960 
TShe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
August 10, 1018 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Dhy Weathku. —There is no question 
uboiit the (Irougiit now, and there is little 
satisfaetion in going back to read what 
we said about the rain some 50 days ago. 
As usual, on our hills, the dry weather 
(omes with hot wind.s which suck out the 
moi.sture (juickly unless there is a cover¬ 
ing of “niulch’' 01 finely cultivated soil 
on top to hold the water in the ground. 
()ur lower lields are inclined, naturally, 
to be wet, and this drought suits them 
well. On the hill, with its thin layer of 
soil over the rock, the drought is serious. 
We are, however, much better off than 
some other sections. There have been 
.several loc.al showers which carried our 
crops through. On .some of the lighter 
soils a few miles away the ground is like 
powder or like a rock, according as it 
was worked in wet weather. 
Organic Matter. —A drought of this 
sort always brings out the value of humus 
or organic niattm- in the soil. There can 
be no doubt that this organic matter, 
when well handled, acts like a sponge to 
hold water, and I think it keeps the soil 
cooler. This is one reason why we talk 
so much about cover crops, for, aside from 
any other benefit, such a crop when 
lilowed under at the right time and well 
packed down will hold water for the 
crop. It Avould be easy to change that 
and make this cover crop waste water if 
you turned it under lightly and hdt it 
loose in the .soil. If that were done .such 
weathei’ as we now have ■vvnnild prove 
ruinous, for the warm, dry air would 
work in and steal every drop of water. 
'I’lien this layer of dry, coai-se tra.sh just 
Isdow the surface w’ould prevent the 
water b<'low from rising up to help the 
crops. Where the cover crop is packed 
down firmly af^er idowing it serves as a 
reservoir in the soil and holds moisture. 
This is the .season when I teach spelling 
with a scythe. A big weed, a bush or 
vine or bunch <»f grass during such a 
drought is a sucker, for it surely sucks 
useful moistui-e from the soil and lets it 
go into the air. When you cut off that 
weed and lay it on the gi’ound around a 
plant or tree you change the e into an o 
and cut out the k, making the sucker into 
a succor, for it st<^ps wasting moisture 
end starts in to conserve it. My hoys 
are not very enthusiastic over this scythe 
spelling, for it means hauling weeds, 
ti-ash, brush or whatever we can cut. and 
l)iling it around the trees. Youth wants 
to see immediate results^—and it is sin¬ 
gular, too, since all the future helongs to 
youth. It seems like small business to 
] i!e all tins trash around fia'es when we 
i:ii.":l.t be i-u.shing something olf to market 
with the truck. But these weeds will get 
their work in later, and next year peojjle 
v.iil come and wonder ho" ’ e ever got 
such color and growth with so little culti¬ 
vation. 
Soi'Tii .Ter.sey. —I went down to Glass- 
boro, N. ,T.. last week, to attend a meet¬ 
ing of the New Jersey Horticultural .So- 
ci(‘ty. That country is worse off than we 
are for moisture. The soil is natui-ally 
light and they have had little rain. It is 
a great tomato country, and this yc'ar the 
ci'op is coming on earlier than usual. The 
hot weather is hurting it, and there will 
be serious loss unless they have rain 
s<mn. A farmer from the rockj^ hills of 
this section or a Western grain grower 
would hardly know where to find himself 
in that level, sandy country. If he had 
no vision beyond the crops and metlnals 
of his own neighborhood he would he 
likely to call it a forsaken place, with 
))oor opportunities for making a living. 
Yet those farmers, who know how to do 
it, have made South Jersey about the 
most profitable farming section in the 
country. I think that in the future this 
section is to play a great part in i)rovid- 
ing food for our bi.g Eastern cities. But 
a man must know how to do it. I have 
heard men crack their jokes about Jer.sey 
mo.squitoes and “.Tersey sand,” without 
knowing that New .Tersc'.v has fought 
mosquitoes as no other State has done, 
and that in old times the Avorld was fed 
from the light, sandy soibs. The “deserts.” 
so called, were the granaries of the world, 
for just as soon as they jiut the water 
on this light .soil it ijroduc(‘d the most 
wonderful crops. With a fair wattu" .sup- 
comes to. Here 
for a truck load 
is one 
commission 
2 bask. 
. No. 2 
, sour 
at 
$3.00 
4 bask. 
, No. 1 
, sour 
at 
1.00 
8 bask.. No. 2, 
sweet 
at 
3.00 
27 bask.. 
No. 1, 
sweet 
at 
3.021/. 
1) bask., No. ], 
Iiilipiu 
at 
2.*25 
1 bask., 
No. 2, 
pippin 
at 
1.00 
Commission 
.i:72..TS 
7.24 
.$G5.14 
In this case the No. 2 fruit were wind¬ 
falls, most of them brui.sed. The baskets 
held 144 bushel, which makes this fruit 
run from .$2.40 to .$5.40 lau- baiu’cl. Much 
of it could not be sold at any ])rice in 
f(jrm(>r years. This was not our best 
load—one of 54 baskets brought <-onsid- 
erably more. This kind of fruit sf'cms to 
b<‘ used for making pies. They cut out 
the bruise, .slice up what is left and turn 
out a pie which retails in a restaurant 
all the way from .50 cents to .$1.20! Gne 
baking firm in this city uses 150 big 
baskets of such fruit every day ! . . . 
(Continued on page 1)(!0) 
ply these lighter and quicker soils are 
superior to the heavier soils, and you 
must remember that South Jersey is prac¬ 
tically an island—its climate tempered 
by the surrounding water. One great 
value of .such soils is the ability to grow 
the finest of cover crops for manuring. 
As for water, I expect some da.v to see 
on that level country big irrigating canals, 
after the Chinese fashion, holding the 
waste rain w'atcr now lost, and most of 
the fresh water from far up the Hcl.aware 
I’iver. 
The Meeting. —There was a great 
crowd—i)i-obably near 2.500 jteople—gath¬ 
ered on the fruit farm of IMr. Stanger. 
2 he d.ay for holding Summer meetings 
indoors has gone by. Tl)ey want to get 
out close to the trees and fields. Ten 
years ago I went to Glassboro to attend 
a former meeting. At that time we drove 
in a stage behind a cotiple of tired hor.se! 5 . 
This year wc rushed over the road in a 
car. Then there were hardly a dozen cars 
on the ground—objects of great curiosity. 
This year there were over 400 cars on 
hand. Ion could hardly find a horse. 
Then there was hardly a motor truck 
Used on a farm in that section. Now 
tlu're are dozens of them rushing about. 
Ten years ago I told A. T. Bepp that I 
thought it might pay him to look up 
some of the rather crude tractors then 
talked about. Tie said he doubt(*d whellu'r 
they would ever be Avorth anything. Yet 
on this farm I saw a light tractor pulling 
two big disk-harrows up and down tlu' 
orchard faster than horses could travel. 
It makes one wonder what will be found 
in the section 10 years hence! The 
crowd, too, is different. Eor many years 
these meetings were made up almost en- | 
tirely of middle-aged men. Now and then ! 
a woman would come along. At this 
meeting the .vounger men seemed to be in 
the majorit.v, and there were hundreds of 
interested women. Down in that .section 
the introduction of power and more skill¬ 
ful handling of crops have brought the 
younger people in. No one can fully 
realize what the Bed Ci’oss has done and 
is doing for farm women. It has given 
them organization and led to business 
methods and improvement in farm work. 
1 think this Bed Cross work in its effect 
upon women is going to show wondeiTul 
results in the future, both in .social and 
business life for the farm. There can be 
no question that the farm meetings this 
year a;'e larger and far more serious than 
ever before. There is one settled deter¬ 
mination that this war must be carried 
through to a finish. Most people put that 
above all else. Then there is the belief 
that we do not need more .scientific knowl¬ 
edge half as much as we do the ability to 
g(‘t togethei- and combine our interests 
and our credit . \Ye are going to learn 
how fo do it and perhaps the greatest 
help of all will come from the farm 
woman through the training of the Red 
Cross. 
Crops. —The heat drove the early ap¬ 
ples along fast, and a high wind hatted 
many of them out into the field. When 
one of these delic.ate early varieties falls 
50 feet or more from tlie top of a t*-ee it 
does not dent the ground, hut it does 
bruise the apple. We pick<‘d what we 
could and gathered some of the windfalls 
and sent them to New York. Some one 
wants to know what a load of such fruit 
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Help Save the Canadian Crops 
When Our Own Harvest Requirements are Completed 
United States Help Badly Needed 
Harvest Hands Wanted 
Military demands from a limited population have made such a 
scarcity'- of farm help in Canada that the appeal of the Canadian Gov¬ 
ernment to the United States Government for 
Help to Harvest the Canadian Grain Crop of 1918 
Meets -with a request for all available assistance to go forward as 
soon as our c/wn crop is secured. 
The Allied Armies must be fed and therefore it is necessary to 
save every bit of the crop of the Continent—American and Canadian. 
Those who respond to this appeal will get a 
Warm Welcome, Good Wages, Good Board 
and Find Comfortable Homes 
A card entitlin.g the holder to a rate of one cent per mile from 
Canadian Boundary points to destination and return will be given to 
all Harvest Applicants. Every facility will be afforded for admission 
into Canada and return to the United States. Information as to 
wages, railway rates and routes, may be had from the 
UNITED STATES EMPLOYMENT SERVICE 
BRANCHES IN ALL LARGE CITIES OF THE U. S. 
