1908. 
THE KURAL NEW-YORKER 
717 
Hope Farm Notes 
Strawberries. — That close - planted 
patch of Marshall plants is looking well. 
You wifi remember that we set these 
plants in late April, 18x15 inches apart. 
They have been kept clean of weeds, and 
every runner has been cut off. We let 
a few rows make runners in order to 
get some layer plants for setting, but by 
September 1 every plant stood by itself 
with the runners nipped. The result is 
a patch of about 3,000 enormous plants 
—as fine as anything I ever saw. It 
has cost a lot in labor and time to keep 
the patch clean, and I am not yet pre¬ 
pared to say that it will pay.. We be¬ 
lieve it will, and on the strength of re¬ 
sults thus far I am preparing to plant 
15,000 more next Spring. I will give 
the rows more room, so as to do part 
of the work with the horse, but this 
plan of crowding large plants and keep¬ 
ing the runners in check looks right to 
me. Shortly after fruiting the beds 
were cut over with the mowing machine. 
Later with the disk plow we chopped 
out furrows so as to leave narrow rows 
for next year’s fruiting. By thorough 
work with the cultivator we have kept 
the middles clean, but the rows require 
constant work with finger and hoe. 
Late in July we began transplanting 
year-old plants as an experiment. My 
theory was that these old plants will 
be more likely to give fruit next year 
than runner plants would—even when 
potted. Many of these old plants died. 
The soil was a little dry, and as every 
one knows, the root of an old plant just 
after fruiting is pretty tough. The live 
ones look first-rate. I have them planted 
closely and shall keep the runners off. 
I have tried another experiment on a 
very weedy piece of ground. We 
plowed the weeds under, but I knew 
that meant transplanting them for a 
stronger growth. We set the strawberry 
plants one foot by two and then cov¬ 
ered all the space except about two 
inches along the row with a thick 
mulch. My object was to see if by 
doing this we could not prevent the 
growth of weeds, keep the soil moist 
and make that great mass of weeds de¬ 
cay in the soil. This plan of killing 
weeds by injunction will save fingers 
and hoe. We tried coal ashes, manure 
and lawn clippings and straw. Long 
straw will not answer, for the weeds 
work up through it. Cut straw and 
grass packed to the ground keeps the 
weeds out, and so does manure. Where 
these were put the plants have done 
well, and there is only the narrow row 
to be weeded. The coal ashes proved a 
failure. Many of the strawberry plants 
were killed, and none make a good 
growth near the ashes. Some of the 
weeds are sickly, but “pussley” and a 
few others thrive on such treatment. 
Coal ashes are useful around currant 
bushes or trees, but my advice is to 
keep them away from strawberries. 
With a suitable mulch this plan of keep¬ 
ing down weeds will work. 
All Sorts. —By September 1 the best 
of the Crimson clover in the corn was 
nearly two inches high, with some of the 
Cow-horn turnips three inches. On the 
whole our corn crop is about the best 
we ever had. Most of it is on the 
same ground that was in corn last year 
where turnips and clover were seeded. 
. . . Elberta peaches began to come 
along about September 1. Our crop is 
fair—the fruit large and fine on the 
mulched trees. After all this is the 
peach that people want, though to my 
taste the quality is below par. It is 
such a handsome fellow and opens up 
so like a bunch of soft gold that cus¬ 
tomers demand it much as they do the 
Baldwin apple. ... I find, how¬ 
ever, that more and more people each 
year know the different varieties- and 
call for them. For example, customers 
want the Fall Pippin apple for sauce 
and baking. They know the appearance 
of this variety and will take no other 
when they can get it. As for the Ben 
Davis apple, one man tells me he 
wouldn’t have it in the house, while an¬ 
other wants it because he says there 
is more “meat” in it than in any other, 
f suppose he means it is drier. This 
same man says he would as soon have a 
plate of good beef stew as a slice of 
roast beef. Speaking of Ben Davis, 
when I planted the orchard, to satisfy 
the boys I put in about a dozen trees of 
old Ben. That was five years ago. To¬ 
day these trees are the only ones in the 
orchard to give a crop. One of tnem 
has nearly a bushel of great red 
bouncers. Baldwins haven’t thought of 
producing an apple yet. 
After all—what was the use of it? 
What good did it do? 
Well, we have a country at least! 
That’s so—but it don’t treat us right! 
It was Sunday afternoon on the Hope 
Farm hill in eaily September. It would 
be a singular tjnng if a man with gray 
in his hair, looking off to the Hudson 
over the great billows of green, did not 
have in his mind some questions about 
the great mystery of life. 
The old soldier’s head was white. He 
had faced the hard steel of battle and 
the harder corners and weapons of 
peace. There he was a little weary, a 
little lonely, a little poor and a little 
hopeless. Life has not treated the old 
man as he hoped it would. He told me 
the story as he looked off over the hills. 
Looking at it as an outsider, I could not 
help but see it was partly his own fault, 
though I did not have the heart to tell 
him so. 
You see he came marching back from 
the war full of ardor and enthusiasm. 
Such men as he were heroes for a time 
and nothing was too good for him. The 
food they fed him in praise and good 
living was too rich for mind and body. 
You never saw a man who had a Gov¬ 
ernment job for some years who 
amounted to much when he got out of 
it. Many of those old soldiers felt that 
the Government owed them a living 
without much labor on their part. When 
a strong, able-bodied man begins to feel 
that way he begins to lose responsibility, 
and that is an awful loss. Feeling as 
they did about the debt which the Gov¬ 
ernment owed them many of these old 
soldiers were not as thrifty as they 
should have been. You see they were 
not long-headed, and did not realize 
then that they would live to see the 
country in charge of a new generation 
which could not possibly look at the war 
and what it stood for as these old sol¬ 
diers do. There is a great difference 
between men who see history all draped 
with flags and sentiment, and those who 
view it in a frame of dollars. There was 
a time when the “old soldier vote” de¬ 
cided things, and was the greatest politi¬ 
cal asset in the land. That time seems 
to have gone. The things which made 
that “vote” potent are memories, and 
young men are seldom moved by the 
memories of older men. 
Age, which enables a man to look 
back and apply history, ought to appeal 
to youth, but it does not. My old friend 
and others like him, when they sit down 
on Sunday afternoons and think it over, 
know now that while they were rejoic¬ 
ing and living on their fame, silent 
enemies of the Republic were at work 
drawing the wealth and the power of 
the people into their own grasp. These 
older men now realize what has been 
going on, but they are powerless either 
to go out and fight this dangerous silent 
enemy or to make younger men see 
what ought to be done. I could hardly 
blame my old friend for feeling as. he 
did the impotence of a single man’s 
voice carrying a note of sorrow to be 
heard in the wilderness. After he 
finally went off along the road switching 
with his stick at the heads of wild car¬ 
rot I went home and hunted through 
Tennyson till I found what I wanted. 
“Behold, we know not anything. 
I can hut trust that good shall fall. 
At last—far off—at last to all 
And every Winter change to Spring. 
So runs my dream: hut what am I? 
An infant crying in the night, 
An infant crying fpr the light. 
And with no language but a cry !” 
At various times I have talked with 
Hundreds of men who for a while have 
lost their grip and cannot see the future 
clearly. Like my old friend the soldier, 
they grieve because it seems as if their 
past labor has not been appreciated. 
Sometimes a farmer at the close of the 
season looks about. and sees that after 
all his toil the farm has not done as he 
hoped it would. These men sometimes 
cry out in bitterness of spirit, and those 
of us who realize how great the world 
is and how merciless the laws of nature 
seem feel that those men are indeed 
“with no language but a cry.” And yet 
as the sun disappears behind the hill to 
the west T remember that after all the 
infant needs only its cry to bring the 
helper, and that its faith removes all 
the terrors of the night. Man with his 
stronger cry in what seems to him a 
darker night may well have the same 
faith. I am glad this came to me at 
this season. September is usually a 
thoughtful time for a farmer past 45. 
H. W. C. 
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Terrific Cut in Price 
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| The United Factories Co., Deot. 3 1 -R. Cleveland, 0. 
EXCELL 
ROOFING 
