1908. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
Q 19 
Hope Farm Notes 
I have a piece of ground in oats and 
peas that I shall cut green for feed. I 
intended to fit this the best I could for 
Alfalfa, but my heart has failed me. I 
have not had the confidence in getting a 
catch of Alfalfa that I should have. I 
have decided to put this piece in rye and 
plow under next Spring for potatoes. I 
saw in Hope Farm Notes about having 
clover with rye. When do you sow the 
clover, with the rye or next Spring? 
A. 
Sorry you had a case of heart failure 
with the Alfalfa. My experience is that 
one must put a cartload of faith into 
this crop, and faith is the evidence of 
a stout heart. However, the chances are 
that the Alfalfa will fail anyway unless 
the conditions are just right for it. 
Under the circumstances I would not 
sow rye to be plowed under next year, 
but would use Crimson clover and Cow- 
horn turnips—about as we have advised 
so many times. The rye will make a 
strong growth and provide a large 
amount of matter to plow under. It 
adds nothing to the soil, dries out the 
ground, and is very slow to decay. The 
clover will add some nitrogen from the 
air, roots deeper in the soil and decays 
rapidly. If there were reasons for sow¬ 
ing the rye I should sow 10 pounds of 
Crimson clover with it at time of seed¬ 
ing. We plow the ground well and sow 
the rye broadcast on the furrows and 
work it under with the Acme. Then 
the clover seed is scattered and worked 
in with brush or fine-tooth harrow. 
The clover will make a fair growth with 
the rye and improve the crop for plow¬ 
ing under. 
It appears that the crow has many 
good friends. Here is one from Ver¬ 
mont : 
I am sorry you let the crows have that 
good corn. You needn’t love the crows if 
you don’t want to, but if you want a sure 
way to save the crop “feed the crows.” 
“Have faith, brother,’ Don’t sneer. It 
only takes a few quarts of cheap corn. 
You are not half as sorry as we are. 
I have no disposition to sneer at the 
crows or their friends, but I confess 
that I need further argument to prove 
that they are not a nuisance. Possibly 
this plan of feeding them would answer, 
but my belief is that they would take 
the gift corn and then pull the stalks. 
Hope Farm is supporting an army of 
them. They killed over 60 chickens for 
my neighbor, ruined acres of my corn 
and have now begun on the peaches. 
We have one row of Alexander peaches 
running through the center of the or¬ 
chard. As fast as the fruit turned red 
the crows got at them, and have actually 
cleaned out the entire row. I know 
they did it, for we caught them in the 
act. I have a lot of faith, but I want 
some peaches. As I stated before, I 
cannot see that any of our field insects 
have been kept in check except Potato 
beetles, and no one seems to claim that 
the crows destroy that pest. 
The Woodchuck. —Sunday afternoon 
found me on the shady side of the crab 
apple tree with the boy, watching the 
woodchuck. Of course you will say 
that a man of my age ought to have 
been at some more serious occupation, 
but I don’t know. It was a peaceful 
time stretched under that tree in the 
shade, with the great patches of hot 
sunshine heating the hills. As for the 
woodchuck, we are told to look for ser¬ 
mons in stones, and surely one could find 
a dozen in this little animal. If you 
want to see a purebred specimen with 
the papers guaranteed the boy can show 
it. All hands were hoeing corn on the 
hill the other day when Shep and Tinker 
set up a fierce barking. They had cor¬ 
nered a young woodchuck. He was in 
a place where they couldn’t meet any 
part of him but his teeth, and they 
didn’t care much for that part. The 
boy finally got the chuck into a box and 
brought it down to the barnyard. 
Of course we have read everything we 
can find about woodchucks since this 
new Hope Farmer has appeared. This 
short-legged, clumsy creature certainly 
has his prize-winning points. He can 
eat more than anything of his size, and 
probably sleep more than any warm¬ 
blooded creature. We are told that the 
woodchuck knows only three seasons, as 
he spends his Winters in sleep. He is 
a great home body. After he digs his 
hole he comes out a few hours in the 
24 to eat and enjoy the sun, and then 
goes back to sleep. Fie presents a good 
model for man in the way he works to 
make his home. The way he digs with 
those black, feet to scrape out his hole 
make us think he could move the world 
if he kept his labor up. If, in propor¬ 
tion to their weight and strength, men 
would work like that to provide homes 
it would be hard to find a homeless 
mortal in the world. If men decline to 
take the woodchuck for their model at 
home building, truth compels us to say 
that some of ’them come closer to him 
in social traits. After the hole is dug 
Mr. and Mrs. Chuck give points to the 
man who offered this prayer. “God bless 
me and my wife, my son John and his 
wife—us four and no more!” The 
woodchuck gets in the first three words 
and then apparently stops. His motto 
seems to be “eat and sleep,” varied oc¬ 
casionally by “sleep and eat.” A surly, 
lazy, selfish beast—that is all you can 
make of him. It is even said that Mrs. 
Woodchuck when hard pressed by a dog 
digging at her hole will push out her 
children one at a time in the hope of 
purchasing her own safety! Two things 
I give the woodchuck credit for which 
I hope my boys will recognize. He has 
courage and grit when you corner him. 
Many of the wild things are afraid of 
their own shadows, and their very haste 
to get away leads them into danger. 
The woodchuck will stand up and fight 
when his rights are invaded. Another 
tiling is his love of home and freedom. 
Here is this lazy animal in a comfort¬ 
able box with sweet apples, clover, water 
—everything he likes at his side. He 
has no care in the world, with nothing 
to do but eat and sleep. Yet, open the 
door and let him alone and off he would 
go, well content to face danger or en¬ 
dure hunger or thirst provided he can 
be free! The boy thinks he can tame 
this chuck so as to let him out with the 
cats. Perhaps—but in the Fall when the 
nights get cool, the habits of thousands 
of years will pull too hard, and some 
morning Chuck will be far away dig¬ 
ging a hole where he can sleep through 
the Winter. Then his months in polite 
society will prove his undoing. I hope 
he will stay through the Summer and 
keep fat. I want him for an object les¬ 
son for some of the people who eat 
three enormous meals a day and then 
sit on the front porch. When they see 
that fat, lazy creature they may see what 
is ahead of them, and get into the onions 
or strawberries! 
Farm Notes. —We got the cabbage 
planted in fairly good shape. Showers 
had made the soil moist enough, but 
the sun was very hot, and some of the 
plants wilted badly. Most of them came 
up, and we have enough left to fill out 
the missing places. A few days after 
planting we put on a fertilizer analyzing 
3 y 2 per cent nitrogen, seven potash and 
eight phosphoric acid. - This was scat¬ 
tered between the rows—not all close to 
the plants. Then we ran the cultivator 
so as to throw a little soil to the cab¬ 
bage. Our plan is to cultivate in this 
way twice a week up to September 15, 
and to give at least one thorough hand 
hoeing—two if need be. As for worms 
on large fields, we seldom try to fight 
them unless we see more than usual of 
the butterflies laying the eggs. The best 
thing we know of is a dust of Paris- 
green and flour sifted into the plant 
before the head begins to close and 
round out. This gets them, but I hesi¬ 
tate to recommend it because people will 
not always go by directions, and will in¬ 
sist upon using the poison when the 
head is half formed. At such a time 
it is quite likely that some of the poison 
will be enclosed in the head. ... At 
several places I find farmers making a 
desperate effort to start Alfalfa. Hav¬ 
ing failed several times when the seed 
is broadcast they conclude that the soil 
must be strongly inoculated. When a 
man buys Alfalfa soil he seldom knows 
what he is getting. It may be full of 
weed seeds, and sometimes not even the 
man who sells it can swear that the 
Alfalfa bacteria are present. In many 
cases it would be a surer thing to buy a 
few tons of Alfalfa hay, feed it to stock 
and spread this manure on land to be 
seeded. There are some farmers who 
reason that if they can sow a little patch 
and pet the Alfalfa along at almost any 
cost until the soil is right, they can then 
use this soil to inoculate larger fields. 
Therefore they are sowing the seed in 
drills and cultivating it with a wheel 
hoe or even with a horse, using lime 
and fertilizer or manure freely. There 
is another class of eastern farmers who 
begin to argue that it will pay to culti¬ 
vate Alfalfa as we would corn or pota¬ 
toes. Now I confess that I are not sat¬ 
isfied with our Alfalfa. It is nowhere 
near as good as it ought to be. I feel 
disposed to try this drilling plan on 
about half an acre which we fitted for 
cabbage. The plants ran out before we 
finished. We can fit this ground thor¬ 
oughly and drill in the seed about 18 
inches apart so as to work it with the 
tools. It may be worth trying, though 
it may turn out to be only a play. Expe¬ 
rience will show us. h. w, c. 
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