1911. 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
11236 
Cement Beehives. 
C. 77., Derby, N. Y .—I would like to 
know your experience with cement beehives. 
I am thinking of making some, walls and 
floor to be 1% inch thick, tarred and 
painted on the outside. Would they he 
cold and damp? Do you think they woula 
be good hives, or would hives with inch 
cement sides and one-half inch board bod¬ 
ies be better ? 
Ans. —Cement block hive stands of 
different shapes have been more or less 
used for some time. The matter of 
making hive bodies of cement has been 
discussed at some length, and possibly 
been tried out, but the general opinion 
seems to be against their use. There 
are many reasons given for this. Some 
of them are these: First, they are too 
heavy, also too cold for Northern use. 
These two objections would make them 
impractical, in the minds of bee-keepers 
who get their bread and butter from 
the bee business. If I had an idea that 
I should like such a hive I would build 
a few and try them out, but the two ob¬ 
jections above make me think that I do 
not want any of them in my apiary. 
j. A. CRANE. 
Questions About Flour. 
L. J. 8., New Canaan, Conn .—I wish 
some one who is thoroughly posted on 
milling would contribute to The It. N.-Y. 
an article setting forth the difference be¬ 
tween bread flour and best pastry flour, as 
it affects economy, both domestic and nu¬ 
tritive. Many people like to avoid too 
much starch. Also the difference between 
whole wheat and graham flour seems not 
to be understood. Is the bran retained in 
the former, or is it the outside layer of the 
wheat berry that gives the color? 
Ans. —Hard wheat, especially the 
hard Spring wheat grown in the West 
and Northwest, contains more gluten 
and less starch than the soft Winter 
wheats. Flour made from the former 
is best adapted for bread because owing 
to its strength it will rise better, make 
whiter bread, more loaves per barrel, 
and the bread will retain its moisture 
longer than bread made from Winter 
wheat flour. Winter wheat flour is well 
adapted for pastry, owing to its abund¬ 
ance of starch and smaller amount of 
gluten; it requires less shortening, for 
instance, to make tender crisp pie crust. 
Winter flour dough will break off short, 
Spring flour dough will stretch like 
rubber. Many families keep both kinds, 
one for bread only, the other for all 
other culinary purposes where flour is 
required. Therefore, it has become cus¬ 
tomary to call the one bread flour and 
the other pastry flour. The quality of 
any brand of flour, bread or pastry 
would, of course, depend upon the qual¬ 
ity of the wheat from which it is made, 
the equipment of the mill in which it is 
made, and the skill of the miller who 
makes it. In modern milling it is pos¬ 
sible to make several grades of flour at 
one grinding; the better part or cream 
of the wheat is called patent, the poorest 
part is called low grade, and what re¬ 
mains between is called baker’s or clear. 
When only one grade is made at a 
grinding it is called straight. Winter 
wheat is mostly made as straight. In 
the big mills of the West that make a 
specialty of bread flour, a certain per 
cent of the best or patent is used. But 
the proof of the pudding is in the eat¬ 
ing, for the word patent written on a 
sack might mean anything from 60 to 
95 per cent. When patent flour is made 
there remains of course lower grades 
to be disposed of. These are sometimes 
sold as pastry flour. But they might not 
always be satisfactory as such. In an¬ 
swering the questions asked it would 
be safe to say that the best bread flour 
is the best Spring wheat patent, and the 
best pastry flour is the straight grade 
made from the best quality of Winter 
wheat obtainable. 
Graham flour is “supposed to be 
made” from sound, thoroughly cleaned 
wheat ground with no separations 
made; white wheat is preferable, as it 
gives the graham a better appearance, 
and the outer coating or bran from 
white wheat is softer and less irritating 
to the human stomach than the bran 
from hard red wheats. I use the words 
“supposed to be made,” because it is 
sometimes (not always) made by mix¬ 
ing lower grades of flour and bran to¬ 
gether with a scoop shovel, or other 
handy implement. Therefore, I would 
advise those who use graham flour, for 
sanitary and other reasons, to be sure of 
their miller or dealer or both. Whole 
wheat flour is more of a modern pro¬ 
duct than graham. I have handled con¬ 
siderable of it, but am not entirely 
familiar with the process of its manu- 
v facture; am quite sure that it is made 
from the stronger gluten wheats. The 
bran or outer coating, claimed to con¬ 
sist of woody and indigestible fiber, is 
removed. All the remainder of the 
wheat is retained. miller. 
The Waste of Plant Food. 
T. R. II., Kirkland, Wash .—I think you 
miss & point in Liebig’s blast at England 
(page 11 IS), viz., that she squanders the 
wealth of other nations down her sewers to 
the sea. The necessity of importing fertil¬ 
ity is coincident with this economic waste. 
At Seattle we can see not only the sewers 
carrying the fertility of the soil away, but 
teams are constantly hauling manure out 
and throwing it into the tide flats. This 
is a crime against the next generation, but 
we have no Liebig to raise his voice in 
protest. The railroads might well take a 
hand in this matter of returning to the soil 
its natural food in part at least, and I 
could wish I had a voice to arouse an in¬ 
terest iu the conservation congress to this 
serious waste of the life of the next gen¬ 
eration, for at the last analysis that is 
what it amounts to. 
Ans. All nations and sections seem 
to follow a universal custom of wasting 
fertility until driven by necessity to save 
it. When the first settlers reached New 
England they found most of the cleared 
land already worked out by the Indians. 
These Indians taught the whites to use 
fish in the hills of corn and wood ashes 
and ground clam shells. The white peo¬ 
ple at first refused the fish, saying it 
was contrary to nature. In the South¬ 
ern States for years cotton seed was 
dumped by the ton into the rivers to 
get it out of the way. Finally the seed 
was used as manure or feed. Then the 
oil, the meal and the hulls acquired new 
values, and farmers began using chem¬ 
icals to replace the plant food removed 
in the cotton. In the early history of 
the West stable manure was neglected. 
Great pileo accumulated, so that there 
were actual cases where it paid better to 
move or build a new barn rather than 
haul the manure away. It was not until 
manure spreaders made it possible to 
handle manure by horse power that tliQ 
West used this waste economically. In 
California vast piles of sheep manure 
accumulated on the old ranches. In that 
dry country there was not much waste. 
Later there came a demand for plant- 
food. These great piles of sheep ma¬ 
nure were dug up, crushed fine and in 
many cases shipped across the continent 
to be used in greenhouses or for grow¬ 
ing tobacco. Every section finally comes 
to wastes and chemicals. The greatest 
manurial waste to-day is that poured 
out through the sewers into streams, 
lakes or ocean. The contents of these 
sewers is so dilute that thus far scien¬ 
tists have not found an economical way 
of holding and pressing the plant food 
on a large scale. Near some of the 
smaller cities in this country and Eu¬ 
rope sewage farms have given fair re¬ 
sults. The sewage is pumped out and 
spread over the soil in which crops are 
grown. In some of the cities garbage 
and street sweepings were burned or 
treated so that the ashes or solids can 
be used, but only a small part of the 
actual plant food is saved. We shall 
have to come to it sooner or later and 
devise plans for saving this waste. 
Bean Picking; a Winter Job. 
In reply to the inquiry of R. C., Mich¬ 
igan, page 1138, as to home industries 
that would work in with fruit raising to 
occupy some leisure time in Winter, will 
say that if R. C. is in a section where 
white beans are grown he could find 
profitable employment in hand-picking 
beans during the Winter. For two or 
three Winters we have hand picked 
beans off and on during stormy weather. 
Ic is not the most desirable work one 
can find, but by taking the beans into 
the kitchen or some other warm place 
it is not as bad as it might be. Some¬ 
times we take a bushel or two of beans 
into the kitchen, dump them onto a 
table and go after them all hands, little 
and big. Hand-picking beans is some¬ 
what tiresome work, but one need not 
work at it 10 hours a day but can work 
a while until he is tired, then rest awhile 
by splitting wood, doing chores, etc. One 
year we traded beans to the groeeryman 
for groceries. We got $2.35 per bushel, 
and arranged with the grocer to take 
one or two bushels a week. In this way 
the grocer was owing us in the Spring 
instead of us owing him. Another year 
we kept the beans until Spring and 
shipped them to a commission man, who 
returned us something like $2.65 per 
bushel. We had quite a few bushels, 
and it being a time of year when money 
was not coming in very fast, it came in 
handy to buy seed, etc. I notice that 
white beans are quoted from $4 to $4.85 
per 100 pounds, and red kidney $5.35 to 
$5.75 per 100 pounds in the New York 
market. These prices make me wish 
that we had a few bushels to hand-pick 
this Winter, but we have not. We have 
never raised red kidney beans, but I 
think they could be raised here. We 
have always raised the marrow, white 
kidney and pea beans. We cook the 
waste beans and feed them to the hens. 
The hens like them, and I think they 
help make the hens lay. 
There are but few beans raised here, 
but I will tell how they are raised and 
handled. They are sown about July 1st 
with a common grain drill in drills 
about 28 inches apart. The beans come 
up in four or five days and can be soon 
cultivated. We use a one-horse culti¬ 
vator and cultivate as often as is neces¬ 
sary to keep the weeds down and keep 
up a dust mulch until the beans get so 
large that the horse or cultivator will 
injure them. After that they are let 
alone until they are ripe, when they are 
pulled and placed in bunches, roots up. 
When dry they are hauled into the barn. 
They are thrashed with a thrashing ma¬ 
chine, corn shredder or are flailed out 
with an old-fashioned flail. If one has 
a good place to store them they can wait 
until some stormy day in Winter and 
thrash them then. The beans thrash 
much better when it is good and cold. 
After they are thrashed they should be 
run through the fanning mill to clean 
them. After this they are ready to 
hand-pick. I do not know that this 
bean-picking business will fit R. C.’s 
case, but offer it as a suggestion. 
Chautauqua Co., N. Y. l. g. S. 
Big Potato Story. —You ask for records 
of large potato yields. Here is one from 
the Portland Oregonian. A picture is 
shown of seven potatoes weighing 35 
pounds. “The rulers show the length of 
the potatoes, some of them being nearly a 
foot long. These potatoes were raised by 
W. L. Sochren on his farm one mile west 
of this city. These were but a few of the 
large ones’ he had. Ilis whole crop con¬ 
sisted of large potatoes, scarcely any of 
them being less than 3% pounds. Be¬ 
sides this exhibit of large potatoes in tins 
city, there is another exhibit of potatoes 
in the window of the M. D. Ellis drug 
store, consisting of 12 potatoes that weigh 
53 Mi pounds in the aggregate. These po¬ 
tatoes were raised by W. H. Kraber on his 
farm two miles from this city.” M. it. 
Jerked Beef. —In Uruguay the jerked 
beef industry is important. Cattle are 
killed and skinned and the meat is cut 
from the bones in such a manner as to 
leave a flat, single piece. This is put into 
brine and then packed between layers of 
salt. Consul Coding describes the rest: 
“After a varying period of time the meat 
is removed to the open air, where it is 
again stacked and salted, the drying pro¬ 
cess continuing there for several months. 
Acres are covered with these piles of meat 
to a height of 10 feet, salt frequently being 
thrown over the surface. If rainy weather 
appears the meat is covered with a strong 
tarpaulin, although windy, cloudy weather 
is preferred to sunshine. When ready for 
the market tasajo is black in color, a few 
feet square and an inch or two in thick¬ 
ness, and as hard as sole leather. Very 
little tasajo is eaten in Uruguay, the great¬ 
er portion being exported to Brazil, Cuba, 
and Porto Rico, where it is eaten raw or 
boiled for some hours and is preferred to 
a choice steak. In 1910 1,233,200 cattle 
were disposed of in this way.” 
Busy asphalt diggers ia Trinidad Lake 
You know how sap keeps a tree 
alive and strong and defensive 
against weather. Trinidad Lake 
asphalt does the same in 
Genasco 
the Trinidad-Lake-Asphalt Roofing 
The Kant-leak Kleet defends the 
roofing-seams against weather without 
cement. Prevents nail-leaks. 
Ask your dealer for Genasco mineral 
or smooth surface guaranteed roofing 
with Kant-leak Kleets packed in the 
roll. Write for the Good Roof Guide 
Book and samples. 
The Barber Asphalt 
Paving Company 
Largest producers of nnph&lt, and largest 
manufacturers of ready roofing in tho world. 
Philadelphia 
New York San Francisco Chicago 
Cross-section Genasco Model Roofing 
Cflashed Quartz 
Trinidad Lake Asphalt 
Asphalt-saturated Wool Felt 
Trinidad Lake Asphalt 
Asphalt-saturated Burlap 
Trinidad Lake Asphalt 
msmam 
/■As low as § 10 -v 
And any boy can operate it and earn tho 
price of this saw In two days easily by 
contracting to saw lumber, firewood, lath, 
fences, posts, etc., for neighbors. 
Hertzler & Zook 
Portable 
Wood 
Earn 
$10 
is positively the cheapest and best 
saw made. Liberally guaranteed for 
1 year—will last many years. 
Strictly factory prices —you 
save jobbers’ profits. Stick 
sits low—saw draws it on 
immediately machine 
starts—ensuring ease of 
operation. Only $10 saw to 
wh'ch ripping table can bo 
added. Write for catalogue. 
HERTZLER * ZOOK CO. 
Box 3_Belleville, Pa. 
Monarch 
Hydraulic 
Cider Press 
Net owners 25 i to 100)5 
on investment per year 
Ask for Tree Cat¬ 
alog and “Good 
Tip” booklet tell¬ 
ing how. 
Monarch Machinery Co., 609 Hudson Terminal, New York. 
For Orchard and Farm, 
All gonuino “Cutaways” aro intense cultivators and 
will increase your crops 25 to M per cent.. Our Double 
Action "Cutaway” Harrow Is a wonderful invention 
—can bo used in field or orchard. Perfect eentor 
draft. Drawn by two medium horses will move the 
earth twice on every trip. We can prove it. 
“Intensive Cultivation,” our new catalogue is Free. 
Send for it today. 
CUTAWAY HARROW CO., 839 Main St., Higganom, Conn, 
Just Say You Want To Try 
a QUAKER CITY MILL 
Built in 23 styles ranging from hand to power and sold 
direct from factory to user. Grind Corn and Cob and small 
grain at the same time and separately; also feed and table meal. 
Soft and Wet Corn, Shuck and Kaffir Corn. Three styles of plates for fine, 
medium and coarse grinding. 
Sent on Free Trial—Freight Paid 
Wo take the Risk and want to convince you that tho Quaker City Mills grind faster; require 
less power and do better work than any other mill on the market. Our Free Trial and Guarantee 
Absolutely Protect You. If tho mill is not satisfactory after trial, you are at liberty to return same at Our 
Expense. We have been building Quaker City Mills since 1867 and know how. Wo also handle Knginos, Cutters, 
Shellers, etc. Send for our Free Catalos and samples of grinding done on our mills before purchasing elsowhero 
m A W <5TRAIIR COMPANY* Dept, E, 3740 Filbert Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 
A. W. OliWiUD bUinrAN I . Dep t.T, 3709 So. Ashland Ave., Chicago. Illinois 
Biff Stumps Pulled 
Quick and Easy TJ€EZ 
Pulls an acre a day. It doubles land values. Enables you to 
grow crops instead of paying taxes on land that yields nothing. 
HERCULES 
More power than a tractor. GO per cent lighter, 
400 per cent stronger than cast iron puller. 30 
days' free trial. 3-year guarantee to replace, 
free, all castings tliat break from any cause 
whatever. Double safety ratchets insure safe¬ 
ty to men and team. Accurate turning means 
light draft Mail postal for free book show- I 
ing photos and letters from owners. Tells* 
~ how to turn stump laud into big 
money. Special introductory price proposition will 
interest you. Write now. 
IIKKCCLES MKO. CO., 130—17th St. 
Centerville, Iowa 
Trip la 
Power 
