1909. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
427 
Hope Farm Notes 
Those Free Seeds. —On page 371 I 
printed a copy of the letter I wrote 
our Congressman on returning the pack¬ 
age of free Government seeds. He 
replied promptly in the following let¬ 
ter : 
Replying to your letter of the 22nd in¬ 
stant I desire to say that I am inclined 
to agree with you in this matter of the 
distribution of seeds. Further, I have on 
every occasion when the opportunity pre¬ 
sented itself, voted against the practice. 
Since, however, the House continues to ap¬ 
propriate the money, the Department to 
expend it, and the seed placed at my dis¬ 
posal, I have adopted the line of least 
resistance in this matter and permitted 
my secretary to send them out. I doubt if 
this distribution does the average member 
of Congress much good, inasmuch as a 
great majority of the right thinking and 
intelligent people of the community must 
feel very much as you do. I am glad to 
have had this expression of your views. 
WILLIAM HUGHES. 
That is sensible, and I can find no 
fault with it. I am sure that many 
Congressmen would take much the 
same view if people would tell them 
squarely what they think. That is par¬ 
ticularly true in a district where the 
election is close, as it is with us. In 
some districts where there is a sure 
margin of several thousand votes the 
Congressman often gets so that he 
doesn’t seem to care. He would though 
if the voters told him honestly just 
what they wanted—and did not want t 
A Child’s Questions. —The follow¬ 
ing note from a New England man 
will appeal to many farmers who have 
children to bring up: 
The Hope Farm Man. 
Dear Friend : “What is a spirit?” So 
asked ray litlc six-year-old boy last night 
as I was milking. . He began the conversa¬ 
tion by saying that mother told him that 
his litt'e brother who died three years ago 
was dust by this time, and when I began 
to speak of body and spirit, he said, “What 
is spirit,” and although I am 45 years 
old and a college graduate—even if I am 
a second-class farmer on a rundown farm, 
I could only use words—I could not an¬ 
swer him—and when he asked me whether 
the cow we lost the other day had a spirit 
and whether that went to heaven, I thought 
how little we had advanced in some re¬ 
spects since Solomon asked the question: 
“Who knoweth the spirit of man whether 
it goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast 
whether it goeth downward to the earth?” 
After that he entered the domain of 
sociology by way of the tramp question, 
asking many questions of course. Ivastly, 
he wanted to know about the devilfish, but 
that was easy. I am terrified when I 
think how my children look to me as the 
source of wisdom and goodness and espe¬ 
cially when I think of their coming to years 
of understanding and knowing of my mis¬ 
takes and failures and sins of the past. 
TIMOTHY. 
What shall we say to such a child so 
that he may understand it? No harder 
problem presents itself to the man or 
woman who desires to bring up a child 
like a legacy to the future. Every man 
knows that sooner or later, his children 
will find him out. I certainly have no 
advice on a problem which has baffled 
the wisest men and made them more 
ignorant even than the little child who 
has nothing but faith in the words 
which he believes. That very idea en¬ 
larged and elaborated seems to be all 
there is to it after all. 
Horse Dentistry.— Every year ques¬ 
tions like the enclosed come: 
I remember that the Hope Farm man 
has had one or more old horses. Did he 
ever have their teeth filed? 1 run a one- 
horse, one-man place, both getting on in 
years. Like many another who has been a 
mechanic for 25 years, I have more gump¬ 
tion with the mowing machine than with 
the horse that pulls it. It takes the old 
horse a long time to eat his hay, and I 
have been told that his teeth need filing. 
What do you think? u. s. b. 
Ilingham, Mass. 
We have three old horses on the farm 
now. Their teeth have all been filed at 
various times. I am sure that many a 
horse is “doctored” for various disor¬ 
ders, when the trouble really is with 
his teeth. Sometimes the teeth grow 
so. long that the horse cannot use his 
grinders. In other cases a tooth may 
be broken or grown out so that it cuts 
the gums and makes chewing painful. 
The horse will bolt his grain. Some¬ 
times when such horses are fed ear 
corn they have a hard time with their 
food, and get less benefit from it than 
they should.. I would by all means 
have a veterinary look at the horse and, 
if need be, file his teeth. I do not stop 
to think about this—we have had ex¬ 
perience enough to know that it pays. 
Live Stock. —At one time I had a 
hard job getting the children up in the 
morning. Now the lightest touch gets 
them out of bed, and they are often up 
by the time I am. No—I have not in¬ 
vented an alarm clock or an early riser, 
but the children have invested in live 
stock, and they get out early to take 
care of it. My plan with each child is 
about as follows. Fie studies out the 
kind of stock he wants, and then makes 
a partnership agreement. I buy the 
animals and the child gets a half in¬ 
terest by putting labor against my capi¬ 
tal. We each pay for half of the feed 
and each Ifas half the income and in¬ 
crease. After proving that they will 
care for the animals properly the chil¬ 
dren can buy my interest out for half 
of what I paid in cash. In case they do 
not give proper care I reserve the right 
to take the stock—mother to be the 
judge of the case. Under this agree¬ 
ment one boy has a fine pen of R. I. 
Red hens, fhe other as good a pen of 
Pekin ducks as we could find, while 
the girls have rabbits and bantams. One 
of the girls wanted to try turkeys, but 
it was late in the season and I could 
not find a good trio of birds for less 
than $20—which is too steep for us. 
We decided to buy as good foundation 
stock as we could get at a reasonable 
price. For our eating eggs we bought 
some ordinary farm hens here and 
there—good specimens of mixed breeds. 
By the side of those hens, and on the 
same kind of food, our pure-bred Red 
liens give us an object lesson of what it 
means to select animals true to type 
and habit. The ducks are fine speci¬ 
mens—the drake being nearly as ’ large 
as a goose. The boy dug out a small 
pond and turned the water from the 
brook into it. Surely no birds ever had 
more watchful carq, and they respond 
it. For feed the boys use the grain 
mixture which we give the horses. This 
is corn and oats ground together in our 
own mill with wheat bran added to the 
mixture. Beef scraps are added to 
form a mash—with whole corn or 
wheat at night. Our boys have dis¬ 
carded the incubator and use hens for 
hatching. The plan is to hatch what 
they can care for well and force the 
chicks along. In the Fall they will sort 
out the best pullets for our own use 
and sell the others with the cockerels— 
buying some new blood each year. We 
shall see how this business makes out. 
I believe in keeping children busy and 
in getting them into business habits 
early. It is understood that I shall 
come upon them at any time without 
warning for a statement of how we 
stand—and they must be ready. In 
addition to his hen business the older 
boy is agent for a washing machine. 
Farm Notes. —Somehow I never saw 
the buds start on the crab apple trees 
so hopefully as this year. As the trees 
have grown and our plans worked out 
all hands begin to take greater pride 
in the farm. After all it is this pride 
or spirit in things which is the real 
motive power of farm success. Let a 
man get up every morning gloomy and 
discouraged to some hopeless struggle 
against conditions, and he is at a dis¬ 
advantage before he strikes a blow. 
On the other hand let the man feel that 
something in his farm is improving and 
that he has learned how to make things 
better and he has new hope and cour¬ 
age. I have said that if I could have 
1,000 young men and make them know 
what it means to be 50 years old I 
would change history. So I could, but 
I could change it even more with 1,000 
men of 50 who, while doing a full 
man’s work, have kept hohj of the hope 
and true ambition of youth. Such men 
would be harder to create than the 
other class, but they would make the 
world sing. If I could make my farm 
mean to me what the big white drake 
and the red rooster mean to my boys 
I could be the happiest man on earth 
with no one to match me in brilliant 
prospects. Spring is coming as never 
before. We are ready for it, and plan¬ 
ning well.The first plowing 
was done on April 5—the strawberry 
ground and part of the garden. Oats 
and peas and speltz go in early. This 
speltz is new to me, but some of our 
people speak so well of it that I decided 
to try an acre to compare it with oats. 
I have made up my mind to one sure 
thing. On any spot where I cannot 
spend the time to give the most care¬ 
ful cultivation I shall put in some 
broadcast crop to be cut for forage. 
In years past I- have lost money by 
planting too much in hoed crops and 
then falling down in weed time. Far 
better to put these places in oats and 
peas, sorghum or buckwheat, fertilize 
well and let them go. Concentrate your 
hand and cultivator work upon a fair¬ 
sized space and work it hard. . . . 
We are putting lime on some of our 
grass and grain fields. This is not the 
best time to do it, I know, but as it 
was not done last Fall we do it now 
We use hydrated lime. This is expen¬ 
sive, but I wished to make a fair com¬ 
parison with the slaked lime. The lat¬ 
ter burns and bites the eyes and nose. 
This seems to be because parts of the 
lime are not fully slaked, so that you 
get particles of caustic lime in your 
eyes. The hydrated lime does not bite 
or burn, and is no more unpleasant to 
put on than road dust. I am covering 
the meadows and the grain and also 
the orchards. The sod orchards are 
rather sour and this won’t do—for 
peaches.I have an agricul¬ 
tural problem for consideration. In 
half my cornfield the 'seeding of Crim¬ 
son clover is good—even after the try¬ 
ing weather of March. In the other 
half there is barely a plant to be found. 
It was the same variety of corn, 
planted and handled in the same way, 
and on the same western slope of a 
hillside. As this will make a difference 
of nearly $10 an acre to me I want to 
know the reason. On the half where 
the good clover is found the seed was 
put in a week before the other and 
was a thicker seeding. This should 
not fully account for it, for the clover 
was poorer on one lot from the stant, 
while the corn was about as good. On 
the poorer side of the field three suc¬ 
cessive crops of corn have been grown 
— on the best part two. The best 
part is now two years from the sod— 
the other three. The only difference in 
fertilizing is that when the sod on the 
best part was broken up we used a 
dressing of basic slag on the sod, and 
a complete fertilizer on .the other side 
My belief is that the lime in the slag 
has sweetened that side of the field so 
that it is in better condition for the 
clover. In another field, which is a 
peach orchard planted in sod, I put 
two years ago a fair dressing of the 
slag. At that time .there was merely a 
scattering plant of clover here and 
there. The clover began to come in 
and last year it was thick all over the 
field. Again I attribute this to the lime 
in the slag, and also to the phosphoric 
acid. I begin to feel sure that in our 
country we might as well keep our 
clover seed out of the ground as to use 
it without lime. I am sure the phos¬ 
phoric acid in the slag helped the corn 
from the appearance of the ears and 
grain. h. w. c. 
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