©60 
THE RURAL* NEW-YORKER 
September 14, 
FARM ENGINEERING NOTES. 
Building a Stone Cistern. 
J. C., South Bethlehem, Pa. —I am about 
to install a ram at my spring, and wish 
to force the water to a cistern on the 
highest point of my ground. To get the ele¬ 
vation I need I must build a cistern about 
six feet high on the ground level. I wish 
to build it of stone about 18 inches thick, 
with stone roof and double door, this being 
out of ground. Will the water freeze in 
the cistern in Winter? 
Ans. —Water in a cistern built ex¬ 
posed to the weather with solid stone 
walls 18 inches thick will freeze in 
very cold weather unless kept constantly 
in motion. Make the walls double, with 
perhaps six inches of dead air space 
between and, if the water is drawn 
from the cistern with ordinary fre¬ 
quency, it will not freeze. If you do 
this each wall need be only eight or 10 
inches thick, so no more stone will be 
required than with a solid wall. 
Coloring Cement Blocks. 
J. V. C., Spur kill, N. Y. —I am building 
a house and wish to stain some cement 
blocks to more nearly match the dark 
granite of my foundation. Would it be all 
right to paint them with lampblack and 
turpentine or kerosene to get the black to 
penetrate the pores? I am afraid oil would 
injure the caustic qualities of the cement, 
and thus injure the blocks. Would it be 
any advantage to put a handful of lime 
in the mixture of turpentine and lamp¬ 
black ? 
Ans. —No matter what you color the 
cement blocks with now, the result will 
be disappointing. The best mixture you 
can use is water glass (sodium silicate) 
and lampblack. Thin it with water, if 
need be. The sodium silicate is very 
strongly alkaline, so there is no need 
of adding lime. 
Building Root-Cellar. 
IV. C. V., Hew York. —I wish to ask a 
few questions about a root-cellar. I am 
building a cellar 18 by 20 feet and five 
feet four inches deep, solid concrete floor 
and walls, the walls projecting a foot above 
ground. The ceiling is tongued and grooved 
one-inch material; the roof thoroughly 
weather-proof; gable door and double in¬ 
side door, and ventilating shafts. I would 
like to have one of your experts tell me 
whether such a cellar is practicable, and if 
not, make such suggestions as would insure 
its usefulness. Also, whether it is custom¬ 
ary to store vegetables in this house on the 
floor, or in bins above the floor, or in re¬ 
ceptacles of any kind. What precautions, 
if any, are necessary to guard against rot 
or mildew or freezing in temperatures _ in 
the neighborhood of Rockland County, New 
York ? 
Ans. —It is essential that the floor 
and walls have good drainage and that 
ventilation be provided through the top. 
The construction must be frost-proof. 
The root crops may be dropped in from 
above directly upon the floor of the 
cellar through trap doors in the roof 
of the cellar and the bottom of the 
wagon. It is not customary to pro¬ 
vide any bins above the floor, although 
the floor is sometimes separated off into 
bins. To make the walls frost-proof, 
double construction may be used—an 
air space between the two walls. When 
the roots have been put in leave the 
ventilators open until sweating has 
ceased, when they may be closed for 
the Winter. In Winter the cellar 
should be kept closed on warm days. 
Roots, especially potatoes, need uniform 
temperature as low as possible without 
injury and sufficient moisture to pre¬ 
vent shriveling. The temperature should 
be above freezing. If the cellar is too 
dry pack the roots in sand and sprinkle 
occasionally. Carrots tend to heat and 
decay, and should have good ventilation. 
They can be covered lightly with sand. 
Beets and turnips may be kept the same 
as potatoes. R. p. c. 
Clearing a Muddy Well. 
What is the trouble with my well which 
I drilled this Spring? It is 60 feet deep, 
the last 40 feet drilled through a rock, and 
we cased it 20 feet. The pipe is 4% feet 
from bottom of well; we pumped it clean, 
and about six woks after we drilled it we 
lifted the pipe and sand-pumped it clean 
again, and the water never cleared. It is 
so muddy we cannot use it for anything. 
Can anyone tell me what the trouble is, and 
whether it will ever do us any good ? 
Clearville, Pa. R. G. 
It is not advisable to pump all the sand 
out of a well, as a sand bottom is most 
satisfactory and clean. The water will 
always be muddy if all the sand is gone. 
Probably the best thing to do is to place 
a very fine wire screen on the lower end of 
your pump to keep the sand out, and dump 
into the casing a quantity of clean sand. 
Wait for the sand to settle and you should 
have no more trouble from dirty water. 
e. p. c. 
Trouble with Icehouse. 
Can you tell me why my ice does not 
keep? I have an icehouse 10 feet by 12 
feet and 10 feet to eaves, with a peak roof 
with 14-inch openings in the gables, the 
walls are double and the building is of 
wood. I put a layer of six inches of saw¬ 
dust on the ground and pack the ice on 
this, leaving about one foot of space around 
.the outside which is filled with sawdust 
and the ice is covered with two feet of saw¬ 
dust. We have pretty warm weather from 
June 15 on, and yet half of the ice will be 
melted before July 1. The soil under the 
icehouse is sandy and drains freely, with 
very little rain during the Summer. I have 
been told that the ice melts from the 
ground on account of the earth becoming 
warm, and that if I were to put in a 
floor my troubles would end. a. V. s. 
Washington. 
It would be advisable to put in a double 
floor with a dead-air space between them. 
Then use a layer of newspapers on the 
floor and over them a thick layer of saw¬ 
dust. Be sure your double walls are air¬ 
tight so as to have a dead-air space be¬ 
tween them. You can be certain of this 
by papering the walls with newspapers or 
wrapping paper. An icehouse can’t be too 
air-tight. It would also be a very good 
plan to divide your two-foot layer of saw¬ 
dust on top of the ice into two layers of a 
foot each separated by a thickness of paper. 
Your difficulty seems to be entirely one of 
insulation and if you follow these sugges¬ 
tions, you should have no trouble next year. 
R. P. C. 
Reservoir for Water Supply. 
I want to bring the water from a very 
fine spring to my house and barn by pump¬ 
ing it with a ram, placed 10 feet lowep 
than spring, 70 feet up a hill into a reser¬ 
voir, then by gravity to the house, and 
would like to submit diagram to some of 
your expert readers for criticism and cor¬ 
rection, if faulty. A supply of water is 
wanted for house, barn, poultry house of a 
small farm and average-sized family, and 
perhaps a limited amount for irrigating gar¬ 
den. IIow many barrels should reservoir 
hold, and what size of pipe should be used 
from spring to ram, ram to reservoir, res¬ 
ervoir to house? What sized ram should be 
used? House is 25 feet below reservoir 
level. s. r. 
Hendersonville, N. C. 
The plan you have devised is all right. 
Use a two-inch pipe from spring to ram, 
%-inch pipe from ram to reservoir and 
either %4nch or one-inch pipe to house. 
The ram will not deliver to the reservoir 
over one-seventh of the water that flows to 
it from the spring, so some provision must 
be made for the rest of the water to run 
to waste. The reservoir may conveniently 
hold 15 to 20 barrels. A ram suitable for 
the system will take from eight to 15 gal¬ 
lons of water per minute to operate it and 
will cost about $14. R. P. C. 
Sorrel and Rich Land. 
I am interested in a recent note on the 
appearance of sorrel in Central New Jer¬ 
sey, where large quantities of fertilizer are 
used on potatoes. On a recent visit to 
South Jersey I was surprised that the 
acid phosphate and the slightly acid condi¬ 
tion brought about by its heavy use in the 
heavy annual application of fertilizers, 
usually 1,500 pounds per acre for potatoes, 
allows' them to grow potatoes year after 
year on the same ground without scab, and 
I was told of the ninth consecutive crop 
on the same piece being the best. Some 
fine potato fields were pointed out that 
have been used for potatoes without regard 
to rotation. I can easily see how sorrel 
would come in under such conditions, and 
that there is no starvation in this case, 
as they pile on the fertilizer, and grow 
their own humus-making crops on the same 
land. When I asked about the Philadelphia 
manure they used to haul, I was told they 
could not afford to bother with it any 
more, with their high-priced teams and other 
conditions, excepting for mulching straw¬ 
berries. This is hardly a dose that can be 
taken easily by some who are keeping 
scrub cattle to “make manure.” I believe 
that the small herd of cattle- under the 
conditions as I see them is really a curse 
to the farm in many cases instead of a 
help. I should think that the conditions 
under which sorrel comes in in New Jersey 
with the excessive use of fertilizers, would 
bo much the same as where it comes in on 
new land, never before plowed. Certainly 
neither is a case of starvation, but I am 
foolish enough to believe that the sorrel 
would help to correct the acidity if left 
to itself. i. C. R. 
Second-Growth Sorghum. 
We saw an article about growing sor¬ 
ghum in earlier papers and we planted two 
acres and got a heavy crop, although we 
had a long drought. Now it is making a 
good second growth. We saw in the Farm 
Journal advice to beware of second growth 
sorghum ; it is poisonous to animals. Please 
enlighten us on subject. Q. B. 
New York. 
That is true. Such sorghum is apt to 
contain prussic acid, and that proves deadly. 
One cannot always be sure that this is 
going to prove true, but if it does the 
damage will be certain. For that reason 
one should not run chances in feeding sor¬ 
ghum or kaffir corn fodder when the plants 
have been killed and wilted by disease or 
drought, or have been cut and grown again. 
a. s. A. 
Poates Complete Atlas of the World. 
—Most large atlases are ungainly things, 
taking too much room on a table, and too 
large to fit in a bookshelf. This book is 
the finest and most convenient atlas we 
have seen; 6%x9%, containing 220 pages. 
The maps are clear, each State covering 
two pages, and every country in the world 
is shown, all the latest geographical 
changes being indicated. The reading mat¬ 
ter gives the counties and chief cities and 
towns of all the States and more than 700 
of the important cities of the world. For 
sale by The Rural New-Yorker, Price, 
cloth, $1.50; leather. $2. 
Hedgehogs and Snails. 
A correspondent of the London Garden¬ 
ing Illustrated, residing in Alderney, Chan¬ 
nel Islands, has installed hedgehogs (porcu¬ 
pines) as garden policemen : 
“For many years I have been troubled 
with slugs, which were very numerous, in 
my garden, some 200 feet long by 120 feet 
wide, enclosed in walls. It was impossible 
for me to raiise any Dahlias, Chrysanthe¬ 
mums, lettuces, beans, etc., without having 
to pay heavy toll to them. Beautiful 
Funkia leaves looked like sieves. I tried 
all sorts of remedies, slugicides among 
others. I put round my young Dahlias a 
ring of bran late in the afternoon, and 
visited the same with a lantern at night. 
I killed every evening between 150 and 
300. After having reached 17,000 I gave 
up. The more I killed the more there 
seemed to come. During a visit to friends 
in Normandy one of them suggested that 
I should try hedgehogs. I brought over 
with me two, but one got drowned in a 
manure tub. I replaced it by a couple I 
got from England. What a transformation ! 
I can walk all over the garden without 
finding a single young plant or shoot at¬ 
tacked. Not one young shoot of Dahlias 
(we leave them in the open ground in Win¬ 
ter, our climate, being so mild) has been 
eaten, not a strawberry touched. Verily I 
consider hedgehogs worth, if not their 
weight in gold, certainly in silver. If my 
garden were not walled in they would cer¬ 
tainly stray away, but it seems to* me that 
people who have only hedges round their 
property might prevent the little beasts 
from escaping by some wire netting.” 
German Millet for Hay. 
What is the best time to cut German 
millet for hay? e. m. 
New York. 
We should cut millet, like all other fod¬ 
der, before the seeds harden. This rule 
will apply to millet as well as to small 
grains cut for hay. Cut while the heads 
can be easily smashed with finger and 
thumb. 
Through this region the wheat crop is 
almost an entire failure, due to being 
frozen out last Winter and a peculiar sight 
greeted me. I found that in many places 
the farmers had refitted the bare spots and 
sowed oats and there is now the sight of 
oats in patches mixed in with wheat. There 
has been a drought of six weeks duration, 
With everything drying up; they had a 
little shower Monday evening that laid the 
dust and brightened and freshened the 
foliage, but not enough to do much good. 
The farmers feel discouraged after all the 
hard work, nothing to show for it. The 
hay crop was very fair, some meadows 
looking excentinallv fine, but that is all. 
Erie Co., N. Y. e. c. l. 
In regard to the query of W. E. C. on 
page 828. about a good way to get rid of 
Canada thistle, 10 years ago I had this 
thistle appear on my farm in the Middle 
West, through the agency of some clover 
seed. When the thistles were grown, but 
before they seeded, I had the stems cut 
about a foot from the ground, then left. 
The whole plant rotted on account of rain 
filling the hollow stems. Every one died, 
and I have never had a sign of them since. 
Alabama. Bradley Hancock, jr. 
Two layers of glass instead of one 
You never cover Sunlight 
Double Glass Sash 
The two layers of glass take 
the place of mats and boards 
Between the two layers is a 51s inch layer of dry air. 
the very best non-conductor. Glass held in place with* 
out putty—can't slip out—easily replaced. 
Crops on the market weeks ahead 
Under Sunlight Double Glass Sash your plants grow 
fast and strong, for they get all the light all the time. 
They enable you to sell your crops while the prices are 
still high. 
Send for these books 
One is our free catalog; the other is a book on hot¬ 
beds and cold-frames by Professor Massey. It is 
authoritative and of vital interest 
to all growers. 4c. in 9tamps will 
bring Professor Massey’s book in 
addition to the catalog. 
Sunlight Double 
Glass Sash Co. 
924 E. Broadway, Louisville, Ky. 
(Sold with or without elevator) 
For Every Variety of Work 
Have conical shaped grinders, Different 
from all others. Handiest to operate and 
LIGHTEST RUNM1NG ( ^ 8 c ^ ar 
Ten Sizes— 2 to 25 horse-power. 
EPEE Booklet on “Values of 
• nCC Feeds and Manures." 
P.R. Bowsher Co. South Bend,lnd. 
Successful -W- 
Steel Fence 
well galvanized; 
PTOSIS 5ft., 25c. Horse 
and bull strong. Cheaper than wood 
or cement. Last a lifetime. Direct 
to 'armers. Catalog free. 
STEEL POST CO.. 
295 Clinton Sb, Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Calendar and CDCC 
Directions rllCE 
CM) AY 
Ew la U I We make Bucket, Barrel, 
llrl m Knapsack, 4-Row Potato 
a MM P* Sprayers, Power Orchard Rigs — 
Wv P Sprayers of all kinds for all purposes. 
Automatic liquid agitators and strainer cleaners— 
up-to-date sprayer line. Ask for free spraying book. 
FIELD FORCE PUMP CO., 2 1 1 th St., Elmira, N. Y. 
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J-M Asbestos Hoofing is suitable for any type of building, anywhere. Comes 
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Sold by hardware and lumber dealers—or shipped direct from our nearest 
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Write for sample of the curious Asbestos rock from which this roofing is made, 
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17 
