THE RURAL NEW-YORKER 
969 
Business 
Magazine Money. 
We subscribe to a goodly number of 
magazines, and a few years ago we found 
it something of a drain to lay out a 
fairly large sum at a stated period each 
year. Our inclination was to cut down 
the number, but when one simply be¬ 
comes “wedded'’ to certain magazines it 
became a different proposition. We 
solved the problem, and this is the way : 
On the reading table we placed one of the 
slotted savings-banks used by children, 
and as each magazine arrived, we dropped 
tie retail price of it in the bank. This 
was found to be a painless extraction 
method, as we didn’t mind it a bit, and at 
the end of the year we had all our maga¬ 
zine money and excess enough to add a new 
magazine or two which may have been 
wanted for some special reason. The 
excess also covered the cost of an occa¬ 
sional purchase of a single magazine 
from the news-stand. It is a method we 
are glad to “pass on.” r. brooks. 
New York. 
The Profession of Apple Packing. 
This month we print the following in 
our series of new jobs or new proposi¬ 
tions. Is there any chance, on Eastern 
farms, for the expert apple packer such 
as have made the apple trade of the Pa¬ 
cific coast possible? This is a trade in 
which women might prove experts if 
there was enough of a demand for their 
labor. Is there a chance for this work¬ 
man on our Eastern fruit farms? 
In The It. N.-Y. for November 20,1913, 
is an article headed “New England Ap¬ 
ples,” by a Mr. Anderson, and in this 
article Mr. Anderson refers to the benefit 
that would be derived by hiring on a co¬ 
operative plan one or two first-class box 
packers, etc. What are the chances of an 
expert box packer with three years wide 
practice in Rogue River and Hood River 
valleys in Oregon, finding such an open¬ 
ing as Mr. Anderson pictures? I was 
brought up on a fruit farm in Central 
Pennsylvania, graduated in horticulture 
from the Ohio State University in 190S, 
have been engaged in the production end 
of the business all of my life, have been 
here nearly two years and with no pros¬ 
pect of a break in our relations, but with 
no bearing trees of our own here I would 
be at liberty for the Fall to consider go¬ 
ing into some community where box pack¬ 
ing is new as yet. Any suggestions that 
you might offer will be highly appre¬ 
ciated. w. G. Y. 
Virginia. 
mand. Many people have succeeded in 
growing a few mushrooms for home use 
yet failed when they tried it as a com¬ 
mercial proposition. The plan of selling 
by parcel post has some possibilities if 
you can advertise and find a good line of 
customers. Do not “plunge” but try a 
small bed to begin with and develop the 
business as it shows growth. 
The Business of Meat Canning. 
Probably few of our readers realize 
what home canning has done and is do¬ 
ing in a business way for many country 
people. We have all been long familiar 
with the canning of fruits and vegetables, 
but canning meat is a new proposition to 
most farmers. In thousands of farm 
come an expert at the business, and pro¬ 
per advertising would bring her custom¬ 
ers. so that a number of of carcasses of 
farm-raised meat could be disposed of 
during the season at a price far above 
what the butchers would pay. Here is 
another case where it seems possible to 
bring back to the farm woman some of 
the business which was taken away from 
her by man’s labor a few years ago. The 
great developments of the packing indus¬ 
try as well as that of baking took from 
women much of the profitable work which 
our mothers and grandmothers were able 
to control. Now comes the home canning 
outfit making it possible to bring much 
of this labor back to the farm We must 
remember that when this labor was taken 
out of the farm home and centralized in 
Mrs. Plymouth Rock Laying in a Supply of Potatoes. 
The Business of Training Dogs. 
We have had quite a number of let¬ 
ters from people who want to know 
where they can send a dog to be trained. 
Usually these people have bought a high- 
class. well-bred dog, and they want to 
make him of use on the farm for hand¬ 
ling stock or standing guard. After they 
get the dog they find that his pedigree 
alone will not answer. This pedigree 
gives him a line of ancestors with a ten¬ 
dency to do certain things, but careful 
schooling or training must be added to 
this tendency in order to make the dog 
worth while. Many of these people find 
after a trial that the proper training of 
a dog is a business by itself, much the 
same as training a child, and so they 
either want to be told just how to do it, 
or else they are willing to pay for the 
training. This ought to make a fair busi¬ 
ness for natural dog teachers. There are 
such people, just as there are natural 
teachers of children, and they could take 
a well trained dog and in a reasonable 
time start him on the road to good busi¬ 
ness behavior. It is quite likely that this 
would offer a fair opportunity for some 
women to do a pleasant business. We 
know there are a number of people who 
would like to have their dogs taught, and 
we would like to get in touch with others 
who are capable of doing the teaching. 
Mushroom Raising. 
I am figuring on going into raising 
mushrooms for market; and also thinking 
of selling same direct to consumer by 
parcel post. Would it prove a profitable 
occupation? Is there a very good de¬ 
mand for mushrooms? e. it. 
< )regon. 
We should go very slow in trying to 
develop a trade in mushrooms. This may 
be ranked as a fancy product—a luxury 
with a limited or not very staple de¬ 
homes today the old-fashioned pork bar¬ 
rel has either disappeared or given place 
to a small tub or keg. Instead of salting 
down pork, beef, or even mutton, as was 
formerly the case, the meat is put into 
cans, treated properly and sealed so that 
instead of living upon salt meat the fam¬ 
ily can have almost an unlimited supply 
of the fresh article. Mutton is being 
largely preserved in this way, and proves 
a very agreeable change from salt beef 
and salt pork. A good many fruit farm¬ 
ers find it possible to keep half a dozen 
sheep at a very little cost, as the sheep 
will eat the weeds and grass in fence 
corners or lane, and when slaughtered, 
most of the carcass can be put into cans. 
The same is true of beef. A small steer 
can now be cut up and canned, where 
formerly it was almost impossible to dis¬ 
pose of the meat at any profit. The re¬ 
sult is that on a good many farms 
calves will be raised and fattened, where 
in former years they would have been 
sold early or even given away 
There is a commercial side to this too. 
Many of the farms where Summer board¬ 
ers are kept now furnish a good share of 
the needed meat in home prepared cans. 
Samples of roast beef put up in this way 
and opened during the Summer are voted 
“delicious” by many Summer boarders. 
In another way the commercial possibil¬ 
ities of this canning may be developed. 
Many of the hotels and restaurants have 
been using the commercial canned meats 
for such purposes as making hash, boil¬ 
ing pieces or pies. They are willing in 
many cases when approached properly to 
buy this home-canned meat direct from 
farmers, and it would be quite possible 
for an enterprising farmer’s wife, to can 
beef, mutton or chicken in this way, and 
offer it for direct sale by parcel post. 
With practice such a woman could be¬ 
the city much of the profit of keeping 
meat stock on the farm went along with 
it, because there was far more profit in 
preparing the meat for food than in pro¬ 
ducing it upon the hoof. 
The Best Grape Juice. 
In a friend’s II. N.-Y. I read an ar¬ 
ticle on “Grape Juice.” It was about 
August, 1914. I intended to clip the re¬ 
cipe hut overlooked it. However, it re¬ 
quired no cooking, grapes, suger and 
water, bottled, as near as I can remem¬ 
ber Will you repeat the same recipe? 
E. J. R. 
The note by Mr. A. I. Loop is repeated 
below as there have been several calls for 
it. 
“In our towm is situated the largest 
uufermented grape juice plant in the 
world, where hundreds upon hundreds of 
carloads of grapes are made into juice. 
It is not their plan, however, that I 
would describe, but a plan that is easier 
than the most simple canning operation, 
and that gives a juice that is without 
comparison, clear as crystal, tastes just 
like fresh grapes and has no cooked or 
burned flavor. 
“Use ordinary two-quart glass cans. 
Place the can tops and rubbers in boil¬ 
ing water. Pick the grapes from the 
stems, wash them and m each can put 
one pint of the grape berries and one 
half pound of granulated white sugar, 
then fill the can with boiling water and 
seal. That’s all there is to it. Care 
must be taken to see that the water 
used for filling the can is boiling hot 
and that the can itself and the top and 
rubber is also boiling hot until sealed. 
If larger or smaller cans are used, use 
grapes and sugar proportionately. 
“Do not crush the grapes or try to sep¬ 
arate the juice from the pulp, do not 
cook or even heat the grapes. There 
are enough heat units in the rather more 
than three pints of boiling water to bring 
the whole content of the can up to the 
point necessary for sterilization, but not 
enough to leave a cooked taste. Place 
the cans in a cool cellar and do not dis¬ 
turb till ready to use. If the work is 
carefully done it wdll keep a year, two 
years or more. The water dissolves out 
the flavor and coloring but none of the 
cloudiness of the berries leaving them 
about full size but without much sub¬ 
stance or flavor.” 
Machines for Saving Sleep. 
Some months ago a reader asked for in¬ 
formation about a “self feeder” for 
horses. It was a clockwork device which 
was arranged to “go off” at a certain 
hour and let a stated quantity of feed 
into the manger. The reader said he 
wanted a chance to sleep an hour or so 
longer in the morning while his horse was 
eating. We found a number of people 
who use such a device for feeding grain. 
Naturally it would not feed out hay in 
like manner. Now comes a man with 
another device to save the farmer’s sleep. 
It is the early bird that gets the worm ! 
The problem was how the hens could 
manage to get outside before the poul- 
trymen get. out of bed? I have perfected 
a device by which the hens open a door 
and get outside as early as they please. 
Kindly advise whether the device can 
be patented and whether it would be a 
payable proposition to spend money on a 
patent. M. y. 
New York. 
You should have an examination made 
at the Patent Office, in Washington, to 
see if this device has been offered before. 
If not it may pay to patent it. There 
will not be much profit in such a device, 
for the ponltryman who expects any profit 
must get up about as early as the hens 
are stirring. 
Those Bottle-fed Pigs. 
On page 758 Miss Artridge Belt of 
Maryland told of a glass-bottle nurse 
which saved a litter of little pigs. 
Several persons have asked for further 
particulars about this and so Miss Belt 
sends the following: 
We fed the little youngsters on cow's 
milk diluted one-half with water. The 
milk was skimmed, but we were always 
sure that it was absolutely sweet and 
pure. The bottles were sterilized after 
each feeding, and they had their meals 
regularly every two hours at first. As 
they grew older we increased the strength 
of the milk and fed them less frequently. 
(>f course we used our own judgment in 
this, but we did not have any trouble 
at all, and at present the orphans are 
flourishing. When they were about six 
weeks old they began drinking whole 
milk from a trough, and this we followed 
up with gruels, etc., until they began 
making hogs of themselves, and then we 
gave them a more manly diet. 
Naming a Farm. 
1 am an old subscriber of The R. 
N.-Y’. and have lately come into pos¬ 
session of a very fine farm at this place, 
being the fruits of my labors for a num¬ 
ber of years. We want to give this farm 
a name, and have been much impressed 
with Hope Farm. Would it be in harmony 
to have another Hope Farm? This would 
be in Pennsylvania. Or possibly you 
have a few names to suggest. J. n b. 
You certainly will not be alone or a 
solitary companion if you name your 
farm “Hope.” We have records of at 
least 25 farms which have taken this 
name. One of them is in Australia, an¬ 
other in British Columbia. There is a 
Hope Ranch in Mexico, a Hope Farm 
in England, at least one Hope Farm in 
Northern Canada, and we understand 
that the Portuguese equivalent of hope 
has been given to a farm in Brazil. 
There are over 20 already recorded in 
the United States. The. name appears 
to be a favorite one, and is a good name 
provided the temper of the owner and 
his family can be made to fit into it. 
We have also heard of several Faith 
Farms in the country. Thus far, how¬ 
ever, we have no record of a Charity 
Farm, in name at least. This plan of 
naming the farm is an excellent one and 
we are frequently asked to suggest such 
a name. It is very difficult to do this, 
because the name of the farm ought to 
express its personality or distinguishing 
feature, and no one can do that better 
than those who live on it and love it. 
We should hardly expect to be called on 
to suggest the right name for a child, and 
naming a farm is pretty much the same 
thing. 
