786 
July 29. 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKEH 
Hope Farm Notes 
Workers. —On page 738 we printed a 
letter from a couple in Pennsylvania who 
are looking for a job. Some 15 people 
have written for their address. Some of 
them sent letters to be forwarded, and I 
have been greatly interested in reading 
them. One man says he had a good hired 
man who went off to celebrate the “Glor¬ 
ious Fourth” and got drunk. This cele- 
brator hit another man over the head 
with a bottle and has probably been bot¬ 
tled up for a time. Some of the seekers 
made a definite offer of work and say 
—“Come at once!” Others want refer¬ 
ences, or say the man may come and try 
it. Of course in the condition this couple 
were placed they must get going at once. 
I hope they will make some good ar¬ 
rangement, but this thing of trying to 
bring strangers together is more or less 
of a gamble. We have had quite a little 
experience at it and, as a rule, it is hard 
to make the papers fit the men. When 
a man starts out to describe his own good 
qualities he is much like a real estate 
agent describing a farm which he wants 
to sell. He may see all the fine points 
he mentions, but they are very much duller 
to the man who puts up the money. It is 
much the same way with people who think 
they want to get “back to the land.” How 
can I or any other stranger tell a man posi¬ 
tively yes or no about a move that will 
change his entire life? Yet, because we 
will not take the responsibility for doing 
so we are often accused of being cold¬ 
blooded, jealous or something woi'se. I 
have had a man come here and argue and 
twist and cross-examine in order to get us 
to say that we knew he could succeed 
in the country. In truth he carried the' 
marks of failure about with him. On a 
farm with a living to make he would simply 
have faded away. Finally I learned that 
he had been after some friends to advance 
him money and they had half promised to 
finance him if we would say he had some¬ 
thing like a sure thing on a farm. Under 
the circumstances it would have been like 
stealing money from his friends. 
To get back to workers—it is more and 
more evident that many farmers are sadly 
in need of help, while the towns contain 
many people who want a job. How can 
they be brought together? It looks easy, 
but I think it would, in many cases, be 
like trying to graft apple on pear. The 
graft will often start and then the inex¬ 
perienced rush out to say they have suc¬ 
ceeded where the wise men failed. After a 
while something goes wrong with that 
"union,” and in the end the old established 
fact prevails. It is as hard to graft grown¬ 
up human nature. That is, you will find 
it next to impossible to get people whose 
habits of living and thinking are fixed to 
adapt themselves to new plans and ways 
of living. Years ago 1 took many theories 
for granted—you must now work them out 
for me. I fear the leopard will not change 
his spots until you can get solid colored 
parents for him. Still there are thousands 
of people now hopelessly at work in town 
who ought to be on farms. Once there 
they would help themselves and also the 
community in which they lived. At the 
same time there are country people ill fitted 
and poorly adjusted to their' occupation. 
Tell me how to transfer these people and 
fit them into the true scheme of life and I 
will see that you get a monument at least. 
Cooked Milk.— Many of you have heard 
of the “pasteurized milk” depots in New 
York. Milk is sold at one cent a glass. 
Small portable houses are put up in the 
parks—the whole outfit being very plain 
and inexpensive. I frequently stop to watch 
the crowd before one of these places. There 
are signs in five different languages, and 
during the hot wave the “call of the milk” 
was so strong that people were lined up 
three or four deep waiting for their chance. 
I judge that the milk is partly skimmed. 
The way the glasses are filled you could get 
nearly five out of a full quart, so that at one 
cent per glass and part of the fat taken 
out there is still left a fair margin. No 
one can tell how much good this milk does. 
Hundreds of men and boys who would 
otherwise drink beer buy this one-cent 
milk. Women buy it for their children. I 
have seen a woman with a brood of half a 
dozen around her having a great feast for 
five cents. I wish there were thousands of 
such places in the city. Every few blocks 
as you go up the leading streets you will 
find the stores of the tobacco trust. They 
handle vast quantities of tobacco, and have 
driven competitors pretty much out of busi¬ 
ness. There might well be a string of 
stores where milk, eggs, fruit and farm 
preserves could be sold at fair prices—such 
goods to be sent direct from the farms. 
That or something like it is what we must 
come to sooner or later. Things have now 
worked around so that town people are 
demanding cheaper food. I think this Cana¬ 
dian reciprocity is only the beginning of 
a scheme to invite food producers all over 
the world to send what they raise here. I 
think therefore that our farmers must 
change their tactics somewhat—get to¬ 
gether, cut out the useless middlemen and 
control more of the retailing. If our North¬ 
ern farmers will take up this question and 
fight for it as they have for the tariff in 
years past they can control the situation. 
Farm Notes.— We got the hay in the 
barn with barely a sprinkle of rain. Most 
of the rye followed, and then the showers 
began. When there came rain enough to 
moisten the soil it became somewhat of a 
study to know what to do. The Brussels 
sprouts were ready to go out, the straw¬ 
berries were ready to pot, the onions were 
weedy—there were a dozen things to do. 
Bob and Broker are willing, but they can¬ 
not turn the entire farm over in a week, 
fio we put them to plowing part of the 
rye stubble for the sprouts. This rye was 
purposely cut high, and the ragweeds have 
started, so plowing put a good lot of vege¬ 
table matter under ground. After plowing 
the soil is harrowed fine and all bands go 
to sticking in “sprouts.” Lime is scat¬ 
tered along the rows and cultivated in. 
Later a dressing of fertilizer is put on and 
cultivation is the same as for cabbage. With 
a reasonably moist Fall rye can be seeded 
among the “sprouts” in October as a cover 
crop for Winter. . . . The oats were 
cut early and got to the barn right. But 
for the rats we would keep them for Spring 
feeding, but the vermin works into the mows 
after the grain. The cats cannot reach 
them, and they will ruin most of the oat 
hay. Therefore I shall feed this oat hay 
during Fall and Winter with the corn fod¬ 
der. It would not pay us to let the oats go 
to grain. 
If the horses can do the work in time 
the oat stubble will be turned over and 
seeded to buckwheat with Red and Alsike 
clover. I do not know how late we can 
seed buckwheat and expect grain. On our 
hills the season is often 10 days later than 
in the valley and the crop may get through. 
. . . This year we have tried the ex¬ 
periment of hilling up some of the potatoes. 
The “expert” advice has been to give level 
cultivation, and some people go so far as 
to say they would shoot a man if they 
caught him using a plow. They will get 
over that. I have come to believe that in 
some cases hilling is desirable, and we are 
plowing some of our late varieties. We 
take a small one-horse plow and throw a 
light furrow from both sides of the row, so 
that the vines are partly covered and left 
on a ridge. I would do this on naturally 
damp soil in a season where there is too 
much rain, or where small weeds have 
started in the drill and it is impossible to 
hoe properly. The ridging properly done, 
will kill out those young weeds. I think 
the ridged potatoes are less likely to rot, 
and I know it is easier to dig them. Of 
course I know that these same methods 
might be employed to ruin a crop under 
other conditions. On light soil and in a 
drought the plow should be kept out. Ad¬ 
vice itself is about as dull as a chip. It 
is the judgment used in giving or applying 
it which gives it life. 
Strawberries. —We have a good illustra¬ 
tion of this in our strawberry field. Yoti 
remember how we told people to cut off 
the vines after fruiting and at once culti¬ 
vate or weed. That is sound advice, but we 
fell down in carrying it out. The vines 
were cut on scheduled time, but then there 
came a dozen calls for help. The hay was 
on the ground, rye was ready to cut, a rush 
order for potted plants, raspberries and 
currants to pick, and half a dozen more. 
Then came the hot wave and baked the 
soil so that no cultivator could get into 
it The result was that field was not 
worked until there came a softening rain. 
In the meantime the weeds and grass came 
In. The morning after that rain we started 
cleaning up. One of the boys took the cul¬ 
tivator with the side teeth off and chased 
Nellie up and down those rows. I took 
the army of red heads and started cleaning 
up. The weeds pulled easily. We have 
young peach trees growing among these 
berries, and about two bushels of green 
weeds are piled around each tree. The rest 
of the trash is hauled to the hill orchard 
and piled under the bearing trees. Philip, 
who is having his annual struggle with 
“pussley,” wants the stuff put on the road 
where the horses will kill it, but there is 
too much nitrogen in it to throw away. 
It is wonderfiil stuff to make trees grow. 
Every bit of trash I can get must go under 
and around the sod trees. The red heads 
soon grew tired of weeding. They saw 
something on the lawn which needed inves¬ 
tigation, ana away they went. I did not 
have the heart to call them back until 
they had played awhile. I found part of 
this field so grown up to crab grass that it 
will not pay to clean it. So it will be 
plowed under, vines and all, and set with 
potted Marshall plants. These old plants 
have given three crops, but with all we 
have in sight it would not pay to clean 
them by hand. You must remember that 
these old beds became very foul. It is 
easy to tell about fruiting them several 
years, but if you let them go as we did 
this season you have a fearful battle before 
you. 
All Sorts. —I have this among other 
questions: “ Do you mean to say that you 
can grow rye in an orch-ard so as to get 
good groicth and pay Jor the handling t” 
Yes, it can be done when the conditions 
are right—not otherwise. For example our 
rows of trees are 32 feet apart Last Fall 
we cut up these middles and sowed rye. 
Some of it was put in very late—nearly 
November 1. This Spring we watched the 
rainfall carefully. There seemed to be 
moisture enough to mature the rye and 
provide for the trees. So where the grain 
was promising we plowed six-foot strips on 
each side of the two rows. This left 20 
foot strips of rye. This year the rye 
made good grain and straw while the trees 
have made a satisfactory wood growth. Rye 
straw with us is worth as much as hay, and 
if well fertilized the straw and grain on an 
acre will bring nearly or quite $25. After 
the rye is cut we can plow or disk the stub¬ 
ble and drill in fodder crops or seed to rye 
again. The income from this rye will more 
than pay for the plowing and cultivating 
and for fertilizer. On part of our orchard 
this plan has been followed some years, and 
It Is a fact that the apple trees are com¬ 
ing into bearing at practically no cost. 
But now do not go off and say that the 
Hope Farm man can produce an apple or¬ 
chard without cost and a chromo thrown in. 
Right on the hillside with the orchard I 
have just mentioned are places where this 
scheme does not work. The soil is thin¬ 
ner and the rock comes close to the sur¬ 
face. On these spots both the rye and the 
trees show the need of food and water, and 
we plow the rye all under, sow fodder corn, 
fertilize and give good culture and seed rye 
again at the last cultivating. On other 
parts we plow the rye under, use fertilizer 
and give culture. 
But what sort of an orchard can you 
get when rye pays the bill? You never 
could tell without looking at it and com¬ 
paring with others. I will show pictures 
of some of the trees, but that will not tell 
It all. On strong soil and with reasonable 
seasons it is possible to make the rye pay 
for the orchard. It might not be so with 
you, as rye straw may not be worth over 
$8 per ton. We have the favorable condi¬ 
tion of high prices and favorable location. 
My object has been to see if a family of 
moderate means could take an old farm and 
develop it into a garden and orchard with 
small capital. It can be done, but I cannot 
say that it will be the best orchard or the 
finest garden. Here we will say is a man 
of 40 “self-made,” who has been obliged to 
consider every cent, train himself and prac¬ 
tice every economy. You might compare 
him with my rye-paid orchard. Here is an¬ 
other man of th.e same age who has had 
all the advantages of expensive training 
without worry or care of money matters. 
He is like the orchard upon which some 
expert has lavished money and care. In 
theory,«at least, the man who has had every 
advantage ought to be far superior to the 
self-trained worker. To an even greater 
degree (since trees are truer to opportunity 
than humans), the thoroughly tilled and 
fertilized orchard ought to be far ahead of 
my rye-paid trees. Yet the latter look as 
if they will support the family. In plant¬ 
ing an orchard my advice is to take the best 
possible care of it. Undoubtedly fertilizing 
and tillage will pay, yet I know that if you 
compelled their use as a new commandment 
many people would be denied the right to 
own a good orchard. My rye method can 
produce good trees; so can the mulch meth¬ 
od ; so can the plan of plowing strips along 
the rows, but the man must climb right into 
the method and stay there. h. w. c. 
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No crop returns better profit for the right fertilizer 
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What is the right fertilizer? That depends on the soil and 
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