942 
o/jc RURAL NEW-YORKER 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Pros.—We want you to meet four new 
iiK'inbers of the Hope Farm stock. They 
sire pork packers by nature, inclination 
Sind habit. They carry their mother’.s 
red color, strong limbs and rangy shape, 
and their father has speckled them wdth 
black spots and markings and something 
of his head and body. A cross between 
Herkshire and .Tei-sey Red ought to make 
a lively, ambitious pig, and the ought 
has not come to naught in this case. They 
now weigh about 40 pounds each, and 
nothing will suit' them better than to 
liave the food and the chance to gain 
TV) pounds or more by Thanksgiving. 
They have been fully treate<l so as to be 
immune from cholera, and now they ar¬ 
rive at Hope Farm, make their bow and 
say: “Gentlemen, we represent the mak¬ 
ings of about half a ton of pork. We 
cannot complete the job unless we have 
a fair chance. Give us that chance and 
we will do the rest!” 
A IIoo’s Chance. —When some char¬ 
acters come along talking that way it is 
wise to view them with suspicion. They 
have neither the pedigree nor the pre¬ 
vious performance to promote their 
promises. Frankly, when some of these 
humans come along with large promises 
and estimate which are far beyond any¬ 
thing you have ever been able to do, I 
would put on the “armor of suspicion” 
and make them show me in language I 
could understand. I have a good friend 
w’ho says suspicion is an evil and should 
never be encouraged, but if I could have 
the money paid out to promoters and 
bluffers because honest people were not 
suspicious I could pay all the expenses 
of the war. Here, however, came a quar¬ 
tette of pigs with*a story like this: 
“Roth father and mother come from 
pork-making families. We are not mere 
pigs, we are producers. Every uncle and 
aunt (and their ancestors as well) that 
has ever had a chance, has walked off 
with 250 pounds of pork inside a y<‘ar. 
A pig without a chance is a chance 
game. A pig with a chance is a sure 
thing. Eight pigs to the ton of pork is 
our slogan. Help us make good!” 
Now in other days I kept hogs. At 
one time we had over 60, old and young, 
but they never did any such work as this 
pig proinis(!d. Hid thej’ have a chance? 
Were their ancestors just hogs, or was 
this new pig just trying to sell me a 
gold brick instead of a ham? 
q'liEY Get It.—I must say that Jere¬ 
miah Jersey looked like an honest hog 
as he stood in the pen looking at me. 
He had his head on one side like a wise 
man glancing over his spectacles. His 
comrades, Jake and June and .Julia, had 
the utmost confidence in their brother and 
epoke.sman. They kept right on eating 
weeds and let him talk. If human fam¬ 
ilies could Cooperate in that way and 
leave the “armor of suspicion” to one 
delegated membei’, what a world we 
should have! As briefly stated by Jere¬ 
miah, a pig’s chance seems to reiua'sent 
about the following: Freedom! They 
W'ant room enough to walk about and 
stretch themselves. No cl«se or narrow 
pen for them. No rings or mutilated 
no.se, but a fair chance to root and dig. 
Give them plenty of ashes, cha"Coal and 
bone, and they will not dig too much. A 
free lunch counter! That means a full 
.supply of different grains before them 
all the time in a self-feeder! That seems 
the hardest thing of all, since most hu¬ 
mans (perhaps from personal experience) 
eat themselves close to sickness with any 
such free show. This pig, however, as¬ 
sures mo that no animal on earth knows 
when he has enough more sensibly than 
a well-bred hog. Such a hog regards a 
sipieal ^ibout as mo.st people regard pro¬ 
fanity in a human being. A squeal sheds 
flesh as profanity sheds character, and 
left free to help him.self to food at all 
hours, the squealing becomes a lost art 
with the pig. It’seems hard to lielieve 
this, but the pig can produce a number 
of scientific bulletins to prove his case. 
Out in Iowa I met a farmer who said 
the only thing that could make him run 
was a squeal from a hog. His hogs nev¬ 
er sipiealed unless they got into serious 
trouble and .sounded an alarm. Job put 
it this way : 
“Doth the wild ass bray when he hath 
grass? Or loweth the ox over his fod¬ 
der?” 
■Vauted Foon.—The well-bred pig 
.somewhat resembles the farmer’s wife 
and daughter who go off and visit where 
there is a fine garden. I low they do en¬ 
joy the big plates of lettuce, peas, beets, 
strawberries, and other fruits! When 
they get home and find not much besides 
eggs, meat and potatoes, or cabbage, who 
can blame them for feeling that a fair 
chance in a country home means salad 
crojis and a good garden? Hikewi.se the 
hog. .Jeremiah quickly made it known 
that the promised ton of pork would re¬ 
quire many tons of green feed, such as 
apples, weed.s, garden wastes and grass. 
From choice these pigs would prefer to 
walk right out and harvest five green 
crops themselve.s. No use waiting on a 
healthy pig. He doesn’t need any butler. 
Still, if you bring the green stufi' to him 
freely he will not complain. Only—let 
him have it. Then you must give the 
pig a chance to make bone. It takes a 
Self-Feeder for Pigs 
sti-ong frame to carry 250 pounds of pork 
.‘iround, and frames are not made out of 
fat-producing food. There must be an 
abundance of lime and iihosphates always 
on hand for fhe pig to help himself. And 
the well-bred pig wants to keep clean. 
The pig is naturally much cleaner in las 
habits than the cow. Give him a roomy 
pen, a dry nest and a chance for a bath, 
and he will beat many human races in his 
u.se of these privilege.s. And he .should 
have some way of killing off the jvara- 
sites which gather on him. It s(>ems to 
be a combination of the.se things which 
make up what the pig calls “a chance” 
•—the sort of a chance which makes the 
ton of pork for eight hogs, fl’he pigs I 
have kept before mwer h.ad this chance 
in full, fl'his quartette shall come close 
to it at least. 
Theiii Quartehs. —W(> took a com¬ 
partment of the <dd chicken hou.se and 
,a largo yard. This hou.se was thorough¬ 
ly cleaned out wdth lime-sulphur and 
wdll have another dose a little later. 
The yard was strengthened by nailing 
planks around it. A little brook runs 
close by. If it w'crc not for the neigh¬ 
bors below' I could let the pigs ruu in 
this brook, but the waiter, bidow us, is 
used for waitering stock. The yard is on 
sloping ground and well drained, so that 
• 
part of it is sui’e to be dry. A little 
later we can fence in a narrow strip 
along an old stone wall and let the pigs 
range there and clean it up. The yard 
is well .shaded by apple trees, and in 
the orchard nearby are big sweet apples 
—just right for pig feeding. The yard 
is big enough to give the.se pigs a good 
shady range and we can bring in the 
water if need be—from the brook. In 
the way of comfortable quartm-s this 
seems to give all that a reasonable hog 
can ask for. 
Feeding. —We use a self-feeder made 
after the plan advocated by I’rof. F. C. 
Minkler of the N. J. Experiment Sta¬ 
tion. It contains a mixture of grains, 
and the pigs help thennselves at will. I 
find that they do not stulI theimselves, but 
eat a little at a time as they feel in¬ 
clined. No one can imagine, until he 
has tried it, what a saving this is over 
the old plan of carrying slo]) or grain 
several times a day and pouring it into a 
trough. Here may be a case where this 
“armor of suspicion” keeps a man a 
.slave to a hog, for most fanners will 
not believe that the hog can be trusted 
with an unlimited supply of food before 
him all the time. The truth is that your 
hog know'S far more about his bodily 
niM'ds than you do. Of course there 
w'ould be no .sen.se in throwing a barrel 
of corn right on the ground and then 
w'alking off to let the hogs .settle it. That 
is very different from putting the grain 
into a clean self-feeder and letting the 
pigs take it—one mouthful at a time. 
We found this plan very satisfactory, 
like that of feeding dry mash to the 
hens. As for gremi feed, we have a 
small platform in one corner of the pen, 
and throw the weeds or waste on it. The 
pigs help themselves. It is a wonder to 
us how much of this waste a pig will 
eat. We give them w'ceds, cull apples, 
garden W’astes. green Alfalfa—anything 
that grow.s. The pigs do the rest. They 
seem to be particularly fond of certain 
weeds—:like purslane or “pussley” and 
lamb’.s quarters. Small vegetables, pea 
vines, beet tops—all go in a steady 
stream toward that ton of pork and hap- 
l)ily the farm carries weeds enough to 
])rovide many tons. No one can realize, 
until he gives his hog a chance, that this 
mi.srepresented animal is like a cow in 
hi.s desire for pasture food. It does not 
seem possible that our four pigs can sur¬ 
round the great bulk of green stuff which 
goes on their table every day. In a 
corner of the pen vi'e have a box filled 
with ashes from the kitchen stove. We 
burn considerable wood in Summer, and 
thus these ashes contain something of 
lime, potash and phosphate. The pigs 
eat the ashes freel.v—I see them going 
to the box again and again during the 
day. In order to give them every con¬ 
venience I want to put in some sort of 
, an “oiler.” A simple form of this will be 
a po.st with burlap bags tied or tacked 
around the lower part. These bags are 
kept smeared with crude oil. The pigs 
will come and rub against the bags and 
work the oil off upon their bodies. This 
does not seem to be entirely effective, 
but it helps, and we .shall probably spray 
the hogs with kerosmie emulsion from 
time to time. Thus we have started in 
to give these pigs a chance. Do we get 
the 1000 pounds of pork in payment? 
Strawherries. —I hope you will read 
the article by Mr. Hartman this week. I 
know Mr. Hartman personally, and I 
believe all he says in this article. It 
will be hard for some of us to realize 
that on one-fifth of an acre Mr. Hart¬ 
man earned more money tlian many a 
farmer on a 100-acre farm takes in. "You 
will understand that this means a com¬ 
bination of fortunate circumstances— 
good season, fine climate and very eu- 
jierior market. Yet even at 10 cents a 
(|uart the income would be large. What 
Hartman tells about the cherry crop in 
Florida makes me think of the time TTncle 
Ed boarded a tree agent. This man wms 
selling some wonderful “new” varieties, 
but a Florida sheriff chased him down 
and arrested him. The trees turned out 
to be small idants of our common wild 
cherry which this fraud was working off 
at .$1 per tree. Hie- owed TTncle Ed a 
board bill, and when the sheriff arrested 
iiim, he sneaked over to I’ncle Ed and 
gave him a big revolver and a box of 
anuinition as security. He served his 
time and then came and redeemed the 
liistol. By the way—what about our 
own strawberry field? It looks well and 
is coming. These plants talked up about 
as the pigs did and demanded “a chance.” 
They are going to have it. ir. w. c. 
Preparing Beeswax 
How can I make beeswax from honey¬ 
comb after the honey is extracted? 
F. c. M. w. 
Old combs should be melted up in hot 
water. This can be done by placing 
them in a wash boiler on a kitchen stove, 
or, better yet, an iron kettle outdoors. 
The combs should first be p\it into a 
cheesecloth or burlap sack, immersed un¬ 
der the hot water and punched with a 
stick. The free wax should then be 
dipped off the top of the hot water. In 
order to got all the wax out of the 
combs this sack of old combs should be 
put under a press of some sort and 
squeezed while hot. A cheese press does 
very nicely. In the absence of a press 
one can be extemporized by putting a 
small box on top of the sack under hot 
water and then crowding this box down 
with a heavy weight. The pressure can 
be made a little stronger by the use of 
a fong lever. If the box holding the 
sack is used as a fulcrum under a lever, 
heavy pressure can be exerted. This 
pri'ssure should be released two or three 
times to allow the refuse inside of the 
sack to fill up with hot water, and then 
the pressure should be applied again, so 
that the wax is virtually washed out of 
Avhat we call slum-gum. The free wax 
will then come to the top and can be 
dipped off with a dipper. Where one 
keeps a large number of bees it would 
pay him to purchase an ordinary wax 
press of a dealer and to follow the di¬ 
rections sent out by the manufacturers. 
E. B. BOOT. 
Capacity of Barrel 
What is the size of the standard bar¬ 
rel? It is probable that from 50,000 to> 
00.000 barrels of Irish potatoes will be 
shipped from this section between April 
15 and June 1. AVe have always used an 
11-peck barrel, but we hear from various 
August 4, ]nt7. 
sources that 12 pecks i.s now the standard 
pack, and it is a question whether mark¬ 
ing them 11 pecks will put us right be¬ 
fore the law. If 12 pecks is a standard 
barrel shall we be considered within the 
law if we mark each barrel as containing 
11 peck.s. N. D. B. 
Ilastings, Fla. 
The Fedei-al law requires that all pack¬ 
ages of food .stuffs shipped in interstate 
commerce shall be plainly marked with 
the net contents. The New York State 
law specifies that a standard barrel for 
apples and potatoes shall contain 100 
quarts dry measure, or 750 cubic inches. 
The head diameter of such a barrel is 
17% inches, length of stave, 2S% inches; 
distance between heads not less than 20 
inches; bilge not less than 04 inches out¬ 
side measurement. Fruits or vegetables 
may be sold in other sized containers 
provided the net capacity in terms of* 
standard dry measure is plainly branded 
in the English language on the out.side or 
top of the jiackage. AA'lien potatoes are 
sold by weight a barrel shall be consid¬ 
ered 174 pounds. 
Cure for Stammering 
A business friend of mine intends to 
go to Milwaukee, AA’^is., to a .school for 
stammers. He got the idea through their 
catalogue. His case is not so bad, about 
five words out of a hundred. The tuition 
is .$100, but for a short time a special 
rate of .$05, board extra. AVhat is your 
opinion about this subject? He has been 
over to the Gornell Medical Clinic and 
they told him to talk slower. 
Maspeth,.N. Y. G. T. E. 
I have no per.sonal knowledge of this 
school for stammerers, but do know that 
these schools which profess special or 
secret methods of curing stammering are 
very apt to promise more than they can 
deliver, and are hardly to be recom¬ 
mended to those whose finances are 
limited, to say the least. There are 
plenty of physicians in your city whose 
advice I should very much prefer to 
that of the stammerers’ .schools. The 
cure of stammering is very much a mat¬ 
ter for the sufferer himself, though he 
may be helped by wise suggestions from 
competent advisers. There are jilenty of 
books on the subject of stammering, 
though most of them are written for the 
medical profession. There are also those 
in the medical profession who make a 
specialty of treating defects of speech, 
and the Cornell Clinic will doubtless put 
your friend in touch with honest and 
competent advisers near by if he asks 
for this information. I assume that you 
refer to the clinic of the Cornell Alcdical 
College in New York. Unfortunately, 
schools for stamrnerer.s, like other ad¬ 
vertising medical institutions, are pretty 
apt to be conducted on a commercial 
basis that lays them open to suspicion, 
and they cannot be indiscriminately re¬ 
commended. It is possible that some of 
them ai'e worthy of patronage, but I 
cannot speak specifically of the one that 
you mention. ^r. n. dean, jr. u. 
Figures on Milling 
Allow me to correct Air. Remer in his 
milling figures on page 8(M). I have bei'ii 
in the milling business for the past 40 
years, as an operative miller in mills 
ranging from 2.5 barrels to 200 barrels 
daily capacity, and am now operating u 
25-bushel midget. I have never been 
able, nor have I found any other miller 
who has to get the yield that his figures 
show from 4% busluds of (JO-lb. wheiit. 
It is utterly impossible to get 100 lbs. 
flour, .30 lbs. bran, 45 lbs. shorts, from 
270 lbs. of wheat, as it is not there. 
Then there is always an invisible loss of 
two to three pounds in grinding, aftm- 
the wheat has been cleaned and riuidy for 
grinding. 
\\''e have just made a test run, and our 
yield was almo.st 42% ''bs. flour from 00 
Ib.s. wheat after 'he wheat was cleaned 
and ready for grinding. This same 
wheat only showed a yield of 40 lbs. flour 
as it came from the farmer’s wagon show¬ 
ing a loss of 2% lbs. in cleaning, wheat 
testing ,59 lbs. to the bushel. 
Now I will take his figures and at the 
market price paid for wheat here to¬ 
day, .Tune 2.3, will show what profit we 
are making. AVe will assume that 4>/. 
bu. wheat makes a barrel of flour, v/hich 
not one mill in 500 is doing by actual 
test. It is more like 4% bushels for a 
barrel: 
41/2 bushels at $2.40.$10.80 
190 lbs. or 1 barrel flour.lO.GO 
.30 lbs. bran at $.30 ton. 45 
45 lbs. shorts at $40. 90 
$11.95 
These are the prices that we were pay¬ 
ing for wheat and selling retail on this 
date. F. E. KENNEDY. 
Nebraska. 
