78 
THE' 'RURAL NEW-YORkER 
us 
February 
1 , 
fine hen manure in the hill or drill for a “starter” 
you will get your crops going earlier than if you use 
the cow manure alone. That is like making up a 
fertilizer with several different forms of nitrogen. 
Now then, if this is understood, where can we buy 
the 30 pounds of nitrate nitrogen and the 41 pounds 
of “organic,” and what will they cost? Here is a 
table showing average analyses of such chemicals as 
you would be likely to use for nitrogen. 
rounds in One Ton 
Nitrogen. Phosphoric 
Nitrates. Ammonia. Organic. Acid. 
Nitrate of Soda 320 .... .... .... 
Tankage . .... 140 260 
I>ried Blood . 20 220 40 
Dried Fish. 5 175 - 
Fine Bone. .... 70 500 
You can quickly see from this that nitrate of soda 
is the great source of nitrate or soluble nitrogen. 
The other forms will change to nitrates sooner or 
later—dried blood and dried fish, as we see, quicker 
than tankage, because they contain more ammonia. 
Therefore to start with we shall need 200 pounds of 
nitrate of soda to supply the nitrates which the ton of 
fertilizer contains. 
But what is nitrate of soda and where does it come 
from ? It looks very much like common salt, and is 
taken from the soil in a dry, rainless part of Chile— 
really a South American desert. As to the origin of 
this nitrate various theories are advanced. One of 
the most reasonable is that centuries ago great herds 
of vicunas and llamas, South American animals, 
roamed over this section. These animals have the 
singular habit of always depositing their manure in 
the same place. An entire herd will have its special 
dunging place, always returning to it. Thus, in time, 
there would be an immense accumulation of manure 
which slowly changed from organic to nitrate forms 
of nitrogen, which in that dry, rainless country were 
not washed from the soil, but were left in the form 
of a salt. Very likely some of our readers have seen 
nitre formed near old manure piles. During the 
Civil War there were many nitre beds in the South 
where cow and horse manure was made into saltpetre, 
to be used in making gunpowder. At any rate this 
nitrate of soda is what we use to provide nitrates, 
and we want 200 pounds to equal the ton of fertilizer. 
In order to figure what this will cost, write to some 
dealer in chemicals and get his figures. Add the cost 
of freight and you can figure the cost of a pound of 
nitrates. You will see certain “trade prices” men¬ 
tioned in the station bulletins. I would not advise you 
to use them to figure with. The safest way is to get 
your own quotations and use them. 
But what about the 41 pounds of “organic” nitro¬ 
gen? You have your choice of tankage, dried blood 
or dried fish. Tankage is a sort of meat soup, dried 
and ground. In slaughter houses bone, scrap and 
other waste is put into a tank and boiled or steamed 
until the fat rises to the surface and is skimmed off. 
The remaining soup is run off when the meat, bone 
and other solids settle. These are dried and ground 
and make tankage. The blood collected in slaughter 
houses is cooked, dried by pressure and heat and then 
ground fine—this is dried blood, and is next to nitrate 
of soda in value. In making fish oil fresh fish are 
cooked by steam, put under heavy pressure to remove 
the oil, and then dried and ground into the fertilizer 
known as dried fish. H. w. c. 
THE STRAW MULCH IN NEBRASKA. 
The orchards connected with the Crete Nurseries 
have during the year of 1907 yielded one-half as many 
bushels of apples as we secured during the year of 
1906. Apples were worth a little more than twice as 
much during the Autumn of 1907 as could be procured 
for them in 1906. Therefore, the disastrous freezes 
which came to us in April and May were not as detri¬ 
mental as we at first thought they would be. We no¬ 
tice that our neighbors handling their orchards in the 
ordinary farmer way, with but little or no cultivation, 
are securing but five to 10 per cent of the yield per 
tree or acre which we have secured. To what shall 
we attribute this? Doubtless the foundation of our 
success in growing paying crops of fruit is in con¬ 
tinued good cultivation. Our oldest trees have been 
under cultivation for 35 years. We think, perhaps, the 
second factor of our success lies in spraying the trees 
with Bordeaux to maintain a healthy foliage. Our 
orchard trees during the years of 1906 and 1907 
showed remarkably healthy foliage. A good healthy 
foliage is essential to the maximum quality of mer¬ 
chantable fruit. The third factor, spraying with 
arsenate of lead, lessens the number of Codling moth. 
The fourth reason, our effort to maintain the fertility 
of the soil by the use of manure applied to the sur¬ 
face. That portion which is under the branches acts 
as a mulch, that which is applied between the rows of 
trees is cultivated in. The use of manure increases 
the fertility of the soil and the health of the foliage. 
Our foreman is inclined to think, however, that in 
proportion to the cost of the work, a straw mulch 
gives better results for each dollar expended than 
manure. Straw can usually be purchased within from 
one to three miles at 25 cents a load. Each load of 
straw is expected to mulch eight trees to the width of 
eight or ten feet. Each load of stable manure is ex¬ 
pected to make an application to the soil around eight 
or 10 trees, applying to each tree about 400 pounds. 
The reader should not understand that all of our 
orchards have been either manured or mulched. The 
pressure of other work has allowed only a fair be¬ 
ginning at this class of work. Perhaps we have so 
far been able to mulch with straw about one thousand 
trees, and last Winter we applied manure to the sur¬ 
face of one thousand trees. Where the trees are 
showing tlie results of overbearing, indicated by a 
very short twig growth we will this Winter as far as 
we can, supply a straw mulch to the row and manure 
to the ground between the rows. Should roads and 
weather conditions remain favorable this Winter we 
hope to haul one million pounds of manure and straw 
to cover the entire orchard once over in about three 
years. Steady cultivation for the space of 35 years 
has resulted in our orchard, in a considerable loss of 
humus, and some loss by washing away of surface 
soil on the sharply rolling hillsides. We are endeavor¬ 
ing to replace this waste. We have this season se¬ 
cured 30 bushels of apples from single trees 35 years 
planted, almost 20 times as much fruit from trees of 
nearly the same age and variety as was secured by 
other farmers in our neighborhood. 
We fear that in central Nebraska to neglect the 
cultivation of the orchard and allow weeds or grass 
to grow must lead to a serious lack of soil moisture 
during certain portions of the year. The apple trees, 
- r*. * 
‘ . 
_ 
A CENTRAL N. Y. FARMHOUSE, Fig. 40. 
which do not have a reasonably full supply of subsoil 
moisture in the months of July, August and Septem¬ 
ber, are not likely to set a sufficient number of healthy 
vigorous fruit buds. By careful study Prof. Goff has 
demonstrated that the fruit buds of the apple begin to 
form in the month of July, and continue to develop 
and strengthen until October. Hence the supreme im¬ 
portance of having the apple tree carry a healthy 
vigorous foliage during the Summer and Autumn 
months, and having the trees supported by a sufficient 
amount of subsoil moisture. e. f. Stephens. 
A NEW YORK FARMHOUSE. 
The house pictured at Fig. 40 is the home of A. H. 
Cole, of Covert, N. Y. Mr. Cole has been a reader of 
The R. N.-Y. for more than 50 years—his father tak¬ 
ing it when he was a boy. Speaking of this farm¬ 
house, Mr. Cole says :— 
“The house was erected 54 years ago this coming 
Summer by my father-in-law, the late Miner T. 
Coburn. The timber for frame was furnished by the 
farm and built on contract, the contractor furnishing 
everything aside from the frame timbers, and built it 
for $1,000. Compare this with buildings of the present 
day. The house is 40 feet square, 20-foot posts with 
garret, with a two-story addition in the rear. 24x44. The 
house stands on a prominent knoll on the west side of 
the old Ithaca and Geneva turnpike, in sight of and 
two miles west of Cayuga Lake, about 60 rods from 
the little hamlet of Covert, and one-half mile from the 
Lehigh Valley Railroad. Covert has a population of 
about one hundred, with a store, church and school.” 
STRUGGLES FOR A FARM. 
Confessions of a City Farmer. 
Keep the city fellows fully warned that the poor 
farmers don’t live on Easy street, for unless a man 
has business ability enough to command more than 
the average salary which is paid in cities, he certainly 
will not be able to manage a small farm—say worth 
from $2,000 to $3.000—to bring him in enough to 
supply his family with but the barest necessities of 
life. Looking back over my own history I find myself 
so short of money that my ingenuity was taxed to 
the utmost to meet expenses of family during the first 
half-dozen years of farm life. I solved the shoe prob¬ 
lem by turning cobbler, repairing the old ones for 
Winter, and going barefoot during Summer. The 
interest money problem was solved by trading off the 
good horse and getting along with a poorer one, 
using the boot-money to meet interest. And the Sun¬ 
day meeting clolhes problem was met by wearing old 
ones for several years and then staying home from 
church after they were gone. The first Summer it did 
not rain from first of May until July 4 (1880). That 
meant that nothing grew to any advantage the fore¬ 
part of that year. There was no hay to speak of, or 
pasture; garden did not amount to much, nor any¬ 
thing else. When I hear the mechanic growl because 
he is out of work a few months and complains be¬ 
cause he hasn’t a farm, it makes me very tired. What 
would he think if he had to work all the Spring and 
Summer trying to raise a crop of potatoes and in the 
Autumn find they were such a poor crop that it was all 
they were worth to dig and market them? Or sup¬ 
pose he set out strawberry or raspberry plants in May 
and kept up a steady fight against weeds all Summer, 
and then had to wait until June or July the following 
year before he gets a penny for his work, when he 
finds the commission merchant only returns him just 
enough money for picking and crating them? I guess 
he would know what it is to be short of money by 
that time. I don’t know what I should have .done my 
first season if I had not lived within driving distance 
of a city and my wife had not been a good butter 
maker, so from the two cows I kept we, h^d about 10 
or 12 pounds of butter to sell each week. This with 
the eggs from 30 fowls T sold at retail, getting say $4 
or $5 a week, which we managed to skimp along on 
until the cows dried up and chicks stopped laying in 
the Fall. Well. Josh Billings says if we have no 
money or brains, go in the country, steal a cow and 
live quietly on the milk. With all respect to Mr. 
Billings I wish he would tell us what to do when the 
cow dries up. My financial difficulties that Winter 
will never be forgotten, and I have noticed many 
others since then, who were beginners in farm life, 
whom T am satisfied underwent practically the same' 
torments. j. c. l. 
Connecticut. 
This Man Paid Out. 
I came from the city on to a farm of 135 acres, of 
which only about 28 are fit to plow. It cut at that 
time about six or eight tons of poor hay, which had to 
he cut by hand, as the land was too full of stones. 
Buildings were poor. I had to give a mortgage of 
$2,450, with little experience about farming. Let me 
tell you first of all I have a faithful partner in my 
wife. The first year we ran about $400 in debt 
through sickness and other losses. As I look back 
now over all the blunders and mistakes I made, we 
struggled along for a number of years when I goj hold 
of Thf. R. N.-Y. and other papers. When I read 
yours and Mr. Terry’s articles I got more hope and 
ambition. We then read about Mr. Mapes and Mr. 
Cosgrove’s articles on the hen question, and then we 
increased our flock of hens. We kept this past season 
600 hens and have now on hand 900 for this coming 
year. As to results, we paid the last dollar on our 
mortgage two years ago, we fixed up our barns, built 
henhouses and have got a nice bit in the bank for a 
rainy day. We cleared this past season above expen¬ 
ses $900. We keep from six to eight cows besides our 
hens, and do general farming. It is hard work to get 
started, but where there is a will there is a way, and 
the farm is the best place after all. A. z. 
Connecticut. 
