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1085 
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From Tobacco to Dairying. 
New Conditions on Old Farms. 
AM located on the Oliemung River, one mile east 
of the city of Corning, N. Y., which has a popu¬ 
lation of about IG.000. It is quite a prominent 
railroad center, and has a goodly number of man¬ 
ufacturing plants, one of which is a glass factory 
which will compare very favorably with any in 
the United States. It also has for the past two 
years a large covered public market where farmers 
come every Wednesday and Saturday. These farm¬ 
ers come from 12 to 15 miles, and find ready sales 
for everything needed for the inner man. and at 
living prices. It also has a fine motor fire outfit, 
also a heavy pressure water supply that will de¬ 
liver water far above any buildings with good re¬ 
Bloom and Fruit Together. 
Causes of Abnormal Development. 
HE accompanying illustration (Fig. 411) of an 
August Red apple tree bearing blossoms and 
nearly matured fruit is rather unusual, and this 
seems a good time to dwell upon the nature of fruit 
buds and the causes of this condition. The produc¬ 
tion of buds, blossoms, fruit and seed in trees in 
in many ways very like the processes of reproduc¬ 
tion in animals; and good care and management are 
essential for success in either business. It is nat¬ 
ural for a tree to try to reproduce itself by seed, 
and a tree that is dying or that has received a 
shock, such as root pruning or Summer pruning, 
will often blossom heavily even though it may not 
mature the fruit. 
same time. If a tree is thinned and given extra 
food and cultivation when bearing a heavy crop 
it te more able to form fruit buds during that sea¬ 
son for a crop the next year; but that next year, 
being what is commonly called the “off year.” and 
usually given largely to the formation of fruit buds, 
the tree should be checked and given less cultiva¬ 
tion, and the number of fruit buds reduced by ju¬ 
dicious pruning in the Fall or Winter to prevent an 
overproduction of fruit the following year. The 
bearing, or crop year, returning with the fruit buds 
so thinned, the trees should again be given extra 
food and cultivation to encourage the forming of 
fruit buds and make the tree swing into line as an 
annual bearer. In practice this works out pretty 
well, far better than is generally believed. 
Stuyvesant Falls, N. Y. E . w. m. 
Buildings on a New York Dairy Farm. Fig. 410. 
Bloom and Well-matured Fruit Growing Together. Fig. 411. 
suits. 
This valley has had for the past 45 years tobacco 
for its main crop until about five years ago the 
price for it was so low that farmers could see no 
margin for their labor. Most of the farmers have 
turned their attention to dairying, and are much 
pleased with the change. Most of them keep from 
10 to 25 cows, and many have herds of purebreds. 
A large majority of these herds are Ilolsteins, with 
some Jerseys and some Guernseys. 
These cows are worth from $70 to $100 
each. 
The farms are laid out in rather long 
and narrow strips across the valley 
from the river each way. The fields 
next to the roads have always had, 
while raising tobacco, all the manure 
that was made on the farm, and all 
that could be bought at the city, let¬ 
ting the back fields take care of them¬ 
selves. These back fields looking over 
the fence remind me of my boyhood 
days, when my pa rents had company. 
I was obliged to wait at dinner time 
until the guests were through with 
their meal, and it seemed to me as 
though they nearly stripped the table. 
Today those back fields are receiving 
their share of the manure made on the 
farm. Farmers are now buying ma¬ 
nure spreaders, wheel cultivators and 
corn harvesters and nearly all are 
building one or two silos. Many of 
the young and middle-aged farmers 
who were born and brought up in the 
tobacco fields (so to speak) and are 
now owners of these farms, are build¬ 
ing their tobacco sheds over into model 
cow stables. They are putting con¬ 
crete floors in their stripping rooms 
for milk rooms, equipping them with a 
gasoline engine, cream separator and 
some of them are installing milking 
machines to be driven from this room. 
Farmers now, instead of inviting their 
company out on the front porch to see 
their Summer’s work in one or two 
fields of tobacco, say to them after 
dinner: “Now I will get my auto out 
and take you out through the lane to 
see my wheat, oats and corn.” and at 
the end of the long lane he shows them 
his fine herd of cows and perhaps in 
the next field he has six to 10 head of 
choice heifers saved from his best 
cows. Wheat, oats and corn are good 
crops here, but hay is light and potatoes are rot¬ 
ting badly. Many fields of wheat and hay are still 
out. as the ground is so wet, caused by the every¬ 
day rain for the past month, that one cannot get 
onto the fields with harvesters. Most farmers are 
selling their milk at three cents per quart from 
April 1 to October 1, and four cents the balance of 
the year. Butter Is worth 32 cents; eggs 23 cents; 
early apples $1 per bushel, and potatoes 50 cents 
per bushel. This land responds to good farming 
methods, and it is a pleasant section of the country 
to live in. w. o. kusseli.. 
Steuben Go., N. Y. 
R. N.-Y.—Fig. 410 shows the buildings on the 
farm described by Mr. Russell. The Chemung Riv¬ 
er is about 200 rods back of these buildings. Just 
across this river is a place noted for the fatal 
railroad wreck of July 4, 1013. Most of our readers 
have read of this accident, in which 40 persons lost 
their lives. The Erie Railroad, and also the electric 
line, both run close to the house. The farm con¬ 
tains 130 acres of fine bottom land, and is a good 
sample of many farms through that part of New 
York State. 
Cur out the cedax-s—they propagate and carry apple 
rust. 
The process of bearing fruit has tln*ee distinct 
phases, each of which draws upon the strength and 
vitality of the tree; the forming of the bud; fertil¬ 
izing and setting of the blossom and lastly the ma¬ 
turing of the fruit and ripening of the seed. If the 
forming of the bud is delayed because of a dry 
Spring or other causes, and a late wet Fall induces 
the tree to make a second growth and to form or 
partly form a second crop of fruit buds, the tree 
not only goes into the Winter in an immature con¬ 
dition making it especially liable to Winter injury 
around the collar, but the late-formed buds may 
blossom later the next year than others on the same 
tree that were formed earlier in the same season. 
An orchard that is plowed early, cultivated and 
checked by a cover crop in July or August, is not 
so apt to make these second growths as one left in 
sod which responds only to the rainfall of the 
season, and if it does not make a growth early in 
the Summer when it should, may start growing 
later in the season and not ripen the wood or buds 
before cold weather sets in. 
It sometimes happens that from some cause a 
bud may be delayed in developing and is not ready 
to bloom till others have set and matured their 
fruit; and on the contrary, forcing conditions, such 
as an excess of food and moisture, may force a bud 
into bloom the same season that it is formed, in¬ 
stead of letting it remain dormant over Winter, and 
such a blossom would be later than the normal 
buds on the tree. The successful fruit grower must 
be a close, careful observer and watch and study 
his trees as a dairyman watches and studies his 
cows and their care and feeding. Few trees have 
the vitality and food supply to set and mature a 
heavy crop of apples; and form fruit buds at the 
Growing Alfalfa from Cuttings. 
O WING to the increasing importance of Alfalfa 
as a farm crop, and to the persistent efforts to 
get it successfully introduced in many places where 
it is not now grown, it seems likely that an experi¬ 
ence related in the July 23 issue of “Science,” by 
Orville T. Wilson, of the University of Wisconsin, 
will be of value to readers of this 
paper. 
According to this writer it was found 
necessary in the course of some experi¬ 
ments with Alfalfa to clip the tops fre¬ 
quently from some potted plants. Some 
of the clippings, which had been al¬ 
lowed to lie on the soil in the pots, 
were later observed to have taken root. 
Acting on the suggestion prompted by 
this observation, a handful of frag¬ 
ments from an entirely different group 
of Alfalfa plants was scattered loose¬ 
ly over a pot of well-watered soil. 
This was watered from day to day, 
taking care not to move the fragments. 
After a week several of them were 
found to have taken root, and to be 
developing into healthy plants. “The 
regenerating fragments included por¬ 
tions of stems, portions of petioles, pe¬ 
tioles with blades attached, leaflets 
without petioles attached, and even 
small portions of the leaf blade.” 
The writer of the note in “Science” 
suggests that “Under favorable condi¬ 
tions such regeneration might assume 
considerable importance in the field. 
Especially suggestive is the possibility 
of strengthening a stand in an irrigated 
district by an early cutting followed 
by free watering. The cut portions 
might be left where they fall, or col¬ 
lected and scattered over areas where 
the stand is thin.” 
It is hardly likely that the plants 
from cuttings would have the strong 
tap-roots which usually characterize 
Alfalfa plants. In regions, however, 
where the soil layer is thin a spread¬ 
ing habit of root might not be a dis¬ 
advantage but rather something of an 
advantage. If the spreading habit of 
root as seen in the Cossack variety be 
of advantage in some places, as is sug¬ 
gested in an editorial in Tiie R. N.-Y. 
for August 7, there would seem to be 
no reason why a plant from a cutting might not be 
just as good as one from seed. 
Tt is not yet clear what practical importance, if 
any, is to be attached to the possibility of propagat¬ 
ing Alfalfa by cuttings; but it certainly is a mat¬ 
ter of interest and is worthy of some effort to give 
it practical application. h. e. merx. 
W HEN the Texans were making their fight 
against Mexico, what would they have 
thought if some one had told them that the city of 
Houston would one day rank as a seaport on the 
Gulf of Mexico? Yet that very thing has happened, 
a ship canal 50 miles long, 27 feet deep and 200 feet 
wide at the bottom now connecting the city of 
Houston with deep water at Galveston. At the city 
end of this canal is a turning basin 900 feet wide, 
which gives the ships a chance to come through 
the canal, turn and then go back again. Houston 
is already an important distributing center for 17 
lines of railroad, and this new canal will enable 
steamers from any part of the world to unload di¬ 
rectly at the city wharf. This is but one illustration 
of what is happening to the South and Southwest. 
To most of our people the development of Texas seems 
like a fairy tale, and yet in that Southwest corner 
of the country a new empire is surely developing. 
