1907. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
571 
% 
THAT WOMAN'S FARM PROBLEM. 
Advice from a Western Man. 
In reply to the woman who writes on page 527, I ad¬ 
vise her to turn the whole farm into grass. Don’t at¬ 
tempt to do any grain farming. Get as good a man 
as you can from any source in the West you can, prefer¬ 
ably from somewhere where cattle feeding is a spe¬ 
cialty. Get a man who has been on a cattle-feeding 
farm, or who has had experience in feeding cattle. 
Fence two-thirds of the land into pasture for grazing; 
keep the other third for hay and reserve pasturage if 
needed. No extensive barns and appurtenances arc need¬ 
ed for feeding as suggested, but water and shade are 
great necessities; unless best water facilities are pro¬ 
vided this work should not be undertaken. As near as 
possible get all the pasture lands fenced “hog tight” so 
hogs can follow cattle. As far as possible only conduct 
feeding operations through Summer and Fall and “fin¬ 
ish” cattle before Christmas to avoid any Winter opera¬ 
tions, and do not Winter-feed, as it is too expensive 
unless under most favorable conditions when grain is 
low, something that has not been the rule of late years. 
During the month of February, March or April in¬ 
struct some reliable live-stock commission firm to buy 
you as many carloads of “feeders” as your circum¬ 
stances or land will carry. Preferably take 2-year- 
olds and avoid buying anything but best feeding cattle. 
Leave severely alone all cattle from dairy districts and 
skinny, bony, poor quality stuff. Let the commission 
men buy the best they can get for you ; do not hurry 
them to make the shipment, but give them time until 
there is a run in the market of a good 
class of feeding steers. Instruct them to 
be particular about quality and give prefer¬ 
ence to western cattle. Get them on your 
place in March, April or May in this pro¬ 
portion if you have good grass lands—50 
head to 75 to 100 acres of pasturage. 
Graze them until after grass hardens in 
August or September, then, without regard 
to money it takes, feed with corn until 
near Jan. 1, leaving them on grass while 
taking the corn ration. Make the start, 
getting on full feed slow'y, and carefully 
cover three weeks. If corn is high shut 
your eyes and buy it and when green corn 
is husked change from old to new corn 
slowly. During the Summer get a local 
buyer of hogs at your town to buy up 
shotes, or if he is buying for shipment to 
live stock markets give him a premium over 
buyers’ prices and buy two shotes to each 
steer, or one will do, to follow and take up 
waste and follow cattle. 
If you have a good hand he can make 
the hay crop and feed these cattle for you 
and you can oversee it. After getting a 
start brood sows can be saved over and 
pigs can be raised for future, necesitating 
only wintering good, mature brood sows. 
I advise raising no grain and putting in 
excellent farm scales and buying up corn 
from farmers, as any woman can go in and 
buy up corn at market price or a cent 
premium to get it from regular markets. 
This will all necessitate the use of con¬ 
siderable money, but there is not much risk in it, 
as steers grazing on good grass increase rap¬ 
idly in flesh; the expense of putting “finish” on 
them in short feeding is not risky and corn-fed cat¬ 
tle are always, if of'good quality, a good market price. 
This would be less in work and detail for a woman 
farming, and we know of women in feeding sections 
in the West with hired hands easily handling this work. 
One hand this way can handle 1G0 acres of ground, but 
it must have proper head and business management. A 
long line of details in mixed farming is not practical for 
a woman in this western country and she will have only 
to take an interest in cattle, their quality and see that 
they are bought by a responsible commission firm and 
sold right by same, and see that they have all they will 
and can eat; have hired man shove feed in bunks; all 
will be eaten, but make a clean feed every time and clear 
the trough. There are many details, we know, but they 
can be looked up and studied out; there is not nearly 
the overwhelming lot there is in western mixed farming; 
the work will be nearer in hand and under control than 
if mixed husbandry is undertaken. The wdiole farm 
will be continuously in grass and continuously enriching 
and there will be no deterioration. Most of the land in 
the writer’s locality has been under cultivation 25 to 28 
years from the time it was broken up from wild prairies. 
To-day all “feeder” farms are richer than they were 
when original native prairies. Such operations will re¬ 
quire capital, and if you have not got it will have to 
be obtained at the local banks. All over the West banks 
finance such farming on almost any scale they find 
safety in venturing into with bank customers. Such an 
operation would require about $2,400 in cattle, $1,600 in 
corn, $500 in shotes; the use of $4,000 to $5,000 from 
March until marketing Dec. 1 to Jan. 1 following. 
More land would require more cattle and hogs. Many 
farmers carry from $6,000 to $20,COO “feeding” opera¬ 
tions on their farms in this section of the West. You 
must live in a “corn country” for this work and have 
nerve and watch your scales and weights and give the 
feeding fairly good and intelligent attention. There is 
little risk in feeding grain to grazing steers, and if they 
are followed by hogs there is double profit. A growing 
shote on grass makes 12 pounds of pork out of a 
bushel of corn and a steer will make twice the gain on 
grass on corn he will .over dry Winter feeding. There 
is much data on western cattle feeding that can be gath¬ 
ered up and be of use to the inquirer and I advise her 
to let farm go to grass and use steers and hogs, and if 
she can get a man whom she knows is strictly good in 
these lines offer and pay him $5 per month over his 
present wages, and have good hired help at even a 
greatly increased cost. There are “self feeders” made 
and used in cattle feeding that can be filled with 700 
bushels of corn at a time, and I know of women who 
buy in their own feed over the scales and see that self- 
feeders work well and that the windmill keeps tanks 
filled with water. The market problem is not a certain 
factor, but Summer grazing, “short” feeding in Fall, 
has not so much risk. In general farming there are all 
manner of risks in grain crops being detroyed by storms 
that are at times very destructive and prices on grains 
and hay are just as uncertain factors in market as fin¬ 
ished cattle and hogs. w. m. bomberger. 
HAY AT THE N. I. EXPERIMENT STATION. 
The New Jersey Agricultural College Farm has just 
harvested four acres of new seeded Timothy and clover, 
which yielded 17 loads, or 16.4 tons, of well-cured hay, 
or an average of 4.1 tons of hay per acre. There is no 
guesswork about these figures. Eac.i load was weighed 
and the hay had four days of extra good weather in 
which to dry, so that it was as dry as could be made in 
the field. The soil is a heavy red shale and in places 
with considerable Alloway clay. The soil is exceedingly 
hard to work, bakes in dry weather and has to be imme¬ 
diately harrowed after plowing else the lumps get hard 
and the cultivation unmanageable. 
The history of this field for the past seven years is as 
follows: From 1900 to 1904, inclusive, it was planted 
successively to corn for the silo, with a catch crop of 
Crimson clover used for soiling, and hay in 1901 and 
1903. During this period manure was applied twice, 
1902 and 1903, about nine tons per acre, and the applica¬ 
tion of fertilizers has been moderate. In 1905 three 
acres of this field had a dressing of six tons of manure 
per acre and the four acres were seeded to oats and 
peas, yielding 2.7 tons of hay per acre. In August, 1905, 
400 pounds of Peruvian guano and one ton, or 25 bush¬ 
els, stone lime, slaked, were applied and the field fitted 
and seeded to Alfalfa. Either from poor seed or soil 
conditions the Alfalfa blighted and the field was planted 
to oats and peas again the following Spring; 150 pounds 
of fertilizer per acre, with a formula 5.25-10.05-8.75, was 
applied for this crop and a yield of 2.16 tons of oat 
and pea hay per acre was taken off. Aug. 28 to 30, 
190G, this field was seeded to Timothy and clover, nine 
and one-half pounds Timothy, five pounds Red clover 
and two and one-half pounds of Alsike clover per acre; 
250 pounds of Chincha Island Peruvian guano, 100 
pounds acid phosphate and 100 pounds of muriate of 
potash was applied per acre, a mixture containing 4.2 
per cent nitrogen, 9.4 per cent total phosphoric acid and 
12.3 per cent potash. 
The grass was thick at the bottom, with considerable 
Alsike clover, and the Timothy was badly lodged. In 
cutting it took two or three helpers with the machine 
to clear the track for the next round. The expense for 
cutting and hauling the hay was as follows: Mowing, 
$6; tedding $4.80; raking, $1, and carting and putting in 
barn, $21, or a total of $32.80, equal to $2 per ton. The 
expense of seed, fertilizer and labor of seeding was 
$58.20, or $3.55 per ton, making a total cost of $5.55 per 
ton of hay. Assuming the hay to be worth $20 per ton 
as drawn from the field, and this is a fair price when 
hay sells in the market for $25 per ton, the net profit 
from a ton would be $L4.45, or $59.24 per acre. The 
income, therefore from the four-acre field after de¬ 
ducting total cost of seeding and harvesting is $236.98. 
BUILDING A CEMENT RESERVOIR. 
A reader asks how to construct an outdoor storage 
tank to hold 100 barrels of water. Two years ago, with¬ 
out the help of a mason, we made one of about 40 bar¬ 
rels capacity of cull brick, a large portion being broken 
or half brick; these were laid in cement and also incased 
in about one inch of cement on each side of the brick. 
The pit (six feet deep) was cut down true and plumb 
with hoe and post-hole bar, after which we dressed or 
hewed the sides down with an old broadax. 
Having secured cheap, sound boards for 
one side of our form (the earth acting as 
the other side), we were ready to lay the 
brick in the center of a six-inch space to be 
occupied by the wall; then we have one 
inch of cement on each side of the brick. 
The boards are put or dropped in one round 
at a time, the brick laid and the side space 
filled at the same time. The brick should 
be laid wet and the cement can be poured 
from a bucket and leveled and floated down 
with a trowel. The boards are held in 
place by four light corner posts, which 
should extend a few feet above the pit, 
where they may be braced to keep the work 
plumb; these can also be braced from the 
floor of the pit, as it will not be cemented 
till the sides are up. The floor we covered 
with two inches of gravel, which was filled 
with the same strength of cement as was 
used on the sides, three parts sand to one 
cement. After the work set we drew the 
boards, and with another batch of cement, 
enc part cement to two sand, plastered to a 
nice finish the entire inside. I think we 
have about one-fourth inch thick of this 
coat. Should the reservoir extend above 
ground another set of boards would be used 
as one side of form from the soil up. As 
to pipes, inlet and outlet, these can be in¬ 
serted or built in in short lengths between 
the brick at any point desired, and should 
be below frost line unless some protection 
is provided. To prevent the cement holding 
too firmly to the boards we took a cake of soap, and 
after sprinkling the boards rubbed that side with the 
SOap. D. H. WATTS. 
Pennsylvania. 
Presuming that your Ohio reader desires to build 
the tank entirely above the surface of the ground, I 
would suggest that he first lay the supply pipe below the 
line of probable freezing, bringing the end up so it will 
enter the tank from the bottom. I would make the tank 
square or rectangular in form, the size upon the ground 
to be governed by the height desired. Provide an ample 
supply of coarse sand and gravel. Mix, dry, three or 
four parts of same with one part of good cement; then, 
add 20 per cent of bulk in water, or enough to make 
the mixture quite wet. Spread floor or bottom of tank 
eight inches thick, using 2x8 inch plank to retain 
same and while the mixture is soft, set three-eighths- 
inch rods upright in the cement at intervals of 18 inches, 
and about eight inches from the edge of the floor. 
These rods may be 18 to 24 inches long, and are used 
to keep sides firmly on the bottom, or to prevent spread¬ 
ing. Allow floor to harden before erecting form for sides. 
If the sides are to be three or four feet high, I would 
make them 12 inches thick at the bottom and six inches 
at the top, with slope on the inside. Set the outside of 
form on top of the floor, so floor will project two 
inches beyond the sides after form is removed. Be 
sure to keep the mixture wet enough; this not only in¬ 
sures a more thorough cementing of the ingredients, 
but permits the finer particles to seek the outside, giving 
the walls a smooth, finished appearance after the form 
is removed. While filling the form, tamp lightly and 
evenly with a piece of 2x4 pine scantling. Iron rods 
laid horizontally and bent at the corners should be laid 
in the walls every six or 12 inches, while filling; this 
will add very greatly to the strength of the walls, and 
prevent cracking. By having the slope of walls on the 
inside, any ice that may form in the tank will readily 
loosen and rise when fresh water is turned in. 
Dallas Co., Iowa. m. j. graham. 
