402 
THE RURAL NEW -YORKEH 
March 23, 
Hope Farm Notes 
The Potato Crop. —Those who like to 
gamble will have a chance this year with 
potatoes. As we all know, prices are 
high this year, and I find many farm¬ 
ers ready to plunge into potato grow¬ 
ing. Some of them will break up their 
rotation, cut out corn or wheat and 
plant a double acreage to potatoes. In 
some localities it seems like a sort of 
craze which, as we all know, takes pos¬ 
session of people now and then. On 
the other hand, I know several large 
potato growers who will cut out the 
crop entirely this year. These men fig¬ 
ure that they should keep out of the 
rush. 
Now what caused these high prices?. 
A poor crop. Every year there are 
enough potatoes planted to swamp the 
market if the conditions were right. 
Give us one good crop year all over the 
country and potatoes will go to 15 
cents or less per bushel in the large 
growing districts—as they have done 
before. Our present high potato prices 
are not due to the increase of gold but 
to bug, blight and drought. These will 
be always with us, and the man who 
knows most about combating them will 
have the surest thing on potatoes. You 
must have the right kind of soil and 
you must fit it properly. Then you 
must have the tools and the spraying 
outfit and the judgment required to 
know just when to do the work. The 
farmer who has these things will have 
one year with another a good thing in 
potatoes, for sooner or later he will 
strike a full crop in a high price year. 
Then if he have the will power to salt 
some of that money safely away and 
not blow it all in on more potatoes he 
will do well. 
But I talk with men who intend to 
rent land or plow up old meadows, or 
take land out of the regular rotation 
and plunge into potatoes. They are 
worse than the man who hid the talent 
in the ground. That man could go and 
dig it up again, but those who put po¬ 
tatoes on poor or unsuitable land run a 
fair chance of losing what they put in. 
“Avoid the rush!” That is good ad¬ 
vice this year. The South has planted 
heavily and all up the country plans 
have been made to follow. With an 
ordinary season the country will be 
flooded. As all know, the year of a 
Presidential election is likely to be dull. 
We have given up trying to raise po¬ 
tatoes on any large scale. Our soil is 
not well adapted to this crop. A few 
miles away on the lighter valley soils 
potatoes grow well, but on our hard 
hills they are out of place. On the 
other hand, our fruit is superior, and I 
have learned that successful farming is 
pretty much a matter of learning what 
your soil and locality are best adapted 
to and then pushing that hard. It is 
different with corn. The West can no 
doubt beat us growing the soft yellow 
dents, but certain hard flint varieties 
are so well adapted to our conditions 
that with them we can earn more from 
an acre than the western farmers do. 
It is not the same with potatoes, for 
with that crop it is more a matter of 
soil. We usually plant six to 10 bar¬ 
rels, but only one year in the past 10 
have we had any chance to brag, and 
then wisely declined to do so. 
The Cow.—During the 29 days of 
February Mollie gave us 470 pounds of 
milk, making a total since April 19 of 
last year of 8,230 pounds. I was in 
hopes she would run up to 9,000 pounds 
in the year, but this does not seem 
likely now. She has 50 days to go and 
may do it. She will be fresh again in 
June, and I think we can get her to 
make a better record. For February 
her grain cost $5.85, and we charged 
$5.80 for care. Taking this out and fig¬ 
uring the milk at four cents a pound 
Mollie has paid us $218.03 since she 
started. As frequently stated, we hard¬ 
ly know whaf to charge for the rough- 
age, which is chiefly sweet cornstalks 
with the ears picked off or fodder corn 
grown as a second crop among the apple 
trees. We credit the milk at four cents 
a pound, since that is what we would 
have to pay for it in cash, and also be¬ 
cause it has that food value. I can¬ 
not buy its equal in life-sustaining pow¬ 
er for less money in grain, meat or 
eggs! This simple thing of actually 
knowing what an animal costs and what 
it does in return has proved one of the 
most useful things we ever attempted. 
Baby Pigs. —And this leads up to 
more figuring. As stated last week, we 
are keeping record of hens, and here 
is suggested another “record”: 
I am offered a pair of Cheshire pigs six 
weeks or two months old. but have no milk 
to feed them. Can I raise them on some 
other feed ? They are' nert to be used for 
breeding purposes. w. o. 
Suffern, N. Y. 
We have just bought three Red pigs 
of about that age. The children leave 
no milk, so these little red-haired pork¬ 
ers will be handled about as follows: 
We have made a portable house on run¬ 
ners with a portable run attached. 
When Spring opens this house will be 
moved here and there to grass or green 
crops where the pigs can be constantly 
on new soil. They will have weeds and 
waste, scraps from the kitchen, but the 
Chief thing I am after is to find the 
value of dish water. Here we have 15 
people on the farm. The dish water 
will be saved warm and thickened with 
middlings and cornmeal into a heavy 
soup or slop. This will be the chief feed 
for these pigs. I think such dish water 
will have about the same feeding an¬ 
alysis as half-skimmed milk. No wash¬ 
ing powder should be used, but a little 
soap will not hurt. This warm dish water 
thickened with the grain will make a 
fair milk substitute. You cannot hope 
for the pigs to do as well as they would 
with milk, but they will grow, and in 
the portable house—moved about here 
and there—they will keep clean and 
help dean the ground. We shall of 
course keep a record of what these pigs 
are fed, and what they gain, and, later, 
may put in several of these outfits to 
help clean land for strawberry planting. 
The pig is a great citizen to get out 
white grubs. 
Farm Work. —The cold weather still 
continues with no let-up in sight. We 
are still trimming trees and cutting 
wood. I wish we could get at the 
spraying, but in the face of these cold, 
high winds there is no chance for it. 
This sort of a season is death to Crim¬ 
son clover. It might come from under 
the snow, green and smiling, but the 
frost lifts it and these biting winds do 
the rest. By April you see the clover 
several inches out of the ground, with 
the root killed. This clover will not 
see May with 25 per cent of a stand 
four times in 10 in our section, yet 
even so it more than pays for itself. 
Hairy vetch I believe is a surer and 
better crop with us, yet after all rye 
alone or with vetch is our old stand-by. 
I fear we shall run short of hay, and 
so we must prepare for oats and peas 
and oats alone. In part of our orchard 
I am planning for oats in drills like 
fodder corn. The soil will be plowed 
or disked as early as possible and the 
oats seeded thickly in drills about 2 
feet apart, so we can cultivate. I have 
tried this before with fair success. The 
oats grow taller than when broadcast 
and make good fodder. The cultiva¬ 
tion helps both the oats and the trees, 
while broadcast oats would hurt the 
trees if the season proved dry. Then, 
later, if the season is fairly moist we 
can drill Soy beans midway between the 
oat drills and by using fertilizer have 
a second fodder crop coming on after 
the oats with rye to be seeded in this 
latter crop in late August or early 
September. When you have nearly 
every part of the farm in orchards you 
must work all sorts of schemes until 
you find the best plan. I am convinced 
that the Soy bean is to prove a great 
help in our kind of orcharding and we 
plan to plant this bean freely. Evi¬ 
dently it does best in drills and well 
cultivated. It seems hard to believe 
that this coarse stuff of bean vines will 
make suitable fodder and hay, yet I 
know that cows relish it and that 
horses keep fat on it. Another crop 
we shall push this year is mangels. If 
our supply of these beets had held out I 
am sure we could have pushed Mollie 
above 9,000 pounds and there is a fair 
local sale for them to poultry keepers. 
They will pay us better than potatoes. 
Then there is this question of a small 
underground silo. I would like to have 
15 to 20 tons of silage but it would not 
pay to put such a small silo above 
ground. People have begun to discuss 
the hole in the ground proposition and 
we want all the facts we can get. For 
years the experts have rather hooted at 
the idea of a silo below ground. Yet 
the development of concrete work has 
changed many old notions about build¬ 
ing. At any rate we all want to know. 
H. W. C. 
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You Have a WL 
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if you take proper < 
means frequent and tb 
'of it. Proper carq 
Srough spraying with" 
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A 
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