300 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
March 26, 
Hope Farm Notes 
I will ask you to put yourself in the 
following position. You have been over 
the hills in your wagon to the market 
town. It was late before you could finish 
your business, and now, as the horses 
toil to the top of the last hill and you 
look down over the valley, darkness has 
come. Off in the distance you can see 
the lights of your house. Even the horses 
stretch out their necks and call at the 
sight of home. The day has been a good 
one for you. In your pockets and in the 
box under the seat are little presents 
for wife and children. It seems as if you 
can see right through the walls of the 
house and look upon the picture of con¬ 
tentment therein. 
Father and mother are old folks now. 
They are sitting by the open fire in the 
front room. There is no lamp, but the 
firelight plays over their white hair. 
Grandmother is holding the baby. Your 
wife and the girls have the table all 
spread for supper. They have an eye on 
the stove to see that the potatoes are not 
too brown, or that the biscuits do not 
burn. The boys are reading—with the 
lantern turned down all ready to run out 
to help you with the horses when old 
Shep barks the welcoming signal. You see 
it all as you drive down the hill, and it 
ought to" give you great satisfaction to 
feel that here is part of the returns from 
your work and care. Farming has not 
made you a rich man, and yet, you re¬ 
member that many a millionaire must go 
through the world unsatisfied because he 
cannot picture such a scene at his home 
coming. 
Well you drive into the yard and there 
is Shep nearly throwing his tail away 
in the excess of his welcome. The kit¬ 
chen door bursts open and a great flood 
of light streams out. The boys come with 
their lantern and#the wife stands like a 
picture in the frame of the door. The 
horses are a little warm for their water 
and grain, and so you give them a 
mouthful of hay and go in for your own 
supper. Somehow there is a little re¬ 
straint in the greeting of those boys. 
You notice them glancing at you now 
and then, and a little shadow comes over 
your home-coming. Sure enough after 
supper the good wife looks at you se¬ 
verely and says: 
“Now, John, these boys have not be¬ 
haved themselves. I want you to take 
them out behind the shed and attend to 
them!” 
The good lady feels that it is her duty 
to be as severe as possible. These little 
scamps look at you with fond appeal as 
you try to blot out the home-coming pic¬ 
ture and play the part of stern parent. 
I have drawn a picture which many of 
you will recognize. 
J. T. Trowbridge, in “My Own Story,” 
tells how sometimes when his mother 
was about to whip him his father would 
suddenly exclaim: “I’ll attend to him ! 
Then father would drag him by the col¬ 
lar out of sight and give him a few light 
taps with a stick. I have no doubt the 
boy played his part by howling until 
mother came to stop such inhuman pun¬ 
ishment. Mother will, no doubt, read 
these lines and sigh. She will say the 
picture should not end with any such 
suggestion. But I don’t know! I don't 
know! I do not think it is quite given to 
any woman to feel just what a man does 
as he comes home in that way. 
On my way home Saturday night I 
saw a man selling violets. In spite of the 
high cost of living and meat boycotts I 
bought a bunch. When I got home I told 
the baby he might give it to Mother 
and he did so in gallant style. Then he 
proceeded to feel of my pockets and 
bundles. He was very frank to say that 
while flowers were well enough as a sort 
of side issue he would much prefer to 
have me put the money into candy. 1 hat 
is honest at least. On Sunday Mother 
rode off to church wearing the violets. 
She had made an arrangement with the 
baby to give them to a little boy with a 
broken leg. 
Farm Notes. —We began spraying 
March 8 . As we use the oils for the scale 
we need a bright, clear day—not too 
cold. I think it a mistake to use the oil 
on peach trees when the mercury is like¬ 
ly to go below freezjng. The object is to 
spray in sunshine and have the water 
promptly evaporated. This, of course, 
reduces the temperature somewhat, and 
should there come a cold night there 
would be trouble. The usual difficulty 
in March is to find a still day—when the 
wind does not blow too hard. We have 
to watch our chance and get on the spray 
as best we can. . . . We still use our 
gas sprayer. It is satisfactory except 
that our tank is too small. As we are 
near to the city we have little trouble 
about keeping up a supply of gas. I do 
not find much scale except in spots here 
and there. These will be staked first, and 
if the wind will permit we shall go all 
over the orchards. . . . The next job 
is grafting. We have a good lot of 
scions brought from a number of or¬ 
chards from Maine to Nebraska. There 
are some 250 seedlings to be grafted first. 
We saw them off about two feet from 
the ground and put in two scions. Next 
Fall they will be dug up and transplanted, 
leaving one scion to form the head. 
Then we have a number of old trees to 
be top-worked. Large limbs can be cut 
back close to the crotch—the grafts being 
put into the strongest suckers. In past 
years I have cut back some of these 
large trees. The suckers which grew out 
where the cut was made have now 
grown to good-sized limbs, and are form¬ 
ing new heads. ... In the yard of 
our local schoolhouse are several large 
apple trees. They are not, I think, of 
valuable varieties, but I believe they 
could be used for teaching horticulture. 
I think it would be an excellent plan to 
have some good grafter come and top- 
work these trees. Let him put in most of 
the varieties which do reasonably .well 
here and get some, if possible, from each 
farm in the district. This schoolhouse is 
built of stone, and contains material 
from every farm—stones were hauled 
from all over and put into its walls. 
Now I think those old trees could be 
used as a cooperative experiment in hor¬ 
ticulture, and also to teach the children 
something about fruit growing. I believe 
there are many country schools where 
something of this sort could be carried 
cut.Our horses were fed on 
cornstalks, ear corn and wheat bran until 
about the middle of March. I hen we 
began on the hay. The horses have 
wintered well. Even old Jerry looks 
better than ever. I had it in mind to 
have this old fellow killed last Fall, but 
I could not quite get it in heart. With 
an abundance of stalks on hand the old 
fellow’s board did not cost much, and 
here he is in Spring ready to do his 
share. He will do great work on a culti¬ 
vator this year.Our horse Frank 
met with an accident which has inter¬ 
ested us all. One night I came home to 
find our folks greatly alarmed. A dis¬ 
charge of mucus had started from 
Frank's nose and kept up until the floors 
and walls of the stall were covered. I 
had no idea that any nasal cavity could 
secrete and discharge such a mass. Our 
folks had been reading about glandered 
horses, and didn’t like the symptoms. In¬ 
vestigation showed that the little boys 
while playing in the barn had thrown 
handfuls of chaff and dust at the horses. 
A mass of this dust had accumulated at 
the upper part of Frank’s throat. He 
could not get rid of it. and there it stuck, 
a great source of irritation. As soon as 
we could get him to swallow water it 
passed away, but the way that nose ran 
was an education in veterinary science. 
This same horse' has been used to a 
cheekrein—which seems to help him 
from stumbling. One day while travel¬ 
ling without it he stumbled and fell in a 
heap on the frozen ground. He is a 
clumsy horse about falling, and this time 
he landed so that he scraped his nose 
and cut both knees to the bone. This 
wound is hard to heal. We wash it with 
warm water, then smear the wound with 
creolin and dust with borax, after which 
the leg is wound with a long bandage. 
It is healing, but that is a bad place for 
a wound. I have often seen horses fall 
to their knees but never before saw them 
torn like this.It is remark¬ 
able how trash accumulates on a farm. 
As Spring gets near I find all sorts of 
stuff appearing from under the snow— 
old cans and bottles, paper, vines, sticks 
and brush. Now is the time to dispose 
of them. The cans and bottles are bur¬ 
ied. Anything that will decay reasonably 
soon is piled around trees as a mulch 
and other trash is piled on the garden 
soil and burned. The ashes and the ac¬ 
tion of fire will do more good there than 
anywhere else. Now is the time to clean 
up before Spring catches you 
The Oed House. —At Fig. 153 is a 
picture of the old stone house at Hope 
Farm. This old house has been standing 
many years, the stone part dating back 
to Revolutionary times or close to it. 
As there is no one at hand to deny the 
statement I can say that Washington 
may have slept in it. We moved out of 
this house some years ago, into a cottage 
which I shall show later, but the old 
home is still kept in good repair. As will 
be seen it is well covered with vines— 
many of them being roses which The 
R. N.-Y. has given to its readers from 
time to time. The old house is jammed 
up close to the road, and with its coat of 
pearl gray paint and thick masses of 
vines it makes an attractive point on the 
road. I like it because it links the past 
with the present. As an advertisement 
it would be a great thing if Hope Farm 
were on the market. H. w. c. 
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