1900 
THE! RURAb NEW-YORKER 
723 
Hope Farm Notes 
The Drought Broken.— On Sunday, 
July 18, we had a heavy shower. The 
rain came in a small flood, and the 
ground was so hard and dry that but 
little of the water soaked in except 
on the levels and hollows. Our hills 
were covered with gullying streams in 
15 minutes. If I could have had some 
of those intense cultivation cranks on 
my hill during this shower some of 
their theory would have been washed 
out of them. Had the surface been 
fine and loose all over the best part of 
it would have been washed to the bot¬ 
tom, for streams started at four or 
five places on our hill. As it was, be¬ 
fore they could gain much headway 
they struck a ridge of sod, either along 
the rows or in the middles. This spread 
the stream out along the field, and most 
of the water was saved. This rain 
helped, but there was not enough of it. 
Next day a hard, dry wind started in, 
which quickly licked the moisture out 
of the soil. By Thursday the drought 
was as severe as ever, but then the 
clouds began to form in earnest and by 
night a steady gentle rain came on. 
This kept up through Friday, till we 
thought the ground was soaked through. 
Next day, however, in trying to plow 
a piece of tough sod, we were surprised 
to find the soil powder dry eight inches 
below the surface. 
With the rain came a dozen jobs to 
be done at once. Here it was July 24 , 
and not a cabbage plant out. The 
ground had been ready, but so dry that 
nothing could live in it. By Saturday 
night we had over 2,500 cabbage in. 
It is doubtful if many of them will 
head, but they will make good feed 
anyway. Then the strawberry plants 
needed attention. I went into the field 
to cut off the runners. Some of them 
had made good size in spite of the 
drought. The boys followed me, and 
as I cut the runners off they picked out 
the larger ones that had started to 
make white roots. These were nipped 
off and taken to a wet piece of strong 
soil and set about six inches apart in 
rows. They will be well fed and 
cared for, and with moisture make good 
growth. A week before sale we can take 
them up with a good ball of earth at the 
root, and put them with good soil in pa¬ 
per pots. There they will root and make 
a good start, and when sold all the buyer 
has to do is to tear off the paper pot 
and plant square blocks of soil. We 
pot a few plants in the usual way be¬ 
side the parent, but when the soil is 
moist these transplanted layer plants 
give us even better results than 
potted plants. I ■shall handle as many 
of my next season’s plants as possible 
in this way. The plan is to take the earli¬ 
est runners that start, let them form 
white roots and then set them close to¬ 
gether, where they can be cultivated. 
Keep them growing and chop off the 
runners. Next Spring you will have 
fine plants for ‘setting—finer than the 
usual runners in matted rows. 
But why not let the runners stay 
where they are and dig them later?' 
With us they are in the way of cultiva¬ 
tion, and take some strength from the 
plant. Also, by having them on rich 
soil by themselves we can give them 
better care and make finer plants. 
It may look like small business to the 
larger growers to handle plants in this 
way, but we are after the 10,000 quarts 
of first-class Marshalls on an acre. 
You cannot do great things with 'a 
berry, a horse, a cow, a potato or a 
man unless you see that the childhood 
is passed under most favorable condi¬ 
tions No use handling the child in a 
hap-hazard, shiftless way, and then ex¬ 
pect to reach great things by giving the 
grown-up extra attention. Therefore, I 
know it pays to make our young plants 
as strong and vigorous as possible. 
In fact, true success is always in the 
future—that is, in planning so that your 
labor will not end with one thing or one 
crop, but lap on to the next one with 
its accumulation of power or experi- 
rience. I had my eye on the future 
when we planted our potato field on the 
lower farm. We plowed a tough sod 
completely over. Then, instead of tak¬ 
ing a spring-tooth or disk I had that sod 
packed down with the Acme, leaving 
about three inches of the top soil fine 
and light. The boys wanted to open 
furrows through the sod and drop in 
seed pieces, as that was the easiest way. 
They were inclined to argue when I 
made them stretch lines across the field 
2 r '2 feet apart and plant by driving a 
spade down into the ground—dropping 
the seed piece so that not a bit of the 
sod was turned up. The fertilizer was 
scattered on top and the field harrowed 
with the spike-tooth three times before 
the potatoes came up. I knew that in 
case of a drought that undisturbed sod 
would hold moisture and slowly de¬ 
cay. With a seeding of grass, I think 
this would be just the thing not to do, 
but with a crop where you can cultivate 
and thoroughly kill out the weeds and 
grass, the plan is right. The boys said 
it took twice as long, but we now have 
a field in almost perfect condition, with 
exactly straight rows of Irish cobbler 
potatoes that are as fine as anything 
I have seen this year. And now comes 
the future. While the soil is moist, in 
early August, we can run straight lines 
between the potato rows and set our 
transplanted layers of Marshall straw¬ 
berry plants. The potatoes will be dug 
in late August, and we shall then have 
a field well started in berries, with 
plants 2 l / 2 feet by 18 or 15 inches. And 
this field can be kept in berries five or 
six years. I am trying to teach my 
boys to handle the richer parts of the 
farm in this way—to fit the soil prop¬ 
erly and then keep it busy all the time 
—one crop helping the next one. 
During the drought some of our po¬ 
tatoes suffered severely. I cannot ex¬ 
plain the behavior of one part of a 
field. Practically all our crops are grown 
among orchard trees. On the hill the 
• alleys between rows of young trees 
were plowed and planted to potatoes 
A strip of sod is left along the row. 
But the alleys receive exactly the same 
treatment as regards culture and fertil¬ 
izer, and the seed all came from the 
same place. Yet in one block of six al¬ 
leys five are green and vigorous, while 
one is dead.. The drought affected them 
all, but when the rains came five re¬ 
vived while one died. I cannot account 
for it, except that I believe there is a 
narrow outcrop of rock at this point 
very close to the surface. I think the 
alley which suffered so is directly over 
this ledge, and that the plants were so 
stunted from lack of moisture that they 
could not recover. At any rate I can¬ 
not afford to have a potato field lie 
idle from July 20 , so when we saw the 
potatoes were doomed we went in and 
planted Evergreen sweet corn midway 
between the potato rows. We can dig 
out the potatoes, cultivate where they 
grew and seed to rye among the corn 
in October. It may seem strange to 
many that we keep planting fodder corn 
up to August 1 . We do not expect any 
grain, but as frost keeps off usually un¬ 
til October 15, we can grow a good 
yield of fodder. It looks to me like ex¬ 
pensive hay this year. 
Farm Partnerships. —I Know a 
young couple, well educated, industrious, 
strong and willing. The man has been 
a successful teacher in a trade school 
and is a practical mechanic and engineer. 
These people are thrifty and have 
saved a little competence. They have 
an ambition to be farmers, but they 
realize that they must have experience, 
as well as capital Now, they reason 
that there are probably people who are 
childless (or whose children have gone 
from home) with good farm properties 
which they would like to keep up. As 
we know, many farmers would prefer 
to live on their farms if it were pos¬ 
sible to keep up the property. Ordinary 
hired help will not do this satisfactorily. 
The young people I speak of want to 
know why they cannot make a business 
deal with such a farmer—putting their 
energy and strength with his experience 
and advice- They want to learn how to 
run a farm, and they reason truly that 
the best way to learn how is to go to 
school to a successful farmer right in 
his own home. I understand these 
young people would work for their 
keep for a while in exchange for the 
instruction they would get. It might 
then be possible to make up a business¬ 
like partnership with invested capital. 
The man tells me that he knows of 
others somewhat similarly situated, who 
have a little capital, and think a farm 
partnership of this sort would be bet¬ 
ter than for them to start out alone. 
I speak of this as an experiment—or 
rather to try an experiment. If there 
are farmers who would consider such a 
deal 1 will give them the address of this 
couple. I do not care to hear from those 
who simply have farms for sale, for 
these parties ds^ not want to buy. This 
is for farmers who want to remain on 
their farm's and who would take such 
a couple in preparation for a possible 
partnership. In theory this ought to 
work out, but there might be some ob¬ 
stacle when we come to practice 
H. W. C. 
Anybody can make good pic¬ 
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•LIGHTNING 1 
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SPENCER 
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CLARKS 
CUTAWAY 
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Hi 
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of draft and keeps the surface true. n n BIG 
All other disk harrows have to run 
in half lap. ^ 
The Jointed Pole Takes AH the Weight Off the Horses’ Necks, —^ 
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IP 
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