4U 
TLiI£ KURA L, NEW-YORKER 
January 10, 
Northern Spy apple, of spicy flavor, can take the 
place of tea or coffee. For supper, we may take 
some large King or Northern Spy apples, dig out the 
core, and fill the hole with sugar, and then bake them. 
These with some new brown bread, some nuts, figs, or 
dates, plain homemade candy, and cheese for those 
who desire something heavier. Then we can take 
some apple jelly and make a hot drink that is palat¬ 
able and refreshing. This is a good supper for me. 
In this supper we have all that any right-thinking per¬ 
son will desire, except it may be those who do hard 
manual labor. One point I wish to make, is that the 
apple is most appreciated, as we come more and more 
in the way of right thinking, and the higher the cul¬ 
ture, and the more ideal the life, the less animal 
foods will be used, and the more fruit, also that it is 
a good work to do to rightly plant and care for an 
apple tree, for we are anticipating the needs of a 
better age. Suppose the apple is taken entirely out 
of the menu or bill of fare I have mentioned, the 
other food would be almost useless to us. 
At a recent dinner at which some friends were en¬ 
tertained, I asked my wife not to provide any pie or 
pastry of any kind for dessert, but to let me plan it. 
On a plate I placed one large apple, some mixed nuts 
and candies, some figs, a bunch of grapes, and a 
wafer. This dessert, that made her no work, would 
not have been desirable without the fruit. The succul¬ 
ence the fruit contained was needed to make the other 
dry food acceptable and healthful. T believe our peo¬ 
ple are progressing toward a vegetable diet, and the 
apple will be needed in the same way as it was in 
our dessert. The uses of the apple are now so many, 
in domestic economy, that we could hardly make use 
of our other food without it. 
I shall not undertake to mention the many uses of 
the apple. We now want our apple pies, our baked 
apples, and especially the sweet baked apples in milk 
or with cream. Dry bread is made palatable by steam¬ 
ing and serving it with layers of stewed apples be¬ 
tween it. Apple shortcake is about the best substitute 
for strawberry shortcake, and evaporated apples are 
always a staple food. To drink fermented apple 
juice, or hard cider, is certainly the abuse of one of 
nature's best gifts to man, but it is a good thing to do, 
to own a small fruit press, and drink fresh fruit juice 
in place of tea and coffee. Raw apples are of great 
value when rightly used. People with weak or nervous 
stomachs may find trouble in digesting raw apples. I 
advise such people to try apples of fine texture like 
the Seek-no-further, and chew them very finely. 
'Pender apples like the Strawberry and Snow, make 
good sauce when sliced and sprinkled with sugar, 
and are quickly prepared. If one feels the need of 
eating something between meals, apples eaten in this 
way are the best thing, but probably the better way, 
sometimes, is to go without the regular meal and 
eat a meal of apples with other fruit. The very best 
way to take a drink of water is to eat an apple, as 
the apple is more than 90 per cent water. The water 
is taken in just the right way and is the purest water 
we can get. If you are going to some place where 
the Water is not pure, or does not agree with you, 
take some apples with you. 
One value of the apple is its keeping quality. A 
good Winter apple can be kept in good condition 
one year, or longer, and five or six months without 
cold storage. For family use, where cold storage is 
not available, apples can be packed in barrels in saw¬ 
dust. or each apple wrapped in paper and the barrels 
headed up. Place the barrels in a cool place in the 
cellar, and you may have fresh apples until mid¬ 
summer. Other fruit must be canned to keep it very 
long, except perhaps the pear, which I place next 
to the apple in value. I tell my family that with 
an abundance of the very best apples it is unnecessary 
to can much fruit for Winter. The apples and pears 
as nature made them to keep through the Winter are 
all we need. Let us enjoy the fruits, fresh, all 
through the season. They are never so good any 
other way, and with good Winter apples, this work 
of canning, that interferes with our work in the busy 
season, is largely done away with. 
Anyone who grows or offers an apple of inferior 
quality in market is doing both the apple—the real 
apple that is only worthy the name— and the con¬ 
sumer an injustice. We have no moral right to grow 
apples that are not of high quality, except for animal 
food. Some of the high-class apples can be grown 
in your locality, and if you cannot grow as many 
bushels per tree as the Ben Davis, plant more trees, 
and learn how to take care of them. It will pay in 
the end to be governed by the Golden Rule and offer 
to sell no apple to your neighbor that you would not 
enjoy eating yourself. Another value of the apple I 
must not overlook is for animals. I seldom give 
animals medicine. If a horse or cow is out of con¬ 
dition I feed apples or parings and vegetables. With 
hay and grain before them they will leave both to 
eat the apples. It is usually safe to let them decide 
what is good for them. I have seen pigs wintered on 
apples alone. On most farms the cul] apples from 
a large orchard are needed to get the animals through 
the Winter in good health. No one can appreciate 
the flavor of the apple if the natural taste is perverted 
by any drug, stimulant, condiment, sweets or anything 
impure. No one can use tobacco, or anything un¬ 
natural and foreign to the human body, and enjoy 
apples as well. Children enjoy them for this reason; 
they are able to get their true flavor. The apple has 
an aesthetic value I think few appreciate. Those who 
like to see and eat beautiful things, should note the 
COTTON HEADY FOR MARKET. Fig. 18. 
blending of colors, and delicate tracings that make a 
dish of apples an ornament to the table. 
New York. w. h. jenkins. 
SUCCESSFUL GRAPE CULTURE. 
These grapes are grown on the renewal system, one 
year vines being purchased and set in nursery rows 
for one year and highly fertilized with wood ashes 
and hen manure, thoroughly worked into the soil. They 
are kept free from weeds and cultivated as often as 
once in 10 days. Two canes are allowed to grow 
the first year. The following Spring the plant is 
taken up, roots shortened severely and the smallest 
cane cut back to two buds. The remaining cane is 
trained to a wire, and allowed to fruit from one to 
three bunches, mostly for the purpose of finding if it 
is true to name. If true to name the cane is cut close 
to parent slock. Two canes arc allowed to grow from 
the buds left on the cane cut in Spring. These two 
canes, if properly cared for, will produce eight to 10 
very large bunches the second year, and the third 
year, if climatic conditions are favorable, will produce 
as in Figs. 20 and 22. This can be done only with the 
best of care and extremely high fertilizing, but it pays 
well. 
Fig. 20 shows Moore’s Diamond, the vine being 
three years old in the Spring of 1908. Fig. 22 shows 
A LOADED COTTON PLANT. Fig. 19. 
McPike, the vine being the same age as the Diamond. 
As you will note, the results are highly satisfactory. 
Massachusetts. _ s. r. walker. 
A FARMER’S SHARE OF COTTON. 
The Hope Farm man asks what part of the dollar 
we get. I am sending a postcard of a bale of cotton 
with a statement from the commission man for this 
same bale. In addition to the statement I paid $1.75 
for ginning and $1 for baling. Had I hired the pick¬ 
ing done it would have cost one cent a pound for seed 
cotton, or $15. It takes 1,500 pounds of seed cotton 
to make one 500-pound bale of lint. We came from 
Central Ohio last April down here to this Gulf Coast 
county of Alabama. Farming is very different here 
from what it is in the North, but we can raise a great 
variety of stuff here and in such great abundance, and 
can have vegetables from our own garden the whole 
year around. At Christmas time we are working out- 
of-doors every day in our shirt sleeves; we have no 
mud. Roses are in bloom, the sun shines nearly every 
day. Nothing would induce us to go back to the 
cold frozen North. g. h. f. 
Loxley, Ala. 
R. N.-Y.—The commission returns from that bale 
are as follows: 
51S His. of cotton at. 9 cents. $46.G2 
Freight . 81.45 
Weighing, etc.45 . 
Fire insurance ..15 
Commission. 1.1G 
- 5.21 
843.42 
Cotton is now quoted in New York at 9j4 cents. 
In addition to the lint the bale of cotton gave 1.000 
pounds of seed, worth 25 cents per bushel for feed. 
Of course cotton is one of the products which must 
go through a long course of manufacturing before it 
reaches the consumer. Many people stand between 
the grower and those who finally buy the cloth, and 
most of them get as much or more out of it than the 
farmer does- The pictures show a cotton plant ready 
for picking and the bale ready for market. 
THE INCOME FROM DAIRY FARMS. 
On page 947 the Hope Farm man refers to my 
question about the income per acre from good dairy 
farms in Jefferson Co., N. Y. 1 did not intend to 
question the figures given. They are absolutely cor¬ 
rect. I merely wanted to take advantage of the state¬ 
ment to show that these farms are not givingthe gross 
nor net returns such land could and should produce. 
I am living on one of the oldest dairy farms in the 
State, where the milk from 50 to GO cows has been 
made into cheese on the farm for nearly 75 years, and 
this section of the Mohawk Valley was a dairy section 
almost before Jefferson County was on the map; I at 
once saw how exactly similar the conditions so 
graphically described are to those which prevail in 
this section. Nor did 1 intend to imply that Prof. 
Bailey stated that $49 per acre was realized from any 
dairy farm. To do this it would be necessary to keep 
nearly a cow to an acre. The farms to which Prof. 
Bailey referred are smaller farms on which fruit is an 
important money crop. We know there are fruit farms 
in the western part of the State and market garden 
farms near our large cities where $100 per acre would 
be but a fair average of the year’s income. I believe 
the lowest average income per acre is in the sections 
were dairying prevails, and that the expense of carry¬ 
ing on a dairy farm, considering the feed, labor, main¬ 
tenance and interest on the stock, is greater in pro¬ 
portion to the gross receipts than for almost any other 
branch of farming. This is the point 1 wanted to 
emphasize and see discussed in your columns, and my 
card was intended to call attention to your very cor¬ 
rect statement that the fine farming lands of Jefferson 
County were only returning $10 to $12 per acre, lands 
that you envied the owners the possession of. The 
average of the farm lands of the entire State for 
1899 was $15.75, and I have no doubt this has been 
quite a little increased in the last few years. There are 
plenty of dairy farms in the State where much le;ss 
than $10 per acre is realized in gross receipts. It is 
these poor returns from our farms that make their 
values so low. I don't mean their values; I should say 
their selling price. I have seen good farms sold for 
less than the value of the buildings on them, so that 
the purchaser gets the land for nothing. Free land 
here in New York State! Right at the doors of the 
best markets in the world for country produce; land 
that will produce acre for acre and dollar for dollar 
as much as any of the land in the Middle West which 
sells for three times as much per acre, and is three 
times as far away from the markets where their chief 
products’are sold. That there is no money in pro¬ 
ducing milk to be sold at from two to three cents 
per quart has been demonstrated over and over again, 
and the small demand for farms where this milk is 
produced as shown bv their selling price is the 
strongest demonstration of this fact; yet these very 
same farms are capable of producing from $25 to $50 
an acre in grain and corn, or from $75 to $150 per 
acre in potatoes and cabbage, and from $200 to $500 
per acre in berries or orchard fruits, and .with a 
proper rotation of crops, and judicious use of fer¬ 
tilizers and green crops plowed under no robbing of 
the farm of its fertility need be feared; With my 
dairy reduced to 16 cows, and net returns from my 
farm are greater than were the grass receipts with a 
full dairy on. Grazing and wintering dairy cows on 
land that is capable of producing three to five times 
as much if put to other uses seems to me the greatest 
mistake our farmers are making, and I firmly believe 
that if the dairy farmers of the five States shipping 
milk to New York City would reduce their dairies one- 
half and devote part of their farms to producing other 
money crops, they would get as much for the milk they 
would then have to sell as they now receive, or from 
$100 to $150 per cow. and have the produce from five 
acres for every cow they disposed of, which latter 
amount ought to be three times as much as they would 
have received if they had kept the cow under present 
conditions. 
The dairy farmers have been cutting their own 
throats by straining every resource to keep more cows 
and glut the market with milk. Conditions have en¬ 
tirely changed since dairying was very profitable in 
New York State, when the markets of the West, the 
South and of Europe were looking to us for butter 
and cheese. Now the West and Middle West, Canada. 
Australia and the Argentine Republic are supplying 
the outlying markets and shipping supplies of butter 
and cheese tb New York City, and the prices at which 
this butter and cheese sells is the basis of the price 
we get for the milk we sell to the milk station during 
the Summer months. During this same period the 
price of grain has doubled and this reversal of condi¬ 
tions is shown in the complete reversal of prices of 
land as between the East and West. Is it not time 
that the eastern dairy farmer recognized these condi¬ 
tions and changed his method of farming so as to 
take advantage of them? p. w. castle. 
Herkimer Co., N. Y. 
