1064 
THE KURAb NEW-YORKER 
November 12, 
Hope Farm Notes 
The short days are here and the sun is 
lazy about showing up. Our hill faces 
the east and as I look out in the morn¬ 
ing there are streaks of light and shade 
across it. Through these are to be seen 
white moving objects slowly climbing 
the hill. They are the White Holland 
turkeys which have left their roost by 
the barn and are out hunting their early 
breakfast of worms and seeds. This 
flock rarely goes out of sight of the 
house. A neighbor has a few Bronze 
birds and they sometimes travel far to 
our house to visit our turkeys, but I 
have never known our whites to leave 
the place for any distance. I see them 
walking about through the strawberries 
and orchards and among the cabbage. 
I am sure they pick many green worms 
out of cabbage without doing damage. 
My belief is that crows and English 
sparrow's do the same. The turkeys 
follow the course of the w'agons that 
hauled home the rye and clean up this 
grain. They eat it better than any other 
poultry we have. They are the cleanest 
of barnyard birds and do no scratching 
in the garden. They pick at tomatoes, 
apples and similar soft fruits but do not 
tear up plants as hens will do. As for 
insect hunters there is nothing in feath¬ 
ers to beat a turkey. 
Why then does not every fruit farm 
carry a good flock? Largely because 
they are the hardest of all poultry to 
raise. Of course the women who make 
a special feature of turkey raising will 
deny this, but go and ask the hundreds 
who have bought eggs or birds and 
started in to produce a small flock. A 
number of them have reported to me. 
Some lost all the young birds, some 
raised one. I begin to think our moder¬ 
ate success may rank as a fair record 
by comparison. The facts are that I 
bought a trio of two young hens and a 
good gobbler about a year ago, and gave 
them to my daughter. She read all the 
turkey “literature” she could find, but 
it is surprising after all to see how little 
real help you can get from books. 
These people who meet with great suc¬ 
cess have “instinct,” and no one can put 
that on paper. The girls w'ere afraid 
the turkeys w'ould take cold when they 
persisted in flying into trees or on the 
roof of the shed, but except in cold 
storms or very cold nights the birds 
are better off to do as they please. In 
very bad weather we put them in the 
house, but they were never really con¬ 
tented there. We learned early that 
turkeys are very much cleaner and dain¬ 
tier about their food than hens. They 
prefer clean whole grain and must have 
clean water and plenty of it. 1 am not 
quite clear in my mind yet whether the 
turkey is a very wise bird or the victim 
of unbreakable habit and prejudice. 
When Spring came the turkeys were 
in fine shape. They did not begin laying 
as early as the hens did and the girls 
were quite impatient. They were ad¬ 
vised to put barrels and boxes nicely 
filled with straw near where the turkeys 
lived so as to tempt them to make their 
nest, but Crescent and Queen knew their 
business better. Their husband, Champ, 
finally betrayed them by hanging around 
and gobbling while they hid their eggs. 
Then we found that Queen had gone up 
to the top of the wood shed and started 
a nest on a narrow board. Every egg 
would have rolled down if left there, 
but the girls lined a box with straw 
and put it on this board with the egg 
inside. Shall we call the bird foolish or 
wise? At any rate she came back, ac¬ 
cepted the nest and kept on laying. Cres¬ 
cent found a place beside the fence un¬ 
der a cherry tree and started her nest 
there. We left the eggs in the shed nest, 
but those laid outside were picked up 
and kept in the house until Crescent 
started to sit. Then they were all put 
under her and a box was arranged so as 
to give her shelter. .Between them the 
two hens laid 26 eggs. The children 
broke three and 19 poults were hatched. 
One was killed in the nest. We took the 
18 little ones and gave them all to Queen 
while Crescent was turned out to lay 
more eggs. She proceeded to do this 
after grieving a few days. She laid about 
12 more, but the rain continued and the 
season was so unfavorable that we did 
not set them. 
It is said that a young turk will die 
if it run against a "blade of wet grass, 
and that is about so. My neighbor 
batched out a good brood of Bronze tur¬ 
keys and left them to roam with the 
hen. They were draggled by the dew 
and rain and the hen kept moving. The 
little things got wet and tired, lagged 
behind and were caught by cats or died 
from exposure. On the other hand we 
were told that the little turks will surely 
die if cooped up. With the rain falling 
day after day and the soil and grass wet 
as sponges it was hard to know what to 
do. We took a large colony coop for 
chicks, put the hen and young turks into 
it and left them there. Now and then 
the sun would dry the grass for a few 
hours and the turkeys could come out 
into a little yard, but most of the time 
they stayed right in that little house. 
They were fed on a mixture of hard 
boiled egg, bread crumbs and chopped 
onion. A dry cake made of ground 
horse feed and crumbled is good. This 
was fed four times a day and the water 
was changed frequently. The soaking 
rains kept up and 1 had no idea that any 
of these little turks could live, yet when 
the floods ended and drought started in 
15 were left. Some of these, however, 
were feeble. The cats got a few and 
others dawdled behind and died. An¬ 
other year we can save some of these 
stragglers by taking them up for a few 
days’ nursing. At any rate there are now 
left five good ones from this brood, or 
eight in the flock all told. This flock 
could not be duplicated for $30. I can¬ 
not tell just what they have cost in feed, 
but even with this small increase there 
has been a good profit in the investment. 
We weighed old Champ the other day 
and he pulled down the beam at 24J4 
pounds. We can put several pounds of 
fat on him by Thanksgiving. If the girls 
consent we shall have him for dinner 
and buy a new gobbler in the Spring. 
1 think there would be good money in 
turkey raising on large farms where the 
birds could roam. In a section like ours 
where farms are small or narrow a big 
flock would become a nuisance. Let me 
tell any man or woman who thinks of 
trying turke\’s that they will go sailing 
upon unknown seas. The turks are ten¬ 
der as the feelings of an amateur poet 
and the old birds are as obstinate as a 
school teacher who has bossed a school 
and then a family of her own! Precept 
is not worth its breath in turkey raising 
and practice is not much better. “In¬ 
stinct” is all that will save you, and if 
you cannot go to school to the turkey 
and learn how—keep away from her! 
This man makes good pork, keeps down 
weeds and grubs, gets rid of wastes, and 
greatly improves his soil. Under this 
plan the pig is as clean as a sheep. 
What is the best way of preparing to set 
trees on very rocky hillsides where culti¬ 
vation will be impossible, excepting with 
hand tools, while trees are small? Would 
you advise digging holes three feet in 
diameter and a foot deep this Fall, and 
allow a bushel or so of good cow manure 
to leach into each of these holes during the 
Winter, the dressing to be removed when 
trees are set and used as mulching? Would 
lime or basic slag be advisable on such 
rocky soils which show no acid reaction to 
litmus for the best start of young trees? 
Addison, Me. d. f. 
I should not dig large holes and fill 
them with manure to winter over. I 
tried that once and lost half my trees. 
I am not prepared to give the reason 
for it, but manure or its residue in the 
hole close to the tree roots will do more 
harm than good. Let the place alone 
until you are ready to plant. Then dig 
a hole, c r if the soil is very hard and 
rocky, explode a small piece of dynamite. 
Cut the tree roots back to stubs about 
four or live inches long, and the top to 
correspond, plant them and pound the 
dirt down hard around the stem. You 
can use the manure for mulch, but keep 
it out of the hole. Lime or basic slag 
will probably help. I think 99 per cent 
of these New England hillsides need 
lime. H. w. c. 
Cement Drain Tile. 
J. G. B., Seattle, Washington, wants to 
know about cement tile. I have 60 rods 
of concrete tile that has been laid nearly 
two years, and will say that they are per- 
factly satisfactory; they drain much 
quicker than clay tiles. The water soaks 
through the sides of the tile as well as 
in the joints, therefore drains twice as 
fast as clay tile. 1 could not see why 
J. G. B. could make a mistake in making 
his own tile if he will get a machine that 
would make perfect tile, using good 
cement and clean sharp sand, one to five 
mixture. J. w. w. 
Hillsboro, O. 
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HARVEY BOLSTER SPRINGS 
Florida.— The boy has the garden well 
under way. The rain finally let up and 
those big weeds were cut off and burned. 
Then the boy hired a mule and small 
plow and began turning things over. It 
was about like plowing an Alfalfa field, 
for the roots of Bermuda grass and 
weeds were like ropes to hold the plow 
back. In order to make such soil fit. 
the boy is “flat hoeing” as they call it 
down there—that is, chopping up the 
roots with a heavy hoe. When this is 
done the piece will be in fair shape. He 
has half a dozen kinds of vegetables in 
and will have more this week—also 
plants of tomatoes, cabbage, egg plant 
and pepper. The way they do is to make 
a “seed bed” or a thick drill of seed so 
it can be watered and protected. In dry 
seasons this seed bed is made fine and 
the seeds thickly planted after soaking 
the bed with water. Then a cover or 
low tent is rigged over it by driving 
down stakes and stretching fertilizer 
sacks or muslin over them. This shelter 
keeps off the sun and gives the little 
plants a start When the plants are of 
fair size they are pricked out or trans¬ 
planted from this seed bed and thus 
treated they grow in a way to startle a 
Northern gardener who judges soil by 
its appearance. No one could imagine 
that this light Florida soil could pro¬ 
duce such crops. The boy took some 
strawberry plants with him and got them 
started. They are green and thrifty and 
look as if they might come on. In fact 
it looks now as if our folks would have 
some green stuff to eat by December. 
They will need something else and so 
they are figuring on good-sized lots of 
groceries and provisions to be sent ahead 
by freight. I have heard a Florida man 
say that he lived on “fish in Summer 
.and Yankees in Winter,” which was a 
fair statement of it. Our bunch of 
Yankees will try fish in Winter, as the 
lake is well stocked. 
Hogs as Plows. —I met a man the 
other day who has worked out a good 
plan for keeping pigs. On most small 
places the pig is a nuisance, yet, prop¬ 
erly handled he can be kept clean and 
will use up many loads of waste. This 
man keeps pigs in movable pens. These 
are made of stout panels of fence that 
can be driven into the soil and fastened. 
Every day or so the pen is changed by 
driving down new panels and making a 
new pen by the side of the old. By 
keeping three extra panels, one side and 
two ends, this can be easily done. The 
pigs are well watered and fed and they 
tear the soil in pieces as their pen is 
moved along the fields. The waste of 
all garden crops is thrown to them. 
After peas are picked the pigs can be 
penned on the place to clean up the vines 
and tear the ground. This is the finest 
preparation for a strawberry bed, since 
the pigs dean the white grubs out of sod. 
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