1909. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER. 
820 
Hope Farm Notes 
I wish some of the old-timers who have 
owned my farm during the past 200 years 
could be here now. I am not sure that they 
would prove pleasant associates. Some of 
those sterling virtues of the pioneer are 
better to read about than to practice. But 
I would like to have one of those old far¬ 
mers sit on our lawn and see the old stone 
walls melting away. There were nearly 
three miles of these walls on my farm when 
I bought it. There are walls along the 
boundary lines, walls through the center and 
cross walls where the farm was laid off in 
small fields. For over 150 years farmers 
picked up rocks and stones and piled them. 
With each crop the hatred for the stones 
grew deeper, and the battle against them 
harder. When the weather was bad and 
the boys wanted to go Ashing—they picked 
stones. Through frost or through sun the 
walls grew. Sturdy backs were bowed, An¬ 
gers were cramped, boys ran away from the 
farm—all as a tribute to the stone-wall 
habit. The old man who owned the prop¬ 
erty next to mine used up everything of 
value on his farm. lie had nothing to show 
for 50 years of labor except a row of stone 
walls. If he were here today he would see 
what he called a nuisance and a curse 
turned to a thing of value. 
We awoke one morning to And a gang of 
Italians marching up our roads. Years ago 
the coming of an army of Homans meant 
disaster, but this array of their descendants 
meant quite the reverse. They came with 
pick and shovel to make our roads. The 
old stone house is jammed up close to the 
highway, and directly irf front of it a ledge 
of rock crops out. It was necessary to cut 
this down by three feet or more, which 
meant blasting through the solid rock. 
They blew $10 worth of glass out of the 
windows, but in the end left the road with 
a gentle rise up from the brook. Those 
Italians picked and shovelled until the 
grade was true, and then they were ready 
for the broken stone. This is where our 
walls came in. We have nearly 1,000 feet 
of driveway around the houses and through 
the lawns. This was made by putting 
down stones and covering with dirt. It 
was not very satisfactory, for in Spring 
the dirt turned to mud, while the lower 
stones worked up. The contractor came 
and offered to haul broken stone for the 
driveway, to pack it and roll with the 
steam roller, in exchange for a section of 
our stone walls. We made the bargain, 
and within a few hours those walls were 
melting away. Many of the walls are built 
of large rocks. These were shattered by 
dynamite and the Italians loaded them upon 
wagons. In a central place about a quar¬ 
ter of a mile away a stone crusher has been 
rigged up and by the time our walls have 
passed through its strong jaws a nuisance 
and a curse has been changed into a bless¬ 
ing. We have enough of this, stone to top- 
dress miles of roadway, and there are three 
times as many more left on the Aelds. 
When the walls are gone I can plant hun¬ 
dreds of apple and peach trees where the 
walls stood, and for years they will mark 
the place by their superior vigor and color. 
This is the best illustration I have seen 
of the way new values are worked out from 
wastes. Even 10 years ago, when I came 
to this farm, the old walls seemed about 
the most useless things in the neighborhood. 
When crushed for delivery I figure that 
these walls will now bring at least $6,000 ! 
Out of that, of course, must come the labor 
of hauling and crushing. The contractor 
wanted to figure on a 15 per cent basis— 
that is, give US' 15 loads of crushed stone 
for 100 loads as the walls ran. All over the 
Eastern States near where money has ac¬ 
cumulated in town or city new values are 
being created and new desires being de¬ 
veloped. Our white birch is wanted for spool¬ 
making, there is' a limited trade in dried 
old stumps for open Ares. With each year 
there come new opportunities for utilizing 
things that were formerly called wastes. 
In some places it is a fact that spring 
water brings more per gallon than milk. 
Jack had a toy Boston terrier dog. A col¬ 
ored man was working for me one day, and 
I asked him what he would give for the 
dog. After some mental figuring he said 
he would give 50 cents, and this was the 
limit of the dog’s value to him. Now, later 
that little dog won first prize at the great 
New York show, and a cash offer of $500 
was made for him. The difference lay in the 
two ideas of value of the same thing. Now 
farming in the Eastern States, close to the 
large cities', is up against the problem of 
saving the wastes and catering to these 
large ideas of value. We need the faith to 
believe that in our swamps and low places 
there are values as sure as the money in a 
hank, or that our neglected hills are only 
waiting to roll the most beautiful fruit 
down to us. My boys went out last Sum¬ 
mer with a load of strawberries. They 
were late, and many people had bought. 
One woman had bought fruit, but she car¬ 
ried a few boxes of ours in to show her 
friends. The result was a sale of four 
boxes right there. I told the boys when 
they came home that they probably could 
not expect to be a better lawyer or orator 
or doctor or poet than anyone else, but t^ey 
were learning how to raise berries, peaches 
and apples that were second to none. It 
is better to be A No. 1 among fruit growers 
than C No. 3 in some profession. This is 
the way I would talk to one of the old wall 
builders if I could get him here now to 
watch the Italians tear his walls apart. 
Ilis work came to something after all—of 
course it did. Who ever heard of honest 
labor that was lost? I would like to have 
one of these old citizens on my hill of a 
Sunday afternoon and point out to him how 
values grow without labor. Here is' this 
very stone, crushed and put on our roads. 
Within six months travel in front of our 
farm will be doubled. The country will be 
opened. Home seekers will And it. People 
will come buying our peaches and berries 
as never before. Ten years ago these old 
stones drove buyers away. Now, crushed 
and on the roads, they bring swarms of 
buyers, and year by year witli no effort on 
the part of the owners values rise. I 
would like to put the thing before one of 
the old owners and see what he would say 
about the public morality of it. 
Farm Ncjhs. —Our soaking helped for a 
time, tind then the cold winds gave us an¬ 
other parching. By Labor Day the soil 
seemed as dry as ever, but a little shower 
then helped us out. Wo had some five 
acres plowed for rye, and this late rain 
gave a good chance for seeding. Working 
up one of our frontier Aelds nearly led to 
an accident. There were hundreds of nests 
of yellow jackets scattered over this Aeld. 
They stung the horses and attacked the 
men and nearly drove them out of the Aeld 
I never saw such a congregation of stingers. 
We use lime on every Aeld I his 
Fall where, grain or clover is seeded. First 
the soil is plowed or disked, then the lime 
goes on the rough furrows. Then the 
spring-tooth goes in and stirs the lime into 
the upper surface. Then we plan to let it 
stand a week or so and then work cross¬ 
wise with the spring-tooth, after which the 
Aeld is Atted with the Acme for seeding. 
We broadcast rye, as we do not seed enough 
to pay to keep the drill. Besides, nearly or 
quite all our farming is done between rows 
of young trees. By next Summer we shall 
have practically all the farm in orchards. 
As for clover we are using Alsike in place 
of Red. Our Arst planted apple orchard has 
now started bearing. For the past four 
years we have grown corn in this orchard, 
with Crimson clover at the last working. 
This year I did not use Crimson in this 
orchard. The corn will be cut early and 
shocked along the rows of trees. Then the 
middles will lie worked up and seeded to 
rye with Alsike clover. My plan is to cut 
the rye early next year for hay and leave 
the clover for a mulch crop. 
This year we are using a large disk in 
place of a turning plow. The disk has a 
pole, and our horses' work steadily with it.. 
Where there is not too much sod I think 
the disk is superior to the plow, as it tosses 
up the soil, cuts off roots and leaves the 
Aeld better for the harrow. The average 
man wants to sit on the machine, but he 
will do better work to weight it lightly and 
then walk behind and drive. 
The peach crop is a puzzle this year. The 
fruit ripens' slowly and out of season. We 
picked Carman for over three weeks. El¬ 
bert a should have come in, but it dawdled 
along and would not ripen .and then all of 
a sudden came in with Chairs Choice and 
some other varieties On the eastern slope 
we have Chairs in sod. By Labor Day 
these trees were ripening a few peaches, 
while the same variety on the western slope 
and cultivated were hard as bullets, many 
of them with hardly a touch of color. There 
cannot be any doubt that the sod-grown 
peaches are higher colored than the cul¬ 
tivated. This year, in spite of the drought, 
our sod peaches are quite as large. There 
lias been more growth on the cultivated and 
better foliage thus far.The 
corn is very late in earing this year. We 
cannot reasonably complain about growth 
of stalk, and the color is good, but the ears 
are slpw to grow and harden up. A warm 
September will Ax them, but if the present 
cold winds keep up there will be much 
soft corn. Our Crimson clover made a good 
start, and is on the whole ahead of last 
year’s crop at this time. We have gone on 
with Crimson long enough to know what a 
great thing it is for the soil to have good 
clover weather in September. h. w- c. 
I’IISave You $50 
On a Manure Spreader 
r-Bf You'll Let Me 
This is just a little ad—but a postal will bring my Big 
Book —and give you my $50.00 Saving Price and Special 
Proposition. You can save as much answering this little ad¬ 
vertisement as if it coveted a page. 
My Spreader positively will do better work and last longer 
than any Spreader made—no mat 
ter what the price—so why pay " 
more? 20,000 farmets have 
stamped their O. K. on 
my spreader and money, 
saving price. MySpecial 
Proposition wiil interest you. 
Just a postal addressed to Gal¬ 
loway of Waterloo, Iowa, will 1 
bring you everything postpaid. 
Will You Pay a Penny For 
The Postal and Save $5O.OO? 
Address Wm. Calloway, Pres. 
WM. CALLOWAY CO. 
669 Calloway Sta. Waterloo, la. 
Freight 
Paid 
RUNNING WATER ON FARM 
THE AERM0T0R GASOLINE ENGINE 
is designed to supply water for the farm 
building. This outfit insures a supply of 
water at all times and the price is within 
the reach of every farmer. Pump cap.—1600 
gals, per hour, 15 ft. elevation; 800 gals. ,25 
ft.; 100 gals., 50 ft. Complete outfit $37.50, 
or del. at It. K. Sta. $42.50. 
Write for descriptive Catalog 
No. 5 giving full Information. 
J. H. EDWARDS, 
59 Park Place, N. Y. 
4 .50 Buys Best All-Steel Farm Gale 
Cheap as wood. Lasts a lifetime. 12 ft. long; 54 in. 
high. Resists all klndsof stock. Also Farm Fence.Orna¬ 
mental Wire and Wrought Iron Fences. Catalogue free. 
W rlto ibr Special Offer. 
The Ward Fence Co., Box 542 Decatur, Ind. 
This is our 
NEW 
Cement Book 
Just Published 
FREE To Every Farmer 
We want every farmer and cement worker to send for 
this new edition of our Cement Book, 
“Concrete Construction about the Home and on the Farm.” 
It is larger and better than any previous edition, and it de¬ 
scribes and illustrates many new ways of using concrete. 
There are 160 pages and over 150 illustrations. The directions 
for making cement structures are given in plain language that 
everyone can understand, with tables showing the exact 
amount of material required for the work 
in hand. 
Send for this book now and get the benefit 
of many new ideas for this year’s work. 
When you build, do not forget 
that ATLAS Portland Cement makes 
the best concrete and that the U. S. 
Government bought ATLAS for the 
Panama Canal. 
Ask your dealer for ATLAS. If 
he cannot supply you, write to 
The ATLAS Portland CEMENT Co. 
Dept. 22 , 30 Broad Street, New York 
Daily output over 50, OOO barrels 
—the largest in the world. _ 
NONE JUSTAS GOOD 
Bargain Sale of Vehicles 
190 Show Room Vehicles to be Sold Cheap 
Absolutely in Arst class order. Never used except for 
exhibition purposes in our salesrooms. Theyarenew. 
The very finest products of our factory. To be sold at a 
big discountto make room for new goods. 
State yourwishes. Thelist includes buggies, 
runabouts, surries, delivery wagons, carts, 
stanhopes, phaetons, pony carts, etc. 
We will send Murray’s Catalog free with bargains 
marked, or thenumbersif you have a Catalog. It’s 
the largest catalog ever published, devoted exclu¬ 
sively to vehicles and harness. Newcatalogissued 
yearly. Don’tdelay. Write at once and get Arst pick. 
The Wilber H. Murray Mfg. Co., 326-332 E. 5th St., Cincinnati, 0. U.S.A. 
Murray’s 
Catalog 
free with 
Bargains 
Marked 
GRAY’S 
Practical, dura¬ 
ble and econ- 
om ical ma¬ 
chinery. Write 
for illustrated 
catalogue 
showing cuts and descriptions of our full line. 
A. W. GRAY'S SONS, 51 South St., Middletown Springs. VL 
THRESHERS, GASOLINE ENGINES, 
HORSE POWERS, ENSILAGE CUTTERS, 
and WOOD SAWS. Highest Grade. 
— Special Sale of Wire!— 
Here’s the greatest opportunity ever presented to buy Wire and Nalls at an enormous saving. 
There's good reason why we can sell our merchandise for less money than anyone else. We purchase our 
goods in an entirely new and original way. No old-time methods about our business. We recently pur¬ 
chased the contents of a barge sunk In the OHIO river, containing 20,000 kegs of wire nails, besides thou¬ 
sands of reels of high-grade Barbed Wire, Wiro fencing and much additional wire product. Our customers 
get the benefit of our wonderful operations. The Barbed Wire offered is the finest and best manufactured. 
It Is unimpaired and just as good as the regular first-class material that you buy from your high triced 
dealer. The nails are offered just as they are. No deception about our business. We want sat isfied 
CUSTOMERS EVERYWHERE. 
Galvanized Barbed Wire, 2 or 4 point, put up on 
reels, per 100 lbs., $2.25; Painted Barbed Wire, per 
100 lbs., $2.00. Our Special Galvanized high-grade, 
light weight Barbed Wire. Put up on 80 rod spools, 
price per spool, $1.75. Painted Twisted Wire, per reel, 
$1.90. At $1.50 per 100lbs. wo will supply you new Gal¬ 
vanized Wire Shorts. They are put up 100 lbs to the bundle. By shorts we mean wiro 
in lengths from 50 to 200 ft Good for all general purposes. Comes in gauges from 0 to 
15. BB Telephone Wire No. 12, $2.85 per 100 lbs. No. 14, 83.10 per 100 lbs. 
n vTjTj Mixed Wire Nails, per Keg, $1-50 
These Nalls were on board barge sunk In the Ohio River and are more or less rusty. 
They are practical for use and make a fine handy assortment. Put up mixed, just as 
S U j they come, 100 lbs. to the keg. Sizes from 3 to 40 D. Nalls, straight sizes, just one 
" kind to a keg with slight surfaco rust, sizes3 to 60 D; also Casing Nails .and Finishing 
nails, all kinds; price per keg of 100 lbs, 81.75. First class bright, clean new Nails, 20 1) common, per Keg, 
82.20. Builders, Dealers, etc., should take advantage of this opportunity to buy nails so cheap. . 
ASK FOR OUR MAMMOTH BARGAIN ILLUSTRATED FREE CATALOGUE NO. G. P. 57. . 
It shows 10,000 bargains bought by us at Sheriffs’Sales. Manufacturers’and Receivers’ Sales. Also explains 
our wonderfu. Marine and other Wrecking operations. Shows everything in the line of material and sup¬ 
plies, Including high-grade Furniture, Household Goods, Rugs and Carpets. Give us a trial. Write today. 
CHICAG O HOUSE WRECKING CO.. CHICAGO, ILL. 
Ask for our Low Prices on “WIRE FENCING’’ ■■ 
