I 
7 
1M7. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
Hope Farm Notes 
Western Work. —On my way through 
Centra] Illinois I saw at some distance in 
a great cornfield what at first appeared to 
be a group of farm wagons with sails 
moving straight through the corn. It was 
simply a gang of men “husking” corn in 
a manner very common in the West 
What at first seemed like a sail was a 
wall or frame of boards rising four or 
five feet above one side of the wagon 
box. The wagon was driven slowly 
through the standing corn. The men 
walked along beside it, taking several 
rows at a time, breaking off the ears 
without the husk and throwing them into 
the wagon. The wall on the wagon box 
was to give these buskers a better chance 
to throw into the load. Most of the 
ears I saw thrown seemed to hit this 
frame and fall back into the box. Some¬ 
times a« ear would go wide and fall on 
the ground, but no one seemed to care 
about it, and in no case did 1 see a busker 
go back and pick this corn up. With us 
every ear would be saved, but it was not 
because they thought they had too much 
that these men let it go. As I saw later, 
there was not much chance that it would 
be entirely wasted. 
Where I live it would be considered 
little short of criminal to handle corn that 
way. We must pay 65 cents or more per 
bushel at times, and our stalks are nearly 
as good as hay. We can shred the dry 
stalks and feed them to our own { stock 
with grain, and thus sell our hay at $20 
or more per ton, or we can cut the en¬ 
tire green stalk into the silo and obtain 
even more for it. It is true that in a 
good many fields through New York and 
Ohio I saw shocks of corn out in the 
rain and snow unhusked and spoiling, and 
that is a far greater waste than snapping 
off this western corn. I was, however, 
surprised that I did not see greater evi¬ 
dence of the use of corn harvesters and 
shocked corn. Still, it cannot be said 
that this plan of leaving the stalks and 
some ears is entirely a waste. As we 
went on I began to see herds of cattle 
and colts in those cornfields. Often with 
each steer there would be one or two 
pigs, usually Poland Chinas. These ani¬ 
mals seemed to first roam through the 
field hunting for ears of corn. Pigs, as I 
know, are sharp-eyed, and I can under¬ 
stand that they will not let an ear re¬ 
main undiscovered on an acre. If anv 
corn is undigested by the larger animals 
the pigs will get it. Alter finishing the 
ears these cattle, I was told, begin on 
the corn blades, then they eat most of the 
husks, and before Spring gnaw most of 
the upper part of the stalk down so that 
the greater part of the crop is really 
eaten. An eastern farmer can readily 
figure a loss to him by any such process. 
Of course we can get more feed out of 
an acre by cutting the crop and feed¬ 
ing it out as needed. Take a field of 
clover and cut and carry to stock, and 
we can make more milk or meat than if 
we turned stock in to eat it down ! Every¬ 
body knows that, and yet for some 
farmers the pasturing might pay better, 
since in this way one man can care for 
many head of stock. One great reason 
for this pasturing cornfields is that it 
saves hand labor. I was told of cases 
where corn was not even picked off, hut 
stock were turned in to “hog it down,” 
that is, eat both stalk and grain. While 
this would not pay us I can see how 
it might pay some of these western men. 
The labor problem is hard in the West, 
although not in just the same way that 
it troubles us. There, however, as well 
as here, farmers must often hunt for the 
stock and crops that will enable them to 
make the most of one man’s labor. 
In Southwestern Towa I heard of sev¬ 
eral schemes of this sort. In some cases 
flocks of lambs from Wyoming are han¬ 
dled about as follows: At the last work¬ 
ing of the corn Dwarf Essex rape is 
seeded—sometimes in tracts of 40 to 100 
acres. In the latter part of July a sheep- 
tight fence will be put around this great 
cornfield, and from 500 to 1,000 lambs 
turned right into the standing corn. With 
our smaller corn those lambs would 
quickly ruin the crops, but in these west¬ 
ern fields, I am assured, they clean up 
the rape and weeds and eat only the lower 
blades of „the corn. These lambs clean 
up the wastes and weeds better than a 
hired man with a hoe. and those of us 
who have used a pinch of fertilizer at 
time of earing to force the crop can 
understand the effect of this dropping of 
lamb manure in the crop. The lambs 
usually pay a good profit on this feeding, 
and I can see how the corn crop is better 
for them. After they go out and the 
ground gets hard cattle and hogs are 
turned in to eat down the corn. If we 
saw this process at any single part of it 
we should probably call it wasteful, yet 
when we understand what it means and 
how it gives a single farmer power over 
a large farm it seems reasonable. There 
are cases in the West where one man 
with the help of his family or with one 
hired man is able to cut out husking and 
harvesting, since the stock do it for him, 
and obtain large values from goocFsized 
farms. One renter put 1,500 lambs in his 
corn, as I have described and “out of the 
waste and weeds alone” made $1,000. An¬ 
other farmer reports an income of $47 
an acre on a large acreage handled in this 
way. This apparent “waste” in western 
farming is not, therefore as bad as it 
seems to us who are used to small econ¬ 
omies and smaller farms. One thing I 
found hard to explain to a western 
farmer was why some men on the hills 
with 90 or 100-acre farms seldom plow 
more than 10. In the West practically 
all the farm is tillable, and men do not 
realize how different our farms are in 
shape and character. As for this plan 
of pasturing down crops I believe it can 
be followed to advantage on many farms, 
lu fact I think some of us will be driven 
to it sooner or later by the trouble in 
getting help. I have done something at 
it in a small way with hogs, and it paid. 
I believe there is to be a development of 
the meat trade in the East, and that 
through some modification of this plan 
some of the crops in a rotation will be 
eaten down by stock. It may seem strange 
to say that the East can profitably make 
use of a method already spoken of by 
some western people as'ft “waste,” yet I 
think it will come and help solve the hired 
labor problem on some farms. 
“Hope Farm.” —I print the following 
letter, as it gives me a chance to make 
a little statement: 
I write this to convince some of your 
readers who are in doubt that there is a 
Hope Farm and TIope Farm man. This 
Summer a lady came from New Jersey to 
visit her mother, a neighbor of ours. I spoke 
to her about Hope Farm and she related it 
just as I have read it in The It. N.-Y. She 
described the place and family just as I 
have read, especially the Prizetaker onions; 
she said she got hers there every Fall. She 
said the people around tnere laughed at his 
experiments, some of which seemed ridiculous. 
I used to have my doubts about there being 
such a place, but" am convinced now. 
Schenevus, N. Y. w. M. 
I have had a number of people tell me 
that I must be a fraud, and that there is 
no such place as “Hope Farm.” They 
have us all down as shadows. When I 
satisfy them that T really live on an old 
farm in New Jersey some of these people 
find fault that I do not conduct what they 
call a “model farm,” or one better than 
their own. I have always tried to be 
careful not to claim any great skill as 
a farmer. I do not pretend to have the 
capital required to run any model farm. 
We do not conduct our affairs just as we 
do entirely from choice, but we are try¬ 
ing to work out certain problems both 
indoors and out. Of course I knew when 
I bought this stony hillside that it was 
not a good place for farming, as we 
usually understand the word. I believed, 
however, that it was good apple soil, and 
I wanted to see if it could not be worked 
into a profitable orchard at moderate cost. 
I also wanted to see if this could be done 
largely by unskilled labor. That is why 
we do some things which, I am well 
aware, seem strange to others. I find 
that some of our original ideas about 
orcharding must be modified, but on the 
whole our plans are working out as I 
expected. We are not model farmers or 
models of behavior by a good deal, but 
our hope is to give character to an old 
piece of land, and also to several old and 
young pieces of humanity. h. w. c. 
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