1908. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
823 
Hope Farm Notes 
The Fight. —You would have known 
as he came up the road that he was 
hunting for trouble. The slant of his 
shoulders, the angle of his jaw and 
the way he walked all indicated what 
he was after—trouble. Trouble usually 
hunts me up without my running after 
it, but this fellow, in his pride and 
strength, thought he could handle a little 
extra. He halted in the road before the 
house and looked things over. It was 
Sunday afternoon, and great streaks of 
warm sunshine breaking through the 
shade of the trees lay in patches along 
the lawn. The stranger took it all in 
and noticed the Hope Farmer, about his 
size, dozing under a tree. 
“Here—get up there, you lazy tyke.” 
There was a growl in his throat as he 
said it, and this more than the words 
tore the Hope Farmer from pleasant 
dreams and brought him to his feet. 
Many of us might be willing to admit 
in private that we are lazy, but we 
don't like to have the fact growled into 
us. 
The stranger squared his shoulders 
and inched in from the road. 
“For five cents I would come in there 
and whip you.” 
Now, it was Sunday afternoon, fight¬ 
ing is all against the rules at Hope 
Farm, and anyone should be able to 
see how ridiculous such a proposition 
is, but this Hope Farmer rose to the 
occasion. He went more than half-way 
and before you could wink he had grap¬ 
pled with the stranger and they were 
rolling in the dust. One had a throat 
hold and the other was twisting a foot. 
Then one of the smaller Hope Farmers 
sailed in. He got the stranger by the 
ear and proceeded to try and bite it 
off! 
But by this time some of you may 
have pictured the Hope Farm man roll¬ 
ing in the dust—gouging and kicking, 
with one of the boys biting ears. It is 
time to explain that the stranger was 
the neighbor's bulldog, the Hope Far¬ 
mer was Shep and the little one Tinker, 
the lame Boston terrier. The human 
members of the family came running 
to try to separate the dogs—and a hard 
job it was. Six months before Shep 
broke his leg. I had hard work to be¬ 
lieve the doctor when he said that leg 
would be as strong as ever, but here 
was proof of it. What started Shep 
into such fury I cannot say. I pre¬ 
sume dogs have some silent language 
of insult. At any rate, our old dog 
was blind with rage and it was like 
handling a bunch of wild cats to sep¬ 
arate them. As for little Tinker, no 
one thought he “had it in him.” I 
have seen Shep walk around in front 
of mother and the girls when they are 
talking to some human stranger, and 
I now believe that the old dog would 
willingly go to death in their defense— 
and Tinker would follow ’ him! The 
bulldog limped away with all the fight 
taken out of him. You won’t catch 
him hunting trouble until his wounds 
are healed at least. Shep lay down to 
lick his wounds. He didn’t deserve 
it, but everyone went out to pat him 
and call him “good dog,” and he had 
an extra supper. 
The Potato Situation. —We find on 
digging that our potato crop is very 
poor. This is true of all our section. 
On some farms the potatoes are so 
small that farmers will not dig them. 
At present prices for labor the aver¬ 
age man will hardly dig enough in a 
day to pay for his work. If we were 
to figure on American supply and de¬ 
mand, potato prices ought to go soar¬ 
ing out of sight. Those who figure on 
$4 or more will be disappointed. Peo¬ 
ple will not pay more than a certain 
price—usually about $3 per barrel 
wholesale. When prices go above that 
most consumers will use rice and corn- 
meal in place of potatoes, and thus de¬ 
mand falls off. We must also remem¬ 
ber that this year there is a large crop 
k Europe. In Germany and Belgium 
millions of bushels are made into al¬ 
cohol. If the export price rises above 
what the potatoes bring from starch or 
alcohol making, they will be sent here. 
Germany alone produces about three 
times as many potatoes as this country 
does. I am told that German dealers 
offer to put potatoes in New York, duty 
and freight paid, at one cent a pound. 
This, of course, will determine the price 
of our potatoes. These foreign tubers 
are fair in quality and home grown will 
rarely go more than 50 cents a barrel 
above the price at which they are sold. 
I also find that our own customers are 
wanting yellow turnips at $1.50 a bar¬ 
rel as a substitute for potatoes. 
Farm Notes.— No killing frost up to 
October 10 on our hills. In the low 
places a few miles away ice formed be¬ 
fore October 1—so we hill men have 
some advantages after all. The dry 
weather since August has been bad for 
the clover and turnips. They made a 
fair growth at first and responded to 
every sprinkle, but the total growth has 
been small compared with what would 
happen in a dry Fall. Unless we have, 
good rains through November the 
clover can hardly make enough growth 
to carry it through Winter. . . . We 
had a supply of peaches from Greens- I 
boro to Sal way—through 69 days—■ 
with enough more in jars to carry many 
weeks more. With us the most profit¬ 
able variety was Carman. Elberta is 
the great commercial peach, but every 
one plants it, and there is a great flood 
of fruit during its season. Carman is 
one of the handsomest peaches we grow, 
and while inclined to be a cling unless 
dead ripe, we find it easy to dispose of 
the fruit. Our trees have grown well 
and are now full of fruit buds. We 
shall soon begin the campaign against 
the borers. As for the San Jose scale, 
it is almost impossible to find it in most 
of our trees. Nevertheless I shall spray 
them all thoroughly. ... I have no 
love fo our friend the crow, for he 
has done me great damage. At the 
same time, if he is really of any help, 
I want to give him credit for it. I 
have noticed flocks of crows in my cab¬ 
bage fields of late. At first I thought 
I had another case against them for 
eating the cabbage. I have almost be¬ 
come convinced that they are after the 
cabbage worms. While I have not seen 
a crow actually pick out a worm and 
swallow it, I really believe they do it. 
The Feed Question. —One of the 
most useful implements on the farm is 
our sweep grinder. We have it set in 
the barnyard with a small portable 
house or shelter over it. When we 
want to use it, this shelter is unhooked, 
the hopper filled and the horses hitched 
on. I do not want to bu - any more 
mixed feed if I can avoid it. We have 
given various kinds a fair trial and I 
am satisfied that they contain oat hulls, 
ground corncobs and other wastes 
mixed with oil meal or other strong 
grains to bring up the strength. Of 
course, a manufacturer can use oil meal 
or cotton-seed meal enough so that the 
mixed feed will show a fair analysis, 
but with most of them the object evi¬ 
dently is to get rid of a lot of waste 
at the price of grain. I don't care to 
have my stock forced to swallow a lot 
of stuff not much better than the sweep¬ 
ings from the barn floor—and pay the 
price of grain for it. So we buy whole 
grain when we need it and crush it in 
our sweep grinder. Then we know just 
what we are feeding and save several 
dollars a ton. Corn is the base of all 
our home rations, with good wheat bran 
next. For the horses we use some oats 
—-buying the entire grain and crushing 
with the corn—then adding bran. It is 
quite easy to demonstrate that oats and 
wheat bran cost too much as compared 
with some other feeds, but I believe it 
pays to use some oats for the horses, 
in spite of the cost. As for wheat 
bran, I think we are more likely to 
detect adulterations in it than with 
brewers’ grains, middlings or gluten 
The coarse bran can be recognized, and 
while with a microscope we have found 
crushed corncobs in it, my conviction is 
that when we buy from reliable parties 
we are reasonably safe in using bran. 
I believe corn will be cheaper this Win¬ 
ter, and by getting the whole grain and 
mixing bran and oil meal with the 
ground corn we can make a good ration. 
My advice to any farmer who feeds 
stock would be to buy whole grain as 
far as possible, to grind it at home. 
Our sweep grinder is all right, but a 
gasoline power would be better. 
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