364 
THE HUKAL NEW-YORKER 
Hope Farm Notes 
“Hen Fever.” —I have heard A-arious 
cynics wonder how the germs of this 
disease are ever kept alive. Every' 
Spring there is the same excitement over 
incubators, hatching eggs and stock, and 
money is spent building henhouses. If 
any records are kept I am sure 90 per 
cent of these ventures represent a losing 
game. The usual result of the lien fever 
is a loss of money, yet when the Spring 
shows signs of approaching once more 
the experience is usually forgotten and 
the well-known symptoms of the disease 
show themselves. Of course I know that 
there are people who actually make 
money and considerable of it out of 
hens. There are others, and I must con¬ 
fess that up to date Hope Farm has been 
forced to get very near the “other” class. 
We have been up as high as 400 hens 
and down to a dozen, and the plain, 
staring fact is that the dozen beat the 
400 for profit. It is useless to try to tell 
why this was so during the hen fever 
season. November is the time to make 
the shadows felt. The only thing right 
to the point now is that Hope Farm has 
the hen fever once more. That is, the 
children have it. One boy has some 50 
R. I. Reds. They are good birds, and are 
paying their way. The boy plans to 
hatch all the eggs he can from a pen of 
15 of the best. It looks like a paying 
proposition, as these things usually do in 
the hen fever season. The other boy has 
Pekin ducks, but thus far they have not 
paid. One girl has White Holland tur¬ 
keys and the other Bantams. Now I am 
getting a little of the fever by planning 
to buy the girls a pen of Light Brahmas. 
“What in the world do you want of 
these great, clumsy birds?” says my 
friend the Leghorn man. “The Brahmas 
have been back numbers for years!” 
- Some of the “back numbers” still rank 
as No. 1. I was brought up with Brah¬ 
mas. When I was a boy everyone in 
our neighborhood kept this breed. I got 
many a lesson in sticking to my job 
from watching a sitting Brahma on her 
nest! I shall enjoy seeing those quiet 
birds walking around. I notice too that 
when people start out to develop a new 
“breed” of chickens they usually take my 
old friend Brahma for the foundation. 
So I expect to send to a farm about a 
mile from where I was raised and get 
some Brahmas for the children to asso¬ 
ciate with. It makes me realize that 
time has grown from a chick to an old 
bird to find only one or two farms in 
all that section where the old breed is 
kept. So the hen fever has sent me back 
to old friends, and I am glad of it. 
Out of the Snow. —There came a 
rain and a long thaw at last. The points 
of the hills and the stone walls first put 
their noses through the snow and ice. 
The earth liked the smell of the warmer 
air, and crawled slowly into view. In 
48 hours the Winter’s covering melted 
and ran down the hills to the brooks. 
That gave our open ditches a chance to 
prove themselves, and they did well. 
They passed that water along, leaving 
only a little gouge or gulley here and 
there. It looks as if we had our tile 
planned for just the right places. As the 
fields came out from under the snow I 
was curious to see how our crops had 
wintered. The rye is in fine shape. This 
tough plant is surely the hustler among 
small grains. Under conditions which 
would ruin the wheat crop, rye winters 
and thrives. I well remember how the 
late E. S. Carman hoped by crossing-rye 
and wheat to obtain a grain with the 
flouring qualities of wheat and the vigor 
of rye. My Fall clover seeding does not 
seem at this time very promising. We 
put the clover seed in with rye. It start¬ 
ed well, but the hard Winter seems to 
have killed most of it. Spring clover 
seeding for me. The Crimson clover 
varies. On the stronger ground it is ex¬ 
cellent—particularly where the stand was 
thick enough to make a solid mat. On 
poorer soil and on the steep hills Winter 
lias killed much of this clover, and more 
of it will go before April. I believe we 
must all admit that sowing Crimson 
clover anywhere north of Philadelphia 
is more or less of a gamble so far as a 
full stand in Spring is concerned. Yet, 
I am sure that our Crimson paid for 
seed and labor and 20 per cent profit be¬ 
fore the ground froze last Winter. The 
growth it makes this year is pure gain. 
A pond of water formed over part of 
the strawberry bed and froze solid. I 
feared this had killed many plants but 
they show up strong and fresh. This 
Winter’s experience leads me to doubt 
the great need of mulching these large 
hill plants. They are so firmly rooted 
that the frost can hardly dislodge them. 
The crowded matted plants with their 
smaller roots are easily lifted by the 
freeze and thaw of the upper soil, while 
these big plants remain anchored. I ex¬ 
pected to find a number of trees gnawed 
by mice and rabbits when the snow dis¬ 
appeared. We gave each tree a good 
mound of earth last Fall, but at times 
the snow drifted over the mound. To 
my surprise I find only three or four 
trees injured. One is a grafted seedling 
standing in brush. The tree is about six 
inches in diameter at the ground, and 
rabbits have eaten around it—leaving 
only about two inches of bark. I never 
before saw such a large tree eaten in 
this way. It seems hardly possible to tell 
too much about the way to handle these 
trees. Here is a new idea in bridge¬ 
grafting from our old friend Nicholas 
Hallock: 
You show illustration of remedying the 
damage by mice. As the past Winter has 
had deep snow and likely to have had 
much damage done, I would like to give my 
remedy. I use a small graver’s gouge, the 
size of a large goose quill; with this I 
cut above and below the barked place. It 
is easy to cut the graft to lit this groove, 
lay it in, and with a very small-headed wire 
nail, that will not split, driven in each 
end holds securely and is not so liable to 
be disturbed as when sprung out from the 
tree. I have used this to start a limb on 
a small tree where needed. Wax thor¬ 
oughly, and if feasible cover with earth. 
I have never had a tree fail so treated, 
and it is quicker than the chisel method. 
I have done that very many times. 
On the whole Hope Farm comes out 
from under the snow in good spirits. 
Farm Notes.—O n our new land is a 
meadow or swamp which makes a good 
pasture. Now I can take the inside 
fences from the main farm and keep all 
the stock on the new place. Inside 
fences on a fruit farm are a nuisance 
anyway. So we have been taking up the 
woven wire fences and getting them 
ready for their new service. These fences 
have been up six years or less, and some 
of them are so rusted that it is no use 
trying them again. Others arc still in 
fair condition. As a rule the large wire 
is in fair shape. It has held the galvan¬ 
izing reasonably and part of it looks 
good for five years more. The smaller 
wire in these fences is a dead and rusty 
failure. Part of it hung in mere strings. 
If 1 ever buy any more wire fence, I 
shall figure on a-t least No. 9 wire, and 
call for a test of the galvanizing. A 
farmer buying a small lot of wire might 
not find it profitable to have such a test 
made, but if 4ie buys $50 worth or more 
I think such testing would pay. Fair 
samples of the wire should be cut from 
the rolls and submitted to a chemist. He 
can quickly tell whether the galvanizing 
is right or not. I believe the time has 
come for us to buy our wire on test as 
we would buy our fertilizers or sell our 
milk to the creamery. In changing my 
fences I have learned that I want no 
more small wire for the stays, and I 
want more galvanizing. ... It is a 
foolhardy thing as a rule for a farmer 
to tell before his crop is put in what he 
expects to do. Still there might be some¬ 
thing gained by chasing up the plan. I 
am tempted to try it this year on a com 
and potato crop. I would like to take 
these crops, outline as well as I can be¬ 
forehand the details of planting and care, 
and then live up to it through the 
March 19,' 
season, keeping an accurate account of 
every bit of expense to every pound of 
product. The potato crop I have in mind 
will be planted in sod—grass with a 
sprinkling of Alfalfa. The location is at 
the center of an apple orchard. There 
are three large trees and three small 
ones scattered over the field. My plan 
is to turn this sod flat over, pack it 
down, fine the under surface without 
disturbing the grass and plant in hills— 
putting the cut pieces down into the sod 
by hand. The corn crop is planned for 
an old pasture which we have just tile- 
drained. Here I want to try my hand at 
a big crop of corn to show what these 
old fields can be made to do, and to 
show if I can that our selected flint corn 
is a good one. I am tempted to block 
these experiments all out early, tell what 
we do from week to week with all labor 
and its cost, and stand or fall by the 
result. This might be a good wa}' of 
learning just what our crops cost, for I 
should charge the work by the hour at 
a good price. It is of course safer to 
keep quiet until the experiment is ended 
and then report a success or blue-pencil 
a failure. . . . We have a great pile 
of coal ashes to dispose of. The chem¬ 
ists find little or no plant food value in 
these ashes but they show where they 
are put. I shall use most of mine in 
a patch where bush fruits and peach 
trees are growing together. The bush 
rows are eight feet apart, with the peach 
trees in every other row. I shall scatter 
the ashes thickly along the rows where 
the peach trees stand to prevent growth 
of weeds and cultivate the middle rows 
with some crop like potatoes or corn. 
As a mulch the coal ashes have given 
me their best results. h. w. c. 
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