992 
RURAL NEW-YORKER 
August 18, 1917. 
Pastoral Parson and His Country Folks 
Tukxips. —“Turnip hash for break¬ 
fast.” That is what the Parson and the 
Imys holler for all the Fall and Winter 
till the women folks get so tired of it that 
we have to let up. This is hash made of 
turnip and potato mashed up together. 
How the boys do like it I Of course, the 
Par.‘<on only nibbles. We raise these 
sweet Yellow Olobe turnips. They are 
called a Fall turnip, but we find them 
hard and brittle as ever when wo. clean 
out the cellar in the Spring. They are 
left in the ground till after a good freeze, 
then in cutting the tops do not cut them 
off too close. With a dirt bottom cellar 
.and always dry I sdiould round out .a hole 
!Uid pour them in and put sand over them. 
We use old barrels—filling the barrel 
witirturnips and shaking down and then 
pouring the dry sand over the top. 
Raising Them. —We have turnips as 
regularly as we do potatoes, and they 
save the potato bin wonderfully. They 
are so easy to raise about here anyway. 
About the 20th of .Tuly we begin sowing 
the seed in any .spots we can find where 
there is room, mixed with a little clover. 
We rake it in where the early potatoes 
are dug, where the sweet corn is not too 
thick to shade it and along the south ends 
of the corn row.s. Turnips will do quite 
well in small flint corn planted in hills 
quite far apart, so that the sun gets in. 
We can keep putting in the seed hei-e 
and there till the middle of August. The 
toi)s and the small turnips make excellent 
feed for the cows if fed immediately after 
milking, so as not to taste in the milk. 
Reet.s. —What is said of turnips may 
also be said of beets. Keep them cov¬ 
ered from the light and they will be fine 
all Winter. So also with carrots. A woman 
was telling the Parson Saturday how 
she got fine brittle carrots from the cel¬ 
lar the other day and then went out in 
the garden and found the new ones also 
big enough to eat. 
Onions. —The Parson will have to tell 
what others say about onions. He has 
no time to raise them, or, better say, weed 
them, and he doubts if it is wise to count 
on the boys doing it. Will weeding 
onions tend to keep the boys on the farm? 
Ask the boys themselves, especially when 
they have to do it alone and Pa is in 
town taking all day for a few errands. A 
down-county woman tells me that she 
keeps them in the attic till in danger of 
freezing there, when they are moved to 
the cellar and put up on a shelf. She has 
had fine success and says not to leave them 
in the ground too long till they get too 
badly faded. She is a back-to-the-lauder, 
and the Parson found her much discour¬ 
aged over the high price of corn. 
CAI 515 AOES. —The Parson knows soiiie 
things not to do with cabbages, if you 
want them to keep. Don’t put them in a 
cellar that is inclined to be rather damp 
and warm. Some have good luck in keep¬ 
ing them in cellars, but from what the 
Pardon hears it is risky busine.s.s. A 
cabbage is a cold weather critter, and is 
best kept out of doors. Leave him under 
an open shed till he is actually going to 
freeze, then dig .a trench in a dry place 
and put in some straw—just enough to 
keep the heads clean—and stand them on 
their heads. Put some straw on top of 
the heads just to keep off the dirt, then 
cover with dirt and leave the feet in the 
open air. A brother parson does this and 
has fine cabbage well into the Spring. 
Doing Visiting. —Last Sunday our 
church in the country all went visiting. 
We went over and joined with a ueigh- 
horiug Congregational church about four 
miles away. Now that so many have cars 
in the country, this can be done. The 
Parson preached, and it was certainly hot. 
In his ordinary—very ordinary—suit, he 
told them about an Episcopal bishop we 
had once down in Kentucky. He was to 
l)reach in a dwelling house and it had 
i)een noised abroad among the natives 
that an Episcopal bishop was going to 
lu-each with his garments of black and of 
white and of red and big sleeves thrown 
in. They had all come to see the sight, 
fl’o their surprise they beheld the bishop 
in his ordinary business suit starting in 
for the service. The place was fiendishly 
hot. and with the crowd grew hotter. 
When well into the sermon the bishop 
pulled off his coat and hurled it into the 
corner back of him. It still grew hotter, 
a”d ."fte’' a f''w more pointers, if he didn’t 
rip off his vest and fling that on top of 
the coat. So the mountaineers decided it 
was not all a matter of gowns with the 
bishop, but he was handing out the real 
thing. 
Refreshments. —The Parson had his 
big freezer well filled in the back of his 
car and propo-sed sociability and refresh¬ 
ments. There was a great big beautiful 
church lawn. The cream could have been 
pas.sed out full 7.5 feet from the edifice. 
But no, this would not do on Sunday, so 
we had to go quite away to the parsonage 
yard. Some of the boys followed on, but 
that was about all. Strange times have 
we come to. Who spoke of the officials 
of the average country church as “relics 
of a former age?” and did he get it very 
far out of the way? 
Getting L’'p a Sermon. —We had a great 
discussion over at Storrs the other day 
on the matter of the country sermon. The 
Parson holds that the day of the old- 
time sermon that never touched on any¬ 
thing that had happened in the last thou¬ 
sand years, or was of the slightest in¬ 
terest to the peoide, or discussed matters 
that were in their minds, has gone by. 
One way to “get up” a sermon is to go to 
the books in the library and concoct one 
as a woman concocts a cake from the 
pantry shelves. Another way is to go 
to the magazines and papers of the hour, 
and still better, out into the great stream 
of human life, and find something to 
talk about there. There seems to be 
enough! It doesn’t take the pew long 
to tell whether the pulpit has got some¬ 
thing to say or whether it has to say 
something. 
Was Going to re Hanged. —Ye.s, they 
had a man over in Simsbury once who 
was to be duly and properly hanged. As 
he stood beside the gallows they brought 
forth the minister and had him preach a 
Swimming Day at the Church 
sermon. This move was reported as a 
great success, for at its close the man w'as 
not only willing, but glad to die, that he 
might never Imve to hear another-. It 
sometimes seems surprising that as many 
men go to church as do, when one thinks 
of the sermons they have to hear! 
Reading a Sermon. —Think of a ])hos- 
phate agent coming around and pulling 
out a long written statement, page after 
page, and reading it to you. Would you 
be apt to buy? So with the sewing ma¬ 
chine agent and the mowing-machine 
agent, or even the County Farm Bureau 
man. But the minister, with his mes¬ 
sage of life, and eternal life at that, 
must read off what he has to say. I hear 
for a fact that a man up the river has 
5()0 sermons snugly packed away in a 
tin box and insured against fire. 
CiiURCit Rivalry. —The old days of 
church rivalry have got to go. If the 
blight struck your neighbor’s potatoes 
and not yours, then yours would bring 
a better price, and so much the better. 
That spirit must pass. A man was com¬ 
ing up the Valley Road the other day. 
“How is your church getting along now?” 
his seat-mate asked. “Oh! we are having 
a hard time to get along, terribly hard; 
but, thank Heaven, the Methodists are 
not doing any better.” The Parson once 
heard of two churches directly opposite 
on a long, wide street. On Sunday morn¬ 
ing, each sexton w'ould stand in the door¬ 
way, bell rope in hand. A stranger 
would be seen approaching down the 
street. Yank, yank, clang, clang, would 
go the one bell. Yank, yank, clang, clang, 
would go the other. Then both sextons 
look out to see which way the man might 
turn. Yank, yank, clang, clang, would 
go the first again—then a quick look up 
the street to see which would bag him. A 
long, triumi)hant clanging would show 
which sexton won out and got the man. 
Settling a Fight. —^Since beginning 
this the Piirson has been off on a trip 
down county settling up a long-standing 
and bitter fight between two neighbors. 
Each side had engaged a lawyer and the 
matter has dragged on for over two years. 
During this time each family has lost a 
child, and the sorrows, coupled with wor¬ 
ry over money matters, has made the 
affair unbearable. The Parson has been 
spending the bulk of a week in trying to 
bring the parties together. With the ther¬ 
mometer officially registering KMo in the 
shade the last trip was made and th.e 
papers signed by both parties. The Par¬ 
son went to one house for a long figuring 
and settling and then to the other house 
(where the matter was aided by a big 
dish of huckleberries). Then we all gath¬ 
ered at the home of a third party on neu¬ 
tral ground and the matter was brought 
to a head. 
The CorNTRY Losses. —So the Coun¬ 
try Parson is to fill the place of the old- 
time squire or justice. The small-town 
lawyer has gone to the city, like the doc¬ 
tor and the post office. It is now up to 
the Parson to settle the disputes, to help 
get the sick to the doctor and the doc¬ 
tor to the sick, and to furnish about his 
church plant a substitute for the soapbox 
discussions on a Saturday night that 
took place at the village post office. 
There is no reason why the country 
church should not do this—in fact, it is 
among the things it has got to do. The 
useful church will not die—the useless 
one will. 
The Pot.vtoe.S. —The potatoes have .a 
great growth about here, but I think 
many i»ieces are going to be struck by 
the blight—in fact, it has come to one 
of the Parson’s. This plot was not 
sprayed as faithfully for blight_ as the 
others, and this may account for it. The 
boys hope to go over the others with Bor¬ 
deaux again today. This is August 2. 
and just about the time when blight 
comes about here. On the farms both 
sides of us the lice have raised havoc with 
the crop,- and there has been considerable 
about the State from this. The early 
potatoes have ,a fair yield and line qual¬ 
ity. 
The Corn. —So far it seems to_ have 
been a great year for corn. There is cer¬ 
tainly a tremendous growth of stalks and 
it bids fair to be a fine crop. AVe have 
over three acres. AVe mix in a sprink¬ 
ling of the big Eureka to fill up the silo, 
and the juiciness of this enables us to let 
the Learning get good and rii)e. About a 
third of the crop is old-fashioned flint 
corn, which is especially for the hens. 
We are sowing rye between the rows for 
Back-fo-t'ie-Landers 
;i cover crop, and to hold the soil from 
washing. 
The AA’heat. —Each year we harrow 
over the jiotato field and sow to AVinter 
wheat. This must be done about the first 
of September. AA'e have never failed for 
a fine crop and it comes into the barn 
just at a time when the hens are seri¬ 
ously considering taking a vacation. AA'heii 
we dump .a load of scatterings into the 
henhouse they immediately change their 
mind. Of course they have eai -i of old 
corn before them all the-time to help 
themselves. AA’e have clover and rye 
sowed for them to work on late in the 
Fall, and clover in the barn for them 
next AA’inter. Our mangel beet seed did 
not come up and we were disappointed 
here. Nothing has paid us so well as 
what little we have done in cultivating 
plots near the henhouses for the hens to 
work in themselves, such as rye. Avheat 
and clover. AA’e sow rye and wheat to¬ 
gether for them to harvest themselves the 
next Summer. AA’ith eggs 50 cents a doz¬ 
en the first of August, what will they be 
in October? AA’ith the last jump in corn, 
there is a mad rush to dispose of hens 
in this section. AA’hile writing this, the 
boy and I have rushed over in the face 
of .a thunder shower and gotten in oats in 
fine condition. The cows will eat the 
straw like hay and the hens are even now 
singing under the wagon. 
I.AW.N I’ARTiES.—AA’ith the fine moon, 
this has been lawn party week with us. 
AA’e are j)utting on four of them down 
county. AA’e lo.ad up the car with ice 
cream, soda, crackerjack, Avafers, cones 
for the cream, etc., and down we go. AA’e 
stop under a tree, hang the lantern from 
,a limb, play games by the moonlight and 
have a great time. Of course, every child 
gets a soda and ice cream cone, whether 
they bring any money or not. 
Dutch Cheese.- —Mrs. Bastoral Par¬ 
son is here, and is going to tell how she 
makes the Dutch cheese we enjoy so 
much. She calls it smearcase, coming 
from the South. Some call it pot cheese. 
She uses skim-milk, letting it get well 
clabbered. Pour off the whey and put the 
clabber in a cheesecloth bag and hang on 
the clothes line in the hot sun, but do not 
le.ave too long if the sun is very warm, as 
it cooks the clabber and makes it tough. 
AA’hen thoroughly drained season it to 
taste with salt and -pepper and sweet 
cream. It does not take very much 
c:'(\-i;a. .y.e.t. it. w.anbs. x'n,,in„h to. in.-ike .il 
smear or spread. If you have not the 
sweet cream, a little melted butter Avill 
answer the purpose. How wholesome this 
is, and how much we enjoy it, and it saves 
meat at that. It must be .several weeks 
since we have bought a piece of meat of 
any kind on this place. 
A Square Deal for Mother 
Iowa’s blue laws are now a common 
subject in every conversation ; some peo¬ 
ple believing them to be a joke and others 
thinking that they were made for a pur¬ 
pose. Their object seems to be to give 
all laboring people one day that they may 
call their very own. And yet, there is 
one class of people who must work Sun¬ 
days that will hardly be reached by a 
blue law. How many of us can remem¬ 
ber the Sundays when we used to be 
inA’ited Avith our folks, to a big country 
dinner? After the royal feast the men 
would find ,a place in the shade to dis¬ 
cuss Aveather and politics, the children 
Avould be off for a romp, but hoAV about 
mother? Not so many of us Avill re¬ 
member hoAV tired she Avas after it was 
alt over and the company had left. Sun¬ 
day to her had been the hardest of the 
Aveek. A big meal takes hours to pre¬ 
pare and several more to wash up all the 
dishes and clean up the silverw.are. 
AA’e ask for better community life, with 
more visiting among farmers, but there 
is one important factor in a great many 
communities which must be dealt with 
before we can hope for results. That 
factor is the neighborhood custom of 
making Sunday meals a competition be¬ 
tween the housewives of the community. 
One ambitious Avoman sets the pace by 
putting up a big meal for her company 
and the rest folloAA'. Too often when the 
matter of inviting a neighbor in for Sun¬ 
day is brought up the hou.scAvife thinks 
of all the Avork it will mean to her and 
objects. 
AA’hat man.v rural communities need is 
more “drop-in” informal visiting. Let 
mother rest and haA'e her visit, too. The 
modern farmer’s Avife knoAvs a great 
many different salads that may be pre¬ 
pared while the morning’s work is being 
done. AA’ith cold meat, fresh fruit in 
Summer and preserves in AA'^inter a sub- 
stanti.-il and attractive meal can be 
placed before visitors Avithout spending 
the forenoon OA-er a hot stOA'e. As much 
skill can be displayed in these simple 
meals a.s in the big ones and no one is 
being robbed of the rest that belongs tn 
them or are violating any blue laAVS.— 
The T</ica Afjriculturisf. 
Sunday for the Farmer’s AVife 
The enclosed clipping from a AA’i.scon- 
sin paper voices the sentiment of a gre.-it 
many farmers’ Avives, so I thought pos¬ 
sibly you Avould give it space. 
Maryland. BERTHA S. NICHOLfSON. 
The clipping is as folloAA’S: 
“At your meetings of the Council of 
Defen.'^e, and from noAV on Avill you kindly 
make a jdea for the cfuiservation of the 
farmer’s Avife’s strengtth and time? 
‘■’l’ht‘ Government is calling upon her 
to i»l:int gardens, can, dry, preserve, etc., 
all of Avhich she is most Avilling to do if 
she has the time and strength. The Goa’- 
ernment is doing a great deal to give her 
information, etc., but she must have one 
thing more—a proclamation or else news¬ 
paper or magazine publicity bringing be¬ 
fore city people the need for her to have 
her Sundiiys for rest or recreation after 
her hard Aveek’s Avork instead of spending 
it Av.-iiting on endless croAvds Avho come 
in a neA’er-ending procession Sunday 
after Sunday since the automobile has 
come into general use. 
“The fact that she really loses tAV(» 
days each Aveek Avhich she might l>e using 
to help the Government this Summer 
ought to bring this practice into bad re¬ 
pute. Siiturdays are spent in extra bak¬ 
ing. cooking, etc., and if she is not too 
tired to Avork at all, iMondays are spent 
in replenishing the empty larder, Avash- 
ing table-linen, straightening disordered 
house, etc., caused by the Sunday 
croAvds. 
“If you can give the farmer’s AA’ife's 
plea sufficient publicity, many thought- 
le.ss peoi)le Avill cease burdening tlieir 
tired country friends and you Avill be 
doing her the greatest service that has 
ever been done. 
“Obviously, this is a delicate subject 
for the farmer’s Avife to plead for her¬ 
self. and if she only did defend herself, 
it AA’ould not help the millions of other 
farm Avomen Avho suffer likeAvise, so we 
have appealed to the heads of the Council 
of Defense to defend us from our friends 
real or make-believe—this busy Summer, 
unle.ss the.v bring their lunches. 
“It surely is unpatriotic and should be 
made unpopular through the press for 
them to so burden us Avhen Ave are doing 
all this extra Avork in ansAver to the 
Nation’s call so the ciF- people Avill haA’e 
food this coming AA’inter and so sorely 
need the time and strength instead of 
squanderfng it so needlessly. 
“AA'e Avould enjoy having people come 
Avheu Ave specially invite them, of course, 
but Ave like to feel that we Avill not be 
interrupted b.A' tAVO or three more auto¬ 
mobile loads of folks Avho Avanted to go 
somoAvhere in the country to spend the 
day.’ 
“If you haA’e any doubt of the truth 
of this, ask any farmer’s Avife or take a 
trip through the country on Sunday and 
see the croAA’ds at every farm home and 
couat .the Lo.ss t») the Nation.” 
