1907. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
399 
Hope Farm Notes 
All Sorts. —Still cold and wet By- 
May 1 we had barely planted a potato. 
There seemed no sense in putting potato 
seed into the wet ground. The sprouts 
will do better in the sun on the barn 
floor. This is fine weather for planting 
strawberries, bush fruits and trees, and 
we make the most of it. Thus far we 
have planted about 100 apple, 200 peach 
and about 600 roots of blackberries and 
raspberries. As older readers know, our 
tree planting is quite a simple operation. 
We cut the tree back severely, both root 
and top, dig a hole about large enough 
to hold the roots, and pack good soil 
firmly around them. I have given up 
telling people just how to do it, for I 
know from my' own experience that I 
had to learn how by practice. In peaches 
I am following the crowd and planting 
largely of Elberta. I can imagine the 
Ben Davis apple, Elberta peach and Pres¬ 
ident strawberry holding a convention 
and pouring profit into their lack of pop¬ 
ularity and smiling at the overflow. _ I 
am also planting Carman, iChairs Choice, 
Mountain Rose and Niagara, with a few 
Champions. As for apples, I am about 
done planting Baldwins, as we have 
enough of them. Wealthy, McIntosh and 
Fall Pippin are going in this year, with 
some Russet and Greening. I have 
Earned to plant peach trees in sight of 
the house. On the little mounds on the 
lower farm we are putting small peach 
orchards with strawberries and bush 
fruits in between. Thus Hope Farm is 
settling into two distinct plans of fruijt 
culture. On a few acres near the road 
we intend to crowd most of our manure, 
plant close and give the most thorough 
culture we know how to give. On the 
hills we will keep the trees in sod, only 
plowing from time time as the ground 
needs reseeding. . . . The most in¬ 
dustrious member of the Hope Farm 
family just now is Queen, the white tur¬ 
key. She not only covers 30 of those 
incubator eggs, but keeps on laying too. 
This double duty puts her ahead of any 
hen I ever saw. The other turkey hens 
offered to sit in the nest they made un¬ 
der a brush pile. It was too near the 
road, so we put them in barrels at the 
barn, hoping they would continue in busi¬ 
ness. They both struck at once. If they 
couldn’t have their own way they would 
suit themselves-—so they started laying 
again. What a world this would be if 
human strikers could settle the labor 
problem that way. ... I am a great 
stickler for harrowing the soil after plow¬ 
ing. If possible I would stir it up and 
work it at least eight time before plant¬ 
ing. We have four different harrovvs— 
Acme, spring-tooth, Cutaway and spike- 
tooth, and it sometimes requires nice 
judgment to know which to use. In fit¬ 
ting our strawberry bed we piled on a 
very heavy coat of manure in addition to 
the rye, and plowed it all under. The 
bovs wanted to do a fine job, and fol¬ 
lowed the plow with the spring-tooth. 
This was the wrong tool to use in that 
place, for it dug quite a little of the ma¬ 
nure up to the surface. I wanted that 
manure left down deep in the soil, and 
the upper surface scratched or worked 
lightly with Acme or spike. We can 
put a little fertilizer at the surface, but 
the place for the manure is down, deep, 
where it will hold moisture and induce 
deep rooting. For Fall-plowed sod the 
spring-tooth followed by the Acme gives 
us a fine seed bed for corn, provided 
you work the spring-tooth long enough. 
It will not pay to use spring-tooth or 
Cutaway on sod unless you are prepared 
to do a thorough job and break the sod 
all up. Better turn over the sod, pack 
it with the roller, and scratch over the 
surface than to chop it up once and leave 
the grass on top. 
Housework. —Tt has come to be some¬ 
thing of a common thing for the Hope 
Farm man to superintend the kitchen job 
on Sunday while the rest of the family 
join the procession on the way to church. 
The children offer to stay and help, but 
they get their share on week days. As 
we all know what is by general consent 
rated next to godliness, the kitchener 
who does a good job ranks ahead of the 
churchman who goes to church to show 
his clothes or some such motive. Then, 
again, I have no right to insist that every 
member of a family ought to know how 
to cook and serve a meal unless I can do 
it myself. No man should preach until 
he is ready to practice. It seems that 
there are others. Here is a note from 
an Ohio man who went to his farm in 
order to start things before his wife 
found it safe to come: 
April 0 found my wife still in the West, 
me on a 240-acre farm ; 20 days behind be¬ 
cause of bad roads preventing man in the 
house from moving: help indoors and out 
sick. Imagine a fellow washing woodwork, 
scrubbing tloors, cooking, looking after a lot 
of setting hens; (young lambs needing at¬ 
tention, too), putting up curtains and 
shades, down upon his knees stretching car¬ 
pets, and doing other things necessary to I 
instal a lot of household goods, without even 
a woman to “boss,” and with 70 acres of i 
ground to plow. After 10 days of this 
pleasantry (?) I now have the promised 
help and am getting things in shape. 
Now it may be a mere notion of mine, 
but some of these household men are 
more useful to the world than so-called 
statesmen. I suppose all men at some 
time of life write verses—I cannot call 
them poetry. When these men grow up 
and acquire the dignity of gray hair it 
is doubtful if you can inflict any keener 
punishment than to get them with their 
families and read some of their poetry 
out loud! You will not find a man 
ashamed of the days when he did a good 
job at household service. I once washed 
dishes in a large boarding house, and stood 
out in front to call off the bill of fare. 
There is nothin" to be ashamed of in 
this, as those dishes were clean, and on 
a clear day people with good ears a 
mile away knew what we had for dinner. 
Burning Stumps. —That old tale about 
burning stumps is going around once 
more. You are told to bore a hole in 
the stump, put in saltpeter, wait a while 
and then set the stump on fire. A friend 
in New Hampshire has tried this with 
the following result: 
Last Spring I cut down close to the 
ground three apple trees eight to 12 inches 
in diameter. In the Fall, just before snow, 
I bored an inch and a half auger hole In 
the center of each as deep as possible with¬ 
out boring through ; put one ounce of salt¬ 
peter in each and tilled with water and 
plugged. This Spring the water was gone, 
but most of the saltpeter was left. Filled 
with kerosene—a good free-burning grade, 
not the watery stuff commonly on the mar¬ 
ket, and set on fire. They burned finely, 
or rather the oil did while it lasted; then 
the fire went out, leaving the stump as good 
as ever except for a slight charring where 
it was driest. That Is the result of my 
first attempt. L. m. s. 
That is about what will happen in 
every case. Just where these stories 
start is hard to say. I see many about 
like this and no doubt hundreds try them. 
I remember as a boy how people paid $5 
for a new way of smashing rocks—“in 
successful use for hundreds of years.” 
They got a card stating that when Han¬ 
nibal crossed the Alps lie built fires 
against the rocks and when they were 
hot, poured vinegar over them! Who 
can deny it to-day? That was a good 
thing, for a couple of farmers used two 
barrels of hard cider in disproving the 
theory. They might have drank the 
cider! 
Old Timers. —Here is a question from 
New York State much like others which 
come to us: 
At our bouse when we don't know bow 
to find out what we want to know, we say 
ask the “Hope Farm Man.” We have bought 
an old house witli box after box of old news¬ 
papers in it: back as far as 1841. anyway: 
all through the Civil War papers from both 
North and South. Have they any market 
value? People say they have, but no one 
seems to know where. l. j. l. 
Copenhagen, N. Y. 
My reputation for wisdom gets me into 
trouble sometimes. I regret to say that a 
“back number” has very little value except 
such as is based on love or sentiment. It 
is hard to coin these into money. It is 
doubtful if those old papers will bring 
more than their value as old junk. There 
might be some one who wanted a few to 
complete a collection, or who wanted 
some advertisement or legal notice cut out. 
Such people might pay a fair price. There 
may also be some who would like to show 
those old papers in comparison with the 
modern sheets. As a rule, though, ancient 
history is not worth live money. Once in 
a great while some one wants to buy an 
old copy of The R. N.-Y., and will pay 
a fair price for it. while thousands of 
other copies will be worth little, if any¬ 
thing. Tt is much the same with old 
books. Unless you can strike some col¬ 
lector who has some special reasons for 
wanting them, such volumes can hardly 
be given away. 
Ashes and Borers. —(Here is another 
sample of advice: 
I think I have read somewhere that one 
quart of wood ashes piled around a peach 
tree in the Spring will kill or prevent borers. 
Is this true? . c. H. p. 
I have no doubt this story has been 
printed many times. It ranks with the 
saltpeter and stump theory. One quart 
of wood ashes will not get rid of borers. 
We use about a peck of mixed wood and 
coal ashes around a peach tree, and still 
have borers. The mound around the tree 
helps by compelling the moth to lay her 
egg higher up on the body. She usually 
lays it at the surface of the ground, 
where it is hard to get at the borers. 
When laid at the top of the little mound 
we can get at them easier. It may be 
claimed that the lye in the wood ashes 
kills the borer. One quart of ashes 
would not supply enough to do it. We 
use a pound of caustic potash to 20 gal¬ 
lons of very hot water, and even this 
will not get them all. We would by all 
means use the ashes around the trees, 
but do not depend on this alone for kill¬ 
ing borers. Use the hot lye or dig them 
out. H. w. c. 
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