1907. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
783 
MEIV ENGLAND HILL-TOP ORCHARDS. 
New Value to Old Pastures. 
Part IV. 
One thing can be said about Hale’s peach trees; they 
are models for healthy color. In every orchard there 
will be found some sickly-looking trees—damaged by 
borers, or winter-kill, wounds, or “yellows.” You can 
find some of them here, but the great ma¬ 
jority could hardly look healthier. There 
is considerable fungus disease in this sec¬ 
tion. A grape vineyard at one side of the 
orchard had evidently been kept plastered 
with Bordeaux. In the past Hale has been 
a strong advocate of lime and sulphur for 
fighting the San Jose scale. It has done 
the business for that insect, and has also 
had an excellent effect upon the foliage. 
Various statements have been made about 
Mr. Hale’s experience with the oil sprays, 
and I am glad to be able to state the facts. 
Hale has been afraid of the oils, as he 
felt there was always a chance of injury to 
the wood and leaf where oil was used. 
There is never any danger, he says, from 
lime and sulphur, which benefits tree and 
foliage. For the past three years he has 
been experimenting with “Scalecide.” This 
year he used side by side “Scalecide,” 
lime and sulphur and some oil of his own 
mixing. He states that the foliage where 
the two kinds of oil were used is just as 
good as the other. It would certainly re¬ 
quire an expert in plant diseases to detec* 
any difference—if there be any. Hale 
states that he does think more favorably of 
the oils than ever before. In his “home 
mixture” there is a quantity of carbolic 
acid, which has some effect as a fungicide 
A form of “Scalecide” is now being made 
which has also some of this effect. Hale 
thinks he will hereafter use the oil one 
year and lime and sulphur the next, keep¬ 
ing up his experimenting meanwhile. Oil 
is the easiest and quickest to apply, but at 
present prices lime and sulphur is cheaper. 
Mr. Hale seems to think that “home mix¬ 
tures” of oil can be made at a reduced cost. 
At the horticultural meeting Professor 
Jarvis, of the Agricultural College of Con¬ 
necticut, explained the home mixing of oils. 
He gave the following formula, which I un¬ 
derstand to be what Hale calls his “home 
mixture:” Two quarts carbolic acid; 2 J /> 
quarts fish oil; one pound caustic potash; 
heat these to 300 degrees; remove from fire 
and then add V/ 2 quarts kerosene and 5^4 
quarts water. This mixture when fully 
made is called the Emulsifier. To make 
the complete oil mixture take eight parts 
Emulsifier; one part water; 18 parts crude 
petroleum; four parts rosin oil. This makes 
the “home mixture” which is used at the 
rate of one part oil to 15 parts of water. 
Now this formula is given as Professor 
Jarvis explains it, but I advise readers to 
go slow and experiment carefully before 
they use too much of it. An oil chemist 
tells me that this does not make a “soluble 
oil,” but an emulsion or mixture. I have 
seen farmers mix kerosene emulsion after 
the standard formula given by the exper¬ 
iment stations. The dregs of this stuff, 
or the last to be sprayed out of the barrel 
were so strong that it blasted the trees as 
if fire had touched them. A careful man 
with every appliance may make this oil 
mixture, or whale-oil soap, but something 
besides mere mixing or stirring is required. 
Taken as a whole, it seems to me that 
such work as Hale is doing on these rough 
hills is about the most hopeful thing seen 
for many a day in New England. For 
no man undertakes such work unless there 
is some spirit or strong ambition in his 
heart. I doubt if it would be possible to 
obtain what we call purebred Americans to 
do the work of fitting and planting this 
land. It would seem to them like taking a 
backward step to labor on this abandoned 
soil. Europeans, and especially Italians from northern 
Italy, do not have this feeling. Anything out in the air 
of this country is progress away from the conditions 
which they left at home. So they go at their task with 
hope and ambition, for as the trees develop it means 
home, competence and hope for the future of their 
children. Thus such development helps {0 solve the hard 
problem of future citizenship. h. w. c. 
SWEET CLOVER AS STOCK FOOD. 
Experience With This Forage in Ohio. 
The following is suggested by reading Mr. Legg’s ar¬ 
ticle on page 715, “Sweet Clover and Alfalfa.” There 
are wrong impressions, regarding the plant. Here it 
grows very rank on the roadsides, and in some fields. 
! used to think, like Mr. Legg, that stock would not 
they began to feed on it, and below the height men¬ 
tioned, it was too coarse and hard to be palatable. Sel¬ 
dom now do we see it in pasture fields, but on the 
roadsides adjoining these fields it grows in abundance, 
and would undoubtedly grow in the fields if the stock 
let it alone. When driving lambs along the highway, I 
have noticed that they eat it as readily as the grasses 
that grow with it, Blue grass, etc. Men owning horses 
in my nearest village I have known to cut 
it from the roadsides and haul it to their 
stables and feed it to their horses. At first 
they refused it, but soon learned to relish it. 
I know of a Timothy meadow being cut 
this year that had growing with it an equal 
bulk of Sweet clover. This was stored in 
sheds, and will be fed out to cattle this 
Winter. In the same field in which this 
Timothy grew last year, after wheat, there 
came on five or six acres a very rank 
growth of Sweet clover. This year there 
grew a very excellent crop of corn on the 
same land. Alfalfa grows on all the land 
about here without soil inoculation. But 
unless the land is well drained, naturally or 
artificially, it will winter-kill. As regards 
Sweet clover, I would gladly have more of 
it grow on my farm than the stock and cul¬ 
tivation will allow to grow. 
Ross Co., Ohio. john m. jamison. 
THE LILY-LEAVED SUNFLOWER. MUCH REDUCED. Fig. 391. 
See Ruralisms, Page 786. 
eat it, for I often took care to notice when driving 
along a road on the sides of which it grew as high as 
a horse’s back, whether the droves of stock, cattle prin¬ 
cipally, fed on it, and never did I see that a plant had 
been nipped. Later, in a field where a lot of large steers 
were pasturing, the Sweet clover grew in great abun¬ 
dance, and the cattle, by feeding on it, had cut it down 
to about knee high.. Tt had made a large growth before 
CONNECTICUT CONDITIONS.—The 
principal business of farmers in this se«- 
tion is dairying and market gardening. We 
have good markets close at hand for these 
products and there is always a good de¬ 
mand for them. I think farmers are handling more 
actual cash to-day than they were 25 or 40 years ago, 
as the population is increasing all the time, but, on the 
other hand, expenses are more. Labor has advanced 
25 per cent to 50 per cent, and feed even more than 
that, so I do not know that farmers really have any 
more cash in hand to-day than they did years ago. 
New Britain, Conn. h. p. a, 
THE FINISHED PRODUCT—A YEAR'S SUPPLY. Fig. 390. 
NEW YORK RURAL DISTRICTS . 
The north central part of Plerkimer 
County is especially a dairying region, and, 
in this town, most of the milk is brought to 
the local milk condensery. The grain and 
hay products are used on the farm, and 
more or less feed bought in addition. 
There are no “abandoned farms” here in 
the usual sense of the term. There are cir¬ 
cumstances that would, however, indicate 
the contrary. For instance, between this 
village and the next one, a distance of three 
miles, there have been within the past 60 
years no less than eight dwelling that are 
now destroyed. Two were burned. In each 
instance the land was sold to adjoining 
farmers, the area being small. In the other 
cases the buildings were pioneer structures, 
and their location being in a meadow, it 
was advisable to remove them and fill the 
cellars. But, suppose that they were in a 
pasture and were allowed to tumble down. 
Passers-by noticing the ruins, would very 
naturally assume that this was a real “aban¬ 
doned farm.” Some of the owners, or occu¬ 
pants, of these small places moved to town 
where work was plenty and hours of labor 
fewer than on the farm. The decrease of 
population in the rural districts is also ap¬ 
parently indicative of an agricultural exo¬ 
dus. The relatively smaller sized families 
and fewer houses are largely the real cause. 
Many of our farms are occupied by tenants 
who move to another location after one 
year. Too many of them are intemperate 
and incompetent properly to manage a farm. 
They never seem to get ahead; are often in 
a dispute with their landlords or neighbors, 
and come howling to me, as a magistrate, 
for justice, and get it, too, to their sorrow. 
I think the man who has his own farm 
and can properly care for it ought to do 
fairly well here. Farm labor is scarce, feed 
is high and the abnormal Summer weather 
has not given us a very good hay and corn 
crop. I do not farm it personally. My 
tenant, who retired last year on account of 
age, was on the farm 34 years, 26 of them 
as a tenant. Such faithful ones are as 
scarce as hens’ teeth. I think that in some 
instances the disagreements between land¬ 
lord and tenant are due to a grasping land¬ 
lord who expects too much from his tenant. 
New York. g. s. g. 
