1906. 
TIIE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
73i 
Hope Farm Notes 
Farm Notes. —These are about the live¬ 
liest days of the year. 1 have heard peo¬ 
ple say that September is the month for 
"calm reflection,” but I find something 
more than that necessary this year. This 
lawn is putting many gray hairs in our 
heads, and is not satisfactory yet. This 
extra work interferes with corn cutting, 
potato digging, peach picking and a dozen 
other jobs, but we hope to get them all 
done in time. Corn seems ready to cut 
earlier than usual this year all through 
our section, and most farmers have the 
crop well handled. We are late at it, still 
the stalks are in good condition. In 
former years 1 have cut the crop too early 
sometimes, hoping in this way to make 
better fodder of the stalks. Now that 
grain is so high I prefer to let the corn 
Stand until the grain is thoroughly ripe. 
On the whole we get more out of it in 
this way. The Early Canada flint corn 
has made a good crop. The stalks with 
us are small—just right for feeding. 
While the ears look small they are so well 
filled and so many of them that the yield 
of grain is surprising. I have never had 
a better variety for growing on our hills 
among the trees. In cutting it we put the 
shocks along the tree rows, which were 
not plowed. This leaves the corn ground 
free to be worked up with cultivator or 
harrow and seeded to rye and wheat. 
. . . I spoke last week of turning a 
sow and eight good shotes into the or¬ 
chard where we had cow peas and Kaffir 
corn. That is as good a thing as we have 
done this year. The pigs are tearing up 
the soil so that plowing or harrowing will 
be much ' easier. They have eaten the 
windfall apples and ripped up the low 
places. You would think a spring-tooth 
harrow, well weighted down, had been run 
over the ground. Now the pigs have be¬ 
gun on the second growth of cow peas 
and Kaffir, and they are rounded out like 
a football, just over the fence is a corn¬ 
field, and it is an easy matter to snap off 
a few ears every day and throw them to 
the pigs. Prof. Voorhees fed cows on 
cow pea hay and silage and got as much 
milk (considerably cheaper) as when he 
fed grain and silage. Those hogs would 
grow fat on the cow peas and Kaffir corn 
alone, but 1 think it pays to add the soft 
grain. I do wish that more farmers 
would recognize the value of a hog for 
such work as this. Mrs. Cheshire and her 
family will eat almost anything and beat 
Bob and Jerry as a plow team. This or¬ 
chard is enclosed in a woven wire fence. 
1 find that the “hog-tight” qualities of a 
fence depend much upon what there is in¬ 
side the fence. There are one or two 
places where a pig might perhaps wriggle 
under the fence if lie tried hard, but 
what’s the use when you have enough to 
eat inside? A man might leave a good 
comfortable place in that way, but a pig 
has more sense. The old cow put her 
head on the fence and shid: “Here, you 
pigs, why don’t you crowd through that 
hole and see the world a little?” d he old 
hog had half a windfall Baldwin in her 
mouth, so that her words were a little 
indistinct, but she seemed to say: “What 
do I care for the world when this field 
supplies more than I can use ?” Certainly! 
• Some men may learn from a hog! . 
This farm is pretty well seeded to wild 
carrot. After the first cutting of grass 
this carrot jumps up ahead of the clover 
and covers the ground. We usually cut 
it early in September, and cure it as we 
would clover. What is the use of bother¬ 
ing with such stuff? We find that our 
horses are fond of the wild carrot, and it 
is easily controlled in cultivated soil. 
Everybody knows how horses crave culti¬ 
vated carrots. I take it there is some¬ 
thing in the wild carrot which suits 
them. It looks like poor farming, I admit, 
to see us hauling in a load of wild carrot, 
but we keep on doing it. 
Mulching and Mice. —A Connecticut 
man gives the following experience: 
I tried n few years ago mulching some 
peach trees and rasplierries and blackberries 
in two different parts of the farm. 1 he 
trees made a good start, but mice or some 
small animal made a perfect network of 
burrows in the soil under the mulch, so that 
the air could circulate there, and the growth 
was checked and some killed. The berry 
canes suffered the same way. This may be 
a - local condition, such burrowing animals 
not appearing in other places. It has oc¬ 
curred to me that in such land as we have 
here, with numerous loose stones, the ground 
around the trees for a radius of 10 feet or 
so might be covered with these stones for 
a mulch. The mice or whatever it is could 
not burrow under them, for the stones would 
settle on them. What do you think of this 
idea? H. H. K. 
Most likely those burrows were made 
by mqles. Mice may have had something 
to do' with it, but where moles inhabit a 
piece of land in this way they surely write 
their record on the surface. The moles 
seldom eat vegetables or gnaw trees, but 
they do give a sample of the evil results 
of too much cultivation. 1 lie way to get 
rid of them is to set two or three mole 
traps in their runs. These traps have 
spikes or spears held up by a strong 
spring. As the mole works along his run 
he sets off this spring and the spikes dart 
down and pierce him through. A dead 
mole planted underground will help the 
tree. If mice are hurting the trees I 
would poison them by mixing flour, bran, 
molasses and white arsenic into a dough, 
baking it like a cake. Scatter pieces of it 
around the tree, and the mice will very 
soon manufacture themselves into fertiliz¬ 
er. So will chickens if they run at large. 
As these trees were not gnawed I think 
moles were the culprits. I have obtained 
fair growth by piling stones around peach 
trees. The most rugged trees 1 have are 
growing along stone walls. 1 thiffk, how¬ 
ever, that borers and burrowing animals 
are worse in such places. 
Strawberry Talk. —On page 587 a good 
friend in Pennsylvania gets after me about 
raising low-quality strawberries. Now I 
hear from him again: 
I went to cleaning a lot of old fence-rows 
after writing you about your inconsistencies 
in the Ben Da vis-President strawberry talk, 
and 1 took ivy poisoning so badly that I 
have been in torment most of the time since. 
The truth of I he matter is, I thought I 
had you down, fast, when I wrote you, and 
in tlie first paragraph of your letter in reply 
you admitted it, but before you put in the 
peroration I noticed an inclination to talk 
out of it notwithstanding. 1 thought, how¬ 
ever, the matter was closed, and that I had 
beaten an editor into sensibility once in my 
life, but imagine my surprise when I saw 
you take the whole matter, drag it broadside 
before the public, and make it look like a 
piece of Government armor plate after going 
through the test of Uncle Sam's big guns. 
Our old friend J. H. Hale once at¬ 
tacked the Ben Davis apple at a fruit 
growers’ meeting and a man got up and 
asked Hale if he grew the Elberta peach, 
which he said was the Ben Davis among 
peaches. The audience, or most of them, 
thought that Hale was well answered. 
Our friend thinks my answer was as 
sound as armor plate! Now I will be 
honest and say that I thought and still 
think that I made a pretty lame defense, 
and that a man really hasn’t much right 
to attack a low-flavored apple and then 
proceed to sell poor strawberries. But 
President is good enough for most peo¬ 
ple ! As for trying to beat an editor into 
sensibility—don’t try to do it. '1 he job is 
too hard for those of us who must work 
for a living, and thus have no time for the 
impossible! 
Humus. —Here is one which shows that 
our scientific men may be trying to teach 
the fifth reader to some who ought to 
learn the primer: 
Referring to United States Department of 
Agriculture Farmer’s Bulletin No. ltr>7, page 
10, it is stated that organic matter of 
manure and green manure was easily con¬ 
verted into “humus.” In what way does 
humus differ from organic matter? We have 
been ignorant enough to suppose humus was 
organic matter. M. G. 
Ohio. 
You cannot get me to lay claim to much 
scientific knowledge. I stepped in once 
where good scientists feared to tread, and 
have gone a little lame ever since. As I 
understand it humus means the mold or 
dark colored remnant which is left after 
organic or vegetable matter has decayed. 
A tree may be called “organic matter,” 
since it is organized or built up by a 
growth which puts various substances to¬ 
gether in an organized form. 1 hat tree 
could not be called “humus” until it had 
thoroughly rotted. Most of us have seen 
in the woods the remains of great trees, 
so decayed that in place of the large 
trunks which fell to the ground we find 
only a thin strip of dark colored powder 
or thick mold. This was far more useful 
as plant food than the entire tree. This 
remnant is humus, and it may be called 
the life or spirit of the organic matter, 
such as sod or green crops or manure— 
so far as the power of feeding plants goes. 
So that humus is organic matter rotted 
or fitted over for plant food, or for stor¬ 
age in the soil. There are so many inter¬ 
esting things about this humus that I will 
try some day to repeat something of what 
the scientific men have learned. 
h. w. c. 
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We’ve demonstrated that the beater drive 
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u The Little Things 
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