stirring, but this fog suddenly 
fell or rolled into the valley. The boys 
were working a little to the west of me, 
I heard them shout and saw shadows 
darting past in the fog—and then came a 
burst of rain that got me before I had 
made two rods for the barn. There 
wasn’t any sparring or side-stepping about 
that deluge—it got down to business at 
once. Before I got to the barn the fog 
was washed away and the barnyard was 
afloat. Looking from the barn door we 
saw little ponds forming in all our low 
places, and small rivers pouring down 
the hill sides. If the redroot and “pusley” 
in the old strawberry bed didn’t grow 
six inches in the two hours that storm 
lasted our eyes deceived us. At any 
rate, our hay was all in the mow, while 
our neighbor’s mower had clicked all the 
day before. The garden soil was just 
about as full as a drunken man, and I 
kept thinking about those children out in 
the storm. However, it’s better to face 
the storm with labor than in idleness, 
and there were harnesses to oil, wagons 
to grease, henhouses to clean and plenty 
of other indoor jobs. We kept out of 
mischief, and by noon the rain slacked, 
the sun slowly appeared, the children 
came home only a little wet and 15 
hearty eaters sat down to dinner. But 
the storm left its depressing effect behind. 
Nelson quit for the day, and Philip 
wanted to go to New York. I marshalled 
my boys after dinner, but I cannot say 
that my army had faith and energy 
enough to blow down the walls of 
Jericho. They hunted shelter without 
regret at the first drops of another storm. 
However, we got the lower orchard 
cleaned and mulched, the cherry tree cut 
up and hauled away, and other little jobs 
done. Among other things we dipped 
Shep in Zenoleum to cure his mange. 
Poor Shep didn’t fancy having kindness 
rubbed into him in just this way. He is 
losing faith in human nature. When we 
call him now he comes, but the very wag 
of his tail shows that he fears we are 
to give him another dose. And like some 
humans he will not associate his relief 
with our treatment. . . . The wet 
weather has upset almost every plan we 
ever had except that of cutting mulch 
for the trees—and that is hardly needed. 
The boys claim that by the time they 
weed to the end of a row more weeds 
have come up where they started' One 
of our strawberry fields has been cultiva¬ 
ted nine times and hoed five times, and 
yet in a week’s time it will be alive with 
redroot and grass. Yet I tell the boys 
that this is all the more reason why we 
should keep them down, because it shows 
what a wonderful growing season this is, 
and the strawberries grow as the weeds 
do. It is hard to get the boys to see 
any such point. The boy has a potato 
patch 35 x 36 feet. Most of the seed pieces 
were started early in boxes and trans¬ 
planted when the sprouts were five inches 
or so above ground. The soil was plowed 
the same as the oats, which were along¬ 
side. It was worked with the diamond- 
tooth cultivator about eight times, and 
some of the stones picked up. The fur¬ 
rows were made with a wheel hoe about 
20 inches apart, and the seed pieces were 
put a foot apart in the furrow. They were 
covered about three inches deep—leaving 
the plant a little deeper than it grew in 
the box. Cultivation has been with wheel 
hoe and fingers. The boy has dug and 
sold enough thus far to show that the 
patch will bring him over $10, which is 
at the rate of about $350 per acre. 
But have you any full acre that will 
do it? 
No, yet we have an acre in hills on an 
old Alfalfa sod that seems likely to come 
nearer to it than we ever did before. This 
small patch shows us possibilities in thor¬ 
ough culture that we read about, but 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
seldom see. The boy and I will try this 
plan on a much larger scale next season. 
Of course this has been an unusually good 
potato season. We did not use an ounce 
of poison, and to my surprise there has 
been no blight thus far. Prices are high 
too, so that we are not now finding any 
fault with potatoes. I should know better, 
however, than to let out even this ghost 
of a crow, for who knows what will 
happen next? 
If the potatoes look right at present I 
have a failure to reporr in the use of 
manure containing unrotted sawdust. I 
used a good deal of sawdust fresh from 
the mill last Winter. We used it for bed¬ 
ding and absorbent, and I figured that the 
liquids and the heating in the manure pile 
would fit it for use. Where it stayed in 
the pile three months or more it appears 
to be all right, and pushed the crops as 
well as any manure. Where it was in the 
pile for a shorter time than this it is 
not satisfactory for most garden crops. 
For use around apple trees or on grass I 
see no damage, but I am satisfied that 
some of our peppers, beets and other 
garden crops were set back by the use 
of this sawdust manure. The sawdust is 
excellent for absorbing liquids, but it 
would be safer to let children vote than 
it would be to use sawdust for manure 
until it is old enough to get rid of its sour 
spirit. It looks close to another failure in 
that orchard where we are trying to grow 
cow peas and Kaffir corn. Too much wet! 
Plowing Potatoes. —Here is a question 
to take sides on: 
I have been informed that plowing and 
hoeing potatoes when out in blossom will 
injure the crop. Is this so. and if so, why ? 
Let us hear from your potato growers. 
Pennsylvania. p. h. l. 
I have been over this question with sev¬ 
eral people. As I understand it, the argu¬ 
ment is about as follows: When the 
blooms form the potato plant is making its 
tubers rapidly. This is the critical time 
of its life. It needs all the plant food 
and moisture it can get. Both enter the 
plant through the roots, and when these 
roots are cut off the growth is checked 
and the tubers must stand still until new 
roots are formed. This is what they 
claim; but I have never yet seen any cast- 
iron rule in farming. In a very dry season 
where the ground is hard I should con¬ 
sider plowing potatoes while in bloom 
about the poorest business a farmer could 
be up to. I have seen it done under such 
condition that new roots could not start 
and tubers could not form. On the other 
hand, I have seen potatoes growing on 
wet soil and in a wet season where plow¬ 
ing seemed the best thing that could be 
done. It opened the soil and gave it a 
chance to dry out. The vines were mak¬ 
ing too rank a growth, and the root prun¬ 
ing checked this and started the plants to 
making tubers. I can think of only two 
good reasons why potatoes should ever be 
plowed. In a wet season and on wet soil 
the hilling which the plow gives enables 
the soil to dry out, by exposing greater 
surface to the air and sun. Cutting the 
roots checks the vine growth—often too 
heavy in wet weather—and drives the 
plant to make tubers. Again, the hilling 
makes easier digging. I have known 
farmers to say that they would plow 
anyway—wet or dry—in order to get 
the potatoes out of the soil easier. This 
year we have not used a plow in the 
potatoes—or even the side wings on the 
cultivator. The seed was planted shallow 
and the culture has been as level as 
possible. All our culture this year has 
been with an eye to what is to follow 
corn and potatoes. 
The Weeder. —Not much has been 
said about this tool during the past 
season. Its value seems to have been 
demonstrated so that people feel there is 
no more use in arguing in its favor 
than there would be in urging the use 
of a cultivator. One friend in Massa¬ 
chusetts was taken sick at planting time 
and the work fell far behind. He says: 
Most of my potatoes have just come up, 
having been planted in .Tune. If it had not 
been for the weeder I do not know whether 
I should have got out of the weeds this Sum¬ 
mer. Father hitched it behind a pair of 
wheels and rode over about four acres of 
corn and potatoes twice when the weeds 
were just starting, and saved me a lot of 
work now. 
In this case Father is not well, and 
could not have handled a cultivator or 
walked behind a weeder. By working as 
he did just at the right time he was able 
to keep the little weeds down. This rid¬ 
ing on a pair of wheels ahead of the 
weeder is a good idea. On Long Island 
before the roads were Improved it was 
often necessary to hitch an extra team to 
a load of produce to get it over a hard 
place. Insteed of hitching the extra team 
direct to the wagon tongue a “tow-cart” 
was used. This was a pair of wheels 
with a seat. A driver sits on it and 
drives the team and the chain for hauling 
is hitched from the tow-cat to the load¬ 
ed wagon. Let’s sit down while we can! 
Natural Grass Land. —A Pennsylva¬ 
nia man asks this question: 
I have a field in grass that is poor. I 
had intended to plow the field as soon as 
the hay was made, and sow one bushel of 
buckwheat per acre. After the buckwheat 
was oft I would harrow well, sow rye, and 
plow down in the Spring • for either corn 
or potatoes. I have never tried potatoes, 
but have for the last 10 years never raised 
a good crop of grain or grass. I have put 
on fertilizers, manure, and last Fall spread 
25 bushels of lime per acre. The ground 
slopes northeast, and in a wet season I must 
wait quite a while; besides, the lower por¬ 
tion is infested with wireworms that de¬ 
stroy one-third of the corn. My idea of 
raising buckwheat was to get a catch crop 
that would make up for the loss in the hay 
crop. What would you do in my case? 
Would it grow potatoes? I am afraid to risk 
them. S- 
Pennsylvania. 
We should not try potatoes on that 
wet field without draining it thoroughly. 
Probably the lime will help the soil for 
grass. As we are situated we would cut 
the rye for fodder, plow and sow Japa¬ 
nese millet. After this was cut we would 
plow and fit the land and seed to Tim¬ 
othy and Red-top with Alsike clover. 
That is what I would do with such a 
field, and I do not know of any better 
advice a stranger could give. Our Japa¬ 
nese millet has given a great crop this 
year. It needs good soil and plenty of 
moisture. It is often a great temptation 
to put these wet fields into potatoes or 
similar crops. Most of us believe such 
soil must be rich. It usually is, but un¬ 
less we can control the moisture by some 
form of drainage we cannot control the 
crop. Unless such fields can be drained 
they are. better left in grass, and Red-top 
and Alsike clover are best for them. If 
you were fortunate enough to have a 
born farmer for a boy—you would not 
try to force him to be a lawyer. 
Home, Sweet Home. —There seem to 
he two seasons of the year when the 
"sweet” part of home is likely to change 
into an acid. One is along toward the 
end of Winter, when mud is following 
snow and people have been driven into 
a few rooms for several months. We al¬ 
most lose faith at such times that Spring 
is ever coming again. Another time is 
at the end of Summer, when the “dog 
days” are here. Then we see how many 
of the hopeful plans of Spring are 
doomed—for it is now too late to make 
the crops over or save them. We are 
face to face with the hard fact that some 
of our ideals must wait longer, and that 
the old masters of debt and dire necessity 
are still to have us under their lash. It 
it hard, and sometimes we weaken and 
let the home feel it. Father remembers 
that he is growing old, and girlhood 
seems like a far-away dream to mother 
You cannot tell the Hope Farm man a 
thing about this, for we have been all 
through it. All you folks who are work¬ 
ing in lonely places, toiling for those you 
love, living what seem to be hard, un¬ 
lovely lives to those who do not under¬ 
stand—we know all about it, and under¬ 
stand. Tt seems to me a part of the 
higher life of farming to make much of 
the home. We are doing more for our 
country when in our humble way, with¬ 
out any thought of glory or public rec¬ 
ognition. we put our home first, than 
when we stuff the local bank with farm 
proceeds. That’s why we live in the 
country. That’s part of the work God 
has given us to do. Let’s live up to it 
as well as we can—even in dog days. 
It is an awful thing to be without a 
home. One morning in May I got up 
early and was working back of the house 
when a man came along the road. He 
must be close to 60, and was born and 
raised in our neighborhood. A drinking 
man, he has swallowed all he ever 
earned, and his share of the old farm. 
Fie came back to work for the present 
owner of the old homestead, but drank 
so That he could not be kept. He came 
slouching down the road, an old sack 
over his shoulder and a little black dog 
at his heels. He came in to bid me good- 
by and leave a message for one of his 
old friends. He pointed to the place 
where he was born and said: 
“That was my home. Now I have none 
—I am going away.” 
Then off he slouched through the 
morning fog, a kindly, good-hearted, 
homeless man with the little black dog 
at his heels. 
Homeless! and only a dog to follow 
him to the land where the homeless live! 
If some actor could walk across the 
stage through the mist bearing that man’s 
burden of pathos and followed by such 
a little friend in black he would be voted 
a greater actor than Jefferson. 
The Hope Farm table is too small for 
the family just now, and the boys slide 
off to a little table of their own. From 
the baby of 10 months to the Hope Farm 
man of a debateable age, all seem to feel 
pretty certain that there is no place just 
like home. The children are sure they 
will be provided for, though they have 
not yet given society any very valuable 
equivalent. Their faith is about the sur¬ 
est asset in the world. If these little 
things feel so sure of shelter and food 
and care does it not seem as if the older 
ones ought to be ashamed of themselves 
if they doubt after all the years of guid¬ 
ance and help? h. w. c. 
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