1907. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
6o7 
Hope Farm Notes 
Home Notes. —The Sunday school pic¬ 
nic was voted a great success by all—the 
older folks giving a deep sigh of relief 
that it was over at last. Our folks sat up 
the night before making sandwiches. The 
little girl made a large cake. She forgot 
to put any baking powder in the first one, 
but we had that as a sort of shortcake. 
It was eaten in short order. Every horse 
on the place except the brown colt was 
mustered into service to carry the pic¬ 
nickers. At night there was a crowd of 
little folks in whom weariness and happi¬ 
ness were struggling for mastery. I could 
not tell how many races they won. The 
smaller boy was fairly loaded down with 
prizes. He said he came within two 
points of winning the “grand prize.” I 
told him he ought to go out and give old 
Jerry an extra quart of oats, for it must 
have been chasing the cultivator behind 
that worthy old veteran that gave the boy 
wind and legs to win his races. Old 
Jerry beats any professional trainer you 
can find. The children wanted me to go 
and play baseball on the married men’s 
side. What would I gain by throwing 
away a good record? It is now easy for 
me to sit on a comfortable chair and tell 
about the time I jumped up in the air and 
caught a ball, touched the runner and 
then ran to second base and put another 
man out! I know very well that if I got 
out on the field face to face with a hot 
ball I should quickly destroy all the evi¬ 
dence of faith people may now have in 
this old story of the triple play. So I will 
play baseball in a chair. 
Alfalfa Notes. —The second cutting of 
Alfalfa was ready August 1. This is later 
than usual, and the third cutting will not 
be large. I was afraid this Spring 
that the Alfalfa had played out. 
There was considerable Timothy in 
with it, but th!e first cutting was the heav¬ 
iest we have yet taken from the field. The 
Alfalfa has thinned out, but what there is 
of it is good size. I have decided to seed 
nearly two acres more. This field is an 
orchard of Baldwin apple trees some 20 
years old. They are headed high, and 
some have been taken out so that they are 
not too close. I would not think of put¬ 
ting Alfalfa in a young orchard, but in 
one as old as this I can see no harm. We 
had rj f e and wheat in this orchard, the 
crops being cut and cured for hay. The 
stubble was' plowed and harrowed, and a 
good dressing of basic slag broadcast and 
harrowed in. Now we shall harrow, then 
harrow again and then keep on harrowing 
until the middle of August. Then I shall 
put on 400 pounds per acre of a strong 
fertilizer. On a cloudy, moist day I shall 
dig out of the old field enough soil to 
give 500 pounds per acre, and scatter it 
evenly over the new field. Then we shall 
put 25 pounds of seed to the acre as evenly 
as possible and work the whole thing with 
a light harrow. The soil from the old 
field will be taken wh'ere we find the 
nodules on the roots, using the upper eight 
inches with stones and stalks sifted out. 
Now if we carry out this programme I do 
not see what more can be expected of us. 
Faith tells me to sow the Alfalfa seed all 
alone. Experience says put a little Tim¬ 
othy in to provide against failure. 
Burning Stones. —T would not willingly 
make fun of any honest opinion or state¬ 
ment. I am aware that some things which 
look strange to me are easy enough to 
others. Now this idea of blasting rocks 
by building a fire on them. Evidently I 
sh'all have to take a back seat and go back 
to the primary class: 
Do you allow women to have a voice in 
vour paper? Upon reading the “Hope Farm 
Notes'’ on page 559 we were surprised to find 
that you doubted whether blasting stones by 
fire could he done. Whether it can he done 
as the Dane did it, T do not know certainly, 
hut think it quite probable. However, I have 
seen my father remove a very large granite 
bowlder from a held in that way. The stone 
was too largo to move without breaking, so 
he built a tire around it and also on top. 
After burning a while (I am not certain 
about the time it took), the stone broke into 
many pieces. He has done the same thing 
many other times, but this was the only 
time I saw it. e. l. d. 
New York. 
Do women have a voice? If this lady 
could be at Hope Farm awhile she would 
probably see that women not only have a 
voice, but the ability to use it. In the ma¬ 
jority of cases women are more trust¬ 
worthy witnesses than men, and I am 
forced to admit the possibility of blasting 
by fire. If further evidence is needed 
here we have it from a Canadian: 
For the benefit of anyone interested I may 
say that I have broken hundreds in the way 
mentioned. The harder and more compact 
the stone the more easily it breaks. Lime¬ 
stone or any soft or porous stone does not 
break readilv. onlv crumbles. I have blasted 
with dvnamite. giant powder and fire, and 
where rough fuel is plentiful and cheap I 
prefer fire. A little common sense is advan¬ 
tageous in the work. a. g. 
Very likely that last sentence may be 
truthfully applied to me. We shall have 
to admit that th'e Dane knew his business, 
and that the newspaper reporter got his 
story right. ^ 
Sour Soil.— Any suggestion regarding 
lime is useful at this season. I presume 
hundreds of readers have noticed the 
green color mentioned by this Kentuckian: 
I have a little garden hack of my house, 
and I find that after a rain it turns green 
on the surface of the soil. Does this not in¬ 
dicate sourness or acid? Would potash rem¬ 
edy it, or is lime better? l. r. 
The chances are that the soil is sour, 
though the green color is not a sure sign. 
We are told of people who turn “green 
with envy,” yet not all whb have a tinge 
of this color are envious. This green soil 
often comes from scum or slime, and indi¬ 
cates some form of fungus disease. T he 
most practical test for sour soil is to use 
blue litmus paper. Take a fair sample of 
soil and put it in a cup. Make it just 
moist enough to pack together well. Make 
an opening in it with a knife, push a piece 
of the blue litmus paper into the opening 
and press the soil around it. Leave it 
there 15 minutes, and if the soil is sour 
the blue color will change to pink or red. 
Lime should be used on a sour soil. As 
for potash, muriate, sulphate or kainit 
would not correct the sourness. Carbonate 
of potash would do so, as lime would. 
In wood ashes you would have carbon¬ 
ate of lime and carbonate of potash, both 
of which would act. The lime, too, would 
help destroy the green scum or slime. 
Value of Weeds. —I like a man who, 
wh'en he doubts a printed statement, comes 
and demands proof. For instance, here is 
a Massachusetts man with his why: 
It was recently stated in The R. N.-Y. 
that some of our common garden weeds have 
a higher feeding value than clover or Al¬ 
falfa. Does the Hope Farm man really ex¬ 
pect people to believe that? M. t. d. 
The Hope Farm man doesn’t expect too 
much from the intelligence of anyone. 
He just gets the nearest to the truth that 
he can, with the help of his friends, and 
lets others apply it. The Minnesota Ex¬ 
periment Station gives the following anal¬ 
ysis of some of our common weeds: 
Protein Carbohydrates 
Fat 
Purslane ... 
_26.13 
53.70 
2.9 
Pigweed ... 
_26.54 
62.86 
1.36 
Dandelion .. 
.17.68 
68.87 
3.42 
Catnip. . . . 
22.25 
63.07 
2.66 
Lamb’s Quarters .25.06 
79.12 
1.96 
Let tWese be compared with some well- 
known fodders: 
Protein Carbohydrates Fat 
Alfalfa . 
40.6 
2.43 
Clover . 
.14. 
52.3 
3.49 
Timothy hay ... 
. 8.75 
41.47 
2.16 
Millet . 
39.09 
2.59 
live fodder 
. 8.75 
32.12 
1.8 
Spring Vetch. ... 
.16.37 
46.54 
1.73 
Corn Stover ... 
. 7.10 
50.72 
1.90 
Now, when I say protein I mean muscle 
makers, that part of the food which con¬ 
tains nitrogen. We value Alfalfa because 
it is about as rich in nitrogen as wheat 
bran, yet here we see that our old friend 
“pussley” or purslane is 50 per cent richer 
than Alfalfa, three times as rich in nitro¬ 
gen as Timothy hay, and nearly four times 
as corn stover. Of course this does not 
refer to green “pussley” as we pull it up, 
but to a sample dried like hay. When I 
was a boy we ate boiled “pussley” with vin¬ 
egar and liked it. Some poor families 
kept strong and healthy on bread, “puss¬ 
ley” and potatoes. We can see from this 
analysis that the “pusslev” pretty nearly 
took the place of meat. When the cat eats 
catnip she gets far more muscle makers 
than in skim-milk. Pigweed is richer yet. 
Now about one-sixth of this protein is 
nitrogen. A ton of dried “pussley” or of 
pigweed would contain four per cent of 
nitrogen—more than most grades of fer¬ 
tilizer. Our hogs eat these weeds fairly 
well, but sheep are best, and a few head 
penned here and there on weedy ground 
will pick up a great living. But just see 
whlat you do when you let such weeds as 
“pussley” and pigweed grow and dry up 
and then burn them. Burn 100 pounds of 
dry “pussley” and you send away from 
your farm four pounds of nitrogen, worth 
nearly 75 cents. We dig tons of green 
“pussley” out of our strawberries and haul 
it to the hill to mulch around the young 
trees. It is easy to see why the trees 
thrive under this treatment while the 
strawberries do not grow as they ought 
to unless we use extra fertilizer. The “puss¬ 
ley” takes the nitrogen from the ground, 
and it is carried away. Thus whenever 
we burn weeds or carry them away we 
rob the soil even more than in some pro¬ 
ductive crop. If we let weeds grow and 
plow them under before they seed we 
help the soil. In digging potatoes I like 
to bury the vines as I dig, and yet pound 
for pound “pussley” has six times as much 
nitrogen as the potato tops. I think we 
are to learn great things regarding the 
value of our common weeds, and that they 
are to help us greatly in the future. That’s 
like all growth in knowledge. The things 
that we at first curse and detest come fin¬ 
ally to be known as blessings and true 
helpers. H. w. c. 
BUCKEYE ' 
HOE 
OR DISC 
When you sow seed for 
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well it is sown, don’t you? 
Then isn’t it folly to take 
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weather, but how much was the 
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drill you can depend upon. 
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Dept K. 
Springfield, O. 
m 
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