12 
•The RURAL NEW-YORKER 
HOPE FARM NOTES 
Christmas finally came to us with wet, 
rheumatic weather. Last year the season 
borrowed weather from close to the North 
Pole. This year we seem to be served with 
a brand peculiar to the Middle South. 
However, the weather is of small conse¬ 
quence when the home conditions are 
right. The children are all well again, 
there is an abundance of wood for the 
fireplace, the daughter is home from col¬ 
lege and the big turkey weighed 16 pounds 
dressed! I cannot say that we spent any 
great amount of money for Christmas 
presents. In these times it seems little 
short of a crime to spend money for lux¬ 
uries or for things which gratify just a 
passing whim. Thus-far this great nation 
has been raising and spending money— 
great oceans of it. Soon will come the 
harder job of paying our obligations, and 
we must all get ready for it. So as the 
old year passes out we are trying to esti¬ 
mate what the new year will bring to 
farming. 
}»t Jjc * * * 
On the whole I think it will be a rea¬ 
sonably good year for people who are 
conservative and avoid plunging too 
heavily. I hear of farmers who say they 
will borrow money, rent extra land, in¬ 
vest heavily in fertilizer and m r mi re, and 
try to double their crops. Of c urse they 
know this is a gamble, but they figure on 
the same high prices which many of us 
obtained last season. I am not going to 
operate that way. My figures show that 
our farm income for 1918 was larger than 
in any year before, but they also show* 
that expenses were enormous—higher in 
every line than ever before. I can see 
no possible chance for these expenses to 
be lower. I think some of them will be 
higher. On the other hand, I can see 
half a dozen things coming which may 
cut dbwn the price of our products. Every 
farmer in New Jersey knows that he 
could not afford to raise our ordinary 
farm crops and sell them at the prices re¬ 
ceived a few years ago. That would 
mean bankruptcy—slow or rapid as the 
farmer had more or less capital. We may 
be dead sure that our expenses will keep 
up or increase, while it is a more than 
even chance that our prices will drop. 
That being so it seems to me a poor time 
to plunge. I shall stick to the crops 
which paid us and cut out the failures. 
***** 
The chief drone with us is potatoes. 
Our crop has not paid for the past four 
or five years, when we consider the real 
value of the labor. Very likely it is our 
own fault in some way, but we do not 
get potatoes enough to pay expenses. The 
cost of seed and fertilizing is heavier 
than for any other crops we plant, and 
there is more work involved. The work 
of planting, spraying and digging comes 
just when work on other crops would pay 
us better. Therefore we plan to cut the 
potato area down to just about enough 
for our own use and private trade, and 
put the rest of the potato land into sweet 
corn. We can plant an acre of sweet 
corn at 20 per cent of the money and 
labor cost required for an acre of pota¬ 
toes, the cultivation can be done for less 
than half cost and the picking for less 
than 25 per cent. I think one man who 
knows how can take care of five acres of 
sweet corn where he could handle one of 
potatoes. Many an acre of sweet corn 
in this county brought $200 in cash— 
with the feeding stalks extra. 
* * * * * 
You understand that this refers to our 
own farm and conditions entirely. On 
your soil and with your equipment the 
potatoes might pay much better. I do 
not know about that, but the point is 
that every man must settle such things 
for himself and in order to settle it he 
must have figures to show what crops 
cost and what they bring in. Such fig¬ 
ures show that, on this farm, potatoes do 
not pay as well as sweet corn and toma- j 
toes, and we are not here to uphold any 
old habits or methods which figures show 
to be parasites. I knew of a man who 
moved from Massachusetts to Kansas 
years ago. At his old home he made 
money raising strawberries. That was 
all he knew. So out in the Kansas 
prairie he plowed two acres of beautiful 
land and planted berries. He put in the 
best part of a year on them and they 
were wonderful—but there was no good 
market within 50 miles and no railroad 
for shipping. He lost nearly the entire 
crop. There was another man who was 
told that the pioneers need flatirons. So 
he bought about half a ton of them and 
lugged them out to Nebraska in the 
wagon, only to find that there was no 
sale! No farmer will succeed in the 
future unless he knows what crops pay 
him and cuts out the drones. 
***** 
Those of us who live inside of what I 
call the stuffed circle of humanity have 
got to consider these things. As prices 
of land rise we have got to find out what 
our soil is best adapted to, and learn 
how to produce that to best advantage. 
This “stuffed circle” covers a swing of 
125 miles around Trenton, N. J. Inside 
of that circle will be found, during the 
Summer season, more human beings than 
are to be found in any other area of 
equal size on this entire earth. I. hat 
seems like a large statement, but take 
down your map and mark such a circle 
around Trenton. Then figure out the 
population from the census and see what 
you get. Then try the same thing around 
any other point on the world’s map! 
You must remember that we have inside 
such a circle two of the largest cities in 
the world and many other great manu¬ 
facturing and mining towns. During the 
Summer we have also great swarms of 
visitors playing (and eating) along the 
Jersey and Delaware coasts. And also 
remember that during tbe growing season 
a good truck on a farm inside this circle 
is within a day’s run of any part of this 
great market. Thus our farming must 
of necessity be different from that of men 
who live farther back and cannot have 
direct service. We have got to find out 
what our soil will produce to the best 
advantage, and learn how to produce that. 
***** 
For instance, w r e know that the McIn¬ 
tosh Red apple will grow about to per¬ 
fection on our hills. That ought to be 
our line for development, for why should 
we spend time and labor growing potatoes, 
for which our land is not suited, when 
the same labor well applied will produce 
McIntosh, which sell at $7.50 per barrel? 
Consider the labor and expense required 
to produce a barrel of potatoes at $3 
compared with that of caring for a tree 
which will average four barrles of apples! 
Yet there are great stretches of land in¬ 
side this circle whei-e potatoes will pay 
better than anything else. There are 
other places where poultry, cows, truck 
crops, peaches or grain will take the lead. 
The point is that no one can afford to 
farm in a certain way just because his 
father did so. We have got to figure it 
out for ourselves, and be guided—not so 
much by habit as by figures. I met a 
man the other day who said there Avas no 
use asking boys to stay on the farm be¬ 
cause there was no room for them. If 
father had 100 acres there was room for 
only one boy. Now I have 100 acres 
here, and three boys could make room for 
themselvevs. The 15 acres on the lower 
level, near the brook, could be put under 
a system of irrigation and give a man- 
sized job for anyone. A good orchard of 
50 acres on the hills would keep anyone 
busy, and the 30 acres of timber on the 
western slope would give another boy all 
he could do if he really wanted to work. 
During this coming year and the years to 
follow, those of us who live inside this 
circle have got to find our best crops and 
concentrate on them. 
**~*** 
The pigs have paid us this past year, 
and we shall increase our herd. We shall 
keep several brood sow«, sell some little 
pigs and keep enough to take care of our 
waste and roughage so as to get about 
half their living out of it. Even with 
the present high pork prices my figures 
show that it does not pay to stuff a hog 
on grain and drive him to 250 pounds or 
more. We make more profit on lighter 
pigs, which get most of their food out of 
wastes from farm and garden and a small 
amount of grain. - As for poultry, they 
pay us since we cut down the number 
and started to breed quality. Every Fall 
we select 40 to 50 of the best and let the 
rest go. Our birds made a fair showing 
at the egg-laying contest, and the best 
part of it is that the pullets in this year’s 
test are superior to their mothers. Thus 
I feel sure that this strain of Reds is 
capable of steady improvement. Now we 
have a good many calls for stock and eggs, 
and I want to say frankly that we are 
not in the business of selling. I do not 
think it would be fair to other chicken 
breeders who, as I believe, have better 
stock than we have. I just turn over a 
few eggs to friends and stop there. If I 
did go into the business I should tell 
every customer clearly that I would give 
him no guarantee whatever. I know what 
the breeding pens are. On liis order I 
would take eggs from a certain pen, pack 
them carefully and ship. My responsi¬ 
bility would end right there. No guar¬ 
antee, no “come-back,” no making good. 
The buyer would understand this fully 
before he did any business, and would 
have to agree to it before he bought. It 
might seem like harsh treatment, yet in 
the end there would be far more satisfac¬ 
tion than in some of the deals where the 
seller agrees to do everything and then 
fails to make good. It would also shut 
off the class of buyers who seem to “kick’’ 
on general principles, thinking they will 
get a little more out of it by doing so. 
***** 
Looking back over the year’s figures I 
conclude that our truck has paid us well. 
There has not been any excessive cost of 
repairs and we average not far from 12 
miles of travel to a gallon of gasoline. 
The truck has helped us in many ways— 
aside from the one chief thing of getting 
the goods promptly into market. I do 
not know just how much work a farmer 
should have in order to make such a 
truck pay. On many farms there would 
not be work enough to pay fair interest 
on the investment. Yet our experience 
has been that a truck seems to create new 
business. Everyone on the farm seems 
to take an interest in keeping the truck 
busy and almost before you know it the 
farm is producing some new crop which 
makes freight for the truck. After this 
January 4, 1919 
year’s experience we should hardly care 
to try to get along without our gasoline 
freight car. h. w. c. 
Spring-seeded Clover 
I had a field in corn this year in which 
I planned to seed clover at the last culti¬ 
vation, which I tried with great success 
last year. A windstorm tangled the corn 
up so badly that this was impossible. 
This year’s clover field has been turned 
under, my Timothy fields are run out, and 
unless I can get a hay crop from this field 
that was in corn I am up against it. I 
prefer clover. Can I get a crop from a 
Spring planting? If so, would you advise 
straight clover or a mixed sowing? I have 
tried oats and peas for two years and 
have not been favorably impressed—very 
dirty, hard to cut (always down), woi’se 
to cure (always rains), and before fed 
out the mice have all the oats eaten out. 
Southern Connecticut. H. T. P. 
We should have advised a thin seeding 
of oats and peas with mixed clover seed 
but for your experience. The oats and 
peas, cut early, have usually paid us well. 
You can seed a mixture of Red, Alsike 
and Mammoth clover alone and get a fair 
crop in late Summer. We would sow 
five to six pecks of beardless barley with 
the clover seed. You can cut the barley 
early for hay without setting the clover 
back. 
Coal Ashes in the Garden 
I will have, next Spring, a considerable 
quantity of sifted coal ashes, which I 
would like to dispose of. I know that 
fertilizing value of this article is negli- 
ble, but would appreciate to know 
whether it would do actual harm to 
spread it on the garden, having no other 
place to dispose of it. Land is light and 
sandy already, so I would not need it 
for improving the mechanical texture of 
the soil. K. v. a. 
Nassau, N. Y. 
No harm, but a slight benefit. About 
the only plant food value in such ashes 
comes from the wood burned with the 
coal. This will furnish small quantities 
of lime, potash and phosphorus. The 
fine sifted ashes will work into the sandy 
soil and make it more compact, and better 
able to hold moisture. They would also 
work into a heavy soil and make it more 
porous and open. Thus they add to the 
power of the soil to regulate the surplus 
of air and moisture. The ash heap also 
makes a good absorbent for house slops. 
These will be held by the ashes, and the 
plant food they contain carried to the 
soil. 
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Does the Tractor 
Catalog Specify 
SPIREX Radiator? 
% 
You want to know how well 
built is the tractor you think 
of buying. 
You want to know if it com¬ 
prises parts that have proved 
their worth in actual farm 
service. 
And for this reason, look well 
to the radiator. 
The radiator is the safeguard 
of your tractor motor. It must 
render a most unusual cooling 
service to keep from over¬ 
heating this big, internal com¬ 
bustion engine that works 
almost always at maximum 
load in the hottest seasons of 
the year. 
If the catalog specifies a 
Spirex radiator, you know it is 
one that has been tested on 
thousands of the best farm 
tractors built — that it has 
proved its superiority in actual 
farm service as a most durable, 
most efficient tractor radiator. 
MODINE 
SPIREX 
RADIATORS 
Modine 
Manufacturing 
Company 
Racine, Wisconsin 
