1909 . 
171 
Hope Farm Notes 
Farming Futures. —Last week, on 
page 136, there was printed the “bill 
of fare” of that Connecticut fruit ban¬ 
quet. From apple to apple that suited 
me well. The dish that made the great¬ 
est hit was the “Pomological Salad.” 
Large Baldwin apples had been scooped 
out so as to leave a thick rind. The 
salad was served in this living cup. 
You were at liberty to eat up the dish 
if you cared to do so. The banquet 
was a novelty, and the people could 
have given our “Uplift Commission” a 
year's supply of mental food. I sat 
next J. H. Hale, and asked him many 
questions about Connecticut farms 
and those who live on them. He said 
there were a dozen or more of women 
right at those tables who have lived 
the part of “Nell Beverly” in all its 
details. Some have not, perhaps, ended 
as well as she did, but the grit and 
the hope and stern resolve of the New 
England character were there. I asked 
Hale about the curse of hard cider 
drinking. He said it was passing away, 
thought still bad in some sections. 
Rural delivery, telephones, new books 
and similar things are breaking down 
some of the old habits which ought 
to go. Hale also told me that there 
were present at this banquet several 
Italians and their wives—who had 
taken up old farms, planted fruit, paid 
out and made home and successful 
business out of what was counted a 
failure. A banquet at which all sat 
together in an informal wav, brought 
these things out and made such a meet¬ 
ing a memorable one. All over New 
England I find people taking fresh 
heart and courage. Tt makes me think 
of men of middle age who, when they 
find they are no longer young, become 
discouraged and are ready to quit. 
After a little thought they become 
ashamed of this, adapt their power to 
new conditions and proceed to do the 
most useful work of their lives. Op¬ 
portunity is coming back to our older 
sections as never before. It all goes 
to confirm my belief that after all it is 
the spirit back of the labor that makes a 
business or a section prosperous. Un¬ 
less we can have men and women in 
our farm homes who in some way can 
be lifted up in hope or ambition above 
their daily labor farming cannot be 
called a success. Work without pride 
and spirit to direct its strength is dead 
fruit. It may he pride in turning out 
honest and excellent products, hope and 
ambition for our children or joy in 
doing our full duty as citizens—all these 
things may he used to make the plow 
and the hoe seem lighter. Farmers 
need these things, and that is why I 
claim that the education which simply 
tells him how to make another dollar 
does not fit him properly. 
Women’s Work. —As I expected, the 
remarks of our Vermont friend on page 
115 are likely to stir up a discussion. 
Here, briefly stated, is one quite popu¬ 
lar view: 
What you say about the woman's In¬ 
fluence toward or against the farm ts all 
right. Rut unless the man Is capable of 
Inspiring the most intense affection, why 
should she face hardship, toil and poverty 
—which too often gets no recognition from 
the man? 
I am not capable of answering the 
question. T wish some of our women 
readers who can write without preju¬ 
dice or bitterness would discuss this. 
I have heard women go so far as to 
say that they would rather bury their 
daughter than have them marry farm¬ 
ers. Happily most of those ladies 
never had any children, though more 
than one overworked farm mother has 
said it. On the other hand peo¬ 
ple have told me that if any 
woman permitted herself to become 
the slave of a home it was her 
own fault. So there you are. Per¬ 
sonally I. think the education of many 
of our girls is wrong in the fact that 
it fails to fit them for the practical side 
of life. They are not taught to work, 
while thdr parents have not the means 
with which to keep them without labor. 
THE RURAL REW-YORKER 
\\ hat would you naturally expect from 
such girls? Our Vermont friend ha- 
written another letter in which he say?: 
The isolation of farm life comes hardest 
upon the woman, and if there are debts 
the worry addl'd to the isolation makes 
the life hard for them. I don’t know but 
we men are to blame that we don't give 
them a better living. 
Big Corn.— A Massachusetts man 
who says he is “willing to be called a 
corn crank,” sends me an car of corn 
that he has been breeding for 40 years. 
T _ shall try it in comparison with our 
flint. This man must indeed be a 
crank from the following statement: 
I was in Italy four years ago. and in 
my travels picked up a few kernels ot 
corn. I planted one kernel near my hot¬ 
bed, and it grew and tillered like rye and 
sent up five stalks liiat tasseied mid pro¬ 
duced 21 ears that laid end to end meas¬ 
ured eight feet and eight inches and shelled 
3,438 kernels that weighed exactly three 
pounds. Plant your corn three feet four 
inches between rows and one kernel each 
foot in row and you have 12.958 hills per 
acre, and if each bill produces three 
pounds, as mine did. you get 694 1 <i 
bushels per acre. Isn’t that just a little 
the biggest corn story you ever heard? 
E. M. 
Yes, that beats any corn story I ever 
heard. I wish I could raise corn with 
pencil and paper, but I fear that kind 
would not feed my stock. T do not 
imagine, however, that any of us have 
yet reached the limit in corn growing. 
Some one will yet learn how to pro¬ 
duce 200 bushels of shelled cord on an 
acre. I think this is more likely to 
be grown in the East rather than out 
West. Our friend tells me that there 
will be a tremendous increase in corn 
acreage in Massachusetts this year. T 
believe this will be true of all the 
Eastern States. We can hardly do bet¬ 
ter than plow up some of our old grass 
lands and plant corn. 
Here is a Connecticut man on the 
right track—as I see it—aiming to 
stuff his soil with organic matter: 
I have a patch where I want to plant 
late cabbages next year, and there are 
now some Winter vetches growing there. 
Would you let them mature in the Spring 
and not plow until Summer, or would voii 
plow in the Spring and plant some other 
legume and later plow that under? I want 
to save on my fertilizer bill as much as 
possible. 
I am not very familiar with vetch, 
but if 1 had it I would let the crop 
mature and then plow it under. If this 
could be done by June i I would after 
plowing, sovv Canada field peas or a 
garden pea like Champion of England. 
These would make a fair growth, and 
when I was ready to set out the cab¬ 
bage I would plow the peas and use 
lime at the rate of one ton per acre. 
If it were too late to sow the peas I 
would sow Japanese millet and plow it 
under like the peas. 
F arm Notes.— The weather con¬ 
tinues mild and open—too much so T 
fear for the strawberries and small 
grain. The mercury went to 9° be¬ 
low zero one morning, but I am un¬ 
able to see that the peach buds have 
been hurt. I have been undecided 
whether to spray this Spring or not. 
Last Fall I could scarcely find a single 
scale on our trees. The year before 
most of the fruit was spotted, but 
last year scale marks were very rare. 
Now with this showing will it pay to 
blow on the oil again? I am inclined 
to try it as an insurance anvway. Our 
work in getting out lumber gives me 
a chance to figure on the farmer’s 
share of building material. The awrnill 
charges us 70 cents per 100 for sawing 
up the logs. Tf we bought such lum¬ 
ber we should have to pay at least 
$36 per 1,000 feet. We must add the 
cost of getting out the trees to the 
cost of sawing in order to figure what 
our trees are worth. As we did this 
work with our own labor these figures 
arc hard to get at ... . We shall 
begin in February to give the straw¬ 
berry ground a thick coat of manure. 
We shall pile on about all we have, 
plow it under as early as possible and 
fit the soil as well as we know how. 
We have nearly enough plants for our 
use except part of the Marshalls. This 
variety does not make plants very 
rapidly with us, and we try to keep 
most of the runners chopped off. I 
think we are better off to buy this 
variety from some one who makes a 
business of growing plants. Tt is one 
thing to grow fruit and a very dif¬ 
ferent thing to grow plants. Pruning 
will begin next week. We do not prune 
heavily,, and do not make as much of a 
job of it as is done in orchards where 
a heavy wood growth is forced. Our 
main object is to open the head of the 
tree so as to let in the sun and spray. 
The indications now are for a lively 
time in our orchards this vear if fruit 
buds in February mean anything. 
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