■Ghe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1423 
Tomato Vinegar 
(('ontimiod from i)ago 14lil) 
usual. If you want to try it. boil your 
tomatoos a little, squeeze out the juiee. 
add a bit of yeast, and in a few days you 
will have a sort of tomato cider. When 
this is "hard.” that is. when the yeast has 
turned all the sugar into alcohol and has 
quit the job for want of sui)i)lies. strain, 
if need be. and add some "mother of vine¬ 
gar.” which is the plant that turns the 
alcohol into acetic acid. You will be 
I)retty .sure to get some sort of vinegar, 
and if it is any good you might let us 
know. I’erhajis there is a regular recipe 
for this. If so. will the wise ones send it 
inV 
Crude Oil as Wood Preservative 
I can get crude oil cheap from the well. 
Is it any good as a wood preservative, a 
disinfectant and germicidal agent? 
Versailles, (). ,i. r. c. 
The action of crude oil. in general, on 
wood, is merely medicinal; that is. it 
preserves the wood by keeping it dry. 
The preservative oils contain creosote, 
and are obtained by destructive distilla¬ 
tion. A disinfectant is the same thing as 
a germicide, and crude oil has very little 
action on germs except as. by ket'ping out 
water, it makes conditions unfavorable. 
Where this crude oil will help a lot in 
your chicken business is in killing mites 
and lice. You can use it as a wash and 
it will destroy both the insects and their 
eggs. Use pienty of it, but be cautious 
about 0 )>en lights or even lanterns for sev¬ 
eral days later. 
Corn Plasters 
What kind of a compound is used to 
make oxide of zinc plaster? What is a 
reliable paint-on liquid? G. T. E. 
Maspeth. X. Y. 
If you mean the oxide of zinc adhesive 
plaster, we cannot encourage you to e.x- 
periment with it. The general basis of 
such plasters is rubber, and not only do 
the makers d(.) their best to keep their 
formulas .secret, but making the adhesive 
mixture and applying it to the cloth back 
require rather expensive and complex ma¬ 
chinery. On the other hand, for tem¬ 
porary application, any good oxide of zinc 
plaster can be spread on a cloth and this 
held in place with adhesive pla.ster. 
The standard formula for the paint-on- 
corn-olf fluid is 00 grains of salicylic acid, 
10 grains extract of Indian hemp, one- 
eighth ounce of ca.stor oil and one ounce 
of collodion. The business end of_ this 
and many similar mixtures is the salicylic 
acid, which has the peculiar property of 
softening dead skin, but leaving the live 
skin almost untouched. But it' is rather 
irritating at best. :uid should be used with 
caution. _ ' 
Rubber Taste in Canned Fruit 
The following clipping may .be of inter¬ 
est to some of your readers. I notice that 
someone had thi.s trouble. I had. too. A 
sister was visiting me from Toronto when 
I opened a can of gooseberries of such 
marked odor and taste that I investigated 
and found it to.be the rubber: 
“Ottawa. Sept. 25.—After an investi¬ 
gation. the ('anada Food Board has come 
to the conclusion that the rubber bands 
used on preserving jars, infected with 
phenol, do not harm the fruit, and that 
any fruit preserved in such jars must not 
be de.stri)yed. The objectionable odor and 
taste will disappear after 24 hours’ ex¬ 
posure to the air. leaving the preserves 
perfectly suitable for human consumption. 
There is no need to destroy any such 
fruit, as it has not been harmed." 
MKS. .S. W. KE.XXEDY. 
The item you send in about the taste 
in the fruit from the can rubber is cor¬ 
rect; if the fruit is otlierwise all right, 
go ahead and eat it. But that is a good 
brand oT rubber to avoid next year. 
Effect of Heat in Ironing 
Why c.an I not iron clothes with a cold 
iron if I press hard enough? I know it 
does not work, but what does the heat do? 
\ew York. w. ii. c. 
The main thing the heat does is to dry 
cut the water, but you can do that on the 
line or under considerable pressure and 
still not have "ironed” clothes. Linen 
and cotton are forms of cellulose, and we 
do not yet know what this is. but we 
know some things about it. among others 
that in water it take u]) a little water 
and tends to “jell.” (Please don’t ask 
what “jell” is. since nobody knows.) If 
you stir it with water long enough it will 
get quite into semi-solution; this is one 
way that partially transparent papers, so- 
called parchment i)aj)ers, are made: se¬ 
lected rags stirred into this state and 
ironed dry in special rolls. So the hot 
iron dries, and. in a way. cooks the fibers 
of the cloth and you get the well-known 
effect. I'urthermore. there is often a lit¬ 
tle starch ijresent. even if not added in¬ 
tentionally, and thi.s also is cooked and 
dried, and gives stiffness. Wool is by no 
means cellulo.se. and. as you well know, 
is ironed, if at all, in a very difl'ereut way 
and with other results. Silk is another 
special case, although the silk fiber will 
also dry stiff, but is far more apt to be 
burnt if you are a little cai'ejess with the 
heat. It is these differences in the mate¬ 
rials themselves, as well as the amount 
of water to be taken out. that makes it 
necessary to run your iron at the proper 
heat for any given fabric. 
THE MAILBAG 
What About the Milch Goat? 
1 am a great believer in the festive 
goat—the milking kind. Many a baby, 
otherwise doomed, wouhl grow lusty if 
provided with thi.s milk. And the goat 
can make use of weeds and otherwise un¬ 
usable forage for a good part of her diet. 
Further, slu* is the proposition for the 
suburbanite whei'e the cow is impracti¬ 
cal. t’an’t you stir up some of your goat¬ 
breeding readers to give us stories of good 
goats yielding a decent mess of mild- 
fl.avored milk carrying say. five per cent 
of fat? A. COCHRAN. 
(’ome now. what /.v the truth about 
thi.s goat proposition? We hear all sides 
of it. Some i)eople have tears in their 
eyes as they try to tell all the virtues of 
“the poor man’s model cow.” (Ithers 
have a steely glare in the eye as they 
wave their hamls as if to ward olT sonn* 
nuisance. Somewhere in between lies the 
truth about the milch goat. As for “stir¬ 
ring up” tin' goat men. we know alre.ady 
what that means. Have we not listened 
to stories of 400-egg hens, cows that 
jumped over the moon with proliLs, api)le 
trees producing .$.500 crops, dogs that 
(‘a rued more than horses, and canary 
birds that jtroduced more than turkeys? 
Goat men to the front! 
Direct Interest in Agriculture 
We hear so much nowadays about be¬ 
ing directly interested in agriculture that 
I wish you would inform me as to what 
is really meant by dUxciltj interested in 
agriculture. Also who or what is a farm 
manager in the general sense of the term? 
New York. .roiiN w. raruett. 
You can probably obtain a dozen dif¬ 
ferent opinions. Our idea is that a per¬ 
son directly interested in agriculture is 
one who makes his living, or a good part 
of it, out of cultivating the soil. He may 
be the actual laborer who does the farm 
work, or he may be the owner who fur- 
nishe.s the needed capital. If he gets his 
bread and butter or any fair share of 
either directly out of the land he is di¬ 
rectly interested in agriculture. On the 
other hand, a teacher, public official, 
agent or other person who lives on a 
salary is indirectly connected with agri¬ 
culture. A farm managei', in the usual 
understanding of the term, is one hired 
to manage or control a farm and its 
operation. Sometimes he works with the 
other laborers and sometimes he does 
nothing but “execute.” 
Hiving Bees in Late Fall or Winter 
1 should question the wisdom of your 
bee man when he advises your correspond¬ 
ent, T. T. M.. to hive a swarm of bees 
from a barrel at this season of the year, 
and particularly in taking from their 
Winter stores and feeding syrup. It strikes 
me that it would have been better advice 
to let the bees sta.v' in the barrel during 
the Winter, and hive them in the Spring 
by placing a modern hive over the exit of 
the barrel, so that the bees would have 
to go through this hive to get outdoors, 
ami with a bee escape whicli would pre¬ 
vent them from returning to the barrel. 
Of course, a (pieen might have to be in¬ 
troduced into the new hive, but even this 
can be avoided if after ,a few bright <iays. 
when the bulk of the bees are in the mod¬ 
ern hive, the barrel were opened up and 
the bees left there with the queen (for 
there will be a few bees with the queen, 
anyway) shaken into the hive. The 
combs with brood in them can then be 
transferred to the hive and a splendid 
swarm built up. wiLFRii) wiiEEi.ER. 
Save Seed 
Whenever practicable, plant in hills —save 
the seed that would otherwise be wasted 
in crops which are widely thinned 
—avoid useless buying of high-priced seed, and con¬ 
serve the Nation’s supply by using the hill-dropping 
feature on the Iron Age Hill and Drill Seeder. This 
saves from a half to three-quarters of the seed used 
by drilling and very greatly reduces cost and the labor 
of thinning. 
Last year we all gardened as a matter of 
patriotism. We learned what a fine thing 
it is to have our own fresh, succulent vege¬ 
tables, and also that it pays! Now—the 
boys are coming home! New nations are 
in the making—new nations for us to lead 
and feed! More urgent than ever is the 
need for 
No. 306 Hill or Drill Seeder, 
furrowing, 
rolling 
and 
planting, 
marking^ 
le operation 
covering, 
next row 
- 
Save Work 
Hard work—back-breaking stooping, browbe- 
dewing hoeing and cultivating with old fash¬ 
ioned tools—is inefficient, foolish. 
Take a hint from the leading market gardeners 
in your neighborhood—the men who raise big, 
luscious things to eat in a sensible, farm¬ 
like way with Iron Age Combination 
Tools like that shown here. Your* dealer 
can show you many sizes and kinds 
for use in small home gardens, 
flower gardens, poultry farms, seed 
farms, truck gardens, etc. 
Descriptive folders sent on request 
Bateman M’f’g Co. 
961 Main St. Grenloch, N. J< 
Canadian Factory: 
THE BATEMAN-WILKINSON CO., Ltd, 
961 Symington Ave., Toronto, Can. 
In business over 83 years Makers of Riding 
and Walking Cultivators, Horse Hoes, Culti¬ 
vators and Harrows, Sprayers, Hay Rakes, 
Sulky Weeders, Potato Machinery, etc., etc. 
Gardens 
Bigger 
Better 
